THE FOLK COUNTY OBSERVER, TUESDAY, JULY 21, 1914.
"THE BURDEN OF THE NATIONS
99
(Continued from Friday.)
RussiaI don't think I ever visited
a country in ail my travel up and
down the length and breadth of the
world with so much anticipation as I
went to Russia. I never came away
from any place in this world with so
sad a heart. Russia is a wonderfully
beautiful country, attractive in its
physical endowment. I think St. Pet
ersburg and Moscow are two of the
most beautiful cities I ever saw. No
where have 1 seen such evidence of
lavish bestowals of wealth upon cer
tain things. I never have stepped in
side the arched doorways ot such
churches altars gleaming with gold,
the holy icons framed in blazing dia
monds and precious stones, they are
paved with marble, wainscoted with
malachite, panelled with lapis lazuli;
and yet, step out of that environment
of magnificence, and on the porches
and on the steps of this majestic
church youi look upon the most awful
squalor and pitiful poverty you ever
saw. Old men and women lying tliere
literally rotting, mumbling through
toothless gums a prayer for a few
pennies to keep .them from starvation.
I never saw such drunkenness. The
government makes and sells the whis
key, vodka, and the more vodka the
peasants drink, the more profit in the
pocket of the government. And what
does the government care for the few
thousand of these mujiks?
Russia covers one-seventh of the
land surface of the globe. Out of her
stupendous population of millions seventy-two
per cent can neither read
nor write, and in the sense that we
know it, there is not a public school
in the whole empire. Russia carries
a crushing debt of four and three-
quarter billion dollars. She borrows
money every spring to pay the $2,000,
000 interest on it; and yet she has
provided this vear four hundred and
ninety-seven million dollars as a mili
tary budget, and at the knout's end
she is taking by increased taxation
from her peasants and poor the money
with which to build and equip a navy
to replnce the one that Togo sent to
the bottom of the Sea of japan.
Well, there is Japan! Poor little
bankrupt Japan! The logical end of
the whole grotesque delusion! Fifty
millions of industrous, economical, pa
triotic people wresting a living from
a soil impoverished by centuries, with
out national resource, figuring income
and expense to the last penny, halv
ing each pitiful coin in willingly borne
taxation eighty-five per cent of Ja
pan's income is derived from taxa
tion she has nothing else. It means
that her people must give each year
an average of twenty-five per cent of
nil they have and earn to pay Japan's
penalty for following her "Great Al
ly" in the race of mad militarism.
Only fifteen per cent of the land of
Japan is arable, and that only under
forced intensive tanning; all the rest
of it is waste sand, rock, and lava,
which would not grow even a blade
of grass, and even the fifteen per cent
of arable soil must be artificially fer
tilized before it will bring forth any
thing at all.
Japan has a national debt of $1,
378,000,000, an average of $21.75 for
every man, woman and child in the
whole empire. If you put Japan upon
the auction-block tomorrow and sell
her before the nations of the world,
everything, from one end of the em
pire to the other jewels of the em
peror 8 crown, her manufactories,
railroads, tea fields, everything I
question whether at public sale the
whole empire would bring enough to
discharge the stupendous crushing
debt that she has laid upon her
shoulders in an endeavor to keep up
with her great "Ally of the West."
I have been in Japan a great deal
for the last ten years. Some of my
best, warmest, and most trusted
friends are men who stand high in the
councils of the empire and who nie
striving with all the intensity of their
intense natures to solve their prob
lems. I spent a very pleasant day
not long ago with Count Okuma, one
of the few remaining old men of the
ancient regime. For from being the
fire-breathing, sanguinary monster
that a great deal of our sensationol
description pictures as describing the
leading men of Japan, be is a delight
ful old man, spending the twilight of
his lite in good deeds, lie has en
dowed a magnificent university, where
some three thousand young men and
women are engaged in the laudable
pursuit of getting an education. He
has one of the most magnificent col
lections of orchids in the world. He
specializes in beautiful first editions
and rare Confucian classics, lie is
philosopher and a sage an ideal old
man. lie said to me, as we were
talking about these things: "The
impression has gone out through the
world that the Japanese are a san
guinary nation that we are blood
thirsty and quarrelsome, and that we
delight in warfare. Have you ever
stopped to think that Japan has
fought just two wars in all ber his
tory, and that both those war were
in defense of what she considered
as yon in America bare considered
when you fought her sacred rights
and her national honor. What Ja
pan needs, and must have, ia Dot war.
