Thrift

1895

Thrift is a virtue. No people can long be free who are not thrifty. It is true that thrift sometimes passes beyond virtue, degenerating into the vice of greed. Because there are men who are greedy — drunk with the intoxication of wealth and power — we sometimes are told that wealth and power are criminal. There are some that hold that thrift is folly and personal ownership a crime. In the new Utopia all is to be for all, and no one can claim a monopoly, not even of himself. There may be worlds in which this shall be true. It is not true in the world into which you have been born. Nor can it be. In the world we know the free man should have a reserve of power, and this power is represented by money. If thrift ever ceases to be a virtue, it will be at a time long in the future. Before that time comes our Anglo-Saxon race will have passed away and our civilization will be forgotten. — David Starr Jordan in Popular Science Monthly.

Some Good About All Races

1900

"The Bright Side of Humanity," a new book by Dr. Edward Leigh Pell, is said to be the first serious attempt that has ever been made to present the characteristic noble traits of all races. In the preparation of his book Dr. Pell examined one thousand works of travel and although all of them set forth with considerable detail the vices and disagreeable traits of the people which they profess to describe, only two hundred dwelt at any length on their virtues. To supply the compensatory high lights in these dark pictures was a happy thought and must have been a pleasant task.


A Little of Everything

A Chicago tobacconist hands every cigarette purchaser a neighboring undertaker's card.

In the Black forest district of Germany are 1,400 master clockmakers and 6,000 workmen.

A church bell has an empty head and a long tongue, but it is discreet enough not to speak until tolled.

The sultan has forbidden the Turkish war department to use balloons or carrier-pigeons for army purposes.

A French naturalist asserts that nightingales devour the drones of a beehive, and never attack the workers.

A mint is to be established in Canada for the coinage of gold. Heretofore the coining of the metallic currency has been done in England.

An official map of Vesuvius on a scale of one in ten thousand has just been issued, being the first since 1876. A new plan in relief of the cone has also been made.

Slippery Rock War On Vice, Street Walkers, Debauchery

Pennsylvania, 1913

Sun Calls Upon Citizens to Rise in Their Might and Stamp Out Social Evil

Slippery Rock is in sore need of social house cleaning. In it are festering sores of licentiousness which are spreading so rapidly that the clean and whole part of its body is in danger of infection from the loathsome suppuration. The Sun has been importuned by some people to turn on the light of publicity in an effort to stop the growth of social evil in our midst. Still more people have cautioned silence on the ground that publicity of our shame would "give the town a bad name."

We have come to the point where the town, has a bad name because the people who practice lasciviousness have not been rebuked for their crimes against morality and decency. Emboldened by the evident desire to brush and gloss over their rottenness, the lecherous slaves of a brute passion give little heed to the opinions or sentiments of the moral and virtuous majority and nightly practice their soulless and lustful business.

For years a bunch of girls who have forgotten how to blush have been street walkers and dissolutes, loitering on corners and about public places seeking their mates in the hellish business of social depravity. A brood of nameless illegitimate children are the fruits of their shameless crimes. We have all sympathy for the unfortunate girl who falls because of her love and trust in a lecherous and brutal man, but when in brazen disregard of her own shame or the moral rights of her associates, she persists in the practice of her infamy and seeks to draw mere children, perhaps her own fatherless ones, into the life of virtueless debauchery, even the broad mantle of Christian charity is scarcely able to cover her sin. from such a school was graduated the poor girl who paid the penalty of her shame with her life a few months ago and the recital of which calamity in the public press brought a blush to everyone who owned Slippery Rock as a habitat.

But not alone is the street walker to blame for the condition in our town that is a stench in the nostrils of decency. People who enjoy position in the social, business and church life of the community, have so far forgotten man and womanhood, the marital vows and a sense of moral obligation that they have put themselves on a plane with the back alley dissolutes. And their crimes are greater, because they not only debauch their own moral natures, but invade the homes of neighbors, bringing the horror of undeserved shame upon the innocent wife or husband who learns of the detection of her or his unfaithful mate.

After much deliberation and conferring with those who are working for the moral uplift of the community, The Sun has decided that the only way to stop the obscene and vulgar practice is to turn the spotlight on those who are persistently guilty. Hereafter any scandal touching on the social evil will be printed, and with it the names of the participants, be they street walkers, church workers, business or professional people; not because it is scandal, but that the right kind of publicity may warn the passion slaves that their underworld actions will be shown in the broad light of day. Such a campaign will be more dangerous to dissolute husbands and faithless wives than to the unmarried lawbreakers and that is as it should be. — Slippery Rock Sun.

—Reprinted in New Castle News, New Castle, PA, Oct. 31, 1913, p. 10.

Words of Wisdom

1878

Go among great folks for great sinners.

Love drifts into hate more easily than indifference into animosity.

He is no true friend who has nothing, but compliments and praise for you.

Sharp and intelligent rascals are more respected by the world than virtuous fools.

Many people find their only happiness in forcing themselves to be unhappy.

Ennui is a malady for which the only remedy is work; pleasure is only a palliative.

He who has no desire to improve upon his present condition, is usually one who most needs improvement.

Adverse criticism is cheaper than noble attempts to improve upon existing models.

We could not endure solitude were it not for the powerful companionship of hope or of some unseen one.

It is not difficult to do good for the means are constantly clustering about every man's lips and hands.

Pride is like the beautiful acacia, that lifts its head proudly above its neighbor plants, forgetting that it too, like them, has its root in the dirt.

We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine compared with the education of the heart.

The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach, but we shut our eyes and, like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for without finding it.

Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travelers upon their road; they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than when we had conceived them.

Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect. If we strive to become, then, what we strive to appear, manners may often be rendered useful guides to the performance of our duties.

Among the many arguments, while others have been refuted, this alone remains unshaken, that we ought to beware of committing injustice rather than of being injured, and that, above all, a man ought to study not to appear good, but to be so, both privately and publicly.

It is resignation and contentment that are best calculated to lead us safely through life. Whoever has not sufficient power to endure privations and even suffering can never feel that he is armor proof against painful emotion — nay, he must attribute to himself, or at least to the morbid sensitiveness of his nature, every disagreeable feeling he may suffer.