238
PARTISAN REVIEW
his cotton gin on that very spot. So it is exquisitely oxidized
history. Nothing is there now but two or three old timbers,
ioned with green moss, standing near enough the surface of
Creek to make the water purl over them. The road once ended
purposefully winding over its own importance to a definite
osition. Now the road goes by with a sort of stupid arrogance,
ends irresponsibly on the shoulder of a national highway.
In ten minutes the freight will blow for Allen's Station,
no train has been flagged to a stop in a generation. At a
f
before midnight it will blow for Lane's Crossing. Two longs,
short, and a very long; mezzo·soprano. It will be less than
miles from this window then-the terrible breathing of the cylin.
ders in the strain up the slight grade, with tons of scrap iron and
linters for Savannah - and thence.... But there is war
in
America too.
"Thy Neighbor's Goods."
Science must discover a means of recording energy expended
in useful labor of mind and of body. Society must accept the
proposition that men shall be paid according to perforations on
their individual energy cards; with provision for systematic care
for the unfit and the aged. The individual who lays an industrial
plan must not be so much more dearly purchased than his brother
who lays an industrial brick.
All the banking in New York City cannot dig one Irish potato
in Idaho. All the chemistry in Delaware cannot pluck one grape
in California. All the selling agencies in Liverpool cannot burst
one boll of cotton under Carolina sun. Men who work in the
ethereal regions of pure mentality should have sense of humor
enough to realize their workshops, absurdly, are their buttocks.
Let them draw less compensation in metal and more in the delight
of doing things. Otherwise, for all their extraordinary mentality,
they have little notion of ethical grace and none of social sym·
metry.
If
they cannot be broken in any other way from the theory
that men
get
what they
earn,
let them follow, one by one, old Ben·
nock's spavined mule across old Bennock's sand ridge, just west
of here, where Bennock still manages one fairly good ear of corn
to the stalk, despite the journalistic exhaustion of Georgia
~oil.