She has had enough of that, bearen
knows. She need fifty yean of
quiet, constructive peace to win back
the comfortable prosperity to which
men may look as an ideal of national
existence." -
I am sure that Count Okuma sim
ply voiced the sentiment of multi
tudes of men whose names I might
call, and with whom I have talked
in his expression of hearty gratitude
to the United States. He said : ' ' You
opened the door for us by which we
came out into the sisterhood of civil
ized nations. It was you- who led the
way. Shall a child make war upon
its revered mother ?" And that is
the sentiment you will find in Japan.
Don't believe, my friends, the things
that come filtering through the yellow
dispatches from Tokio, designed mere
ly, to make reading matter tor sensa
tional scare lines. Yellow journalism
depends upon springing sensations,
oven at the expense of kindling be
tween nations the awtul catastrophe
of war. Japan is not going to fight
you, not because she has only nine
teen battleships where you have thirty-eight.
Japan is not going to fight
you, because she does not want to
fight anybody. She wants to be let
alone. She wants peace constructive
peace. She is not going to fight any
one, because she can't.
She went back irom rortsmoutn de
feated in her demand for indemnity
not by the diplomacy and the strat
egy of Witte, but defeated by her own
empty-handed poverty, for she knew,
the Russians knew, that japan
could not have delivered another bat
tle to save ber souJ. Tliere is only
one way Japan could fight you, and
that is that some European nation.
intent upon her suicide, should under
write the method of her self-murder,
or that the Hebrew bankers of Europe
should take a mortgage on her tea
fields and lacquer factories, feeling
certain of its enforcement.
Japan is not going to fight you as
long as you and I ace true to the
principles upon which America stands.
Japan will look to you as her inspira
tion and her friend.
But there is not a nation of the
world, from the least to the greatest,
but has a hundred causes of para
mount importance to the future of
her people why these wasted millions
might be well devoted to some other
service. No matter what is left un
done, the military mania is ever cry
ing with feverish greed for more.
Side by side with neglect of na
tional duty and the squandering of
national resources, militarism is breed
ing internal dangers. The civilized
world is seething with discontent.
Everywhere the mass of the people
are developing a resentful opposition
to the existing order of things, and
by far the greater part of it comes
from the crushing and constantly in
creasing demand for larger sums to
devote to national defense, lo the
masses of men taxation is only justi
fiable when its results are manifested
in the general good. It is hard to
convince men of the necessity, in times
of peace, of vast creations of arma
ment, when, in order to pay for it,
there must result ruinous taxes, lonj
hours, short wages, high prices. The
burden eventually becomes too heavy
to be borne, and then comes chaos,
In England today, with an annual
income of one billion dollars, eighty-
six per cent come from almost ruin
ous taxation. In Germany, in addi
tion to the government ownership,
the taxation burdens all classes of iho,
people and Germany has just asSesJsBtl"
a special Income Tax of 8 per cent for
military purposes. In France, the in
terest on the national debt alone is
five dollars a head for every living
soul in the Republic, and the war bud
get takes $7.20 more per capita. In
Italy, taxes range from twelve per
cfc-nt on houses to twenty per cent
on income. In Japan, ninet per cent
of the income is from, taxation and
Japanese patriotism rises, to a willing
rate of thirty-five per cent but lie
pays it with a smile on his face and a
song in his heart, and Banzai for the
glory of Japan.
Far beyond the decadent effect ot
actual war is the immoral effect of
vast bodies of segregated men. Mur
der, cruelty, rapine, and loot always
follow in the trail of battle, but they
come quickly and they pass quickly;
but far more lasting and degrading are
the vices that bang about the idle
thousands of armed peace.
In Germany today titty-seven per
cent of the men are unmarried. Tliere
are three reasons for that peculiar
condition of things: The hist is that
the average population is 310 to the
square mile. It takes "Jbrave man.
conscious of his power of parenthood,
to complacently look into the face of
the possibility of increasing that per
cent of population, then every man
in Germany under the ajre of forty can
be called on a few days ' notice to the
colors. And when he is called he must
go. He may dislike the order of
things, he may dislikeithe War Lord,
but when he is called he must go.
put on his unfiorm. and stand up
and make a target of himself to be
shot at, whether hewill-r,not; and
no man wants a wife, with a cottage
and a little brood of children, with
a contingency like J&t before bim.
