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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 18, 1917)
THE SUNDAY OREGONIA3T.' PORTLAND, FEBRUARY 18, 1917. The Man Who Built the Washington Monument Simply Piled His Stone Higher Than H is Predecessors. The Tatter, Like Every Other Cur, Discloses Mis Breed by the Man ner in Which He Carries His Tate. 1 12 iiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii I " I I The Heights of Tomorrow . ! ? . ' 1 ' By HERBERT KAUFMAN. . ' 1 Aim at something huge it's easier 'to hit. Big game hunting simply requires courage and ammunition of proper caliber. 1 I Mastodonic targets offer better chances than ratty little enterprises. 1 Small ambitions are usually futile because the goal is so unimportant. Inspiration and determination demand incitement. V , 1 ' kx A purpose that can't stir imagination won't spur ability. yrT 1 Just as teeth grow sharp on hard bones, so wits edge keen on stern hones. . 1 Most people don't get anywhere because they never start for anything. "The habitual failure," if truth be told, is more apt to be a habitual four-flush. Habits are active and persist- ent expressions; wherever there's action and persistence failure is merely deferred perform- 1 ance. , "1 1 Opportunity doesn't touch the average man; because he travels rut-cut roads and. old 1 paths seldom lead to new chances. . You can't play safe and stand to win. Results are proportionate to effort. We are all born 1 with possibilities for strength, but neither bodies nor brains develop extraordinarily without 1 due exercise. Climbing success is like scaling mountains. Each onward step fortifies power for the next. The start's the worst part. Exertion pains only the soft and unprepared. I Progress simplifies progress. Will coaches the winning stride. Those who will not dare the peaks must share the low places. The struggle for insignificance is worse than the battle for greatness. It's the crowd fight 1 that crushes youth and mangles age. 1 The wage-hunt is a more rigorous chase than the pursuit of fortune. The very persons who seek security and certainty by compromising with their potentialities betray themselves to heavier trials and harsher futures than aspiration ever encounters. 1 To be commonplace is to have no guaranteed place. Minds and hands, however skilled at . 1 ordinary tasks, are so easily replaceable that the first indication of diminishing utility threat- 1 ens loss of employment. Standardized labor is subject to standard terms and fixed conditions. Originality alone can 1 dictate for itself. Use your adventurous faculties; unlock the warehouse of imagination and take out the cranes 1 and triphammers and power-drills which nature stored there. 1 Tl " J U,,. -l, 1 ' Ui T 1 J j.1 . E Aiicy tan l iiiuvc in Liauipcu pidtca, uut up un uic nciguLS ui xuinuiiuvv, wucrc ucsuny E is drafting her tremendous plans for civilization, there's room for allthe intelligence under the stars; for all the audacity; for all the inventiveness; all the day-dreaming this universe holds. All of which is just a highfalutin' way of saying that anybody who operates a human ma- 1 chine in competition with an automatic adder, or a cash register, or a multiple drill and similar substitutes for men, is not only getting the least out of himself, but the least for himself. 7ilIIIIIlIIIIIIIIIIlIIIIIlIII1IIIIIIIIIIIlI1IIIII3IIIIIIIIllIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKIIIlIIlIHII IIIIIIIIIIIllIIIIIIllIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIllllIIIIIIIIltlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllHIIIlIIIIIIIIlIIIIIIlllllllllliiliiiiHiii tVTT IT B V Verses f Herbert Kaufman n til mm. When did you last Cross-examine the past? Turn back and find where your die was miscast. Ambition walked with you when you started out: Why did you desert her to travel with doubts At some turn of the way Confidence went astray Or you wouldn't be plodding a by-path today. If you'd achieve again You must believe again. Life offers just as much as it did then. Chances may still be found, - Roads to success abound, But they are not for irreso lute men. Enlightenment From the Dark Ages IN THE Middle Ages the transactions of all merchants, factors and ven dors were severely regulated by statute. Traffic in necessaries was con ducted under rigorous supervision. Food, drink and clothes could be marketed only at fixed profits. No one person could sell more than a cer tain quantity of such products within a given period. Competition, of course, was thereby handcuffed, but everybody had a chance to do busi ness only on a limited scale and cost o living was kept proportionate to com munity incomes. Manipulators had no chance to corner crops and create shortage in needables, as any citizen of this free and enlightened Republic may do at will. ' ' Generally speaking, we don't hanker for "the good old days," but when we glance over last month's bills and compare them with the expenditures that father used to make, it does seem as though the past can teach us a few things about government which the twentieth century has neglected to learn. , Why Did the Caterpillar Cross the Road? ON JANUARY 24, at Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson, a big plump caterpil lar leisurely crawled across the snow and ice in Cobb's Lane. You need