Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1900 — HAPPIEST CLASS OF PEOPLE. [ARTICLE]

HAPPIEST CLASS OF PEOPLE.

Those That Enjoy Life Moat Are Those Who Are Neither Rich Nor Poor* In writing of “The Happiest Class of People” in the Woman’s Home Companion, John Gilmer Speed arrives at the following conclusion: “I have told you who are the unhappiest men, and now it is my pleasant duty to speak of the happiest state. Solomon indicated it in his petition, ‘Give me neither riches nor-poverty.’ There is in that, as in most of the “proverbs, both definition and description. Neither riches nor poverty. I need say little more. We all know wlmt the alternative middle state where the income safely exceeds the expenditure. Then a man can bd happy—and he have a good temper and a robust digestion—it does not make much difference what goes on around him. He is safe, and for the time being at least his family is secure. The best thing about this happiest state is that it has within it such a tremendously large class. It ih not only a man here and there that belongs within it; the men are legions. In this country is embraces all of the great middle class. Aud the very great majority of them do not even know that theirs is the happiest state; they do not dream how well they are off. Some of them, being wrong-headed men, envy their richer neighbors; some others throw away their valuable sufficiency in the endeavor to get riches; some others get riches, aud then are not as happy as they were before. Let those who are iu this happiest state continue in it if they can, for the world at large and the country at home has great need for them. They constitute the great conservative force—the force which prevents the democratic country from going pell-mell to smash; they represent tlie solid honesty which stands midway between the madness of a too rapid social reform and the insatiable greed of tlie unscrupulous who look upon the whole world as a gold mine that belongs to them by right of Inheritance or purchase. Happy should be the land where this class is very great; and it is greater iu the United States than anywhere else in the world.”