Then a great many of 'the men in Ger
many do not need to be married. Let
me tell you just one single fact a
little bit of bar sinister, not worse
in Germany, I take it, than in sny oth
er eon n try, but I Happen to -Jisve the
statistic for this last year ten per
cent of all the children bora in Ger
many were fatherless, so far as recog
nized wedlock was concerned. Tliere
were born (n Germany 172,814 ille
gitimate chifdren the very large ma
pority, said'the census report, in the
neighborhood of cities housing large
garrisons of troops.
A friend of , mine, who is a major
surgeon in the English army, walked
with me through a great military hos
pital, There were twelve hundred
men from garrisons scattered all over
Great Britain. My friend told me
that out of, the standing army of
To- htrt i nn ,,n " 1 -
.j,uuu jut?u uver iuu,uuu weic uu,c
lessly, haplessly, incurably invalided
as the result of vices that hang around
snm of tile soldier. ,
In the United States army a't least
1,200 meii more than an entire war-
footing regiment are constantly un
der medidnl treatment for venereal
disease. 'These results of vice over
balance all other causes of disability.
Typhoid,, malaria, smallpox, all these
are negligible beside the black plague.
In 1902,, out of every 1,000 men 102
were diseased. In 1912, with all re
cent discoveries as to prevention and
cure, there were 11,211 cases of ven
ereal disease, as against 3,737 of nil
others. , That is. the army. In the
navy the rate is lfiO. Surgeon-Gen
end Rixey, in his 1909 report, said
"This class (venereal) of disease ren
ders entirely ineffective for over
month .three battleships, with a com
piemen! of 1,000 officers and men for
each. And yet what can you ex
pect? '
Don't you see that if you teach a
man that one commandment is wrong,
you can't for the life of you defend
the other nine? Don't you see that
if it is right to commit murder, you
have no logic by which you can teach
him that it is wrong to commit adul
tery? Don't you see that the whole
moral fabric stands or falls by the
same' logic?
The underlying genius of warfare
is strategy, and in the conception of
strategy the end always justifies the
means. Deceit, fraud, untruthfulness,
spite, betrayal these are the methods
of military statesmanship. Embody
thein in modern civilization, and you
have found war s philosophy.
Aside from Japan, an anomaly
among the sister nations, the greatest
powers ot the world are all the repre
sentative embodiment of Christian civ
ilization. Cut out all reference to the
spiritual side of religion, all reference
tosalvation, or heaven, or hell, or im
mnrfnlity; make Christianity merely
tli'e dynamic of a desirable type of
civilization, u educe the much disput
ed question of foreign missions to a
rot-re desire to carry culture about the
world.
What sort of a front does the
Christian civilization of the world pre
s?nt as it prays its prayers and sings
its psalms under the shadow ot naked
steel, while the "perishing heathen"
laugh in ill-concealed contempt and
h'v, "Look how these Christians
love!"
, I think the saddest thing I saw in
"my whole journey around the world
was a cartoon in a Mohammedan pa
per published in Cairo. I happened to
be in that part of the world when
Italy declared war against Turkey to
take Iropoli. The most inexcusable
act that has happened in modern civil
ization was the declaration, of war
against Turkey for a little strip of
and land in Iripnli. Italy had no
reason to fight, unless it was that she
said: "We have a big army. We
have trained them to kill. , Unless we
give them something to kill, they
might get to killing each other or
us. We have got to have something
to keep our battleships from rust
ing away at the docks. All the na
tions have taken a bit of Africa.
England took a grab, France took a
piece, Germany reached over and took
a little; if we are going to train in
big company we must have a piece of
Africa. ".-So Italy declared war. I
happened to be in Italy, when the
legions marched away from their
homes in Florence, in Rome, in Naples.
These regiments of boys came down
the steets and took ship? . that took
them to Africa; they knew not what
for; they cared less. I never saw a
particle of enthusiasm in those regi
ments. They looked to me very much
like our regiments of national guards
boys mostly; broad shoulders, brown
cheeks, healthy looking; no 'bands
playing; the merchants did not leave
their stores; the populace did. not
gather in cheering crowds. I saw no
enthusiasm of any kind. They took
ship and went to fight for a piece of
Iripoli. ,
A few weeks after that I was in
Cairo. A battle had been fought I
saw a cartoon I shall never forget.
The Moslem artist had drawn a re
markable picture. It was the desert
of Tripoli, in the immediate, fore
ground a single towering palm tree.
