YMCA – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

Douglas’s Advice to Students on Stowing Away Knowledge

From the June 1920 issue of The Intercollegian.

The following is from “A Suggested Valedictory for Class Day at AnyCollege,” by Lloyd C. Douglas, in the June 1920 issue of The Intercollegian (the monthly magazine of the YMCA). Douglas had already done something similar a year earlier under the title, “A Truthful Commencement Address,” given by the college president. This time he’s pretending to be a member of the graduating class:

“Honorable Board of Directors, Members of the Faculty, Distinguished Guests, Alumni, Fond Parents, Fellow Students, Dear Classmates, Ladies and Gentlemen, and — have I forgotten anybody, I wonder?

“We are about through. One more long, trying session in these flowing robes — appropriately so-called because of their perspiration-exciting capacities — and we shall float out of them upon the sea of life.

“It is a well-known fact among us that only a few skippers of our gladsome fleet are aware of their next port of call. Most of us are concerned with the business immediately at hand — that of standing on the bridge, waving our handkerchiefs to the crowd on the wharf.

“Personally, I have an uneasy misgiving about my cargo. For some years, the stevedores have been dumping it into my hold, and I have stood by, checking the items: two B’s of this, three A’s of that, and ten C’s of something else, with an occasional D or two of something else — but making no effort to store the stuff in a manner that may permit of its being unloaded. Indeed, as I have looked into the hold now and again, of late, I have been quite worried over the problem. I find that I have been considering certain consignments as mere dunnage which really are of great value. There are huge bales of priceless wares chucked down in the bilge, probably water-soaked and half rotten by this time, that I could market for a fine price if only I had known earlier how important it was to preserve them.

“Moreover, I have my cabin piled high with boxes and cartons of merchandise which, a little while ago, seemed tremendously valuable, but now appear to be useless.

“I recall with a shudder how I laughed on the day that the big bale labeled ‘Political Economy’ broke loose from the grappling hooks and fell through to the very keel of me and smashed; and I said, ‘Oh, well; it amounts to little anyway! Let it lie!’ That same day, I was toting up to my stateroom packages of stuff which were so precious I wouldn’t let anyone else touch them — all about the movie stars, the latest crinkle in jazz, the last sartorial yip from the haberdashery.

“I would give much today if I might escape this Turkish bath for a few hours to dig about in my hold and lay hands upon some of the discarded and water-logged possessions of mine and fish them out.

“But that seems impossible. The engines are chug-chugging, and the band is um-pah-ing, and our admiring friends are bidding us ‘Bon voyage!’ We must be true to form and see the event through, according to the best traditions. Forgive us for wearing serious faces. We cannot help being reflective. Every mother’s son of us knows that he is embarking with a badly-distributed ballast.

“As for myself, I am aware that there isn’t a scrap of machinery in me capable of hoisting a single bale of my cargo up out of the hold. I hooted at the Literary Society and called the Oratorical Association funny names. I never learned how to speak in public and am considerably at a disadvantage when it comes to expressing myself clearly in private. I do not know how to write, convincingly or any other way. It is difficult for me to compose a readable letter of fifteen lines. In other words, I am full of knowledge up to my quarter deck, and I have no equipment for disgorging it.

“O ye who follow us — a word with you! Be careful how you store your cargo. Don’t emulate our folly who have debated, hours, on the respective merits of Gish and Pickford; who wrote long editorials admonishing the local play-houses against showing such an excessive amount of advertisements on the screen to the loss of our time who had come rather to see Deadeye Pete and Mexico Jake save the life of the Queen of Bronco Bill’s Dive; who had no time for concerts, lectures, art exhibits, or the paleontological museum — half ashamed, indeed, to be caught with an interest in such things — I say, don’t try to perpetuate our foolishness!

“Store your cargo so that you can get at it again. Be sure that you rig some windlasses and donkey-engines on your decks, to be used at various ports! And Heaven help you if you toss down into the bilge-water merchandise of great value. I know some of you. Already well on toward committing the same blunder that today causes us unrest. Nobody could persuade you to appear in a collar one-quarter inch too high — and you pooh-pooh the idea of trying to find out what ails Russia!

“Farewell! We are off! In many respects, we have been off all along. Farewell! Just toss that rear hawser in, will you? That’s a good fellow! Thanks!”

Summer Vacation Advice to Students

by Ronald R Johnson

From the May 1920 issue of The Intercollegian.

The following is an essay by Lloyd C. Douglas in the May 1920 issue of The Intercollegian (the YMCA magazine). It was entitled, “Vacation,” and it was Douglas’s advice to students on how to spend their summer months.

“WANTED — Student willing to earn $75 per week during summer vacation. Inquire Mr. Al. Luminum, Room 13, Coldstream Memorial Dormitory.

“WANTED — Thoroughly reliable students (upperclassmen preferred) for vacation employment. Easy work. Salary guaranteed. Three hundred dollars per month and railroads. Lykelle, Box 23, Local.

“Again, the man with the encyclopedia, and the man with the brushes, and the man with the book on ‘30,000 Thoughts for the Thriftless,’ have taken up temporary quarters in the Slocum Hotel, or in the dorm, and have sent out beguiling invitations for eager, peppy, and ambitious young collegians to call and assure themselves that next September will find them with money in all seventeen pockets. (Note: the antecedent of the last them is at the Slocum House. [In other words, it’s the salesman who’s going to end up with all the money, not the hapless students he talks into working for him.]

“Before signing anything, o youthful friend o’ mine, hie thee to the office of Brother Jones, ’04, who dispenses justice in his second-floor front across the way [the Dean of Students, in other words], and ask him to read your contract and tell you where the little joker is. It will be so much funnier if he points it out to you in May, than if you should discover it for yourself in September. Jones will do this for you free of charge. He still recalls how he went out one summer to sell, in four bindings, The Royal Pathway to Success, on a salary of $40 weekly, and how he owed the company $5.68 on the first day of October.

“Of course, you will want to do something profitable during your summer vacation. Even if you are not required to earn money, you will be greatly benefited by the experience of doing something useful. No matter how wealthy you are — even if you are the son of a plumber — go out and exchange a little perspiration for a few dollars.

“But — before you go, arrange to spend ten days, immediately at the close of the last semester, at the nearest Student Conference.

“The men who laid out these various conference grounds and planned the programs which are rendered there each year were students who knew the state of mind in which the average college man finds himself at the close of an academic year. The sites of these camps are notable for their natural beauty. An air of peace and tranquility pervades these places. They afford excellent opportunities for the man who really wants to think a few things through.

“Especially if you are to have any part in the leadership of your fellows in college next fall, you should spend this little group of days in association with the picked men of all the other educational institutions of your zone; get acquainted with them; play baseball and tennis with them; swim with them; take afternoon hikes with them into the mountains and along the lakeshore; sit with them, mornings and evenings, in an auditorium, to hear inspirational addresses by internationally-known student leaders. This is a part of your education. You cannot afford to miss it.

“The cost, in money, is insignificant. The benefits are incalculable. Forty years from now, it may not make very much difference whether you started out to sell pots and pans on June sixth or June sixteenth. But it will surely make a tremendous difference whether or not you exposed yourself to a ten-day period of inspiration!

“Some of you have been appointed to positions on Association cabinets for next year. You almost owe it to your job to learn, at the feet of men who understand the peculiar problems of student life, something of the possibilities of that job. Indeed, you cannot hope to put your best into your particular department next fall unless you shall have had this experience.

“Inquire for the detailed information about this Student Conference now, while the matter is fresh in your mind! Be a booster for a large delegation from your college! Perhaps the most valuable piece of work you will ever do in your whole life can be accomplished through your urging some strong comrade of yours to accompany you to the conference.”

This photograph was included at the bottom of the article, bearing the caption, “The Northwest Conference, 1919.”

Douglas Looks on the Bright Side

by Ronald R Johnson

From the March 1920 issue of The Intercollegian.

I’ve been doing a series on the essays Lloyd Douglas published in The Intercollegian (the monthly magazine of the YMCA) from January 1919 through June 1920. If you’ve been reading these articles, you may have noticed that Douglas was quite upset with some of the things going on in the nation’s universities following the First World War. When Douglas was against a thing, his sarcasm often took over, and he could become quite pessimistic.

In today’s essay, from the March 1920 issue, Douglas tells about a student who wrote to him and challenged him to change his attitude. Douglas’s response was called “Streaks of Sunshine.” He accepted the challenge and tried to find things to rejoice about. (It’s amusing that one of the things he found was evidence that jazz was on the way out. Douglas, who loved classical music, had a life-long aversion to jazz, and he seized upon this news. Fortunately for the rest of us, that prophecy was not fulfilled.) Here is that essay:

“The other day an undergraduate in a midwestern college who had read in this magazine a few pessimistic remarks of mine relative to some depressing observations of present-day student life wrote and told me so.

“He was highly indignant, and his pen fairly spluttered his disapproval of me and my sour reflections.

“I was glad that he didn’t agree with me. If I were sure there were fifty men just like him in every college, ready to quarrel with me on that point, I should throw up my hat and yell, Hoo-ray!

“Or forty — or thirty — or twenty! I would hoo-ray if there were only ten! Ten optimists could have saved Sodom. And Sodom was a bad outfit. (See the Bible for particulars.)

“I told this young fellow that I would take a few doses of calomel and try to think of some good reasons for being cheerful. Pursuant to this promise, I hereby beg leave to report.

“You can’t get a seat at the Cort Theatre in New York to see John Drinkwater’s ‘Lincoln’ unless you apply a month in advance, with a special pull and a stuffed club.

“The obese producers of our theatrical entertainment (much of whose fatty tissue has accumulated above the collar) are slightly bewildered. They always thought they knew exactly what the American people wished to see. They have produced salacious drivel and sensational flapdoodle for the stage, under the impression that a play couldn’t succeed unless it was slightly off-color. Now they are discovering, with something of a shock, that the Americans have brains. Thousands are clamoring for a chance to see a drama woven about the history of a great American leader. It is a streak of sunshine on our way! Cheer up!

“Reports, properly authenticated, certify that jazz is on the wane; that people are getting tired of the abominable racket of it, the drooling idiocy of it, the execrably bad taste of it — and that a revival of decent music impends. It may be some time before all the back counties hear that the Great Jazz is dead; but whoever contemplates taking up trap-drumming as a life-work had better consult the oracles before he invests too heavily in a supply of cowbells, tin pans, and sandpaper, wherewith to gladden the hearts of his countrymen. For his countrymen are weary, to the point of tears, over such nasty noises. This is a streak of sunshine! And again I say: Rejoice!

“One hundred and forty of the branches of the Christian Church in America have become party to a plan which proposes to demonstrate that they are all able to work together for the common good, forgetful of the old divisive controversies.

“Plenty of people who have spent their lives chattering about the reprehensible ructions among the denominations will now have nothing to talk about. Some of them will again have to be taught to speak, just as many a typhoid patient is obliged to learn how to walk. This will be a great pity. Otherwise, it is all very happy. It is a streak of sunshine! Dawn of a new day!

“A tidal wave of evangelism sweeps the country, invading many quarters previously stolid and indifferent. The colleges are feeling the impact of this new idea. You know what a ‘hormone’ is, don’t you? Well, this new idea is in the nature of a hormone. (Business of looking it [up] in the dictionary. I doubt if you find it. It’s a new word. So is this a new idea. You can’t pour a new idea into an old word, lest the word break, and the idea be spilled.) More students are asking questions about enlistment for life service than ever before in the history of American colleges. More sunshine!

“Here’s to the student who gets sore when some old fossil says we’re going to the bow-wows. Let him line up the other nine in his school who feel as he does about it — and see what happens! Another streak of sunshine! I expect to see daybreak before long!”

Under the Juniper Tree

by Ronald R Johnson

The front page of the February 1920 issue of The Intercollegian (the magazine of the YMCA).

It was early 1920, a little more than a year after the end of the First World War. Although the war was over, peace was illusive. Lloyd Douglas, watching global developments from Ann Arbor, Michigan, was concerned about the future. His essay, “Under the Juniper Tree,” published in The Intercollegian’s February 1920 issue, was prompted by a youth convention of some sort, probably involving the YMCA. I have been unable to get information about that conference, but here is Douglas’s response. The biblical reference is to the story of Elijah under the juniper tree in I Kings 19.

“An old statesman sat, fagged and gloomy, under a juniper tree. The place was a wilderness. The hour was twilight. The man was a fugitive.

“He had tried, unsuccessfully, to make something of a nation that was rotting. Too much war, too much social injustice, too much idle riches at the top and sour poverty at the bottom. All of these conditions had ‘done her in.’ Everybody was restless; the air was charged with revolution; two percent were profiteering on ninety-eight percent, and ninety-eight percent were rolling up their tattered sleeves to settle with the two percent. A mess it was — by all the rules of reckoning!

“The old statesman had given up the sacrificial struggle and wanted nothing else than to die. He tumbled into a forlorn heap under a juniper tree. Thus, the juniper tree became, forever and ever, a symbol of wretchedness. Even the berries thereof have been put under the ban.

“A Voice spoke to the despairing statesman. By no means was his cause lost. There were seven thousand still loyal to the best interests of the endangered kingdom. These seven thousand constituted the key to the desperate situation. Let them be lined up for service and the nation’s mistakes could be rectified.

“All of this happened in 920 B.C.

“At the opening of 1920 A.D., seating accommodations under the juniper tree were entirely inadequate to take care of the prophets who feared we were destined to perish of our quick and easy riches. Materialism rampant; indifference the vogue; selfishness at the crescent; almost everybody with his hand in the bag, up to the shoulder.

“A telegram from Des Moines!

“Seven thousand!’ Seven thousand who? — what? — whence?

“Seven thousand potential leaders of the nation’s future affairs forego their holidays, at no little cost to themselves, to meet in a great convention and pledge their lives to lift, help, heal, serve, redeem!

“Moreover — these seven thousand were but picked representatives of seven times seven thousand who feel precisely as they feel about the responsibilities now facing the trained leadership of the republic.

“Let the juniper tree be cut down for a celebration bonfire! We are not so badly off as we thought! This country simply cannot make enough mistakes to abrogate the influence of these indomitable young dynamos!

“When the census taker inquires about your occupation, tell him you are a wood-cutter — specializing in juniper trees!

“We are on the way up once more!”

On Student Gambling

by Ronald R Johnson

From the January 1920 issue of The Intercollegian.

This is from an essay entitled, “Ulcers and Cancers,” that Lloyd Douglas published in the January 1920 issue of The Intercollegian.

“It is rumored that there is an epidemic of gambling in the colleges and universities of this country.

“Physicians say that it is quite difficult, in many cases, to distinguish a cancer from an ulcer. The ulcer is mostly ‘benign’ and responds to treatment; the cancer is generally ‘malignant’ and usually defies remedial processes. There is a period when the ulcer becomes a cancer. If the affection is internal, correct diagnosis is almost impossible. The physician regards every ulcer as a potential cancer. If he observes one on your nose, he may operate in time; if you get one in your stomach, by the time the doctor discovers it is an ulcer, it may be a cancer.

“It is only a short trip from ‘penny ante’ and ‘pitching choppers at a crack’ to ‘strip poker’ and the ‘bucket shop.’

“Just when the disease ceases to be ‘benign’ and becomes ‘malignant’ is difficult to determine.

“But here is a quiet tip on one safe bet: the student who learns to gamble — no matter how small the stakes — is engaged in the manufacture of a habit that will stick to him like burrs in the fleece of a Southdown ram.

“Once firmly fix this habit, and you may say farewell to your ambitions. So soon as the ulcer becomes a cancer, you are doomed. There will be no gamble on that. Betting on such a proposition is not sportsmanship. The only uncertainty in the case is to determine whether your sore spot is still an ulcer or has become cancerous. And this is very hard to determine in the case of gambling, because it is a more or less secret condition which enjoins locked doors, drawn blinds, and hushed voices.

“Friendship is good for some very severe tests, but it suffers greatly around the gaming table. The nerve which connects the affection and the pocketbook is extremely sensitive. The winner is conscious of taking something for which he has given no value; he automatically assumes a defensive attitude, knowing himself to be in his friend’s debt to the amount of the stakes. This is not very good for their friendship.

“If a man is unusually successful, his companions are apt to distrust his methods. They whisper that he cheats.

“If a man is a ‘poor loser,’ his friends grow to despise him; but, to be a ‘good loser’ he must school himself to a calm indifference toward the depletion of his own resources. In the case of a student, his ‘resources’ are mostly achieved through somebody else’s perspiration and have been entrusted to him for quite another purpose than the hazards of the game. Somewhat bluntly stated, he is misappropriating funds. Just when this ceases to be a ‘mere youthful misdemeanor’ and becomes ’embezzlement’ is a very fine point. But the student who gambles with money furnished by parents who are under the impression that he is using it to defray legitimate college expenses should not be sensitive about the word ’embezzlement.’ It is an admittedly ugly word, however.

“No secret is made of the fact that employers are inclined to be suspicious of the man who bets — on anything. It makes them nervous when they see him handling their property, for they know that he has developed a propensity to risk. They are afraid of riskers. If they want to do any risking, they greatly prefer to attend to that themselves. They assume that a man who is willing to hazard his own money on the turn of a card or the cast of dice may not be prudential and conservative in the care of funds or property belonging to another.

“They dislike to see a gambler handling their money. They audit his books frequently when he is out of the office; and, at the first opportunity, they can him and put a safe man in his place.

“Maybe these words will happen to catch the eye of some student who has been experimenting with this vice. If so — you had better attend to your little ulcer before it becomes cancerous. And the more difficulty you experience in getting rid of it, the more sure it will be that you didn’t begin treating it a moment too soon.”

Fur Coats

by Ronald R Johnson

The following is from an essay by Lloyd Douglas entitled, “Fur Coats,” published in the December 1919 issue of the YMCA’s monthly magazine, The Intercollegian.

“It was a good train, and we had been doing our fifty miles an hour all afternoon. But the trip was long, the book I had been reading had depressed me, and I was feeling the need of some congenial human society when the young doctor sauntered down the aisle and, upon receipt of my smile of welcome, dropped into the vacant chair.

“‘What’s the book?’ he inquired. I told him. It was Professor Cram’s brilliant little volume, Walled Towns.

“‘What’s it about?’ he persisted. I read him a few selected passages, specializing on the author’s indictment of modern society.

“‘This man thinks,’ I remarked, ‘that one of our chief errors is ‘the quantitative standard’ — the worship of bigness, the rejection of ‘the passion for perfection in favor of the numerical equivalent’ — exhibited alike by ‘the ignorant contractor, trying, by the aid of galvanized iron, to produce an effect of a tawdry, lying magnificence,’ and the exploiters of ‘foolish luxuries, and so-called amenities of life which we were far happier without.’ Pretty dismal invoice of the times, don’t you think?’ — for I hoped this young man might restore my optimism.

“‘Well,’ replied the doctor gravely, ‘I don’t believe he has overstated the case. I am blue, today, over certain matters closely related to this.’

“I told him to unpack his troubles from his old kit-bag and we’d look ’em over. He did so. He was on his way back, he said, from the annual ‘homecoming’ at his alma mater — one of the greater state universities of the middle west. There had been a thrilling football game, and a crowded program of social events.

“‘Nothing in all that to be blue about,’ I observed. ‘You must have had a mighty good time.’

“‘I am never going back!’ he said passionately. ‘Never!’

“Whereupon I handed him the inevitable ‘Why?’ — and waited for the story.

“‘Even at my own fraternity house,’ he began, with suppressed indignation, ‘I felt like a cat in a strange attic. The only values there were money values! The new outfit was cold, hard, worldly-wise, blasé, candidly snobbish! Many of the old grads were back. The youngsters coolly appraised their cars, their clothes, and accepted or rejected them on a financial basis. Some of the old fellows brought their wives out to the dance. The woman who appeared without a fur coat was extremely fortunate if she wasn’t snubbed by that selfish, silly, inordinately stupid bunch of new-rich!’

“‘A fur coat!’ I echoed, somewhat dazedly.

“‘Yes!’ snapped the doctor, angrily, ‘a fur coat! That’s the sign of the order now! The Inner Guard at the Greek portal asks the Outer Guard, ‘Who comes there?’ And the Outer Guard replies, ‘Looks like an old grad!’ Says the Inner Guard, ‘How did he get here?’ ‘Motored!’ ‘Spiffy car?’ ‘Not so very!’ ‘Come alone?’ ‘Wife with him!’ ‘Fur coat?’ ‘No!’ ‘Tell ’em we’re sorry!’

“‘But,’ I stammered, ‘what’s going to become of our justly celebrated Democracy if we have this sort of thing going on, right at the tap-root of the leadership we are training to bring us out of our social wilderness?’

“The doctor didn’t know. Presently, we discovered that we weren’t cheering each other’s mood very much, and he went back to his seat while I resumed the little book at the place where Professor Cram was saying, ‘Neither is education a universal panacea for this persistent disease of backsliding; it is not even a palliative or a prophylactic. The most intensive educational period ever known had issue in the most preposterous war in history [WWI, which had ended a year earlier], initiated by the most highly educated of all people, by them given a new content of disgrace and savagery, and issuing at last into Bolshevism and an obscene anarchy that would be ridiculous but for the omnipresent horror!’

“‘But the war!’ I reflected. ‘Surely it was guaranteed to furnish us a new outlook on life! It was to prove ‘a great regenerative agency, out of whose fiery purgation would issue forth a new spirit that would redeem the world.’

“I turned back to the little book and found the professor saying, ‘Every great war exhibits at least two phenomena following on from its end: the falling back into an abyss of meanness, materialism, and self-seeking, with the swift disappearance of the spiritual exaltation during the fight; and the emergence, sooner or later, of isolated personalities who have retained the ardor of spiritual regeneration and who struggle to bring the mass of the people back to their lost ideals.’

“Are these ‘isolated personalities’ now in preparation for their sublime task? Are they in college this winter? And what do they think of the ‘fur coat’ standard of human values?”

The Pearl Merchant

by Ronald R Johnson

From the November 1919 issue of The Intercollegian.

In October 1919, Lloyd Douglas preached a sermon about Christ’s parable of the Pearl of Great Price. In the next month’s issue of The Intercollegian (the magazine put out by the YMCA in America), he published an essay that summarized the things he had said in that sermon. I told about that sermon in an earlier series of posts, and you can read them by clicking on the following links: Part One… Part Two… and Part Three.

Here is the article in the November 1919 issue of The Intercollegian:

“Only in recent times have civilized people worn jewelry for mere display. Their ornamental value formerly took second place to their symbolic significance. The amethyst has wrought many a moral miracle through its legendary power to protect its owner from evil thoughts. Who doubts that the man who had sacrificed many a pleasure to purchase an amethyst for this purpose failed to find help in its ownership?

“Once, a complete allegory of human aspiration, condensed into the telegraphic brevity of thirty-three words, was built around a pearl. Hear the story.

“The hero was a pearl trader. He was not a mere collector, playing at pearls for a pastime; he was a pearl-merchant, seriously making his business a life task. But he loved his vocation, and dealt only with the very finest pearls on the market. Years of shrewd and discriminating negotiations had brought him affluence. His capital stock now contained many pearls of exceptional value.

“Imagination suggests that the trader might have bought one of these cherished pearls in Athens. It was known to him as his ‘agnostic’ pearl. It stood for a neutral-tinted, convictionless attitude of mind — forever seeking evidence, cross-questioning witnesses, and examining testimony; but never arriving at a verdict. Whenever his heart proposed that he take a definite stand for something, he fondled his ‘agnostic’ pearl and remained non-committal. Indeed, he came to have much pride in his unfaiths, and was not offended when men called him a disbeliever. The word was not an epithet, but a distinction. Of all his goodly pearls, he loved this one best.

“But not much less ardently did he esteem the pearl he had found in Rome, the ancient seat of law. He called it ‘justice.’ It had kept him straight, many a time, when he might have cheated without it. Whatever happened, he would be just. Every man should have his due. But no man need expect more than his due. Sometimes the pearl-trader’s heart was moved to pity, for a moment, at sight of human wretchedness; sometimes he was sorely tempted to temper his justice with mercy, but the Roman pearl drew him up before he weakened. Mercy was enervating.

“Another pearl he had discovered in Alexandria — home of riches. When he thumbed the satin surface of his ‘prosperity’ pearl, he invariably experienced a thrill of pride in his wealth, and a longing for added riches. After all, honor and influence were not often far away from the man who held great possessions. Poverty, espoused even in the interest of fine and worthy ideals, was an intolerable curse. Who could afford to be poor?

“Many other pearls had this merchant, in the ownership of which he greatly rejoiced. But still he sought goodly pearls, not content with his possessions. Somewhere, he believed, there must be another jewel of rare value. It had become his sole passion to seek such pearls.

