Oxford High School - Ravelins Yearbook (Oxford, MA)

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RAVELIN 'S derlying cause. It would be an undertaking to benefit the interests of the general public. After the system were in operation for a year or more I venture to say the investment would be well paid for. The only way the utilities of Oxford can be made public is by the people's expres- sion of opinion on the subject. It has been proven that public ownership is a success in other places, let us make it a reality in our own town. TWO CIVILIZATIONS By Sophia Nesta NUMBER of years ago Kipling told us that East is East and West is West, and Ilev- er the twain shall meet' He must have noticed the variations in customs and manners of the peoples in the Orient and America, for each has its own civilization and philosophy of life, and the question is, which seems most likely to bring real happiness to mankind? There are many mistaken ideas of Chinese civilization. American people have always thought of the Chinese people as composed of only two classes-laundrymen and chop suey artists. In the average western mind, China is made up of opium smokers, or men who do dark and devious deeds that are no credit to any na- tion. But nothing is farther from the truth. There are some famous men such as Confucius who are Chinese. Chinese people believe happiness should come from spiritual values-things not dependent upon money alone. Chinese people get happi- ness in learning to control their desires, rather than by satisfying all of them. Living in China is an art. They live in hope, in spite 'of famines and civil war. The Chinese, however, spend too much time in thinking and not enough in Work- ing out their ideas. The Chinese pursue truth for the sake of truth and Americans pursue it for what the truth can give them. Instead of keeping sci- ence just for scholar's pleasure, We make sei- ence give us better homes, better cars, control of disease, and better transportation. The Chinese are wrong when they say that all this doesn't bring about happiness. Chinese boys and girls stay with, and care for, their parents, and try to make them happy. They do not leave their parents and go far away from home to make their future. The home is a spiritual unit where they strive for everything that is beautiful in life. They strengthen and cherish it and give it the best that they have. They are proud of their home. American ideas of happiness are founded on how much money, or what material things a person may have. This makes a short-lived happiness because We are happy only when We have 116W thi11gS. Take the average Amer-i- can. When is he happy? He is happy when he has bought his car or his first radio. Take the housewife. She is happy when she has a Hoover cleaning machine, for instance. She is happy when she has bought a new dress or the one-hundredth new dress, as it were. Then af- ter a while, when the novelty has worn off the thing, she lapses into her ordinary routine of life and is thinking of a new idea of how she can be happy. All these material things make happiness for us. America is a nation of business men who are too busy earning, to be happy. Money, the al- mighty dollar, is the mark of success in Ameri- ca. The dollar is chased so seriously that the spiritual things in life are forgotten. We should not be too materialistic in our conceptions of the important things of life. Take the big apartment housesg are the hu- man values there? Not at all. A man may live in an apartment and he may not even know the man who lives next to him. Love thy neigh- bor as thyself the Christian religion tells us, but he doesn't even know his next door neigh- bor in the big apartment house. In the morn- ing he sees neighbors on the stairs and g'oes by without saying good morning. What is the re- sult? Why, he gets to thinking of materialis- tic things and forgets the human things such as love thy neighbor as thyself and to honor thy parents with all the love you have. We might consider buildings and h'omes. In China you walk down the street and see a great many huts. Occasionally you see elegant l29l

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RAVELIN 'S on paying a mere bill when they want it paid and our service is immediately cut off. They cannot see why a man should have more time to pay his bill. No, they need their money! Because these companies realize they have this control, naturally they want to keep the government from breaking their strangle hold, by providing service to the public at a more reasonable rate. The government plants would show the public just how much it actually costs to provide service and would also show the ex- orbitant rates beine: charged by private com- panies. Vilhen one thinks of trying to regulate these companies he feels about as one would toward the Byrd Antarctic Expedition- Not So Hot. Vllith the present svstem of regula- tion. you first bring your complaint to the local board. if you have any trouble about that, it goes to the county board, then to the state board, and then to the national board, until vou are bored to death. and still there is nothing' done. And that is just an example of how reg- ulation has Worked and will work in the fu- ture. Let me ouote Governor Pinchot of Penn- sylvania, on the great electrical monopoly, Nothing like this gigantic monopoly has ever appeared in the history of the world. Nothing has ever been imagined before that even re- motely approaches it in the thorough-'Z0iH!!, intimate. unceasiner control it may exercise over the daily life of every human being within the web of its wires. It is unmeasurably the great- est industrial fact of our time. If uncontrolled it will be a Plague without previous example. If effectively controlled in the public interest, it can be comp'-rablv the greatest material blessing in human history. One reason why the public is charged such exorbitant rates is because there is little chance to check on the capitalization of these plants. I have already mentioned the fact that utilities commissions are a failure, but I will give an example to show how they have fallen down abominably. In the Conowengo Power Com- pany in Maryland nine million dollars were added to the capitalized value of that corpora- tion, because they said they spent that amount of money in promoting the corporation. Nine million dollars simply added! Because the com- missions haven 't the power to inquire into the acts of the corporation before it is chartered, that nine million dollars had to stand. They couldn't inquire into it, and consequently the capitalization increased by nine million dollars and rates were charged on the basis of the in- creased capitalization. So. after all, it was a pretty good business proposition. They should try it aff-ain, some time later. Here is a section of e report of the Michigan commission, This meth oil of determining value included percent- ages for engineering services never rendered, hvpothetical efficiency of unknown labor, con- jectural depreciation, 'opinion as to the condi- tion of property, the supposed action of the ele- ments, and of course its correctness depends on whether superintendence was, or would be wise or foolish. the investment improvident, or frugal. It is based upon prophecy instead of reality. and depends so much upon half truths that it bears only a remote resemblance to fact, and rises at best, onlv to the plane of a dignified guess. These words are quoted directly from a report by utilities commissioners and that is what We pav the high rates for. Such expenses are camoutlaged to hide the enormous profits, but we know now where they go. I have given examples of what public owner- shin does and would do for other cities and towns. now let us apply the example to our own town. In Oxford the water, electricity, and tel- ephone are controlled by private companies. There are not many who would disagree when I sav the rates are excessive. Such a rate as 2516 a year for water service is too much and this is disregarding the numerous excess charges. VVater is a vital necessity and should be put within reach of the family with a small income. Such rates for electricity as some people in Oxford pay. 3310 SEI 5. is entirely too much, and such rates should be done away with. In re- Qv-fl to the telephone service, that could be taken care of later but such vital necessities should not be kept from the public because of excessive rates. If the town of Oxford were to own and 'operate its own Water and electricity plants it would of course mean a great cost at the start. It would be necessary to buy from the private companies, if possible, the various properties and power houses now in their pos- session. It could then emplov town help in the operation of the plant, maintain the present wage system, and, in a short time. reduce the rates fifty per cent, let me say, with safety. It would be a safe investment-one sure of re- turns. Such an undertaking would not be car- ried on with the selhsh motive, profit, as the un- l28l

