Life — September 21, 1916 — page 35: what you’re looking at

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

Poverty OVERTY is the most important thing in the world. Without poverty to spur us on we would never have invented ambition, and without ambition we could not have made ourselves so sublimely miserable as we are to-day. Progress is due to poverty. So is civilization. It was the fear of pov- erty that led our great financiers to make more money than was good for them—or for us But for poverty we would still be living in a state of the most primitive contentment; no one would have been in jail, and no one would have wanted to be President. Wall Street is our greatest monu- ment to poverty; but even Wall Street falls short of a complete expression. Perhaps the war will do better. The supreme Lenefit of war is that it pro- duces poverty upon a large scale Thus whole nations are imbued with ambi- tion; ambition to become rich again, ambition to recover their lost power, ambition to pay their debts, which is the most disastrous ambition that a country can_ attain, If it were not for poverty there would be no excuse for charity, or for George Bernard Shaw. And what a tame world it would be without these two important institutions! Possibly we could get along without clergymen if poverty did not compel us to seck spiritual recompense for material hardships. The mind shrinks from the contemplation of an existence without clergymen. Poverty prevents people from marry- ing who ought to marry, and induces people to marry who should remain single. Thus we have a satisfactory progression of domestic tragedies, without which no newspaper could exist or law court keep respectably be- hind its calendar. Last of all, poverty provides a back- ground for our millionaires, who are most essential to our national discon- Dana Burnet, TE LIGHT ** Thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait,” Was the spirit of prophecy upon John Milton when, more than two j hundred and fifty years ago, he dic- tated those words to his daughter? Did the “blind poet” have a vision of the millions of telephone messages speeding instantly over hundreds and thousands of miles of wire | spanning the continent? “They also serve who only stand lactic acid bacilli, would it live any longer? nobody but yourself, One System The Vision of the Blind and wait.” The Bell Telephone is your servant even while it “only stands and waits.” The whole system is always prepared and ready for your instant command. Every wire and switchboard and telephone instrument is kept alive and responsive by an army of tele- phone workers, Each one has his special part to do and, because he does it faithfully, countless messages speed throughout the length and breadth of the land, at every minute of the day and night. AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY AND ASSOCIATED COMPANIES Universal Service No Fault of His T many current writers have been poking fun at Professor Metchnikoff, the originator of the buttermilk theory, because he died so carly. longevity and told how one could live to a great age, and because he died before the time he allotted in his book he has been put down as a failure. Nonsense. Professor Metchnikoff had lived a good many years before he discovered the lactic acid bacillus and brought it out into the limelight. Suppose you should buy a second- band motor car that had already been run thirty thousand miles and then tried to feed it on He wrote a book on Professor Metchnikoff may have been right or wrong. Nobody knows. But anyone who has a recipe to make people live long must start a generation or so ahead to be a hundred, begin on your theory before you are born. If you wish to live Then if it doesn’t work, blame