LETTERS TO BILL
Sandburg, Charles
LETTERS TO BILL By CHARLES SANDBURG Dear Bill:— IWANT to pass along an Indian story to you. This Indian story is not the blood-and-thunder kind about Rain-in-the-Face scalping the beautiful...
...We have changed the year front-end-to: we cheat Winter of its work and put Jack Frost out of a job by freezing better and cleaner ice in July than in years gone by we used to lay up in January...
...I say, Bill, suppose you had been living and had talked that way among your neighbors a hundred and fifty years ago...
...poor Bill...
...Suppose that about a hundred and fifty years ago, a man had said to the people around him, "Man is the most restless, discontented, dissatisfied creature in the world...
...It took fighting to get a state without a king...
...We live in a world that is one vast Missouri crying, "You will have to show us...
...Yours always, Sandy...
...It took fighting to get railroads...
...So remember, Bill, if you've got a new idea or a new scheme that you want to see used in the world's work or play or politics, before it will come you will have to hammer and hammer and fight and fight through years on years...
...Nothing much, I guess...
...He has coralled wild horses and bred them and trained them and made them his servants to haul him and his goods from city to city...
...But they would have been kind to you, kind and tender and soothing, and they would have said, "Poor Bill...
...It will take fighting to get a state so ruled by the people that every man will have an equal chance with every other man in the battle of life...
...It's a curious world we're living in, isn't it, Bill...
...He has rigged sails on his boat and goes around the world...
...White man make ice in the summer...
...We fling our wireless words out and across the winds and storms of the sea...
...We have legs that will carry us a mile a minute...
...But man will not stay satisfied with the stage coach...
...White man do more than God...
...When they asked him how he liked the looks of it, he said, "Huh...
...This Indian story is not the blood-and-thunder kind about Rain-in-the-Face scalping the beautiful girl's father and then dragging a beautiful girl to his canoe and taking her to his wigwam...
...And in that day, man will go riding and hauling over the earth as never before...
...This is the most natural thing in the world...
...This is another kind of Indian...
...What would they have done to you...
...The world would not believe it could get along without a king until kings were tumbled off their thrones...
...He's good to his mother and he works six days every week...
...We have made our ears so keen that when the hello girl gives us the connection we can hear a whisper from San Francisco to New York...
...They took him through an artificial ice-plant and showed him the workings of the place...
...They wouldn't have hanged you nor burned you nor put you in jail...
...But it all took fighting,—sleepless, endless fighting, pounding and hammering by men who were not afraid of a new idea, who were willing to be counted with a minority if they thought the minority was right...
...It takes long pounding and hard pounding to make the world come your way...
...We dazzle the poor Indian into saying, "White man do more than God...
...The world would not believe in a railroad until the railroad came...
...The stage coach is an improvement on the old pack-horse...
...He is going to find some new power, mixed some way out of air and water and fire, and he will blow this power into the belly of his iron horse...
...God make ice in the winter time...
...It is to be expected...
...This Indian for the first time in his life was in a big city...
...The more he gets the more he wants...
...We make ice in the summer and grow celery in winter...
...But he must have had a sunstroke or something when he was a boy— he's out of order in the place where he does his thinking...
...He is going to learn more about smelting iron so it will stand more wear and tear and out of this new iron he will make a new kind of horse...
...Your day and your gang will arrive when you get enough people to see it as you see it...
...We are on the edge of learning to fly through the air...
...We've got such tools today as a while ago no man dared dream of...
...Yes, Bill, if you've got a new idea, a scheme that has never been tried, you're sure to find some people who will want to put a brand on you and mark you: F—0—0—L...
Vol. 1 • July 1909 • No. 30
