Part 12

The man or newspaper which imparts dissatisfaction--wise discontent to a nation or to individuals, gives them the motive power that brings improvement.

Ruskin as a young man declared that his one hope in life was to arouse "some dissatisfaction."

The constant aim of men in talking to each other, in writing for newspapers, even in writing novels, should be to arouse discontent.

In this column, as our readers will have noticed, the constant aim is to make the great crowd dissatisfied.

Only through discontent can changes come and are there not causes enough for discontent and need enough for changes?

A majority of the people half educated, and tens of thousands half fed.

Children run over daily because they have no playground but the gutter.

Men of noble aspirations kept down by hard work and poverty.

Children left locked up alone all day while their mothers work for a pittance.

Men, uncertain of their future and of their children's future, engage in a constant struggle for wealth that is not needed--a struggle that develops in the end a passion as useless as it is degrading.

Unless you believe that the world is perfect because YOU happen to have enough to eat and to wear, you should be discontented.

You should remember that the world's achievements and great changes have all come from discontent, and you should be, in as many ways as possible, a breeder of discontent among the human beings around you.

THE AUTOMOBILE WILL MAKE US MORE HUMAN

One of the commonest and most disagreeable sights in a big city is that of a strong, brutal human being beating a weak and overworked horse because it refuses to do what it cannot do.

Brutality inflicted upon horses is atrocious. But the bad effect of such unkind treatment of animals on HUMAN CHARACTER is far more serious than the actual physical suffering inflicted. ----

The perfection of the automobile will do much to improve human beings by taking away from their control and from brutal coercion submissive animals.

Everybody knows that the moral standard is raised immediately in a country when slavery is abolished.

In America we have abolished the slavery of human beings, but we still adhere to horse slavery, accompanied by all the worst forms of the old negro slavery. The faithful slave may be beaten and driven to death. The driver MUST BE BRUTALIZED.

Every day, on every street, you may see stupid, muscular boys and men jerking with all their might on the tender mouths of poor horses, only too willing to do their best.

This brutal indifference to the sufferings of animals makes us brutal and indifferent in other directions.

With the advent of the automobile and the disappearance of horses from our cities, horse slavery will be abolished and men, compelled to use their brains in dealing with machinery, will soon become more nearly human than they are at present. The practical abolition of the street-car horse is one great step in advance.

The abolition of the truck horse, carriage horse, cab horse, soon to come, will complete the dream of those modern and highly deserving abolitionists, the automobile inventors and manufacturers.

LET US BE THANKFUL

Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1902.

Let us be thankful first of all for one great right:

The right, when dissatisfied, to SAY that we are dissatisfied, and to try to make things better.

Let us be thankful that every man--with few exceptions--has a holiday to-day.

However bad our national affairs may seem, let us be thankful they are no worse. And above all let us be thankful that we have the power and the constitutional right to change things, just as soon as we become wise enough to use our ballots. ----