Eugene V. Brewster

“ The one great desire uppermost in the minds of men is to get the greatest good from the earth, the source of all wealth, with the least possible labor and effort. In the so-doing, both experience and reason teach that economy is the watchword. It is the life blood of civilization—the essence of industrial prosperity. The basis of all philosophy is "I want," and in the pursuit of happiness and contentment, economy must be the watchword. ”

“ If these men had the passion, they no doubt felt sorry for it and they would be the first to warn others of the vice. Some of them were ruined by it. It is a folly to be ashamed of, not to be proud of. It is a weakness, and all great men have their weaknesses. Think of the great men who were inveterate smokers and drinkers; yet we would not hold them up as examples for the young simply because they acquired these bad habits. Are we to emulate the faults of the great, or their virtues?
Of all the passions that have enslaved mankind, none can reckon so many victims as gambling. ”

“ Society has already organized. The organization is improperly called government. Government is simply organized society. We elect a President as a public servant, not as a governor. He does not, or should not, reign over us, but serve us, and do our bidding. This is not a monarchy, but a democracy.
And so the great machine is already organized. Unfortunately we are not in the habit of looking at government as a huge industrial machine, and our law makers are too prone to assume arbitrary and tyrannical power, regardless of the theory of democracy upon which all our institutions rest. ”

“ You have specialized and localized your industries, and have affected an efficient system of division of labor, but, you forget that this means monopoly in private hands. You have overlooked the fact that now, every man is dependent upon every other man, and every industry is dependent upon every other industry. Again, when one hundred concerns combine into a partnership, or Trust, as we call it, and throw thousands out of employment, or when a new machine does so, you now have no way of providing for these unemployed thousands, and you cast them out upon the world to shift for themselves. ”

“ Among the hundreds of thousands of gamblers, you can count the few prosperous ones on your fingers. Whether it be stock-market gamblers, race track gamblers, card gamblers, or what-not, the universal law is that they all must lose in the end. Every once in a while you read of some famous once-rich gambler who has just died poor and forsaken, fortune gone. The few successful ones are successful only for a short time. And the chances of your boy being one of the successful ones is about equal to his chances of becoming the king of England. ”

“ A great fire, a flood, a devastating cyclone, is not only a calamity to those immediately affected, but it is a universal loss; for, the great human family is just so much poorer, the world's progress has been retarded, and our onward march toward the perfect civilization has been checked. Likewise, every stroke of labor that does not go toward making the world better or richer is wasted energy. The man who insists on making shoes, or raising wheat, or digging coal, when he is mentally, physically and by nature ill-adapted to that calling, is a drone and a burden upon society. ”

“ We often converse with a dead or absent friend, in our dreams, without remembering that the grave or the ocean is between us. We float, like a feather, or fly like a bird, upon the wind, one moment in New York, and the next in Melbourne, without reflecting that the laws of nature are suspended, or inquiring how the scene could have been so suddenly shifted. We accommodate ourselves to every event, however romantic, impossible, unreasonable, extravagant and absurd. ”

“ Organization is all you require. You have as yet only organized into simple isolated groups. You must now organize all these groups. Every industry, every partnership, is a group. Each group is dependent upon all the others. This being true, you must form a whole. Let every man stick to his special work, let every locality remain in its special work, let every industry and every partnership stick to its special work,—don't disturb nature—but all these must stick to each other! How? By forming yourselves into one solid, compact, organized body. Call yourselves a nation. ”

“ Just as the crowd will make way for the man who pushes boldly forward, so will the public follow any good leader who knows enough about his business to appreciate the value of such sentiments as patriotism, humanity, unselfish devotion and human sympathy. While such a leader is in favor, the public are more than willing to be led, like so many sheep, but the most trivial incident will sometimes win their disfavor, and history shows that the public are perfectly willing to crown a man one day and to hang him the next. To gain the favor of the mob is not so difficult ”

“ If all men and industries in the nation are interdependent, why shall there not be a NATIONAL DIRECTION, so that every industry shall be made to do its duty toward society? If people must have coal, or oil, or meat, or transportation, or gloves, and one set of men or one locality has a monopoly thereof, why shall not the nation DIRECT that those men or those localities shall do right by all other men and by all other localities? ”

“ Again, who may say that a large nose, which was esteemed so highly by Napoleon, or a strong jaw, which is generally understood to denote perseverance, may not be mere accidents of nature, for are not some born tongue-tied, cross-eyed or flat-footed, without design, meaning or tendency, so far as those physical conditions are concerned? And do not all persons develop one or more faculties, and neglect others, without causing any change in the bones of the face? One may conquer and conquer, like Alexander, until there are no more worlds to be conquered, and yet not acquire a conqueror's nose. ”

“ How do we know that a man is popular with the people? Certainly we have not asked all the people about it, and the few we have asked may not be representative. Perhaps we form our opinion of the public's opinion from one or more of these things: what the newspapers say, what those persons say with whom we have talked, and from our knowledge of the human heart generally. As for the last, we know that such virtues as honesty, self-sacrifice, ability and courage are universally admired, and that such vices as dishonesty, selfishness and cowardice are universally condemned ”

