The Bismarck Tribune Newspaper, June 6, 1933, Page 10

(0A By Dr. Frank Thone EPRESSION is a word of harsh and hideous sound to the cars of most of us just now, and the idea that depressions have been the world’s greatest spurs to progress, that successive hard times have been a series of evolutionary sieves to sort the fit from the unfit, hardly comes at first as a checring gospel. Each of us, nursing his own trouble and making it seem as big as possible, may be too apt to see himself as among the lost, the non-survivors. But there is at least one philosophic scientist, Dr. Carey Croneis of the University of Chicago, who looks back over the earth's immensely long geologic history and sees in it the same moral that the more thoughtful historians and economists have been finding in the story of our own briefer, more rapid pulse of financial booms and slumps. Resolutely he tells us that through the millions of centuries. hard times have been good times, and good times really bad isc. Geologic history has repeated itself over and over in an ever-ascending spiral: a cosmic depression has scourged the planet, eliminating inflated stocks, trimming the chastened survivors to the bone and sending them forth fitter. more alert, more able to take advantage of the returning times in disg! better times. But the better times have betrayed those who trusted them too much, luring them in overdevelopment and too-optimistic expansion, so that when the next crash came—as come it always did —down they went in their turn and the cycle repeated itself, se | * all geologic time is taken as 2,000,000,000 years and is represented on a clock dial as one hour,” says Dr. Croneis, “then 33 minutes of that hour elapse before the age of invertebrate animals is well under way. “Even the beginning of the age of reptiles and the dominance of the Ainoeairs (occurs only, cineymnieules before the minute hand reaches 12. More surprising still is the fact that mammals, the dominant life of the present, have been the ruling ani- mals of only the last paltry two and a half minutes of the hour. “And man, commonly thought to have been present for 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 years, has only oc- cupied the center of the stage for a breathless two or three split sec- onds. In fact, man is such a new- comer that he has existed only while our ge- ologicai clock has been striking the hour.” Through all of these ages of recurring de- pressions, the curve of life has pursued an up- ward spiral, as Dr. Croneis sees it. However, it is not the smooth optimistic unbroken rise pictured by well-fed philosophers of mid-Vic- torian days, when evolution as a popular idea was a new thing under the sun. Dr. Croneis admits setbacks as well as ad- vances; the curve is ragged, though still always upward trending. N times of stress, he says, the weak organ- isms have died out, but the strong have al- ways emerged from the troughs of trouble more powerful than ever. Modified to fit the chang- ing environment, they have been ready to take advantage of the return of “good times.” When Dr. Croneis speaks of a “strong” organism, he does not at all mean bulky in muscle, but strong in the balance of a fit body and an alert mind. If the world’s recurring geologic hard times have been consistently ruth- A real bear raid during one of the carlier depressions . . . when the hard times of the glacial period taught mankind such things as the use of fire, the value of clothing and per- manent sheltcr and better patterns for his weapons. MYT QUUVUUUOUOOUR TALL LLLLLCLIUO ALLEL These fellows followed a bull market too persistently, and got cleaned up. less toward any one tendency, it has been to- ward the piling up of huge bulk without intel- ligence governing it. One need only mention the dinosaurs, out of a dozen possible examples. A Diplodocus stuffed with his own flesh was like a bank stuffed with unrealizable paper, or a huge over- capitalized corporation, while its poor teacupful of brains swings the figure; with inevitable irony. to golf-playing dummy directors. No wonder such monsters, with all their resources tied up in unwieldy “organization,” © could not change front to meet the crisis when it came, and so perished! In the early seas of the Cambrian epoch, about half a billion years ago, the aristocracy were the tribolites, creatures related to crabs and lobsters, resembling in general appearance their diminutive remote cousins, the many. legged “‘pillbugs” you find under boards and in damp cellars. “Incredible as it may seem," remarks Dr. Croneis, “they were the first families then; and in their time there were no living rivals. ATMO USVATUUUIVVEVE TY RS UUULEV HL UPT EME horses. “N EVERTHELESS, in their own life history they tell the old but ever re- current story of the survival of the simple and the destruc- tion of the specialized. “The ornate members of the group, like over-expand- ed individuals, families or industries, flourished in times of plenty, ‘but they became extinct long before their lowly, generalized and con- servative cousins had departed from the scene.” At last, however, times got too hard even for the fittest of the tribolites; or more likely a newer aristocracy,’ driven into more efficient living by the spur of tight times, eliminated them. : At any rate, we see, several geological de- pressions later, the race of fishes ruling the world, and facing another period of crisis, with their water supply dwindling and their pools becoming so stagnant that gill;breathing was becoming nearly impossible. MHIS was one