Pigmies of the Cosmos Adversity Helped Them Attain Clearer Mental Vision. By F. V. Waddy ISABEL PENNINGTON had a soft job. She worked as a stenographer, and was a highly efficient one. Her employer, Mortimer Lathrop, owner of an overalls factory, paid her thirty-five dollars a week. She was worth it. She had started at fifteen dollars, but qualified for rapid "raises." Isabel was intimate with Lathrop's family, on the same social level. Quite often after the day's work, he would invite her to accompany him home to dinner. She had many friends and admirers. So customary had it become for Isabel familiarly known as Bella-to spend two or three evenings each week with the Lathrops, that she actually felt slighted when he omitted, one evening, to extend the expected invitation. Lonesome and resentful, she wandered along the street, wondering in her unsettled mood how to console herself for the disappointment. Acting upon an impulse of the moment, she turned into a hall where a socialist meeting was being held. The speaker, Eugene Demarest, was an enthusiastic worker, an idealist, consumed with ardor in his mission of hastening the millennium. He felt convinced that he could revolutionize the economic conditions of the entire human race at once. Bella's interest immediately centered on the young orator, who delivered his im passioned speech with tremendous vigor and emphasis. At the moment of her entry he was in the midst of a tirade against capital and its manifold evils. "Every capitalist," he was shouting, "every capitalist, every banker or financier, is a traitor and a robber!—" "Why, that's what Lathrop is, a financier," thought Bella, "and he certainly was a traitor to me tonight, but as to his being a robber-?” By the end of Demarest's speech. Lathrop was a robber, murderer, and everything else that is scurrilous and abominable. He owned a large factory, therefore he must be a villian, according to Demarest's logic. All employers of labor are thieves and blackguards, he argued. Bella was surprised at herself for not having realized it before. At the close of the meeting she walked boldly up and introduced herself to the speaker. Demarest wiped his brow, brushed back his mop of ebony hair, bowed politely, and took the hand that she offered. For a moment they stood thus, gazing into each other's eyes. And during that moment something happened. His earnest intensity had made a strong appeal to the girl, and his physical attractions aroused emotions the nature of which she was reluctant to admit to herself. "I wish to thank you for your eloquent PIGMIES OF THE COSMOS and convincing address," she said frankly. "I am indebted," he replied, "for your sympathetic and intelligent criticism." They moved towards the door, through which the last stragglers of the audience were departing. Demarest, on his part, was conscious of a strange and delightful perturbation in the presence of this wholesome girl. Not that he knew no others of her type-he was acquainted with every kind-but among his friends were so many girls and women of a "temperamental" bent, supposedly artistic propensity, literary aspiration, or other peculiarity, that this straightforward, normal girl seemed agreeably refreshing by contrast. Few words were exchanged as they walked. Isabel's door seemed to be reached in almost no time, and Demarest took his leave. In the seclusion of her room, Bella realized that by the evening's experience her whole thought and life-interest had been abruptly jerked into a new channel. It seemed as if nothing would ever be quite the same again. She felt differently in regard to Mortimer Lathrop; she found herself analyzing and speculating upon subjects that had never troubled her before, except as vague abstractions with which she had no personal concern. Now she sensed the vibrant reality of these problems touching capital and labor. For nearly an hour she sat motionless, lost in thought, without even taking off her hat and coat. While Bella pondered, thus absorbed, Demarest was similarly engrossed in the converted attic where he lived. A tireless worker, he would often sit late into the night, busily writing, wrestling with social problems of vital import. On this night he seemed more wakeful than ever, and as he wrote, the vision of Isabel Pennington persistently obtruded itself between his eyes and the manuscript, until he realized that her stimulating influence was providing the added incentive to work, and also a series of agreeable interruptions to his train of thought. Demarest crawled into bed at about three o'clock, to dream of the wonderful girl who had unexpectedly given him such revivifying encouragement. * * * 311 When Bella took her seat at the typewriter in Lathrop's office the next morning, she was conscious of a radical change in her attitude to him, and to the forces and institutions for which he stood. Somehow she now conceived him as an enemy, to be opposed and worsted. Lathrop on his part soon sensed the change in her. To his customary cheerful "Morning, Bella," she responded with a kind of preoccupied abstraction that puzzled him, and during the day the impression that something was wrong received ample confirmation. It was not long before the factory owner discovered that his efficient secretary had fallen under the influence of revolutionary doctrines. He was at first amused, then perplexed, and finally annoyed. As the days went by, the personal relationship between them grew more strained; Lathrop refrained from extending social invitations to her, and she, indeed, felt relieved at being thus spared from having to refuse them. In the meantime she was attending the nightly meetings of the Social Progress Club, of which she had become a member, and was rapidly qualifying as a leader. Propinquity was up to its old tricks, and the inevitable love affair between Bella and Eugene ripened apace. Along with his teachings-absorbed by him wholesale from the books of the great reformers, and handed out with added zest to his proselytes she acquired a deep and lasting affection for the man himself. The meetings were well attended. The arguments and discussions were vital, trenchant, irresistible. Every convert to the doctrines of the club left the hall primed with convincing logic wherewith to fight and overcome the reactionary forces of capitalism and special privilege. The only jarring note in Demarest's symphony of love and work was the economic difficulty. The meager collections at his lectures, even when augmented by the sale of a few tracts and pamphlets, were inadequate to pay the rent of the hall and provide for his personal needs, simple though they were. More over he was carrying the additional burden of partial support of a widowed sister, Mrs. Sturgess, and her two anaemic girls. Such, however, was his boundless idealism that he would live on the most frugal fare and practice the most rigid economy, denying himself every luxury and convenience-starving the body to feed the mind-rather than use for his own ends any of the funds subscribed for the purposes of the campaign. Bella's discovery of his impecunious condition was but a matter of time, and when she learned the truth there at once. followed a generous offer of help. She was making thirty-five dollars a week. He must allow her to contribute to the expenses of the club. His resistance was short-lived. Her arguments, re-enforced by the painful necessity of his position, soon overcame his scruples against accepting a woman's money-at least for such an exalted cause. Thus the hall rent continued to be paid, and Demarest for a time ceased to fall in arrear with his landlady, the weekly two dollars for his attic being now regularly forthcoming. And yet, through the malignant influence of economic determinism, the good ship of the Social Progress Club was steadily drifting upon sunken rocks, destined to reduce the noble vessel to a dismal mass of wreckage. Bella lost her job. Lathrop had observed with growing concern her absorption in the visionary and impracticable ideals of Eugene Demarest, and while in the early stages following his discovery of her devotion to the cause-and its leader-he had regarded the affair with indulgent good nature, his attitude later became tinctured with jealousy, and finally assumed a quality of angry resentment. (Continued on Page 339.) TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES By Warwick James Price (Sam Johnson has written somewhere that a habit of looking always on the bright side of things is worth five thousand a year.) When Fancy and I go a-walking together, As though 'twere the clearest and finest of May. The people we pass in the streets of the city The rascally beggars all share in his pity, Fair Julia sweeps by, in her pride and vainglory: A charmingly sweet (but impossible) story, I'd wink at no matter by whom it were told. Or we walk in the country. Every hut in the meadow His sunshine's eternal; if he saw a shadow, Wiseacre friends bid me break with the fellow; I T has frequently been said that the reason two men or two nations fight and wage warfare is because they do not understand each other. A lack of proper understanding fosters suspicion, mistrust and misconstruction of motive, elements that eventually come to a head in severing of diplomatic relations and perhaps actual declaration of war. All of this was known to the Administration in Mexico City, while the European War was in progress. It was also foreseen that the next war would be a commercial one, each nation striving to outdo the other in securing the best products at the lowest cost and best possible terms of payment. That Mexico might share in the commercial prosperity that would naturally be developed in consequence of the rehabilitation of these devitalized countries and of far greater importance, that she might be understood, the President and the Secretary of Industry, Commerce and Labor, conceived the idea of establishing Commercial Museums abroad, where products of every kind, produced within the Republic, might be exhibited. Such a display of products, mostly of the raw materials, would be the best means of connecting the producer with the consumer, it was contended, and hence it came to pass that there were constructed and established various Exhibitions of Mexican Products, one at St. Louis, one at New Orleans, one in San Francisco. Two elaborate Exhibitions are maintained in Paris and Madrid, while plans are under way for two more, one in Washington, D. C., and the other in New York City. The