NZ OD Re T eH 
S H OR E 
BREEZE 19 
el a RM lS ea Se | Disa A LS I MAES LG EE ETS Me aT 
are paralyzed by the pressure of the 
few days preceding the Great Holi- 
day. The campaign started by the 
Boston Board of Trade to develop 
the ‘‘Shop Early Habit’? commends 
itself as a good policy not only for 
the shop keeper but for the customer 
as well. The joy of Christmas shop- 
ping is made easier by the absence 
of the ‘‘crowd,’’ and the opportuni- 
ties to make selections are greater 
for the best ‘‘things’’ have not been 
selected. The item of freshness has 
its appeal. But the basis for this 
movement is ethical, better still, it is 
Christian. The weary body of the 
shop girl on those ‘“‘terrible pre- 
Iloliday Rush’’ days awaken pity 
within us; but is not the late shop- 
per contributing his share to this 
waste of nerve force and the dissi- 
pation of human energy? It does 
seem a pity that the holiday that 
commemorates the human birth of 
the Great Spirit who said: ‘*‘Come 
unto me and Rest’’ should bring 
such care, worry and distress to hu- 
manity in the excessive unchristian 
spendthr#ft purchasing of the Christ- 
mas Season. Shop early and use the 
same good sense when you purchase 
as you use during all the rest of the 
year. 
President Taft’s method of par- 
don consideration appeals to every- 
one’s sensé of Justice. He says: 
“He does not base his decisions on 
the number of names attached to a 
petition of pardon. He considers 
each case on its merits and avoids 
politics—contending that one good. 
reason for a pardon is worth more 
than one thousand names attached 
to it.’’ This is what one may justly 
eall the judicial mind. Mr. Taft 
lacks some of the ‘‘methods’’ of 
other good Presidents but he has al- 
ways shown justice in his decisions. 
At last it seems that the Canadian 
people are awakening to the stupen- 
dous blunder that was made in re- 
jecting reciprocity. The Editor of 
the Toronto Globe claims that ‘‘the 
people have returned to sober think- 
ing and regret their action. The 
voters were swayed by the unintelli- 
gent emotion of the erowd. The an- 
nexation bugbear was to blame for 
it all.’ But that does not change 
the facts that one of President 
Taft’s favorite schemes fell through. 
With a new YMCA in Beverly, in 
Newport, in Newton and in Boston, 
and a decision of the city of Cam- 
bridge to close the disputed street 
with the probable new Institute of 
Technology, we are certainly mak- 
ing progress. 
i 
The new statute on the books of 
the State of Connecticut requiring 
the registration of every firearm 
purchased is not unlike the bill 
which was introduced and was de- 
feated in our legislature last year. 
The frequency with which shooting 
frays are repeated seems to make 
such a statute inevitable in Massa- 
chusetts. An honorable man has no 
objection to registering the purchase 
of a fire arm intended for legitimate 
purposes. 
A financial firm in Chicago sent 
out a letter to thousands of investors 
making inquiries concerning their 
preferences and they were practi- 
cally agreed that safety was a para- 
mount matter and that four and one- 
half per centum per annum was 
about the maximum limit for abso- 
lute security of the principle. The 
next time a money shark letter ap- 
pears it will be well to think of this 
item. | 
The agreement of the expressman 
to deliver without charge provisions 
and other human goods to charitable 
institutions shows the true human 
spirit and it is not lost sight of by 
an altogether thoughtless public. 
Manchester and Beverly [Farms 
need local facilities which will serve 
them in lieu of the advantages of a 
YMCA. 
Andrew Carnegie and the Oppor- 
tunities of the Future 
On the 25th of this: month, An- 
drew Carnegie will be 74 years of 
age. To celebrate it he has given 
away another $26,000,000, his gifts 
to the cause of education, science, 
peace and the general betterment of 
mankind now reaching the princely 
sum of $226,000,000. 
As the self confessed maker and 
sponsor of 43 millionaires—the sur- 
vival of the fittest of that vast army 
of young men, who starting as pud- 
lers. laborers and workers-in- 
ordinary in the great steel foun- 
daries of Pennsylvania, have risen 
to wealth and eminence under him, 
the Iron Master acquires new inter- 
est as the weight of time crowds 
upon him. To the youth of the na- 
tion. ambitious for material power, 
no eareer in the whole galaxy of 
famous Americans, either native or 
foreign born, furnishes greater in- 
spiration or offers more encourage- 
ment, than that of the steel mag- 
nate, who said a little while ago: 
“‘T’q rather be born poor than a 
millionaire and I have had experi- 
ence in both directions.”’ 
Between the youth of Carnegie’s 
day and the youth of today there is 
this analogy — although those with 
the pessimistic bent profess not to 
believe it—the world is constantly 
evolving. Evolution means new op- 
portunity for some one and in- 
versely loss of opportunity for those 
who do not hearken to the eall of 
the times and keep up with the pro- 
cession. Of this kind was Thomas 
Carnegie, father of Andrew, who 
supported his family operating a 
hand lnen loom in his home at 
Dunfermlin, Scotland. Wedded to 
tradition, the elder Carnegie could 
not forsee the advent of steam looms 
which performed as much work in 
one day as he was able to do in two 
weeks or of the still more efficient 
oxford processes which accomplish 
here in two days that which takes 
30 weeks to effect in his native town. 
With the abolition of the hand loom, 
the Carnegies found themselves 
face to face with privation and came 
to America. As good _ fortune 
oftimes comes in the guise of mis- 
fortune, so it was with them. In 
recounting the hardships of his boy- 
hood, the seamed and grizzled old 
Iron Master counts as the proudest 
moment of his life, the day when 
he got his first job in America as a 
bobbin boy in a Pennsylvania mill 
and was able to take ‘home to his 
mother his modest wage of $1.25 a 
week toward the support of his 
family. : 
The experience of the elder Car- 
negie was valuable to the embryo 
ironmaster in that it impressed upon 
him the truth of the modern business 
philosophy that to rest is to rust 
and that to progress it is necessary 
to move with the surging tide as it 
sweeps by. Those who succeed are 
those who seize opportunity when 
it gets into focus and travel to the 
crest of the wave with it. This is 
what Carnegie did and what he 
says every youth in the land pushed 
by the cosmic urge, may still do. 
In Carnegie, the germ of industry 
was rampant and when things did 
not gravitate his way he went after 
them. When everybody turned 
their back on the inventor of the 
sleeping car, claiming that it was a 
fool’s conceit, and nobody would 
take it seriously, Carnegie backed 
him for all he had and could bor- 
row. His shrewdness netted him 
millions and was the real beginning 
of his great future, and while his 
competitors in the early days of the 
steel industry were plodding along 
with obsolete methods, the canny 
Scot slipped across the Atlantic and 
clinched the American right for the 
newly discovered Bessemer process 
of manufacturing that product. 