“ Then a glimpse of astronomy further enlightened him, and, realizing the absurdity of planet worship, he invented other gods of an invisible nature to which he attributed the creation of all phenomena. The propensity for the novel and marvelous always obscured his reason and judgment. To the ignorant mind, everything marvelous is super-natural; but the philosopher sees in all marvelous phenomena nothing but the results of natural causes, even if those causes are not yet fully understood. Science cannot yet fathom all of nature's mysteries, but nearly every day brings forth new light. ”

“ I once became the manager of a dinner in honor of Mr. Bryan, and, like Byron, woke up one morning to find myself famous—think of it!—famous for getting up a dinner. But such fame is meteoric and has but a mushroom existence. Fielding says somewhere that Greatness is like a laced coat from Monmouth Street, which fortune lends us for a day to wear and tomorrow puts it on another's back; but he did not mean Greatness, but Fame, or Popularity, Greatness is not greatness if it is not lasting. If we cannot tell what greatness is, we can tell what it is not. ”

“ We do not condemn and destroy a great machine because it has a defective part, but we rather seek to remedy the defect.
The Trust is doing a wonderful work for the world. Like improved machinery, it is lightening and lessening the toil of the human family, and at the same time it is working a great injury. Labor-saving machinery is also working injury, in that it is making large numbers of men idle, but this is not sufficient reason to destroy it. Machinery and Trusts are brothers. To be consistent, if we destroy the one we must destroy the other. ”

“ The quarrel between Queen Anne and the Duchess of Marlborough over a pair of gloves did not cause the change of ministry and the following peace with Louis XIV, nor did the blood of Lucretia put an end to the kingly powers at Rome, as some say, and neither did the sight of Virginia terminate the decemviral power, nor did the view of Caesar's body and mantle enslave Rome. It seems to be that love of the marvellous, of the curious, of the strange, and of the impossible, that makes us ascribe great results to the most insignificant and isolated causes. ”

“ Sometimes, we call the public by the uncomplimentary name, the mob. Goethe thought the public particularly sensitive, for he said that "The public wishes itself to be managed like a woman; one must say nothing to it except what it likes to hear." He also thought them ungrateful, for he said, "He who serves the public is a poor animal; he worries himself to death, and no one thanks him for it." Hazlitt was of like mind, and he maintained that the public have neither shame nor gratitude.
When we say of a man that he is popular with the masses, we mean with the people ”

“ Now, it is quite true that gambling is a tendency to which most people are prone, more or less, but that is no argument for increasing the temptation, nor for encouraging the vice. Men are prone to steal, to drink, to be dishonest, to lie, to cheat, to be immoral; but these tendencies must be checked and suppressed, not encouraged. Because some men will steal, should we license them and furnish them with ways and means to carry out their brutal instincts? Civilization is striving to eliminate man's brute passions. ”

“ It has ever been the struggle for existence which has urged men to move onward with vigorous, earnest and persistent effort. The desire to surpass, to outshine, his fellows has always been and will ever be a potent factor in his development, and when this rivalry is exerted in the struggle for the means of sustenance then does this desire develop into the power that moves the world. Emulation, that milder form of competition, is that which may be said to have for its object of attainment the applause and approval of our fellows. ”

“ Again, in selecting the great men, should there not be some limit in number and some method of declaring different degrees of greatness, because otherwise the man who wrote "Home, Sweet Home" might find a place alongside Shakespeare. Again, should a conqueror be classed among the great? Still again, are philosophers like Schopenhauer, Ibsen, Bernard Shaw and Nietzsche to be numbered among the great, when most people say that their philosophy is wrong, destructive and immoral? No wonder, then, that nobody has yet been able to give a satisfactory definition of Greatness. ”

“ Christian Science are important, but it does not follow that we are to discard all our other religions, beliefs, and modes of living; for Christian Science is only a speculation, and it does not concern most of us. It rightly is no more a religion than is the theory of evolution, which, by the way, Mrs. Eddy did not seem to understand, for she said: "Theorizing about man's development from mushrooms to monkeys and from monkeys to men, amounts to nothing in the right direction, and very much in the wrong." ”

“ I am prepared to believe without hesitation that nothing passes in the soul which does not produce some change in the body, and that even desire, and the act of willing, create a corresponding motion in the body; but it requires extraordinary credulity to believe that bones are enlarged or diminished by this process, and, consequently, that part of Physiognomy I must reject. But it is quite certain that, on the countenance discernibly appear light and gloom, joy and anxiety, stupidity, ignorance, and vice, and that, on this waxen tablet are deeply scribed every combination of sense and soul. ”

“ Popularity is a delusion.
It is an easy matter to become popular if one wants to, for all it requires is passive tolerance, and active commendation. Taking the individual, listen to his stories attentively, applaud his hobbies, rave over his phonograph, his pianola, or his pictures, or books, or his dog. A good listener is always popular. Taking the individual collectively, the public, the same rule holds good. ”

“ Men are not born equal. Nature never duplicates, and never creates two things alike. Men are unequal and different in nature, in stature, intellect, frugality, desire, industry, perseverance, hardiness and strength. A wise Creator hath made it so.
Were all men alike they would all want the same thing—to do the same thing, to create the same thing, and to consume the same thing—which would result in chaotic confusion. Again, the inequality of conditions has been one of Nature's greatest and most useful expedients in developing and perfecting the race. ”