It Can’t Be Done! A History of Impossibilities

Edward Meyer, 1914

Chapter I.

(STONE AGE.)

Stone Hammer: Look at that crazy gink¹ over there.

Sheep Skin: Wot’s he up to?

S.H.: Oh, he’s loony. He says it’s nonsense to run after deer in order to capture it. He says he can take a hickory stick, a strip of raw hide and another short stick with a sharp stone on one end and a feather on the other end and then send that second stick after the deer and get him! Can you beat it?

S.S.: Gee! He must be a nut! Whoever heard of such bunk? Why, it’s against all the laws of nature and human precedent! Don’t we know from experience that the only way to get a deer is to run after him and catch him? Hickory stick! Sharp stone! Oh, fudge!

IT CAN’T BE DONE!

(But it was done.)

Chapter II.

(LATER ON.)

First Moss Back²: Waddye know about that fool blacksmith?

Second M.B.: What’s the idea?

First M.B.: Why, the blamed idiot says he is going to build an iron tube and put a black powder in it and then shoot a lump of lead a hundred times as far as we now shoot an arrow from a bow! Ain’t that the limit?

Second M.B.: Why, that fellow must be as crazy as they make ’em! Whoever heard of such a thing? It’s against all reason and logic.

IT CAN’T BE DONE!

(However, it came to pass.)

Chapter III.

(A PREVIOUS DATE.)

Tree Dweller: Are you hep³ to the fool stunts that yap⁴ across the lake is up to?

Cliff Dweller: Why, no. Put me wise.

T.D.: Why, the condemned simp⁵ says it’s all foolishness to straddle a log when you want to paddle your way across the lake. He says the sensible and scientific thing to do is to burn the inside out of that log, and then sit down inside the log instead of on top of it.

C.D.: It’s a safe bet he’s bughouse,⁶ all right. Haven’t we and our ancestors always straddled a log when crossing the lake? Now comes the bloke and tells we ought to sit inside the log instead of on top! Oh, piffle.

IT CAN’T BE DONE!

(But the canoe arrived.)

Chapter IV.

(SOME TIME LATER.)

First Fisherman: I’ve had my laps⁷ on that cuss down in the cover. Wot’s doin’?

Second F.: Aw, he’s off his nut! He’s got the dope that he’s goin’ to quit paddlin’ his canoe; got an idea in his think tank that he will put a big stick up in this boat and hang a hide on it and make the wind take him where he wants to go.

First F.: Why, the poor mut. Does he think he can get away with that? Don’t we know from experience that the only way to move a canoe is to paddle it? A sailboat! Oh, pshaw!

IT CAN’T BE DONE.

(But she sailed.)

Chapter V.

(LATER YET.)

First Bonehead: Get wise to this guy. He’s got an idea that he can put the kibosh on the steam that comes from hot water, and then bottle it up in a machine and make that machine work! Get that? Isn’t he bughouse?

Second B.H.: You bet he is! Why, there is no weight, or power to steam! It floats in the air, as light as a fog! Power from steam! Nothing to it!

IT CAN’T BE DONE!

(But the engine turned over.)

Chapter VI.

(FURTHER ON.)

First Colonist: Say, there is a darned fool over at the Hudson River with a little ship he calls the Clermont,⁸ and he had the fool idea in his bean that he can do away with sails and make the steam engine do the stunt.

Second C.: Do tell! Hasn’t he any better sense than to know that while the steam engine has a limited usefulness on land it is impractical and a failure on board ship? Take it from me, the Cler-mont will never move!

IT CAN’T BE DONE!

(But the Clermont did move.)

Chapter VII.

(STILL LATER.)

First American: Say, this fellow Langley⁹ in Washington, D.C., is dead wrong. The idea of him saying that a human being could learn to fly.

Second A.: Right! It’s beyond the bounds of human possibilities to fly. Moreover, it is sacrilegious to fly. If the Lord ever wanted us to fly He would have created us with wings.

Human beings ever fly? Never!

IT CAN’T BE DONE!

(But they do fly now.)

(Historian’s Note.)

Several hundred thousand chapters of the world’s history are omitted from this work for the sake of brevity.

What the writer desires to point out is that in the progress of mankind a never-failing series of cycles has taken place. Here is what has happened in a regular rotation:—

One day, Ignorance says; “It Can’t be Done!”

Next day, Intelligence does it.

The following day Ignorance says of something else: “It can’t be done!”

The day after that Intelligence makes Ignorance back up by doing the very thing that “could not be done!” And so we find it down through all ages, Ignorance trying to hold humanity in darkness and Intelligence lifting mankind out of intellectual night into clear daylight—into ever brighter light.

To the non-Socialist who may happen to read the foregoing the writer wishes to point out that the Ignorance which says the interests of Labour and Capital are identical is the very same Ignorance which says “Socialism is impossible.”

On the other hand, it is the extremely superior Intelligence of twenty million (20,000,000) Socialists in the world to-day who say that the interests of Labour and Capital are absolutely opposed to each other. It is this same massed Intelligence that says we are even now about to realise the fulfillment of this “beautiful dream” which would always “remain a dream!”

Now, Mr. Non-Socialist, which way are you betting? Do you back Ignorance to win?

If so, I place my money on Intelligence and give you heavy odds.

And, by the way, if you want to meet up with the highest grade of intelligence on earth to-day just cultivate the acquaintance of the Socialists. They have the history of humanity’s evolution at their finger tips.

They and they alone understand why present conditions are as they are. They (the Socialists) and they alone know how to make the future as it should be—and will be.

When anyone tells me (not knowing what they are talking about) that Socialism is “impossible,” I think of the “impossibilities” Ignorance has set up all through the ages, and which Intelligence, with unerring aim, has every time wiped away like a set of ten pins on the bowling alley. Then at this point I get real busy brushing the cobwebs out of the cranium of the gink who impersonates a phonograph reproducing a record recorded in his brain by the flutes—“Socialism is impossible!”