local Exhibition, in my charge as Commercial Agent of the Secretary of Industy, Commerce and Labor, is maintained with the express purpose of promoting friendly commercial relations between the United States and her sister Republic, Mexico. It charges no fees whatsoever and is open for inspection by the public. There are many interesting samples of raw materials such as minerals, petroleum, agricultural products of every description, specimens of fine workmanship of the Aztec Indians of Mexico in pottery and baskets, serapes and shawls, besides numerous other industrial articles. such as saddles, aeroplane propellers, candles, cigars, leggings, soaps, perfumes, etc. The exhibit of petroleum is especially interesting and includes samples of the crude, fuel and distillate product, elegant ly displayed on a fine exhibit table. The oil is procured from the famous "Cerro Azul," the world's greatest oil well located some 85 miles south of Tampico, producing over 260,000 barrels daily. Visitors are cordially invited to inspect the exhibition and any information they may desire regarding anything of a commercial nature relative to Mexico will be gladly furnished them. I have been asked to state my views on the Mexican situation as regards possible Intervention by the United States. On that subject I can only fervently say that I do not wish to live to see such a thing brought about by a coterie who regard their investments in Mexico as of far greater importance than the inalienable right of fellow mortals to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." I have before stated my views and opinions of the Interventionists and their Congressional Agents, who may soon be forced to retract certain statements which they are and will be unable to prove, hence I will touch only upon certain phases of the subject, namely requirements for such a step, duration of hostilities and result thereof. The first requisite, as will be generally admitted, will be an immense army of American soldiers. Will they go? That depends entirely upon whether or not they will be convinced of the justice of the cause. Remember they have only recently returned from overseas and are weary of battle. They will most assuredly not sacrifice their lives and futures for the sake of some bloated bond-holder's oil interests, cattle ranges or mining properties. Every railroad in the Mexican Republic will have to be policed as long as hostilities last. Some estimates place the duration of such a siege as two or possibly three years, but I feel safe in saying that the length of that period would be until no Mexican remained to carry on guerrilla warfare. The mountainous nature of that southern land would favor such warfare to be carried on interminably for the Mexican knows as if by instinct every nook and cranny of his beloved country and he will fight for her as long as life remains. Although different factions may continually be battling against each other, they will unite to the last man to oppose and check the invasion of a foreign foe. Many unknowingly speak of the subjugation of Mexico as though it were a very simple matter - merely stepping across the border and administering a sound spanking. Nothing could be more erroneous than such a supposition. To begin with the officially recorded population of 15,000,000 souls is far from accurate. The reason for this is the agelong fear and dread of the Mexican Indians for compulsory military service that originated centuries ago when they were thus arbitrarily summoned to fight for the interests of some tyrant in a cause which held no interest or recompense for them. The aversion to such slavery often caused them to flee in entire communities upon the very sight of an officer of any kind. This has hitherto seriously handicapped the census-taker in arriving at anything like a true estimate of the population of Mexico, for the Indians would not again risk a summons, or “La leva," which is the term they apply to forced military service. This fact justifies my firm belief that the census of 1920 will prove Mexico's population to be around 25,000,000 and possibly more. The present Administration in Mexico has done much to aid and elevate the Mexican Indians-as for instance restoring to them as the original owners, millions of acres of land, declared forfeit, which was controlled by Thirteen Private individuals in the form of concessions! This and many other acts which have convinced them that their government is earnestly striving in every way to help them, has created in them a ed in them a loyalty and allegiance to their country and government that is remarkable and that will not lightly be weakened. Incidentally it has been the means of removing that former fear and prejudice which make census-taking so difficult and I have no doubt but that next year they will be glad to give the officials all the required information. Do the Interventionists, I wonder, ever pause to consider the possible result of Armed Intervention, aside from their belief and hope that their interests will be protected? Apparently not, or they would not be in such haste to force such a step. To begin with, there would be created in every Mexican heart an undying hatred of all Americans and all things American, |