Under it an old man was standing
an old desert sheik, his tattered bur
noos scarcely reaching to his poor
ankles, his green turban on his head,
and the wind blowing his gray locks
about bis face. Beside him was a lit
tle weazened old woman, crouching
at bis side, as be flung around ber a
protecting arm. Just over her ws
s younger woman with a babe suckling
at her naked breast, another little
child pulling ber skirts. All of them
seemed to be shrinking from some ap
proaching terror. Away yonder on
the line of the horizon "some one had
firtd a shell that had described its
fiery arch in the sky. It had sud
denly burst above them, where it look
ed, like some great meteor falling
from the sky, and underneath it the
Mohammedan cartoonist had., written,
''Is this, then, perhaps, the Star of
Bethlehem?"
Oh, the awful cynicism of it, when
we remember that the nation that
fired the shot that killed helpless old
women and drabbled little children
in their own blood was the nation in
whose capital sits the head of the
greatest religious organization in the
world, "The Vicegerent of God, tfl
rule in His name." How can Christ
ianity but stand abashed in the pres
ence of this militarism that gives the
lie to its Pnnee of Peace?
So civilization today faces its most
tremendous problem. Morals, educa
tion, progress, and religion are bound
up in one. Militarism squanders re
sources, increases taxation, raises the
cost of living, breeds rebellion and
anarchy, lowers moral ideals, spreads
leprous vice, makes of religion a thing
of grotesque hypocrisy, paralyzes mis
sions, throttles the , world. Reason
cries "Halt!". But fear has reas
on chained. Not a. nation of them
all but would stop today if it could;
but self-preservaticfn .is the first law
of life. In the aggregation of ancient
states heredity is stronger than sa
gacity. The world is tricked by a
delusion.
Armed peace is not peace, but po
tential, menacing war. There is only
one way to insure peace, and that
is to abandon the possibility of war.
The world wants peace. It wants a
constructive age that will prove the
ideals of humanity and make our
dreams come true. Who will lead
the way? It will require courage and
self-sacrifice far beyond the heroism
of battle. Who is to lead the way?
America can do it.
Is she brave enough ? Can she do it
still? Has she gone too far, or can
she still be what our fathers dreamed
when they planted - that Hag, a new
constellation in .the; firmament of the
earth ? We have made some sad mis
takes. The contagion, with its glam
our and its barbaric fascination, has
touched our sober judgment. We who
are supreme in our self-sufficiency
who for a century laughed at the
follies of the Old World" madness-
have allowed ourselves a venture in
the domain of Bedlam. Providence
flung us for a moment into the fore
front of the world,- and instead of
remembering that'-Ve stood for a new
age and a new pbilosophy we dressed
ourselves in the 'uniform of modern
savagery and began' to ape the insani
ty of the older world, v We are not
oy instinct -a military nation.
It does not set. well With the genius
of the Republic. It does not attract
our men. ' Our young men are men of
vision, of accomplishment ; men of
peaceful "''conditions. They dream
dreams. There is nothing attractive
to the young men of America in be
ing shut, up in dusty barracks, and
burning up in practice marches. If
they must march, they want to march
for something and to some place. Our
old men are not taken with the pos
turing of pomposity and the glare and
glamonrs of European militarism.
Our American women don t go
down into the dark valley and the
shadow of death to' breed boys to be
made targets"for bullets unless there
is something behind the bullets that
is worth sacrifice. What we have
done, we have done well. Let us con
gratulate ourselves on that. With our
tremendous resources, what we have
made is the best that an be made.
At Spithead, at the King's Corona
tion, peace advocate as I am, I hugged
myself when I looked upon the lordly
Delaware, supremest ot tbem all, and
proof to the world of what money
and Yankee genius can do when it
sets out to do it. But we don 't want
Delawares; we don't want standing
armies and big navies. We have no
hereditary enemies. We have no old
feuds' to fight over. Our militarism is
artificial,- but- its tremendous cost is
proof of how easily we might come
to the brink of ruin.
We have only succeeded in col
lecting an army of 81,785 men and a
navv of 47.500 less than lSO.OOU men
in all even after offering chromos of
their enlistment.
We have a population of 100,000.000
on a self-sufficient area of 3,571,223
square miles. What a wonderful
thing it is to stand across the seas
and look at America! You think
about America sometimes, but did you
ever look at it at the angle of five
thousand miles and see what it looks
like? Did you know that you can
take England, Ireland, Scotland,
Wales, France, Spain, Portugal, Ger
many, Holland, Belgium, Denmark,
Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy.
Austria, Greece, Turkey that is, all
of Ecu-ope except Russia? Now take
a map of the United States; cut off
New England and straighten the east
ern line; split the map down the
summit of the Rocky Mountains from
Canada to Mexico. You have a
square republic now, bounded on the
north by Canada and the Great Lakes,
on the east by the Hudson River and
the.' Atlantic, south by Mexico and the
Gulf, 'west by the Rocky Mountains.
