THE MEYERSDALE COMMERCIAL, MEYERSDALE, PA. EH i ———— 3 son or Secretary Houston. A Te angle fonmmerciat big powder company has been = saying it in advertising which ~- you may have seen. It is worth " Published every Thursday by ths Commercial Co-operative Council. EBER K. COCKLEY, : r Business Manager. wet ¢ HERMAN G. LEPLEY, Editor. repeating, not for the sake o attention to another matte “Entered at the Meyersdale postoffice that everybody ought to be] existence is not necessary to progress. about—the idle as second class mail matter. — + | thinking Subscription price, $1.25 per year. _* lacres, > Advertising rates, all matter, 10 cents sition work; 20 per cent extra lor prefer- than all the stumps and rock red position; small readers, 5 cents per line; Business Directory, 50 cents { per month. iis does not relieve the condition Ask for prices on job printing. created and maintained by fic ~~ |titious values. Speculative val IDLE ACRES This is from Successful Farming, with a circulation of more than a million: The loss of each food ship is a tragedy. But the idle acres of America could grow more food per year than all of | the enemy’s ships can destroy. ' Every idle acre helps the | rn enemy. you hinder victory... Culti- | a boulders, or swamps. We urge the taxation of al lation. time or place, i ind in i p 3 ir intaining ‘human qualities. Does vate every available acre or | The mind in its own place, and | factor in developing and maintaining a land. Don’t let labor shortage | hinder you.” No, Mr. Hoover didn’t say | that. Nor did President Wil- | ~~ in itself a hell of heaven. — Milton. A ee et ed a NA a NS mm NS Sm arm ooo RELIGIOUS NOTICE. Amity Reformed Church, April 21, 10:45 a. m., special service for men and women; men’s choir; number of short addresses. 7:30 p. m., The Significance Of Ordination--the Value of Friends. ee er 0 ~r N THE OPEN ROAD With BRUCE CALVERT. “Silence is the soil in which thought grows.” writer might have said, “in which the soul grows.” It is good for man to be alone—sometimes. There is a certain spiritual adjustment, or orientation, of the soul that a man can find only insolitude. Not for nothing have the great prophets, sages and saints of all ages sought the sheltering quiet of the clois- ter or the great silences of the desert, the mountains, the woods and caves. In these retreats far from the disturbing vi- brations of the noisy crowd the greatest revelations ever given to man have been received. We do need, now more than ever, in this age of pragmatism gone mad, to be alone once in a while and to get acquainted with ourselves. Shut up in the crowd, we lose perspective. Little, inconsequential things assume undue proportions. We become submerged in the petty banalities of life. The mechan- ics of living obscure the real meaning of life itself, as a penny | held close to the eye blots out the sun, moon, stars and all the solar system. We need to get away from the clatter and clut- ter of business—away from the soul-killing grind of routine that corrcdes the heart and gives us mental ankylosis. We need especially to get out into the great open. We each ought to take to the open road for a season as often as possible for the preservation of our sanity and our very soul’s salvation. The greatest disinfectants known are shunshine, fresh air and the newly upturned earth of the elds. For the mind as well as for the body is this true. There is nothing like the wild, free winds of heaven to sweep the cobwebs from our brains. Noth- ing like the woods or mountains to steal away that earth weari- ness that presses upon us in the crowd and to restore our men- tal balance. Away from all human contact, alone with nature, we come to an understanding with ourselves. The silences of the open become populous with our own thoughts, and every bush, tree, bird and flower vocal with our own reflections. The concentration of people in the great cities, with the inevitable bitter struggle for existence, is destructive to char- acter. | The cities always have been the sink holes of iniquity. Ifilth, disease, poverty, crime, ugliness, always have flourished in the crowded places of the earth. From Hellenic cities down to New York this is true. The city does not represent the high- est in man’s nature. Its life is artificial, feverish, neurotic, erotic. Instead of the quiet deeps of peace wherein the soul expends, the city breeds unrest, fear, pain, brutality. Greed, indifference, selfishness, fill that place in the human heart from which should flow sympathy, meighborliness. There isn’t enough air and sunshine to go round; not enough of the very essence of life itself for all. Some one has to suffer. We cut our souls to fit the size of the flats we live in. God help the basement dweller! Our wretched civilization is stamping it- self upon our very features. We have the factory face and the business face. The former is pitiful, the latter vulpine, Men’s deepest and holiest experiences come to him only when his feet are firmly planted on the soil. Soil and soul come from the same root word. Noble deeds are inspired, great poems born, splendid dreams dreamed in the open and of the open. There isn’t room enough for them in the two- room soul, the spiritual tenement of the crowded cityite. What has the mob to offer, really? Drunk with its own effluvia, the crowd sees nothing, hears nothing, feels nothing but its own misery. It will trample upon you and crush you into the dust and never hear your cries of agony! What chances has a hu- man being in it? meen helping the advertiser, or help- ing the food supply, but to call ont: Speculation in land is doing : s 10 : per Inch net, 5 