s, and
bought them by the dozen in boxes. It seemed like a sure thing when the
old man put all his money into it. He figured that by 1915 there would
be 40,000 people in this country, each one wearing at least 200 paper
collars a year, something like the hound and the hare, perhaps, but he
didn't know that the hare in this case would drop dead, and the hound
double his jump, as happened to paper and linen collars. Some one
invented the modern linen collar. The laundry service started up, and
paper collars disappeared with the family fortune. Now, my friend must
work for a living, and throw mental bricks at the laundry. In a way
every new habit, or every new interference with the thought and method
of the plain people must run the gauntlet and submit to just such
violent changes.

Now the future of the nut business, which contains the importance of the
industry, depends upon our ability to make the plain, common people
understand that in the future we must cut our beef steak and our chops
off a nut tree. We have made some of the brainy people understand this
already, but the hound is still chasing the hare, and he is several
jumps behind. You may say what you will, or think as highly as you like
of your own place in society, but the world is not run or pushed on by
the brainy people. They may steer it for a while and master it, but
only at the permission of what I may call the stomach people, who always
sooner or later rise up and dominate things. A gild-edged, red line
edition of nut knowledge will get the few or select class, but in order
to make the industry truly important we must make a homely appeal to the
plain people. It seems to me that one of the most effective nut
documents yet issued is that bulletin by George Carver, a colored man at
the Tuskegee Institute. Carver simply makes his appeal to the Southern
farmer, and he gives him 45 ways of cooking and eating peanuts. I rather
think that Carver's work in trying to get the Southern negroes to eat
more peanuts and more cow-peas has done about as much for the race as
the academic instruction given in the college.

On the principle that "Like begets like," I feel sure that the continued
practice of cracking the shell to get at the sweet meat inside will tend
to put more phosphorus and less lime into the skull of the race. I once
explained the nut proposition to an energetic man and he said:
"Fine--the theory is perfect--now hire a man who lives on rare beef to
g