“One day — strangely enough, it was in the ancient city of his fathers — he was pointed to a pearl of such surpassing beauty and perfection that he knew he could never be happy until he had made it his own. He sought out the owner and, together, they discussed, long and earnestly, the peculiar significances attached to the super-pearl. It appeared that ownership of this pearl invested one with a simple, restful, childlike acceptance of the mysteries of life. The wearer would be unable to take pride in his unbeliefs, but would find himself saying, ‘I am persuaded. No; I do not pretend to explain; but I am persuaded!’ Moreover, the super-pearl was sure to guarantee a new state of mind to the four-square man who staked his all on the ‘quid pro quo.’ The wearer of this pearl would become so infatuated with Charity that his erstwhile emulation of pure justice would lose interest for him. And, again, this rare jewel had the power to distract a man’s thoughts from his own prosperity and focus his whole attention upon the happiness and welfare of others.

“The pearl-trader asked its price, somewhat nervously, it is to be believed; for he suspected that its value was beyond his reach. He was told that he might have it in exchange for his entire stock of pearls.

“Surely it must have demanded a long and serious mental struggle for the pearl-trader to arrive at a decision to exchange all of his precious jewels for this one pearl of great price. A friend, unacquainted with pearls, suggested that he ask the owner to cut the pearl in two (as diamonds are cut), but he only smiled sadly and replied, ‘Pearls cannot be cut, my friend. I must take it or leave it as it stands!’

“And so, he refused to trade. And so, he debated again the advisability of trading. And so, at length, he came with his precious pearls and gave them all for this one pearl of great price. For he was a merchant who sought goodly pearls, and he could not be satisfied until he had possessed the best! It is by this process, said the Master Teacher of us all, that the Kingdom of Heaven is achieved in the heart of the individual.”

Demos in the Saddle

by Ronald R Johnson

From the October 1919 issue of The Intercollegian.

The following is an essay by Lloyd Douglas entitled, “Demos in the Saddle,” which was published in the YMCA’s monthly magazine, The Intercollegian, in October 1919. By “Demos,” he is referring to the Greek word Dēmos, which means “the people” or “the common people.” The word “democracy” is derived from it. And when he speaks of “the submerged tenth,” he’s talking about those living in poverty, at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. Hopefully these references will help you in understanding this essay. It seems to me that, on this occasion, he is trying to hint at his point rather than coming right out with it.

Here’s the essay:

“We have a very widely known porkitect, up our way, who, in obedience to the public clamor for fancy cuts of meat, determined to build a hog registering 99.76% pork; no waste, scrap, scrapple, or souse, but chops.

“So, after much patience and many studious hours spent over his blueprints, he constructed an oblong hog with a tiny, highly artistic foot at each corner thereof.

“The evolution was watched with respectful interest by all of the skilled porkitects in this and many other lands. They said in one voice, ‘When fully completed this will be some hog!’

“Yet, when the logical conclusion had been achieved, the perfected pork-chop hog was unable to locomote upon his fragile foundation. His defect was obvious. He needed legs to stand on. The porkitects of the world turned away, saying, ‘What we want is a hog with stronger legs.’

“Now they will try to outdo one another building better legs.

“You can carry any good thing too far. So soon as the general public realizes the good thing has been carried too far it rushes off in the opposite direction for a remedy — but doesn’t know when it has found the remedy. Once started in that direction, it keeps going until everybody on earth knows it has carried the good thing too far again. Trying to find a general specific that will cure all the ills of the social order now and forevermore is much like the search for the city of Detour. One sees the pointing hand indicating the way to Detour — but nobody seems to report having arrived there.

“Take aristocracy, for example. If you had asked anybody, a couple of parasangs ago, who were the aristocrats, he would have replied, ‘The Pedigreed.’ A little later the same query would have been answered, ‘The Rich.’ Of late we have fallen into the pleasant habit of saying, ‘The Intellectuals.’

“It’s quite too long of a story to account for these changes in the definition of ‘aristocrat.’ Perhaps you know the tale. It is bound in many volumes. And the books are all red. When it was required that one be pedigreed to be worth notice, that was undoubtedly a good thing — at the start — else it wouldn’t have started. But they carried this good thing too far. There was a reaction. Then the despised merchant (which might mean trader or highwayman — just as in these present days of profiteering) came into his own. The Rich told the Pedigreed where to get off. The supremacy of the Rich was succeeded — in our country, at least — by the supremacy of the Intellectuals. You and I know that the best people are the college-trained, and that we have an inalienable right to dictate to our current social order. But we seem to have carried this idea too far.

“Just now young Demos is in the saddle, galloping a mad Tam-o’-Shanter to goodness-knows-whither. The dinner-pail is not only dictating to the limousine but hooting at the laboratory.

“College opens again. Thousands of students take up their old task, or their new one, assured that the present ‘trend’ is to be ephemeral. In a few days the ‘restlessness’ will be quieted. The ‘submerged tenth,’ having come up for air, will close the hatches and duck again, presently.

“Don’t be too sure about that.

“What’s to be done, then? Obviously, we ‘college-trained’ must mind our step in the precarious travel of the hour. We had carried a good thing too far. We had bred a college type with too much chest and crust, and not quite enough friendly grip in the fingers of the right hand. Moreover, we had pooh-poohed some of the older instincts of mankind, on the ground that they were vestigial race-fears, etc. Many of us had swapped God for bunch of formulae deduced in the chemical and physical laboratories. We were trying to rid ourselves of untenable superstitions. Then we made war upon our own racial instincts. We went too far.