cents per inch for compo- | yore harm in food production |out that in the Socialist commonwealth the human race will and all the swamps. Blowing| pare animal existence. And there are many other enemies of them out, or draining the land 0 land values for the purpose of [all of the qualities of the human race. eliminating the idle acres by doing away with land specu- Hinder rations and|A mind not to be changed by | Can make a heaven of hell, and | generacy of the human race. ———r And the river will dry up. _ WHAT'S SO AND WHAT ISNT fl Copyrighted by JOHN M. WORK ri No, the struggle between human beings for a bare animal It is a great barrier to progress. Benjamin Kidd, in his Social Evolution, has tried to make S| degenerate because of the removal of the fierce struggle for a $ Socialism who agree with him. He lays it down as an absolute and invariable rule that man beings with each other. And he draws from his false premise the conclusion that Socialism, by removing the compe- 1| tition for a bare animal existence, will degenerate and destroy It is emphatically false that competition is the only factor in developing and maintaining human qualities. But 1 shall not enter into that question just now. For the present moment I will grant, for the sake of argument, that Mr. Kidd is right when he says that competition is the only it logically follow from this that Socialism will work the de- On the contrary, it follows logically that Solialism will remove the causes which are producing the bad qualities of the human race, and will continue and develop the causes which are producing the good qualities of the human race. The trouble with Mr. Kidd is that he has committed a glaring error in logic. Not only are his premises erroneous, but this conclusion is too big for his premises. I have agreed to overlook the fal- sity of his premises for the present, but I want to call attention to his too big conclusion. His mistake in logic may be illustrated in this way. It is as if Mr. Kidd had said: ‘A river cannot have any water in it unless it hag tributary streams flowing into it. The sewers of the cities are tributary streams. Theferoe, if the cities burn their sewage instead of letting it low into the river, the But, there are other tributary streams besides the sewers. Sociaiism does not propose to cut off any of those tributary streams which are bearing pure water into the river. It merely proposes to burn the sewage, and thus purify the river. : Socialism does not propose to abolish competition. It does propose to abolish competition for a bare animal existence._ | It does not propose to abolish competition for excellence, i superiority and pre-eminence in the myriad of higher human | activities. Competition in these myriads of higher activities is so much more humane than the brutal competition for a mere | animal existence that it might more properly be called emula- |tion. But I will stick to Mr. Kidd’s word and call it competi- tion. It used to be quite customary among human beings to com- -levery quality possessed by humanity is developed and main-|- ues create an overhead exX-ftsined by conflict, by competition, by ceaseless struggle of hu- pense that is far greater than the presence of stumps and memenemi to which Socialism will give a free field, are of such a nature that each competitor, by competing, instead of dragging his fellow men down, must necessarily assist and- elevate them. For, by doing any of these things better than other people can do them, he is doing other people a good turn. It is also perfectly evident that these special of competi- tion, to which Socialism will give a free field, are of such a nature that they will develop manual dexterity, mental acumen, broadmindedness, enlightenment, good: will, cordiality, brother- hood, happiness, generosity, courage, honesty, magnanimity, liberality, kindness, buoyancy, gladness, hopefulness, optim- ism, cheerfulness, purity, self-possession, love, and other kin- dred qualities. But these are eminently desirable qualities. «+ To develop them is to improve, not to degenerate, hu- manity. Consequently, even if Mr. Kidd’s rule that competition is the only factor in the development of human qualities were correct, it would necessarily and inevitably follow that Social- ism, instead of degenerating the human race, is absolutely necessary to the development of the human race, because it alone can abolish those kinds of competition which develop brutal and undesirable qualities, and it alone can give men a full and free opportunity to engage in those kinds of competi- tion which develop higher and eminently desirable qualities. Thus, the desperate and hard pushed enemies of Social- ism are convicted out of their own mouths. : In so far as competition is a factor in the development of human qualities, Socialism will strip it of its villainous and degenerating features and turn it to good advantage. But, as a matter of fact, competition is not the only faec- tor in the development of human qualities. It is not even the chief factor in the development of the higher human qualities. It has been the chief factor in the development of the bru- tal and undesirable human qualities. But it is only a minor factor in the development of the higher human qualities. Co-operation is the dominant factor in the development of the higher human qualities. Competition is one of the vital principles of the universe. But it operates chiefly in a comparatively low sphere; at a comparatively low stage of progress. Co-operation is also of the vital principles of the universe. But it operates chiefly in a comparatively high sphere, at a comparatively advanced stage of progress. However, just as we need a mild form of competition in operation in the higher spheres, so also we find a mild form of co-operation in the lower spheres. I am only repeating what has already been pointed out by others when I say that we find co-operation in the animal and vegetable worlds and even in the so-called inorganic world. What is it, for example, that keeps the earth in its orbit? Why, if the stars and planets did not co-operate with each other to hold it in its place, it would go crashing through space and be shivered into countless fragments by contact with some larger sphere. This is co-operation in the so-called inorganic world. Almost every plant has a flower with bright, beautiful pete with each other in physical strength. The stronger man killed the weaker man. blood-thirstiness. But blood-thirstiness is an - undesirable | quality. To do away with that quality is to develop, not to| degenerate, humanity. Consequently, it was a good thing | for the human race when that custom largely passed out of existence. money to buy the necessaries of life. The man who possesses more of the qualitips necessary to succeed in this competition gets the money, while the man who possess less of the qualities necessary to succeed in this competition either starves to death, or at least starves mentally, morally and spiritually. of competition develops greed, graft, dread, fear, hatred, jeal- and other kindred qualities. But these are undesirable qualities. generate, humanity. when these qualities are destroyed by the abolition of capital- ism and the introduction of Socialism. : Socialism will remove the brutal and desperate competi- tion for a bare animal existence. It will thereby give men a full and free opportunity to compete with each other for pre- eminence in such things as making products, managing indus- tries, inventing machines, curing disease, developing any and all of the many arts and sciences, writing books, painting pic- tures, and the thousands of other things which these suggest. In other words, Socialism, by abolishing the brutal and desperate struggle for a bareanimal existence, will give men eminence in all of the industrial arts, all of the fine arts, and all of the liberal arts. It will even give men a full and free opportunity to com- things. Yes, let’s take to the woods. There’s beauty and nobility in the great solemn, religious woods that expands the heart and lifts the soul to the highest in nature. In the whispering of the leaves born upon the evening breeze you hear the voice of the Infinite, and under the cool and silent stars your troubled spirit finds peaple. Take to the woods? It will even give men a full and free opportunity to com- pete with each othier for pre-eminence in doing good in the world, for excellence in altruism, for excellence in unselfish- ness. It is perfectly evident that these species of competition, That kind of competition developed | and reproduction. That kind | 2¥¢hY- ousy, pride, vanity, narrowmindedness, ignorance, pessismism, { enough. hopelessness, meanness, stiginess, cowardice, craftiness, sealth, | plete. "Tis said the wounded soldier The He bends upon each sufferer a full and free opportunity to compete with each other for pre-|Ineffable compassion lights petals. These plants attract the bees and other insects. These insects help to distribute the pollen, thus insuring fertilization This is co-operation between the vegetable and animal worlds. Among the lower animals, those which survive in the greatest numbers are the ones which co-operate with each other. In other words, those which go in droves or herds, like the elephant, the buffalo, the deer, the antelope, the wild-goat, It is now a custom among human beings, forced upon them !the sheep, the wolf, the jackal, the reindeer, the hippopotamus, by the capitalist system, to compete with each other for enough ‘the zebra, the hyena, and the seal. Among men, we owe all the civilization we have to co- operation. If we did not co-operate at all we .would have stark an- The trouble is that we have not carried co-operation far We are permitting it to remain imperfest and incom- We must carry it to its logical and natural conclusion. We have come to a point where we can not make any To do away with these qualities is to develop, not to de-|{further progress unless we do. We are socially marking time, because we are ready for Consequently, it will be a good thing for the human race Socialism and yet capitalism is still hanging on. Capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It is now a detriment. It is a barrier in the way of progress. me, A tate He lifts His hands all bleeding, : T MRADE THE WHITE CO Nor robe, nor sandals, hide Far out upon the battlefields The print of nails upon His In watches of the night, feet, spear-thrust in His sees side. A Comrade robed in white. Oh, if ‘tis true, I know not, Or a vision of the night, Formed by the fever-tortured brain— A look of tender grace, His marred but kingly face. The Comrade robed in He touches dying brows, and white. lo! Well might the agony of earth The fear and pain are fied, Have called Him once again pete with each other for pre-eminence in moral and spiritual | And smiles of joyful wonder To mingle in His human form wreathe Among the sons of men. The faces of the dead. Seen or unseen, He walketh He bends above the wounded Within the place of pain; Vith strength and sympa- Let not the Great White Com- y; rade “Courage! I, too, was wound- Call to your soul in vain. ed— — Carroll Loupe Fisher. I suffered this for thee.” Turtle Creek, Pa. Nad It am a aa
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers