Life — August 12, 1915 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

272 Life’s Fresh Air Fund Inclusive of 1914, Lire’s Frese Aix Fuxo has been in operation twenty-eight years, In that time it has expended $150,987.58 end has given @ fortnight in the country to 36.767 poor city children, The Fund is supported entirely by bequests end voluntary contributions, which are ac: knowledged in this column, Previously acknowledged Rosebud, Honey, Babe F. L. Gross. . Wood Mrs. W. E. A Friend ea May, Sallie and Helen e Margaret, Button Mrs. W. M. F, H. Foster : Proceeds of a fair swego, N. Y., by the following little girls: Margaret Midlinger, Edith Quirk, Christine Quirk, Mary Pell and Katharine Kellogg. «..+ +$4.593.37 3.00 $.00 10.00 5.00 1.00 20.00 1.00 Lowe . William lierrika and 6.00 Greene $.00 10.00 100.00 10,00 iegler harles A. Hone Mr. Griggs's Boys" HW. M. “Five L I, R. B 3.65 10.00 5.00 and 25.00 $4,830.73 Cog Life 'HE handle of the screw-driver has broken off. Shall I whittle it down and put it on again? No; it wouldn’t pay. Time is too precious. It would take a dollar's worth of time, and I can buy a new screw-driver for a quarter. Contemporary thrift saves time. Tinkering is almost a lost art; whit- tlers are scarce; wages are high. When any common utensil needs mending it is usually cheaper to throw it away and buy a new one made by machinery. Until lately it was the custom in the Post Office to save the twine that came around packages of letters, but twine got so cheap and wages so high that untying knots ceased to pay. It is not at all lovely, this thriftiness as to time and wastefulness of com- modities. Art is lavish of time and pains. Business is as stingy as pos- sible of both. The abhorrence of waste used to be a respected element in character. Menders of things broken learned to be self-helpful. The whittling Yankee who could turn a skillful hand to anything had learned AT LIPE'S FARM TAMING A WILD BEAST Not Enough to think and had, in a way, a rounded development. The contemporary man sees the most profit in concentration ona single detail of life. He probably sees true, but what do you call him, a oman or a cog in the world’s machine? Most modern men are cogs; nothing more. The modern German ideal is that all Germans should be cogs in the great state machine and sink their souls in the soul of the state. It is that that makes the reported intention of the Germans to restore Louvain so appalling. Art calls for something more than cogs. Too many servants tend to make people helpless. Machinery is the gen- eral slavery nowadays, and, of course, it does a great deal for people that they might better do for themselves. It tends to make us helpless, thriftless, to keep us undeveloped. But it saves us a lot of time, and if we are clever enough we may be able to use the time thus saved to foil the machines in their purpose to work our undoing. In these machine-made days every- body ought to have spare time and waste it on something that won't pay except in the good it does his char- acter. In that way, or in ways like that, he may save himself from shrink- ing up into the dimensions of a cog. Be a cog, of course. It is the way to make a living. But don’t be satis- fied with mere cog life. Have an art or something. Have a soul, and feed it in your spare time. People behave as though their souls could go without gasoline. Tut, tut! One reason why people go crazy is that their souls are so underfed, Really, the only important thing machinery does for the world is to give us spare time—if we have sense enough to take it. The reason why Edison sleeps only four hours in twenty-four is not that he may work twenty hours a day, but that he may have eighteen spare hours in which to think over a couple of hours’ work and put it off. With economy of sleep and food Mr. Edison is able nowadays to save for himself eighteen spare hours a It has been good for his character, and is probably a leading: reason why he has come to comicbooks.com