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Ebook has 2114 lines and 142168 words, and 43 pages

Release date: November 9, 2023

Original publication: New York City: The Frank A. Munsey Company, 1906

THE SCRAP BOOK

HOW TO LIVE WELL.

BY GEORGE WASHINGTON.

The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While

Lady Ward Discusses Female Suffrage in New Zealand--C. F. Birdseye Shows That the Scope of College Fraternities is Widening--Professor Borgerhoff Points Out Merits of Esperanto--Mormon Elder Says It Costs ,500 to Save a Soul--President Faunce Believes Public Schools Will Supply Antidote for War--Dr. Louis Elkino Writes of German Methods in Fight for Commercial Supremacy--Bernard Shaw Says Americans Are Children in Business--Queen Margherita on Race Suicide--Charles F. Pidgin Finds Boston a Big Debtor--Lord Roberts Wants Rifle-Shooting Made a National Sport.

HOW FEMALE SUFFRAGE WORKS IN NEW ZEALAND.

Even Maori Women Vote, But Only Men Hold Office--Lack of Servants Keeps Fair Sex Home.

What about woman in New Zealand? We are arguing for and against woman suffrage in the United States with almost as much theory and as little practical knowledge of the proposed conditions as was the case thirty years ago. Some of us are positive in the conviction that the right to vote would unsex the sex--would harden motherhood and sisterhood into a sedulous mannishness.

Others believe that womanly intuitions would soften the sheer practicality of politics and induce gentleness where roughness has ruled. And for a dozen years we need only have looked to the Antipodes to learn how woman suffrage might work out in practise.

Sometimes women do speak at political meetings, but it generally turns out afterward that they are visiting Americans, or perhaps English women. No, we don't sit on juries, and we don't run for Parliament. The law would have to be changed before we could do so, but I don't believe we want to. Perhaps some time in the future it will come to that, but I think it will be a long time.

We did have a mayoress once in a town in the northern part of the colony, but no one seems inclined to repeat the experiment. In fact, we are very busy with our domestic affairs, and are quite content for the present to leave the management of public affairs to the men.

The women of New Zealand place their homes before every other consideration, and their domestic problems are just as serious as those of any other country. Our young women would rather be stenographers than domestic servants, and we have not found any way of getting on without servants.

But don't imagine that we are not interested in politics and that we don't vote. There isn't a woman in New Zealand who doesn't know every member of Parliament either by sight or by reputation, and there isn't one who can't talk intelligently about political questions. Out on the farms and in the villages it is just the same as in the cities, and it makes life very much more interesting.

No matter whom you meet, you will always find one subject of common interest. People here don't seem to be much interested in politics, and even your men don't vote, I am told. Isn't it strange? Perhaps it is because our country is smaller that we take so much more interest in its affairs.

Our elections are most interesting events, and the women do a great deal of electioneering, just as they do in England. But they don't do much speechmaking, except among themselves. Political afternoon teas are a favorite method of winning over doubtful women voters.

What becomes of the babies when the mothers are out electioneering? Why, I really don't know. I suppose there is always some kind-hearted woman to take care of them. Perhaps the women take care of one another's babies. I never heard of any difficulties of that kind.

Do the native women vote? Yes, certainly. Every woman over twenty-one votes. The only qualification is a residence of twelve months in the colony and three months in the electorate where the vote is cast. The native women take just as much interest in politics as the white women, and are thoroughly well posted in everything concerning native affairs. We have an aboriginal population of forty thousand, and they have their own representatives in Parliament.

Women in New Zealand have the more time for politics because they do not carry the burden of charitable work. The charities there are subsidized by the State.

WIDENING SCOPE OF COLLEGE FRATERNITIES.

C. F. Birdseye Believes They Bring Undergraduates More Under Influence of Alumni.

The American college fraternity has become a farce, educational and social, intellectual and moral, so great that even but few fraternity leaders appreciate it. At more than one college, chapter-houses have done away with the need of dormitories. As colleges have grown larger and more unwieldy, and the members of the faculties have been less frequently in personal touch with their students, the fraternities have in no slight degree taken the place of the old small-college units, alumni now influencing the undergraduates through their fraternities, much as the professors used to.

The pick of our alumni in wealth and influence are fraternity men. If a tithe of this power can be turned back into the lives of the undergraduates to supplement the efforts of the faculties, we can do much to restore individualism.

Neither college nor fraternity conditions are at present ideal. They are often bad, and there is real foundation for all complaints. Unless promptly checked, the evils will grow far worse and more difficult to root out. This question must be studied by its friends, and the reform must come from the fraternity alumni; for the fraternities can be awakened and developed, but not driven, nor driven out.