Now, between the Hudson River and
the Rockies between Albany, N. Y.,
and Denver, Colorado yen can take
all Europe except Russia, and lay it
down once, twice and a half a time
two and a halt-times -two and a half
times and still have one-sixth of our
territory left to make a frame to go
around the marvelous picture and
hang it oh the Pole Star for all the
world to view in wonder and amaze.
Here are 1,800,000 square miles of
arable soil, capable of supporting, not
our present 100,000,000, but capable
of supporting a thousand million pop
ulation belter than any equal area on
the face of the earth. "
We have a national debt of a round
billiondollars every penny of it war
debt, too. During the past thirty
years our' population has increasd
eighty-five per cent, our wealth one
hundred and eighty-five per cent, and
our expnditurcs four hundred per
cent. For the - ten years before the
Spanish war we, appropriated yearly
$24,000,000 for Oii-rrmy and $27,000,-
UOO lor our navy, since the Spanish
war each year $83,000,000 at least
has gone to the yar Department, an
average ol $108,Q0p,000 to the navy.
In the ten years we have spent $1,-
975,000,000, enough to have paid the
entire national debt and have built
three Panama Canals.
During 1912 our entire income was
$702,000,000. Of this we expended
$054,000,000, and of that expenditure
$444,000,000 went to the War, Navy,
and Pension departments. Seventy-
two per cent, that is, of the entire
income for war, past,; present, and
to come, and twenty-eight tier cent,
or what was left, for all that' a great
nation should do deserts to be irri
gated, swamps to be drained, rivers to
be deepened, harbors to be dredged,
forests, to be guarded, roads to be
built, tuberculosis to' be fought, can
cer to be investigated, ten million ne
groes to be cared for all,, all the
mighty problems of a free Republic
to be met, and we kept twenty-eight
per cent ot our income and gave the
rest to a cheap imitation of European
insanity.
The whole public school system of
America cost in 1912 the sum of $426,
250,434, and we lavished $444,000,000
on our pet delusion. A single bat
tleship costs at least $15,000,000; its
upkeep at least $750,000 per year. We
have grown, alas ! so accustomed to
battleships and their cost that the
enormous magnitude fails to impress
us as it should.
The cost of one battleship would fur
nish a faculty of twenty-five profes
sors to fifty colleges for five years. It
would furnish the entire public-school
system to ten cities of 50,000 inhabi
tants for ten years. It would give a
complete college or technical educa
tion to 20,000 young men. It would
build modern sanitary tenements,
whose small rental would keep them
in lasting repair and condition, cap
able of housing 300,000 souls in com-
tort and satety. It would build and
endow fifteen manual training schools
and enable them to send out each year
ten thousand boys and young men fit
to earn not a mere competence, but
an-adequate living. Instead of cost
ing three-quarters of a million dollars
to keep it in repair, and in ten years
at most going to the scrap-heap of
uselessness, that one battleship would
eliminate ignorance and ;crime and
pave the way to usefulness and suc
cess for thousands of men for gener
ations to corne. And We are urged to
perpetuate . this monumental extrav
agance-yearly not by building one
ship alone, but two or three, and even
four so wild jjas become the mania
of the 'extreme advocates of militar
ism. "
We have fifty two fourtceri-inch
guns in our navy, each throwing a
1,400-pound shell, firing three shells
a minute. There monsters of destruc
tion carl reach a target fourteen miles
away. e have thirty-six thirteen-
lnch cannon all but as powerful.
These guns cost $75,000 apiece. Ev
ery time a gun is fired it burns $1,000
to. ashes, and all this while people
starve in our slums, children die like
flies for lack of pure milk, and half
famished girls sell their virtue for
the price of life. And we pay $75,-
000 for one gun! Why, my God! a
nation that .will do a thing like that
deserves the doom that fell on Babylon
and that swept Rome from the hills
she thought were eternal.
And all this without an enemy in
the world without a single power to
challenge us to combat.
Let America stop. We have noth
ing to. lose. We have an imperishable
immortality to gam. More, we can
teach obr own people a higher, loftier
purpose of .life than the sordid greed
fox territory, and nower that dominates
the policy of the world. We' can
pour out our millions for the people's
good. We can fight poverty and
want. We can campaign against vice
and unrighteousness. We can make
our armies conquering battalions who
shall bear the triumphant banners of
accomplishment. We can bridge our
rivers, scale our mountains, make
ample our harbors, bring the crystal
magic of our streams, beneath whose
touch our arid deserts shall bud and
blossom into gardens of beauty and
fertility. We can harness our water
falls until the whir of masterful ma
chinery shall make a symphony keyed
to the music of peace.