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RAVELIN 'S houses but they are not commong they are the exception, not the rule. Here, if we had to subject ourselves to extreme poverty, as the Chinese on the Whole are forced to do, we would consider ourselves terribly imposed upon, and we certainly could not be happy. How many of you people here would be happy living in straw huts? How many would be happy living on a river boat in the Yangtze River, washing your dishes in the river, bath- ing yourselves in the river? If you Want a drink, how would you lIke to dip down in that river and take the same water and drink it? That is the proposition they are up against. Take medicine, for instance. In China a man becomes ill. They call in the medicine doctor and he says a spirit has taken possession of the patient and they have to frighten it out by mak- ing a lot of noise and racket. They say the man is cured. In America we don 't do it that way. We say there is something wrong, that he has some kind of a germ and we find out what the germ is and how to get rid of it. VVe go to the basic cause. But China is moving ahead and being like America. It is said that women in China are backward, but they are trying to copy their western sisters. They have begun to paint their faces. A missionary was teaching the Chinese girls in one of the eastern school gymnasiums. Dumb bells were introduced and girls were taught not to use too much paint but to use dumb bells to get color. One of the Chinese girls said, Well, you are right, but is it not true that too much color is used to get dumb bells? Now why are we happy? Let us contrast some of the circumstances and conditions of China and America. European historical and polit'cal sages were amazed when America de- clared the right to be free. VVhen our nation gained its independence, Europe and its politi- cal sages looked at us and said, lt is beautiful, but it is hopeless. Later on when we pros- pered, they predicted that our nation would be washed on the rocks in ten years, then twenty, later it was thirty, and still nothing happened. Then gentlemen saw a kind of culture develop- ing in the United States. They called it cul- ture for want of a better name, and found something entirely different from that which existed in other countries. They found that everybody had an automobile and a home and we Americans were slightly different from the people of the rest of the world. Vife seemed to be happy. And in contrast to this, we find-China-a nation composed of two distinct groups. There is first the remains of the old aristocratic order comprising 960,000 people. They enjoy life. In the second group is the mass of the people, 440,000,000 odd souls. They are famine-stricken and poverty-stricken and enjoy but few of the necessities of life. VVhat is their Philosophy? To the Chinese, the philosophy of life is a chart organized according to the diferent val- ues that they can obtain from life. In doing this, they try to ascertain the value of different things that are going on in their daily life. Happiness is not what they have, in the quan- tity of things. Happiness to the Chinese is the satisfaction of what you have. The famines, starvation, and civil war are not the ideals of Chinese philosophy. They are only caused by some contemporary or uncontrolled things like an earthcuake, like a flood, like a drought. It doesn't mean that the Chinese people are not happy because of these things uncontrolled. They have learned to control their in- ward desires. Probably to the materialistic- m'nded people, they are living in misery on ac- count of the famine. But as to the mass in general in China, they still live in hope. Think of our forefathers when they landed at Ply- mouth. They had hardships but they lived in hope, so do the Chinese. American philosophy places a premium on working for things rather than in being satis- fied with less than we can have. Now, we do not wish to give up our radios, automobiles, electric lights and telephones which are almost unknown in China, but let us remember some of the Chinese philosophy of life-we will not spend all our lives building up a bank account: for happiness is the satisfaction of what we have. The best philosophy of each nation should be combined to make the best philoso- phy for both nations. So if we learn to control our desires and stress spiritual values as well as material values, we will have reached the happy medium. l30l