Like every other historical, educational, or social question, this must be studied carefully and with open minds by many alumni and from different standpoints, so as to cover widely divergent conditions in institutions that may be universities or colleges, rich or poor, large or small, old and conservative or recent and radical, public or private, at the North, South, East, or West, and therefore governed by widely different religious, social, educational, and political influences.

Wide Distribution of Chapters.

The wide distribution of its various chapters adds greatly to the perspective and corrective power of every fraternity, and makes it an ideal instrument for wisely investigating and righting undergraduate conditions at the same time in widely scattered institutions.

The true fraternity alumnus can mold the lives and motives of his younger brothers. In most colleges the fraternities are so strong that if we can change the atmosphere of the fraternity houses, which for four years are the undergraduates' homes, we can change the whole undergraduate situation.

The fraternity alumni have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars for housing and otherwise helping the undergraduates. Every fraternity has many loyal and devoted graduates who willingly give time or money or both to the true interests of their younger brothers, and whose word is law to them.

The character of the influence of each chapter depends largely on the local alumni, strengthened, guided, and impelled by a strong central organization. Why not apply modern business principles and systematic organization to this all-important problem?

Atmosphere of Chapter-House.

The alumni have not realized that the atmosphere of the chapter-house determines the character of the chapter's influence on its individual members, and that the ultimate responsibility for this atmosphere is on the alumni. If we would make this atmosphere permanently good, we must appreciate that the alumni are the permanent and the undergraduates the transient body--completely changing every three years; and the seniors, the governing body, every year.

We, as the permanent body, have no right to furnish our undergraduates with fine and exclusive homes, and then shirk responsibility for the future conduct and influence of those homes.

The proper government of a chapter is a strict one, with the power in the hands of the upper classmen, especially the seniors, who are in turn held strictly accountable to alumni who are in constant touch with the situation and personally acquainted with every undergraduate and his work and needs.

Where such conditions are continuous, the chapter's success is assured, and the effect on the undergraduates is highly beneficial. The fraternities, through strong central organizations, must make these conditions prevalent and continuous in every chapter. This has long been the theory, but the practise has been poor.

Correction of Waste.

The fraternities, with their numerous chapters in different institutions, have the best possible opportunities for the investigation and correction of the wastes and for the enforcement of economies in college life.

No one can measure the waste and lack of economy, to the college, the fraternity, the community, the family, or the individual, of a failure in college life, from whatever cause it comes.

It is criminal that we have not studied these wastes in our colleges as we have in our factories, railroads, and other great industries, and that we have allowed the pendulum to swing so far to the other side, and have not long ago returned it to its mean, and found educational influences to replace the small units of the earlier colleges.

Mr. Birdseye maintains, in conclusion, that it is for the fraternities to devote their wealth and influence to improve undergraduate conditions, incite their men to the best work, and prevent the wastes which result from a failure in college lives.

THE LATEST IDEA OF A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

Professor Borgerhoff Points Out Some of the Merits of the Latest Invention, Esperanto.

In the preface to his famous dictionary Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote: "Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas." If that be true, it is not strange that man should so constantly seek to improve the instrument. We have the selective process by which worn-out words and idioms are dropped into the limbo of archaism and new coinages come into use. Then we have the attempts to supply new languages, ready-made. There was Volap?k; and now comes Esperanto.

The latest attempt, and the one which bids fair to be final, is Esperanto, so called by its author, Dr. Zamenhof, a Russian physician, who under this pseudonym published scientific articles before he became famous as the inventor of an artificial language.

Zamenhof, like his predecessors in the same field, was struck by the useless wealth of idioms that divide the inhabitants of the earth and make international relations so difficult, while at the same time they are a prolific source of misunderstanding and enmity among the nations.

He was also convinced that the reason why the existing universal languages had failed in their purpose was that they were too difficult--almost as difficult as the natural ones. The cause of their difficulty lay in the grammar, which was too intricate, and in the vocabulary, which was far too varied. He forthwith composed a grammar which was simplicity itself; this he did by setting aside all rules not strictly needed for the construction of a logical sentence and by eliminating all exceptions. The few remaining grammatical principles may be learned in half an hour.

His next concern was the vocabulary. What makes the acquisition of a foreign vocabulary so hard to students is the variety of roots, the great number of different words. To take an instance from English, to express the various ideas suggested by the one conception of death, we have: dead, to die, deadly, and deathly, mortal, to kill, to murder, to assassinate, to suicide, to commit homicide, etc. What a cumbersome luxury of roots, and how discouraging to the foreigner who wishes to learn this language!

Number of Roots Reduced.

And yet English is one of the easiest of all European tongues. How to reduce this number of roots was the great problem before Zamenhof. He therefore took one out of a number, and by means of a system of suffixes and prefixes he made this one root do duty for all the others.

In this manner the Esperanto dictionary contains only about two thousand roots, yet they are sufficient to form, by means of derivation, a vocabulary large enough for all purposes.

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