. Never came an army borne from a
hard-fought campaign erpwned with
such glory as belonged to the mud
daubed, water-stained : regiment of
our national guard who for a few
months ago fought the floods and gave
battle to the swoolen'jivers.. Their
hands were blistered from the shovel
handles and their shoulders were ach
ing from the burden of bags of sand ;
but they left behind them,- not hos
pitals stinking of putrid blood or sod
den fields laid out in - windrows of
mangled, ghastly dead. They left be
hind them mothers clasping to thank
ful hearts the children rescued from
the torrent, and bappy towns,- rejoic
ing even in the face of grim destruc
tion, over the valor of the nation's
men who had fought for a nation's
weal. -! a .
We have -nothing to lose save the
sorry, sordid, boast of.,, cruelty;; and
power. We can gain. the realization
of a true democracy a-nation-bitrting
tor the Common Good. ; ,' , .'
Let America stop !
Let America stand before the na
tions clad in simple honesty, pan
oplied in elemental justice. Let her
appeal to the common conscience of
the world. Let her say to the war
mad, demented powers of Europe: ,
"There is a way out, and we will
lead. We will help you police the
sea; we will give our quota to a con
stabulary of peace; but we are
through. No great standing army, no
mprfi leviathan battleships. We trust
td' what we (boast of ias .the highest
attainment of; 'the" -age -the inmate
justice of civilized , humanity. ' ?f " '
"Touch us ifyott dare Violate at
yoursperil the sacred cgis with which
we panoply the world's peace!
"We shall have our problems, but
for !their solution you will go with
us to The Hague; you will stand be
side'! us at the bar of international
arbitration, plead your cause with all
the eloquence you can command. Then
we1 will nlead ours. Then the Court
shall - decide. But when the verdict
is given you will abide by the decision
of that court, or we shall hold you up
to the scorn and contempt of the en
lightened conscience of the world."
Within thirty days of such a pro
nouncement the nations of the earth
will stand behind America, thanking
God for the moral courage of a peo
ple who had dared not to fight for
peace, but to live to make peace.
It is America's supreme opportuni
ty. It will demand of us clean hands
and a pure heart. They must be with
out reproach who bear the banner of
righteousness.
Heaven grant us the courage to be
what our fathers dreamed. And so
when the day shall come, as it must
come, when in company with earth's
mighty past this great Republic shall
lie down at last, . its duty done, its
responsibility ended, 'may they write
above her resting-place, not "This
was the richest nation in the world,"
not "This was the greatest nation in
the world ' '-"-but above her may they
write in letters of light, that all the
ages to come tnay read and glorify,
the proudest epitaph a nation may
win, "Thi This - was America, the
Peacemaker of the World. ' '
THE CLASSIFIED "AD."
In learning t.o , utilize Classified-'
A4wrti8in'g,J you ; take' a
"sifrleague" .''stride ? toward
success! -There, are still'some
people living .in Dallas and
Polk county, who - have, not)
learned to use The Observer's
classified advertising columns.
They know'tnat there are
j.'such things aajjjwant ads,"
ana proDaniy assume mat
some people must find them
useful. . But, for some reason
or other, they have not put
these "ads" to the test of
usefulness to themselves.
These same people have
"caught up" with events in
many other directions. They
utilize the telephone, the tele
graph, gas, electric light, the
street cars. They adopt mod
ern convenience for house
keeping. They utilize time
and labor-saving appliances in
business.
But, having a task for a
classified advertisement to do,
they try to find some other
way to accomplish it.- If it is
a renting task,tbey depend
upon a placard. "-If ' it is a
property selling task they
put up a "For Salefjigu."J
If it is a position-finding task,
they rely upon pergonal
friends to help them. If they
have furnished rooms to rent,
they place an advertisement in
the window or over the door
bell.
When these people make
their first successful use of
want advertising, they acquire
a new optimism. Irksome
tasks become mere business
matters. New possibilities
without number open to tbem.
They learn to utilize the "Six-'-League
Boots" of publicity
when occasion requires and
every little daily . problem be
come manageable. The Ob
server is 'published Tuesdays
and Fridays, and give re
sult. It hfc bean proven.
Seal-Weekly Observer 11.60 a year.