not be a student of entomology to appreciate that this was not an orthodox performance. How he got there, no one has the least idea. Fur thermore, competent authority insists that he had no business to be in exis tence on the stated date. Precedent quite justifies the contention but that's the trouble with precedent it's so confoundedly unreliable exceptions are certain to occur. Nature is often erratic, men always and things usually so. Anybody who doesn't make allowance for the unexpected is unintelligent. They Are Not Fiends AN INDEFINITE number of Americans is ad dicted to the use of perilous drugs. It is impos sible to arrive at even approximate figures, but investigation indicates that we must count narcotic habitues by the hundreds of thousands, which conclu sion informs us that we have a grave problem to deal with one that is rendered especially serious by the insidious character of the blight. There would be hope of meeting the situation more efficiently were it not for the stigma attached to the use of morphine, heroin, cocaine and similar allevia tives. The popular conception of a drug slave is not kindly. With considerable justification, we picture these sad folk as lacking in moral stamina and ethical, responsibility. Swept by uncontrollable cravings they can hardly maintain responsible attitudes towards society. The devilish potions strike at the very control stations, destroy memory and play havoc with the entire nervous system. Contrary to accepted opinion, there are no typical manifestations by which we may recognize the class under discussion. The practice is veiled in secrecy and sensitiveness. Add to this a consequent attitude of evasion, carried to the extreme of prevarication and it is readily under stood how baffling the hideous problem must remain. The war against habit-forming drugs may not be abated until we can rid the country of the menace. Vital undertakings will continue to be at the mercy of crazed judgments professional men occupying posts of ultimate importance physicians and a dis turbingly large percentage of surgeons, as well. as neurotics, criminals and outcasts, are victims of the hypodermic syringe and proscribed pills and powders. On the other hand, legislation has thus far failed to furnish appreciable relief it has outlawed the traffic and placed the trade in the grasp of conscience less bootleggers. Prohibition affords these scoundrels an opportunity to intensify the inherent cruelty of the misfortune by usurious profits--so to obtain a satisfy .ing quantity of the stuff, men and women who could afford to buy their supply, when it could be purchased in the open, now deprive themselves of food and clothes, pawn their last valuables, spend the money sadly needed by their families, steal and paw the muds of life for the precious solace. Probably the worst phase of all is the prostitution of school children to the inexorable habit. So warped and vile has their business made them that the peddlers even proselyte among boys and girls still in their first teens. It requires no great stretch of imagination to esti mate the aftermath of such ill-begun lives. Nobody can assure himself that members of his own household are not afflicted. Even husbands and wives, despite the intimacy of their relationship, are able to conceal the hated truth for years. Words cannot translate the sufferings they endure the extremities of torture which these ill folk experi ence. Few have the morale to stand the crazing strain. Society at large is seriously threatened by the alarming growth of drug using. We can't afford to have a million possibly two or three million human beings, who would otherwise be reliable and produc tive citizens, junk themselves. The entire Nation must recognize the immediate necessity for a comprehensive and -effective crusade against the plague. Our investment in progress is too heavy to lose the use of a multitude upon whose utility we have counted for whom we have provided educa tion and training only to have the outlay completely nullified by the loss of their future services. No matter what the cost of correction shall total, the result will justify it. The Federal Government must eventually assume control of drug production and distribution, elaborate and expensive as the system may prove. Narcotics can only be safely marketed in minimum seals, serially numbered and the passage of each individual package from point to point in the chain of disposition be put on record. Manufacturer, wholesaler and druggist must hold their books ready for inspection by supervising author ity, so that the purchase of abnormal quantities of mor phine and cocaine et al. by physicians (upon whose prescription alone may it be secured) will instantly disclose an illicit source of provision. Regulation one whit less rigorous will be inef fectual. The overhead charges may prove enormous, but when we are called upon to save a million human beings from destruction, we can't pause to save money in any amount. Personally, we must stop calling these people "fiends" and view their, plight with proper sympathy. They are sick deranged and require every sort of assistance that will hearten them to fight back to soundness. They can't help themselves so we must do that for them. COPTRIGHT, 1917, BT HKRBKRT KAUFHAIT, GREAT BBXTAZ2T A2TD ill OTHKB BIGHTS REJEBTED,