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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (April 9, 1916)
THE SUNDAY OREGONIAX, TOItTXAXU, ArUIE 1916. Failure and success are measured by the same clock-tick What if your pockets are empty? Resolu tion is a mint What's Wrong With America? 12 9, TT IT t ,,F t rmmrnl ill ii ' I : : . . I ill I I II ! II i I ! 0 A Chance for Everybody But a Quitter By HERBERT KAUFMAN Failure is a phase of success. How can you tell what to do until you learn what to avoid? The only game without a losing chance is solitaire, and that's a loss of time. If you aren't occasionally wrong, you aren't on the right track. Men who don't make mistakes never take chances and seldom get them. Even Nature miscalculates; draughts, hurricanes, tidal waves, floods, pests, storms, blights, land slides and earthquakes constantly upset her plans, but don't alter them. We survive only because the forces which support us are persistent. One bad season cannot thwart the Creative Will the law of growth is founded upon averages. Do you expect a better show? Ride out to the nearest orchard and let a peach tree teach you how to try again. If a wheat field had your code we would have starved to death centuries ago. There's always room to grow again ind omit ability is the greatest ability. There were no elements in yesterday which won't be duplicated in tomorrow. The sky is your limit and aeroplanes have given you farther skies than your father's. You have a complete equipment of the faculties with which the first humans faced the future, plus all the conclusions of the past. ' Every year it's easier to make good because of time - saving, blunder - erasing, energy - conserving ideas placed at your disposal by the experimenters of previous years. Therefore the valid excuses for incompetence dwindle annually. The generation possessed of the most tools should have the fewest fools. Surrender of ambition is folly; real persistence never accepts defeat. Nothing has happened to you except the loss of a few things which you picked up on the way. There's a longer road ahead and every mile of it is richer in possibilities. If you seek as hard as you used to, you'll get more than you used to have. As industries multiply, the need for capable administrators grows in proportion; as new forces are discovered, so are openings for men who can apply them; as commerce extends its scope, the field for executives broadens; as science provides substances, a corresponding provision for their utilization is necessary; as railroads push into virgin territory and trolley lines nose into isolated districts, the demand for business and processional pioneers increases; as inventive imagination pours its dreams into foundry moulds, the prospects of another group of men are recast. The best thing that could have happened to you is this seeming reverse. It will force you to look about, to investigate the season's latest styles in opportunities. If you are still alert, eager, assured and determined, one of these recent developments will offer you a scope which your former engagement never possessed. , Bad luck has often proved a knocker on the gate of Fortune. There's a chance for everybody but a quitter. . . . ... i I a scope wnicn your Jormer engagement never possessed. ip; Ijjli I Bad luck has often proved a knocker on the gate of Fortune. , j j j I jJ There's a chance for everybody but a quitter. ' lii ii! Ill I! I'M H III ! I I ill Hill1 1 1 ; hi! ! These Be Men LOUIS, the little waiter who used to serve you at the La Fayette, is serving a "seventy-five" at Verdun. Etienne, the fat cook of the Palace Grill, was decorated last month for conspicuous gallantry. Beppo, the bootblack, went down before the leaden sleet of that awful Isonzo assault. We suddenly realize that they were men after all these humble serv ants of our necessities. Valor at the stock-pot, heroism in an apron, courage wiping muddy shoes life IS queer! There's a crippled valet in a New York hotel with a record in the Northwest Mounted Police and a Sergeantcy in Strathcona's Horse to his credit. A putty-faced butler in the upper sixties carried the guidon through the Tugela River campaign. A dishwiper in a cheap Greek restaurant answered the call in both Balkan wars, and accommodated half of a Bulgar bayonet in his groin. They serve these alien workers from over seas. We measure them with scant comprehension and judge them low, because they do our menial work. But cart a nation take into its veins a better strain? How many a cook is worthy of the master's place how many a master should be busy with the basting spoon! When Hill Meets Will When a man has one fixed method and accepts his first rebuff as the final decision of fate, he will never solve his problem. Metre Hill was not in the Japanese philosophy, and so it eventually yielded to their as saults. Port Arthur was the goal and everything in its path an incident. A fighter's imagination wipes out all barriers a craven's creates them where they don't exist. The Junkman Gets His Turn WAR makes strange millionaires. Camp . followers have more than once died financiers. There's a sutler in the history of many a "proud and haughty" family. The Rebellion created opportunities which turned peddlers into plutocrats. Now it's the junkman's turn. Woolen scraps, linen shreds, bits of metal are at a premium. Paper making materials, hitherto supplied by Europe, have mounted to prices un precedented in our experience. Shoddy will soon cost as much as we pay for fine cloths metal filings, brass, copper, zinc, antimony, manganese