LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
THE TUCK ISSUE
Dear Sir: Permit me to offer my heartiest congratulations on your last issue of the MAGAZINE. The idea of making it a tribute to Mr. Tuck on the 70th anniversary of his graduation from Dartmouth is certainly most timely and altogether laudable. Happily this comes during his lifetime and he may read it and feel the gratification that comes from a knowledge of the esteem and affection which his fellow Dartmouth men have for him. Just as it is far more satisfactory to give one's friend, in his last illness, a living plant in full bloom while he may yet enjoy its beauty rather than to lay a wreath upon his bier, so this timely and beautifully worded appreciation of Mr. Tuck takes on enhanced value.
Messrs. Krans and Larmon have done their part most admirably and deserve and will receive the thanks and congratulations of all Dartmouth men. Their story reads like a romance which in truth it is at its best. The charming personalities of Mr. and Mrs. Tuck, their genuine and enduring afection for each other, their ideal home life, and their gracious consideration for their fellow humans in all relations with them, add a glamor to the story of their life and beneficences that makes it all as felicitous as it is praiseworthy.
This issue of the MAGAZINE marks the highwater point of its accomplishments. Again I congratulate you.
Elmira, N. Y.
CAUSES AND CONTROL
Dear Sir:
The volumes of statements that have been written about the 1929-32 business depression seem to me to show that its happening could not have been prevented, and that we are sure to have reoccurrences.
The facts conclusively establish that our trouble was caused by our producing more than we could sell.
It surely is futile to blame business men collectively for producing too much. A single producer having a million dollar business does not increase his capacity by another million, and then strike out to try to sell his increased output. Rather, it is his demand and sales that cause his production capacity to grow. Who would be competent to foretell when he is producing too much? Or, when all in his particular industry are approaching the point of producing too much? Or, when his industry as competing for part of the public dollar is producing too much?
Suppose the ablest men in each industry were put in full control of their entire industries. Could they tell how much and what kinds to produce for each year? As each of the industries boomed and grew, could one conceive of their not being sure to reach a point where they'll produce too much individually and collectively, and therefore have a slump?
Even if it is easy to look back and see the cause of the depression, it is obvious that it could not have been prevented, and that we are certain to have reoccurrences at unknown periods to come,—just as we have had them in the past.
There was a general business depression in 1830. At the time Macauley published a statement about it which referred to conditions exactly as they have been described recently, one hundred years later. He referred to a general war, war debts and desolation, shortages of men and goods, corrupt politics, wasteful methods, then producing too much, and a general depression.
The Law of Compensation, as stated by Emerson, certainly never fails from holding good. Just as nothing can stand still, there could be no boom periods unless there had been depressions, and depressions are bound to follow prosperity periods. "What goes up, must come down."
So, why should we talk shallowly on the subject! The problem is so enormous, involving every human relationship, entirely in the hands of only human beings, that it is beyond the grasp of man. In other words, let us face the facts, the up-and-down and down-and-up is our very life itself, and nothing else. Who thinks things can be done to regulate it?
In all that has been written and spoken on the subject, the only man I know of who has dared to speak frankly is A. H. Wiggin, of the Chase National Bank, of New York. Before a committee of the United States Senate last year he expressed the opinion that neither brains nor organization can avert stemming future cycles of depression.
If one should say that surely a solution is not as hopeless as that, another could ask whether from the beginning of the world the religious question has been solved, and what about war, or our little prohibition question.
Who can control the thoughts and actions of all human beings?
Minneapolis, Minn.
SPORTSMANSHIP
Dear Sir:
To an American who has lived in England twelve years and has in that period witnessed many contests in every branch of sport, your editorial in the May issue on the question of comparative sportsmanship of British and American players, is most interesting.
Good sportsmanship is, of course, only good manners. On the question of fair play, there is no difference. There have been regrettable lapses at times, but no one can say the level of sportsmanship is not just as high in America as anywhere else.
I have heard it stated that whereas Americans go into a game to win, the Briton regards sport merely as something to be enjoyed; to keep him fit, in other words. The inference is that we take our sports too seriously and that our one aim is to become champions. It is pointed out that we employ paid coaches, maintain training tables, and that we count a season a failure that does not produce a succession of victories. In the British Isles little or no attention is paid to dietetics, but most teams, amateur or professional, have experts to instruct the players.
At the Norwich game last year I sat next to an Englishman who was visiting America for the first time. He couldn't understand why a football match intended for twenty-two men should have to bring a hundred into the game. In England there are no replacements for injuries incurred; either a man is fit to play the entire game or he is not allowed to play at all. If the game was so rough that players were incapacitated after a few minutes play, then the risk to life, he thought, put such a game on a par with pagan gladiatorial contests. A player carried off the field on a stretcher was to him a disgusting sight.
A master of one of the great public schools in England, recently returned from America, said to me the other day that American college sport was ruined by unseemly publicity, that whereas school sports should be for the schools themselves, in America the public were permitted too large an interest in them. It was no answer that college games depended on the public for financial support. He thought the extravagant attention by the press to college players was harmful in the extreme. He suspected some colleges looked on their teams as a form of advertising, good or bad, according to their respective abilities as represented by the scores.
The will to win is by no means an exclusively American trait, however. Our British contestants aspire to the same heights in international sport that we do, and feel just as badly as we do when they lose.
British and Americans do differ in temperament and outlook. One is an old country, conservative and prone to go along at a comfortable pace; the other, a new land where the tempo of life is faster. In one Country the climate is almost always dull, and strenuous activity out of the question; in the other there is the stimulus of sunshine, an invigorating atmosphere. That centuries of experience should bring about a different point of view in England from that in America may be expected. There is no need for impatience; after all, the main thing is to be happy and not take sports or anything else too seriously.
242 Liverpool Rd.London, EnglandSept. 2, 1932.
