Life — August 10, 1905 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

La “White there ts Life there's He VOL. XLVI AUGUST 10, No, 1:89. 1 West Trnkry-Fiesr Sremer, Naw Yous ISS IDA TARBE done a arkable thing. ered Mr. Rocke- ler so hard on his rel She has hamn fe that st a good d ged poll F of public sym- Mr. Rocke- preposter. has actually stirred pathy for him, feller overdid ously ally—the busi- ness of making money. He has had the most won ot when to stop, He has had uncqualled business capacity exc ticul in one par- he has not been able to stop. Miss Tarbell work- ing through McClure’s Magaz ne a wonderful piece of work in ne has Iding him up to public consideration, the grievances of the Pennsyl- nia vil country ru she has been Venge: ¢ in her blood, © personified in her descent on the great monopolist. he has hurt his feelings. Is it not extraordinary it a woman should have been able to punish such a man as Mr. Rockefeller as punished him? In_ particular assailed him as a professing Christian, she has he has conspicuously devoted to the name and the ecclesiastical machinery of Christianity, and diametrically op- posed in his whole business life (which is almost the whole of his life) to its sault seems wel Mr. Rockefeller, urgent. relig’ he is, seems never to have been pene- trated by the spirit of the religion that he professes, His mind seems never to have taken itin, It may have tem- pered his conduct, but it surely has not actuated it. What kind of religion Miss Tarbell professes, if any, we don’t know, but certainly it has not withheld her hand from smiting Mr. Rockefeller, As his biographer, it may be that she has fallen into much the same fault that has char- unded. nist as “LP Es acterized him as a man of business; that she has fallen in lov and been somewhat ¢ Has kindness with her job, caught horse-thief did not savor 1 of charity. Perhaps has overdone her work—a little. And yet, ed the to our mind, to have demonst weak points of Mr, Rockefeller’s ex- traordinary career, and to have weak- d th orce of his devastating exam- useful service, at it should nconsiderate as. an exceeding] vastly important t ed by the what a prodigious share of xed up in a life-work that seemed to em alla blazing success, As Nemesis be appreci lure was Miss Tarbell isa great figure. She has demonstrated that she has almost as g atalent for skinning mankind as Mr. Rockefeller has himself. She speaks of the brutality inherent in such a study as she has made and justi- fics it on the ground of public need, because Mr. Rockefeller is not a mere individual, the only one of his kind, but “the type preeminent in the public mind of the militant business man of the day.” It is the type she has meant to hit, then. Has she done it?) One thin makes it seem that is that she has not made Mr. Rockefeller personally hateful, but rather ful. He does not nd for stands for tragedy. He is a prodigious money-maker and a monumental fai sa human being. His aims have been commonplace, his philosophy of success; he urea life has been false, his religion has been unsound, his methods have not been ir, his example, useful in some im- portant particulars, has been exceed- ingly pernicious in its general effect. The justification of Miss Tarbell's 1. bors lies in their power to bring it home to the rest of the Americans that '* Live and Let Live a better rule of life than ‘All for Me," and that there is tragedy of pecuniary success as barren and as bitter y tragedy of failure. [7 iS evident that Mr. Rockefetter has sincerely yearned to be respectable. He has had standards of conduct, such He has never scuttled his own ship as Jay Gould did. He chose his partners wisely, got many good men, and was faithfulto them and tohis stockholders, He has had a preju- dice, albeit not a controlling one, in favor of legality. He has done many good things. He has done many things. supremely well, The Beef Trust peo- ple went to his school and learned some of its lessons, They would stand bet- ter with the public if they had learned them all. According to all accounts the Beef Trust cheapens nothing ex- cept what it buys, is a tyrant of the lroads, scorns the statutes, and i i The prosecution als for law- as they were, he of breaking is the most interesting and about the most important undertaking the Government now has on its hands, We hope the Beef men will get justice, hard and even. If we cannot stop the se re of the railroads by great cor- porations who make their own rates and defy mpetition, Government ownership of railroads will have to come. It is an awful remedy, fit only for an awful disease, but the rebate and secret rate evi ERY ren those in progress, or abc in progress, at Portsmocth, New Hamp- shire. n years ago the hospitali- ties of that district were offered to the h pris Now the n and Japanese plenipotentiaries meet there to try to agree on terms of peace. Heretofore such matters have all been settled in Europe. It is a most significant departure that it should have been found convenient to try to settle this present --Eastern war under the roof of the United States. Portsmouth is a good place for the negotiations. Newport might have done, but for the propensity of the ners of war, nese delegates to wear pot-hats with frock coats. Newport could not stand that, but Portsmouth can. We hope the negotiators will be able to agree, but as tothat, who can tell? No agreement which requires the concur- rence of the infirm mind of the wob- bling Czar is a possible subject for tion. comicbooks.com