Write a poem to thrill human hearts with pleasure, AND THE MOB WILL ALLOW YOU TO GO HUNGRY:  THE BLIND HOMER BEGGED BREAD THROUGH THE STREETS. Invent a machine to save labor AND THE MOB WILL DECLARE YOU ITS ENEMY. Less than a hundred years ago a furious rabble smashed Thimonier’s invention, the sewing machine.

BUILD A STEAMSHIP TO CARRY MERCHANDISE AND ACCELERATE TRAVEL and the mob will call you a fool.  A MOB LINED THE SHORES OF THE HUDSON RIVER TO LAUGH AT THE MAIDEN ATTEMPT OF “FULTON’S FOLLY,” as they called his little steamboat.

Emerson says:  “A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and traversing its work.  The mob is man voluntarily descended to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is NIGHT.  ITS ACTIONS ARE INSANE, like its whole constitution.  It persecutes a principle—­IT WOULD WHIP A RIGHT.  It would tar and feather justice by inflicting fire and outrage upon the house and persons of those who have these.”

The mob spirit stalks abroad in our land today.  Every week gives a fresh victim to its malignant cry for blood.  There were 48 persons killed by mobs in the United States in 1913; 64 in 1912, and 71 in 1911.  Among the 48 last year were a woman and a child.  Two victims were proven innocent after their death.

IN 399 B.C.  A DEMAGOG APPEALED TO THE POPULAR MOB TO HAVE SOCRATES PUT TO DEATH and he was sentenced to the hemlock cup. FOURTEEN HUNDRED YEARS AFTERWARD AN ENTHUSIAST APPEALED TO THE POPULAR MOB and all Europe plunged into the Holy Land to kill and mangle the heathen.  In the seventeenth century a demagog appealed to the ignorance of men AND TWENTY PEOPLE WERE EXECUTED AT SALEM, MASS., WITHIN SIX MONTHS FOR WITCHCRAFT. Two thousand years ago the mob yelled, “RELEASE UNTO US BARABBAS”—­AND BARABBAS WAS A MURDERER!

    —­From an Editorial by D.C. in “Leslie’s Weekly,” by permission.

Present-day business is as unlike OLD-TIME BUSINESS as the OLD-TIME OX-CART is unlike the present-day locomotive. INVENTION has made the whole world over again.  The railroad, telegraph, telephone have bound the people of MODERN NATIONS into FAMILIES. To do the business of these closely knit millions in every modern country GREAT BUSINESS CONCERNS CAME INTO BEING. What we call big business is the CHILD OF THE ECONOMIC PROGRESS OF MANKIND. So warfare to destroy big business is FOOLISH BECAUSE IT CAN NOT SUCCEED and wicked BECAUSE IT OUGHT NOT TO SUCCEED. Warfare to destroy big business does not hurt big business, which always comes out on top, SO MUCH AS IT HURTS ALL OTHER BUSINESS WHICH, IN SUCH A WARFARE, NEVER COME OUT ON TOP.

    —­A.J.  BEVERIDGE.