steel in any form, are quoted at prices that make short-handed weavers and manufacturers writhe in the bank-balance. For some time past, the collection of refuse has been one of the best paying little businesses in our midst. There's more gold to be mined out of rubbish heaps than Golconda held. Another group of back-alley families seem slated to move "uptown." You can never tell what a fellow's beginnings will lead to. Every business gets its day. Old Rags-and-Iron is topside man at last! tvrr m V VERSES fWfkWJ Herbert Kaufman ' WV. " V 7 a i ha i i ft,-, I '2 . Don't fret about the chance that flew, Another will soon come to you. Clouds never last,, skies must turn blue. Your right to fight and smite and hew Remains. YouH get your proper due If but to purpose you stand true. One setback doesn't count, nor two. The biggest men we ever knew Met with defeat that's how they grew. They sought and failed and fought anew, . Rode through the stiffest gales that blew, Proved worthiness to join the crew That history chooses for "Who's Who." Regret is not a mending glue; Reget regain your pluck dare DO. LET'S take stock. The rest of the world is busy with its own troubles, so we can safely engage in a frank confession of our shortcomings. Now is the time to find where we're wrong. When the floods are racing against the dykes, it's too late to began repairs. No man can predict when nor how the storms, that are now wrecking Europe, will move upon us. We must know our strength ourselves. It's a poor patriotism that resents the disclosure of national weakness. The optimism that feeds solely upon success eventually breeds failure. Over-confidence is the ally of disaster. Wisdom is wary. History is a graveyard of cocksure empires of peoples who ceased to post sentinels after they reached supremacy. Campaign orators and Fourth of July elocution ists to the contrary, there's a lot wrong in A merica. We've grown rich at the expense of citizenship. We've developed ideas faster than ideals. The biggest organization in the United States is "The George Society'" those who expect the other fellow to do his duty. Individualism the pursuit of personal advantage is the dominant note in our life. Private ambitions absorb splendid abilities which should be devoted to the Nation. The greater minds among us are planning and contriving for their own ends. Generally speaking, public service is deemed a sacrifice instead of a privilege. For example, what have you ever done for Amer ica? Indeed, what do you really know about the country? How familiar are you with its past with the principles laid down by its founders? I low many articles of the Constitution can you recite? Do you even know all the verses of one patriotic song? How often have you examined the record of the men for whom you have cast your vote? On how many occasions have you gone among your neighbors to urge their support for the enactment of measures in which you had no direct concern? Do you care how many forests are destroyed in the next state, or what waterways are choked against navigation, a thousand miles away? To which you probably answer that you'll render as much service as the next man but there's the rub the next man is wrong too. There's too much carelessness too much callous ness, too much ignorance, too much willingness to shove responsibility on the shoulders of a few, and too little care in the selection of the few who shoulder the responsibility. How can we decide upon the sanest measures, if those whom you empower to judge the measures are not themselves the sanest, the ablest and the most patriotic among us. No form of preparedness is so important as your own preparedness for the exercise of the franchise. While you remain indifferent to the great causes be hind progress and security, we will continue to have indifferent legislation through bombastic, superficial, self-seeking and pork-grabbing legislators. ; We cannot be greater than our leaders. And sVj long as men of demonstrated capacity are disregarded, and Bull and Pull are supported for office in their stead, we shall continue to be incompetent for the emergencies of peace as well as war. Whether we are called upon to meet an invader or not is beside the point. Whether you stand ready to shoulder a rifle or play the slacker is not the question. There's a three hundred and sixty-five-day patriotism, and no other sort is genuine. America needs you and your help year in and out. We can boast of illustrious achievements, but we've arrived at a point where we must begin to count the costs. Gigantic blunders mark the path of our progress unless we consider them promptly and counteract their influence, there will be an incalculable reckoning. Criminal wastes have been incurred in the devel opment of our industries. We've licked all creation commercially, but we've almost licked ourselves in the process. We've bluffed prodigiously and the bluffs have never been called, because our game has never reached the stage of a showdown. Nature and four thousand miles of rich and virgin continent have absorbed our extravagances. , Our wanton exhaustion of wealth sources is prob ably without parallel in modern times. Any old-world nation conducting its affairs with the same inefficiency of method and contempt for con servation would have gone bankrupt long ago. There's a lot that's wrong in America. But the underlying trouble is YOU. Copyright, 1816, Jlexbert Kamfman'a Weekly Fa,re, by Kins Featnre Syndicate. Great Britain and All Other Rights Reserved. Copyright, 1818, by Herbert Kaufman,