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قراءة كتاب The Scrap Book, Volume 1, No. 4 June 1906
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
doing most to make railroad and beef trust facts and problems understood? Who but the same magazine which has printed the history of Standard Oil and explained to the people the needed changes in State and city government. What a farce to speak of McClure's Magazine as yellow; what a dull, injurious farce, unless by yellow we mean every movement of benefit to our kind! Did Mr. Steffens's printing of the news about Philadelphia do any harm to the inhabitants of that town? Did it, or did it not, act as a battle-cry which spurred the good citizens and the newspapers of that town to action? When original, living, and conscientious journalism speaks, the routine newspapers are sometimes forced to echo bold words which receive the public's approving seal.
So the balance of expressed opinion on the subject shifts up and down. In all the confusion we sometimes hear an opinion like that, uttered by Herbert S. Hadley, attorney-general of Missouri:
There is no reason to question the efficacy of existing laws so long as they are supported by public sentiment, for law is, in fact, merely the reflection of the moral sense of the country. What I mean by that statement may be illustrated by the fact that while a vast majority of lawyers, as well as laymen, will to-day agree that corporations are amenable to laws from which an individual might be exempt, the same proposition would have met with violent refutation hardly more than two years ago by most lawyers and many laymen.
But the public is now practically agreed, and the courts have sustained this view, that corporations are not above the laws of the State which made their existence possible. An officer of a company may to-day refuse to answer questions on the ground that he would himself be incriminated by replying, but he cannot refuse to answer on the ground that his company would be incriminated. In other words, corporations are no longer considered to have the same rights as individuals and cannot evade investigation and prosecution by maintaining a policy of silence.
Such is the moral sense of the country and such is the law as determined by the highest courts, and with such a condition of public sentiment and law it is no longer possible for public officials to plead that they cannot get at the facts whenever there is a suspicion that any corporation has failed to comply with the laws of the State which created it.
LEGITIMATE SCOPE OF DRAMATIC ART.
Waxworks May Deceive for a Moment,
But They Do Not Leave the Lasting
Impression of Michelangelo's Moses.
Otis Skinner, the actor, recently made a plea for the teaching of dramatic art in our public schools and colleges. In that way, he urged, public taste can be improved to the point where a better quality of plays and acting will be required to fill the theaters. He was speaking before the Ethical Culture Society, in New York. In beginning he explained at some length what he considered art, drawing his distinctions very carefully:
The purpose of the play is to hold a mirror up to nature, although such things as horror, meanness, lust, or crime must not be shown for their sake alone, merely to display accurate dramatic photographs. They must be utilized toward a definite end. The stage has many detractors, and among them are the ones that say the stage does not represent real life always. Nor should it. I will give you a definition of art which I got from Dr. Adler. It explains what I mean: "Art is the pattern, and not so many ells cut from the fabric of life."
Some years ago in London I went to Mme. Tussaud's waxworks. Curious to identify the figures, I turned to a lady and asked her where I might obtain a program. There was no answer. I became embarrassed and a little angry when I saw I was the subject of amusement for the crowd. I looked closer. The lady was made of wax. Well, I don't remember how she looked, but I do remember every line of the beauties of the Venus of Milo, which I saw in the Louvre, and of Michelangelo's Moses. I did not consider them figures or real persons, yet they live with me.
The charge that the theater gives too much attention to vice was discussed by Mr. Skinner. When used on the stage to heighten the dramatic effect, the simulation of drunkenness, he said, is ethically right. "Mrs. Warren's Profession," he declared flatly, was quite properly suppressed, since there was no reason for it except the exhibition of vice. False and namby-pamby melodrama, on the other hand, is fully as detrimental to dramatic art.
He outlined the plot of a play in which a poor young man, after rescuing the daughter of a multimillionaire by a feat of virtually impossible agility and strength, is promptly provided for by the thankful parent, and marries the girl.
The story, as he told it, was glaringly untrue to life—wherefore he denounced it as immoral. It represented the extreme of romantic falsity, just as "Mrs. Warren's Profession" represented the extreme of disgustingly literal reality.
In art no extreme is acceptable—a lesson which the Greeks, with their supreme intuition of artistic fitness, taught the world once and for all.
WOMAN HAS ALWAYS EARNED HER LIVING.
The New York "Sun" Disposes of the
Old Notion That She is the Mere
"Beneficiary of Man."
The Rev. John L. Scudder, of Jersey City, recently preached a sermon on the subject, "Business Women—Do They Reduce the Number of Marriages, and Do They Make Good Wives?" He said, among other things, that if the business woman marries, she marries "as an equal and not as a dependent"; that, therefore, we must expect fewer marriages in proportion to the population. But he added: