Page Ten
THE UNITED AMERICAN
EDITORIAL
THE COMMUNITY CHEST AS A DISPENSARY
WITH A HUMAN SOUL
J* HE COMMUNITY CHEST has become an Ameri
can institution over night, so to speak.
As long as there are children in this world without
parents able to care for them, the responsibility of
their care and education is properly one resting upon
the shoulders of organized society and the state.
As long as there are people who neglect to insure
against possible disability and misfortune of one kind
or another, their care will always be a human responsi
bility resting upon society and the state.
As long as there are people of weak moral
stamina, lacking the adequate physical and mental
poise and balance, there will always be a need for
maternity homes and hospitals for the unfortunate
ones, which again places an unavoidable responsibility
upon society and the state.
As long as there are contagious diseases in
the world, some of which are still unconquered by
medical science, so long must society and the state
furnish the needed care and the never ending battle
to insure the health of the individual and the
community.
As long as there are wayward minors and children
who run afoul of our laws and our moral code,
agencies must be maintained by society and the state
for their correction and public protection.
As long as there are narcosis addicts and victims
of vice and illicit relations and trade which flourishes
throug secret methods, so long must society keep the
vigil, “rescue the perishing, care for the dying” and
restore those who may be saved.
As long as America stands commited to spiritual
things, society and the state must have a concern in
the institutions administering to the spiritual.
A practical and economic administration of indi
vidual and community CHARITY and coordinated
GOOD WILL is deemed far preferable to indiscrimi
nate beggary, hence the Community Chest, backed by
civic and social institutions always ready to furnish
an army of responsible men and women to present
the appeal.
The Community Chest insures economy and
business conduct in dispensation of charity. It
insures an equitable and just distribution of charity
funds, based upon institutional requirements and
needs, placing every relief institution upon a practical
economic business basis.
When the workers for the Community Chest call
upon the citizen who is happy and well situated they
speak with the voices of the fatherless, the maimed
and the injured; the voices, of those who had no
chance, those who have been found on the wayward
path; the voices of the indigent, sick and aged who
lost out in the struggle and are stretching out their
feeble hands asking for mercy; they speak with the
voices of those who lost their spiritual bearings and
drifted with the tide that swept them out into the pool
of moral perversities where they cry out in anguish
OCTOBER 1925
for a lifeline; they speak with the voices of the
rescuers who are on the job relieving distress and
rescuing the perishing.
It should be looked upon as a privilege to give to
the Community Chest, to help still this chorus of
anguish, everyone according to his means.
Giving to those who are in need is an investment
that returns definite and substantial dividends.
TAMANAWEIS
A CCORDING to the legends of the Pacific Coast
Indians, man came from the lower animal strata
through a long process of evolution. When eventually
the mental powers of the man-being had reached a
certain point of development, the creative genius, God,
gave to man the “Tamanaweis” (soul-power). While
this process of evolution from animal to man was
going on, these legends tell that some advancing
species did not possess the mental quality enabling
them to absorb the Tamanaweis. The progeny of
these species which mentally remained half animal and
half man, without soul-power, never acquired this
power of spirituality. Reflecting their progenitors,
these traditions relate, that the children of these
soulless beings were governed by instincts which could
become remarkably developed, but left them without
that warmth and beauty which can come only to those
who possess the soul-power.
The tribe of the Seeahtiks are, according to these
legends, among all the Indians the anomaly in the
evolution of man from animal to a soul equipped being
called human.
These soulless beings developed canny instincts
akin to animals, moving about under cover of darkness
and avoiding the light of day. Being without souls
they had no conscience to guide them, hence they were
capable of inhuman depravities from Which the soul-
equipped being shranked in horror.
So runs this tale from the Indian folklore of man’s
creation; an interesting story with plenty of food for
thought.
If a certain state of mental and physical perfection
was necessary before the creative source could trans
mit the Tamanaweis. it seems to leave a well told
story of a logical plan unfinished, in so far that it does
not state that likewise those who recede from the
point of perfection, necessary to obtain soul-power,
cannot retain it after having retrogressed mentally
from this point in a like manner.
The Indian legend of evolution, taken for what it
is worth, sheds a new light on the contentions pro and
con the issue of man which is agitating the so-called
civilized and Christianized world of the present day.
Suppose we follow this theory in the Indian legend
and the answer is clear why the present age knows so
much crime and reaction to the known primitive
beginning of man—a growing indifference to the
beauty in human life which is superinduced by soul
power. The common tendency of retrogression: a giv
ing up of higher ideals in order to attain that which
a gluttonous material and physical desire dictates,
indicates that in the lives of the great multitude the
Tamanaweis is dead and the soul power has fled.
“A life without a soul” is a philosophical saying