EDITORIAL 
•59 
a certain set of workers are doing their 
work especially well, or at any rate 
better than those of other departments 
are doing theirs, the logical method is 
to assign the work to the workers who 
have best demonstrated efficiency. 
Perhaps it is in more than a joke that 
we suggest the coal mines be given to 
the Standard Oil Company. Practically 
and theoretically most of us are not in 
favor of a monopoly, but here is a case 
where not a theory but a condition con- 
fronts the country. 
There is, however, one redeeming, 
bright spot in the whole situation. 
There seems to be no fault on the part 
of local coal dealers. They are fellow 
sufferers with consumers, and perhaps 
from a financial point of view suffer 
even more. 
This partly jocose suggestion that 
the coal mines be given to the Standard 
Oil Company may also be a sort of 
emblematic prediction of what is really 
going to happen — oil taking the place 
of coal as fuel. “The Literary Digest” 
for February 19, 1921, contains an al- 
most startling article, “Coal Doomed 
by the Coming Age of Oil.” This pre- 
dicts that such an age is not only com- 
ing but is really here. In a quoted 
article by R. P. Hearne in “The Sphere” 
(London) this statement is made: 
“Within ten years the power monopoly of 
coal will be broken, and it will be broken 
not by political or economic methods, but 
by the arrival of a new fuel which will dis- 
place coal. Long before our coal measures 
are exhausted coal-mining, as we know it 
to-day, will have ceased, and the coal strike 
will become as obsolete as coal itself. 
“These may sound daring prophecies; but 
every rise to-day in the price of coal, and 
every coal strike and threat of coal strike, 
is hastening us toward the earlier realiza- 
tion of my statements. 
“The age of liquid fuel has already com- 
menced, and we are only at the beginning 
of immense technical, industrial, and social 
developments. Already road motor-transport 
has become a rival of the railway, and al- 
ready, by this altenative means, the railway 
strike is robbed of its power to cripple the 
community. The road motor has broken 
the power of the railway strike. Liquid fuel 
will soon break the power of a coal strike 
to paralyze the activity of the community. 
For this reason alone the coming of liquid 
fuel will be a great social boon.” 
The article contains astonishing il- 
lustrations of the world’s oil supply 
superior to that of coal. 
Here’s hoping the Standard Oil 
Company won’t let the coal managers 
( ?) get hold of this supply. 
Nature, Science and Sportsmen. 
“The last shall be first, and first last.” 
In other words, there are astonishing 
anomalies in this world and cpiite fre- 
quently things go contrariwise to what 
one would naturally expect. In one’s 
own affairs frequently what seems at 
the time to be the greatest misfortune 
turns out to be the greatest of bless- 
ings. The same is true in the affairs 
of nations. Horrible, cruel, devilish 
as is war, it is in the long course of 
historical events clearly evident that 
wars have improved and advanced civ- 
ilization. Can there be a greater 
anomaly than that — savage war im- 
proving civilized nations? 
With this little bit of harmony — or 
rather shall we call it discord — I want 
to go back to my boyhood and bring 
to the reader some thoughts that have 
more and more impressed themselves 
upon me, many of them in spite of my 
own wishes. It has been truly said 
that every boy is a savage. I am sure 
that I was preeminently so. I was a 
vigorous illustration of that saying. 
Added to my own natural instincts for 
killing something was the active stim- 
ulus made more urgent by the need of 
earning pocket money. A gun, my dog, 
my snaring and fishing equipments 
were the dearest of all my possessions. 
Never was I so happy as when I was 
ruthlessly killing every kind of quadru- 
ped and bird that came in sight. I 
made no exception of our song birds, 
notably the robins, because for years 
I had a standing order from an invalid 
relative to supply something of wild 
life for broth every day or two, and 
when I could not get a squirrel or a 
rabbit or a wild pigeon I selected larger 
song birds. I knew no limit and de- 
sired none to the shooting and snaring 
slaughter. My happiness was meas- 
ured by the extent to which the game 
bag was filled. I had permission from 
the family and from the neighbors to 
snare, trap, hunt and fish on all the 
premises in the vicinity and I exercised 
that liberty to the utmost and without 
hesitation. All my spending money, 
indeed the money with which to buy a 
suit of clothes when I left the farm to 
enter the village school, was the result 
of snares and gun. 