of the big moments of the history of animal life. Dr. Croneis pic- tures it briefly: “A few ganoid types, with the true spirit of pioneers, used their fringed fins to crawl pain- fully from the desiccating ancestral pools to other less stagnant ones. “These first air-breathing, partially land-liv ing vertebrates not only gave rise to the am phibians (relatives of frogs and salamanders) -they originated a Paleozoic parable to the effect ‘that, then as now, animals or industries which, instead of bowing to hard times, use what resources they have to mect the changing situations are likely to be rewarded handsomely with the return of prosperity.” These fish that came ashore because they had When a pair of Heavy Operators appeared, the little fellows had to run for cover... . i was the litile fellows who survived—to cvolve into But in the end it SSTINAUNNUUULLULLU LULL LUAULIILUL ULL ULUDLLL LR Lee LLL to, and liked it, ruled the world when the land con- sisted largely of endless warm swamps rich with coal-forming vegetation and ahum with giant in- sects for the new rulers to eat. The Coal Age was a time like the _ still-la- mented Late Twenties: an apparently boundless era of casy pickings, a “permanent plateau” at a bull market level. But like the same lush period in our own memories, the Coal Age crashed into a terrific period of cold and drought—and woe then to its fat, easy-going am- phibian bosses! yes particular ge- ologic depression ended not merely a chap- ter, but a whole volume. The Paleozoic was closed, and the Mesozoic, the Middle Ages of ge- ologic history, came on. When hard times hit the world of the amphib- ians, some of them, more enterprising than the rest, were stimulated into de- veloping more active bodies, armored with scales, able to withstand the droughtier air and to scramble more ably for the living that was now a great deal harder to get than it had been before. They were like the energetic tribal chief- tains of the ancient world at the breakup of the Roman Empire, who founded the first feudal aristocracies. Their descendants, bigger and more heavily armored, became the real barons of the geological middle ages, the dinosaurs. Thus an entirely new ruling group arose out of the depression, and when prosperity came again they were its masters. But they learned nothing from the experi- ences of their ruined predecessors. “The Mesozoic reptiles were megalomaniacs of the most confirmed sort,” says Dr. Croneis. “They were the masters of all the important habitats. The dinosaurs ruled the land, ma- rine reptiles invaded and conquered the sea, and the ‘flying dragons’ or pterodactyls were lords of the air. The Best People, about a dozen major depressions ago. . Cosmic hard times have hit the earth often, and have always left hardier, fitter, more intelligent races behind to enjoy prosperity’s return ao Se scurrying underfoot of the giant dinosaurs were a few mouse-like primi- tive mammals. They were subservient indeed to the gigantic masters of the moment, who, as is characteristic of the great (and especially the near-great), probably were totally unaware of the mammals’ presence. “But these small creatures, like some appat- ently insignificant individuals and many un- promising infant industries, had great poten- tialities. They proved their mettle at the close of the Mesozoic, when the earth went through one of her really great depressions. “This was, indeed, 2 time of revolution and of the ‘reddest” sort, for the reptiles, like Rus- sian royalists, were nearly blotted out, and they have never again been particularly dominant. “But the small mammals weathered the hard times successfully. Out of their crude begin- nings have come the greatly diversified and rul- ing mammalian types of today.” They were one group which was not over- expanded at the time when opportune depression hit them. In effect, they sold the market short and made their fortunes in the steady decline of reptilian values. The roots of that great mod- ern spreading tree of mammalian types were firmly anchored in the very depression which was too drastic for the optimistic dinosaurs. —O far Dr. Croneis. He does not tell the final tale, or point the final moral, perhaps as being too obvious. But for the sake of com- pleteness, the story of man himself might be added. For man also was born of a depression, one of the greatest of depressions of more recent geologic time, the Pleistocene Ice Age. The pre-glacial men, if they existed at all, lived in days of ease and didn’t have to hustle for a living. So, in all likelihood, they would have been contented toSggmain very much like their zoological cousins, The apes, clever and entertaining up to a certain point, but dull be- yond that, and quite irresponsible and improvi- dent. The glaciers changed all that. By the time the Ice Age was half over we have plenty of evidence that man was on the job, looking out for Number One and Family in first-class order. He had learned to keep warm in spite of the glaciers, by taking to caves or building wickiups on the river banks where he fished, and by wearing clothing made of animal skins. He had invented improved tools and weapons of stone, which no ape ever did or thought of. He had made the most important discovery of all human history, lowbrow though he was: he had learned the use of fire. . « It took all the hard knocks the world has seen since then to evolve even an investment banker. (Copyright, 1933, by EveryWeek Magazine and Science Service—Printed in U. S. A.) 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