Dearborn independent. [volume], February 21, 1920, Page 3, Image 3

About Dearborn independent. [volume] (Dearborn, Mich.) 1901-1927

Image provided by: Central Michigan University, Clark Historical Library

                
T' e r r 'rv a .
' " Li
Mr. Ford's Page
T
HK ROOT problem, after all. is human nature.
But to lay that is to lay oneself open to the
Charge of platitude. There is an almost instinc
tive human dislike of any reminder that it is humanity,
and not something outside of humanity, that is respon
sible for conditions. Even our wise men would rather
talk learnedly lbout the effect! of faulty human nature,
as we view those effects in .society, than about faulty
Iranian nature itself. However there is a very food
object to be secured in compelling people to think deeply
enough at times to penetrate as far as themselves, as far
as their own secret natures, and as far as their in
dividual responsibility for conditions.
We don't want to standardize human nature we could not it
we would, h is the endless variety of individuality that makes so
ciety endurable. Hut what all of Ul would like to do would be to
Standardize human moral dependability. We ihould like to be sun
that to a certain essential degree we could absolutely depend on
human nature "staying put." We are not sure of that now. We are
not sure that we ever shall be sure of it.
We can depend on the ability ol certain elements which affect
human nature. Man's need ut food, sleep, clothing and family
life wil influence him to a considerable
'riree; but even in spite of these he will
still remain an unknown moral quantity.
When you form blocks of granite into
the shape of a house, you are pretty sure
that the granite is going to stay. Hut
when you form men into an orderly
Ctcty, you are not at all sure how long
that form of society is going to stay.
Unlike the material of the house, the ma
terial of society changes under your
hands. There is no forecasting whether it
will turn into adamant or iponge. It is now
solid, now thud, now hot. now cold, nu
orderly, now exulting in vast confusion.
Whatever may be the conditions in
which we find ourselves at present, this
absolutely true of them; they were
caused by people; they are being contin
ued by people; they will change when
people change, and not before. W e can
no! Control the weather, nor ever
plague, but we can control rather, we
could control if we would our social
weather, with its storms, its uncertainty,
its destructiveness and its unequal sea
s ns.
ONE OF the Strange phenomena of
the present is the ascendancy of the
itructive type of mind.
The world at large seems to be in
fatuated with the idea that if Something
is pulled down. Something is thereby built
up; if something is destroyed, something
is thereby created.
There is in every country a party which believes that if it could
destroy the orderly institutions of that country, it would thereby
StC a new era of social justice.
Every Community has a group which believes that if only the
annels ol orderly justice and decency could be smashed, a new
brotherhood of man would rise automatically out of the ruin.
Would-be philosophers preach the doctrine of the necessity of
revolution; never was any progress made, they say. except through
violent revolutions. But everybody knows that every revolution
as a mistake and disgraced r postponed the liberties it SOttght.
i he most revolutionary thing m the world is an idea, and a con
quering idea does not need to imprison, punish or kill a man to
make itself powerful.
In the name of Order, disorder is Counselled; in the name ol
iberty, the dictatorship ol a few idle and non-productive agitators
ls urged; in the name of Brotherhood1, profound and venomous
hatred between the classes i fomented. Surely, human nature is
the sum of all contradictions
W hat e very thought ful man should fear about a possible revol
ution is not its occurrence, but tin- COUrse it WOttld take after it was
started.
The difficulty about revolutions is the impossibility of controlling
them an impossibility shared even by the men who start rev
olutions. Thev nfl out of hand. They rage like forest-
f f extreme of society, you
will find at the other. If you
have profiteers in the big brown
stone buildings, you will have
hold-up men in the streets. It
is not only the "Reds" who are
destroying society it is also the
men who destroy the people9 s
confidence in the possibility oj
right intentions being followed
out. What we need is not rev
olution in society, but regener
ation in human nature. We
are ready to lay the fault any
where but where it belongs
on human nature. Humanity
constitutes society; if you would
mend society you must improve
humanity.
Revolutions are not orderly, social forces marching to
the establishment of a new and better order. The) an
an outlet of hellish hatreds and unbridled passions, mas
sive thefts, the death ol moral and social responsibility,
a most horrible debauch of all that is rottenest in human
nature.
Humanity does not know of what stuff it is made
until the restraint of society is taken off, and the mask
is taken off, and human greeds and jealousies and ig
norances and passions are given full sway.
The revolutions of which we may rear! comfortablv in
the books are not at all the revolutions the people went
through. The real thing is the collapse of every element that justi
fies mankind considering itself as a high animal.
However, it is not alone to the disgruntled man that we must
look for these destructionist influences. We are far too prone to
talk as if the "Reds" were the only ones engaged in destroying social
order and the solidity of social institutions.
Not at all. Any man. rich or poor, in business or in politics,
who does anything that undermines men's faith in the essential
justice at least 0f society's, intentions, thereby destroying society
as rafwUy. a menacingly, as criminally as any "Red"' could do it.
What you find at one extreme oi io
ciety. that you will find at the other.
Rich criminals make poor criminals.
Lawless millionaires make lawless min
ers. Lawless statesmen make lawless cit
izens. It works out inevitablv this
HA 7 vow find at one
i
W .1 .
F VOL" have profiteers in the big
brownstone buildings, you will have
hold-up men in the streets.
If you have a "to hell with the
People" spirit in your higher offices, you
are going to have a "to hell with the
Government" spirit in the lower sections
of your cities and don't you forget it!
What's sauce for the capitalistic gander
is sauce for the laboristic goose.
It is not too much to say that the
whole impetus of this present plague of
lawlessness came from the top. lt whole
reason for being comes from what
we so wrongly call the "upper classes.'1
Th ese more favored classes were lawless
first. And their lawlessness is coming
back upon them with redoubled retri
bution, for the very fact that it is they
who are now pleading for law and order
is the reason why the plea is laughed at.
Yes, law that the people may be kept in
order, but no order so strict as that the
privileged ones shall have to obey tin
law! that is the mocking answer.
When they are trying the criminals
of the Great War. they ought not to over
look the profiteers.
The profiteer is the most dangerous of
all the "Reds" that have ever appeared on earth. He is more dan
gerous than kings for we can get rid of kings. He is even more
dangerous than militarists militarists turn out to be very fallible
men when their helmets and gold braid are removed. But the
profiteer is always there, playing inside all the lines, making money
out of soldiers' deaths and the distress of nations the dirtiest
money that ever found its way into a pocket !
The profiteer ought to be charged specifically with (a) defraud
ing the Government, (b) treason to the Army, (c) giving aid and
comfort to the enemy, and (d) fomenting disloyalty in time of war,
It is pretty hard to gainsay the now common argument that a
society which harbors the profiteer is itself in need of reform.
The profiteer is one of the excuses -one of the good excusei
which the "Reds" otTer for their present attitude. And if the "Reds"
would only center their attention there and help us get rid of the
profiteers, that would be doing a regenerative and constructive act.
The crimes of the profiteer after the war, the increase of his
already too big gains by speculating with the food of the people,
certainly point him out as the one Influence which more than an
other has driven people into enmity toward OUT present form of
society. Tins is where the destructive spirit was born.
Why would it not be a wise move to attack the destructive spirit
at its source? Why not g after those men whose actions destroj
the people's faith in the possibility of justice? They ought to be
res. Very often they deMroy even those who instigated them. made to pay the penalty, and not society.
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