“A newly-rich man was strolling through The Louvre. He had not troubled to provide himself with a catalog. He made a brief inspection of a few of the paintings, leaning across the rail in an effort to get as close to them as possible. Presently, in a voice of fretfulness and annoyance, he said to the old verger, ‘I’ve been hearing, all my life, about these masterpieces. I’ve just looked at them. I’m frankly disappointed. I don’t see anything in them at all. They’re very ordinary, I should say.’

“‘Sir,’ replied the verger, ‘these pictures are not on trial, but the spectators are!’

“Not many college students will have the discernment to appraise the present crisis or sense the present need. The few who do so may have much to say of future interest. These few will be men of spiritual vision, to whom God is a tremendous Reality.

“Our world is very ill of a disease that indicates a prompt infusion of Vital Faith. If you have it, you can help.”

A Truthful Commencement Address

by Ronald R Johnson

From the June 1919 issue of the YMCA’s monthly magazine, The Intercollegian.

This is from Lloyd Douglas’s essay, “A Truthful Commencement Address,” published in the June 1919 issue of The Intercollegian, put out by the YMCA. The full title is, “A Truthful Commencement Address (As It Might Be Delivered by the President of Any College).”

“My Dear Young Friends — or perhaps I had better say, Young Ladies and Gentlemen, for during your four years’ residence here I have been unable to become acquainted with you, having been required to be absent almost constantly, shaking down wealthy alumni and supplicating the state legislature for the wherewithal to pay salaries to your dearly beloved instructors.

“You have now arrived at an epochal hour in your lives — or what would be that, if so many of you were not contemplating post-graduate work which will keep you in the rah-rah for another three to five years. The few of you who do step forth today to grapple with life — or, more strictly speaking, who are all packed up to go home for the summer — might be felicitated upon the triumphal termination to your college career, were it not for the well-known fact that fully seven-ninths of you have been working only for credits, electing the pipes and snaps, and just skinning through with an oh-be-thankful average of C flat.

“I have it from your instructors that some of you are graduating by a very narrow squeak. They tell me that a considerable number of you never did fire on more than two cylinders; and that some of your batteries need renewing, even before you start on the journey of life, due to hard driving on your joy rides.

“Honestly, it makes me laugh when I see you sitting there, looking so solemn and wise, squinting up at me through your black tassels and wondering how far your rented gown misses connections with the back of your collar — for I saw your marks at the Registrar’s office; and, say, they were some grades!

“Doubtless you hope that I will say something about your painful ascent of the Mount of Wisdom — which only three or four of you took on high — for the benefit of your pa and ma who are admiring the top of your mortar-board from the balcony; but I am afraid to attempt it, for fear some of the faculty may grin and give the whole thing away. That being the case, let us approach the matter with friendly frankness — and tell the truth.

“You came here, four years ago, flushed with enthusiasm to become educated men and women. You had bright dreams of fitting yourselves for eminent service to society. The sophisticated upperclassmen had that all shamed out of you by the first Thanksgiving. The little handful of you who did contrive to retain your youthful visions were hectored and badgered and chaffed throughout your course by a bunch of roughnecks, many of whom will not be able to buy, borrow, or bank ten years from now unless they inherit something that can be doled out to them in the form of a pension. The majority of you settled down early to the belief that the faculty was your common enemy and that the big fight of your lives was to avoid seeming to take a personal interest in your studies, lest you should become an object of ridicule among your mates.

“You missed the lectures by eminent men, which we provided for you at considerable expense, and went to the movies instead, to see the man with the big hat and the leather pants rescue the heiress to all of Fifth Avenue from Madison Square to Seventy-Second Street from the clutches of Desperate Mike, in a log hut at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

“On the night of the orchestral concert which we brought on for your delectation to play the music of the masters, you had a dance — the music being furnished by two snare drums, a tin whistle, a pair of cymbals, a cowbell, a pistol, a couple of wooden blocks covered with sandpaper, the whole accompanied by a boy with a fatuous grin who beat the time by bouncing himself up and down on the piano bench. Again, when we enticed one of the foremost American artists to come here with his exhibition, you held another dance which was announced as ‘Strictly Modern’ — so modern, indeed, that some of the chaperones left before it was out.

“I have it on pretty good authority that some of you young gentlemen who are going out to lead in the great constructive movements of our day — pardon my smiling — used to get yourselves excused early from the seven-to-nine P.M. sociology seminar, where you were discussing the best processes of redeeming our degraded social order and setting to rights a badly befogged civilization, so that you might attend a vaudeville in which the chief bill featured a group of tired, underfed, underpaid girls who danced to the tune of ‘By the Moon, I Spoon,’ and coughed, between verses, to the tune of T. B., which was followed by a brief skit in which a trained monkey appeared and smoked a cigarette. This latter act must have been tame stuff, however, since one need not spend one’s good money to see such things.

“Well, here you all are; still young enough to make good, even if you have thrown away a chance you’ll never have again. Some of you possess a glimmer of genius which you can cash in, provided you don’t bank too heavily on what your family thinks you have found here on this campus. Don’t let any of our Commencement felicitations fool you too much about the real value of your college training, for mighty few of you have got anything worth all the fuss we are making over you.

“If you should care to come back about twenty years from today to attend the reunion of your class, it may interest you to see us pass out a generous chunk of the alphabet to some of your classmates who were hooted as ‘greasy grinds’ and ‘moles’ because they kept at their jobs while you went to see the trained monkeys, a sight you might have had any morning while shaving, except, possibly, for the adjective.

“And now, we bid you farewell; knowing that you would like to get loose and have a little walk with Flossie before the 3:15 train which carries you back to Jonesville, and Susie, who wears the Itta Bitta fraternity badge and has promised to share your fortunes when they are divisible by two.

“Don’t be depressed because it’s too late to mend the job you’ve foozled. Buck up, and play the game! A lot of people just like you, who trifled away their chances to learn something in college, have managed to put it over by imitating other people who had learned something. If you want to do a really constructive piece of service before you leave us, write a brief confession of the manner in which you bungled your job, seal it, and deposit it with us, to be handed to your own boy when he arrives here for college training. Maybe it will help to keep him steady; for, unless a new crop of youngsters comes along pretty soon with more interest in the real business of college life than you evinced, the whole thing will get to be a joke.

“Kindly step to the platform now and get your diplomas. We have printed your names on them in English so you might have no trouble identifying your own. As for the rest of it, we have prepared it in Latin. Few of you will ever know just what it says; but — no matter.

“We are sorry to see you leave. We would not be sorry if we thought the next outfit that comes along would be any more diligent. In that case, we should speed you on your way with an almost unseemly hilarity. But we know that you have set an example for your juniors which will make them as nearly like you as peas in a pod.

“Go out in the world, then; and, after five years of hard knocks, do create some new sentiment about college life! For we want to keep old alma mater going — and we can’t, very well, unless there is a change of attitude on the part of our constituency toward the real business of higher education!”

Paste These Words in Your Hat

by Ronald R Johnson

From Douglas’s essay, “Wedding Clothes,” published in the May 1919 issue of The Intercollegian.

This is from “Wedding Clothes,” by Lloyd C. Douglas, in the May 1919 issue of The Intercollegian, the YMCA’s monthly magazine.

“The prince was about to be married. His father, the king, planned a banquet in honor of the nuptials. Only the blue-blooded and full-pedigreed were invited. They sent regrets. The king was enraged. He told his servants to go out and bring in anybody and everybody. The servants brought them.

“Some came because they were curious to see the king’s palace; some to eat; some to drink; some to be able to boast later that they had been there; some to follow the crowd. None of them felicitated the prince or inquired for the bride or cared a whoopteree for the wedding.

“Robes were provided at the door to cover the guests’ rags and patches, on the theory that if you can’t have interior respectability, you’d better try to rub some of it on the outside. One unkempt fellow said, ‘I’ll not wear their togs. They can take me just as I am, or throw me out!’ So they threw him out. It may have been a trivial reason for expulsion, but out he went.

“The man who told this fable added, ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’

“A long time ago, men were born into the Kingdom of Larger Opportunity. Then, so many of the pedigreed fell down on their jobs that the K. of L. O. was thrown open to the general public. They began coming from all quarters to attend the feast of wisdom provided by our institutions of higher learning.

“Some came because it was their parents’ wish; some because they had finished high school, and what else was there to do; some to participate in the sports and the games; some to enjoy the fun and frolic of student life; some to follow the crowd. They are still coming. Many are called, but few are chosen. The majority are pitched out of the K. of L. O. as soon as they enter — sometimes for trivial reasons.

“One man is rejected from the K. of L. O. because he doesn’t know how to speak his own language. Some people know five languages; he doesn’t know any. The vernacular has always served his purpose. Says he, “‘I done it’ is just as good as ‘I did it,’ haint it, so long as I really went and done it?” Then, the day comes when the Big Man, who has it all to say whether our young hero gets his chance in the K. of L. O., hears him talk, passes him up as either too stupid to have noticed the difference between his uncouth speech and the language of cultured men, or too lazy to have mended his slovenly talk, or too indifferent to care. Anyway, out he goes. Oh, not to perish utterly; just to become a second-rater, holding the light and grinding the knives and washing the dishes and collecting the data for some other fellow who hasn’t half his morals but twice his manners.

“Another is thrown out because he doesn’t know how to eat; thinks a knife will do, so long as he is careful not to cut his face. Another is thrown out because he is so beastly ungracious. Another is thrown out because, when he shakes hands, he offers a flabby, flaccid pudding to the Big Man who, having shaken it and put it aside, says, ‘He will not do. It’s his hand. There’s no bling in him!’ And, all the time, the bling may be in him — only one wouldn’t suspect it by shaking the dead fish attached to his wrist.

“The pity of it all is that every year men graduate and go out to win their way in the world, and mess things up for society, who lack any moral purpose, who would willingly double-cross their own grandmothers for a dollar, while other men, who have studied themselves round-shouldered and half-blind preparing to do their share of the world’s work — honest, industrious, sincere — are pitched out of the K. of L. O. for lack of some insignificant decoration, like the wedding garment.

“Many are called, but few are chosen.

“Paste these words in your hat.

“For the man who gave them to us always knew what what he was talking about.”