THE WEBER LITERARY JOURNAL The Art of Communication OMMUNICATION is verily a great art almost too great in the opinion of a majority of us students. We wish it could have remained in its simple, primitive state, composed merely of a few signs and motions. But some meddlesome people having nothing else to do, have developed it into a highly complicated spoken language, which is, by latest inventions, heard as easily across a continent as across a hall. Great as may be our wish, it is very foolish, for without a highly developed sensible means of communication, our civilization could never have risen to its present height. Look about and see if this is not true. Our railroads could never have reached their high state of efficiency without the aid of the telegraph, or some other quick method of communication. History informs us that one of the greatest factors in wielding our country into a solid whole, was the improvement of methods of communication. We can easily see that our very life and well-being depend upon our means of communication. This tracing of the means of communication is a very interesting study. It starts way back in the time of the first associations of men, for when men lived by themselves there was no need of communication. Let us see, then, how from this early time, the art of communication might have developed. Probably the first signs were the smile and the scowl. If one man did something which another did not like, a scowling glance told the offender that it would be dangerous to repeat the act. The scowl is a natural sign of displeasure, or disgust. Likewise the smile was used, to express a pleasant reaction, or to denote approbation. As the scowl is a sign of displeasure, the smile is a sign of the opposite pleasantness. From this simple beginning there developed a sign language. In fact the two came at almost the same time. The hand raised to strike, accompanied by a scowl was a double warning. Thus, man developed signs to make known the most common of his desires, such as the beckoning or "come closer" sign. Two men on a hunt would use only signs to help each other out, and so it was with the other activities which required group action. 8 THE WEBER LITERARY JOURNAL The spoken language probably arose from grunts of approval, or disapproval. If the "receiver" misinterpreted the signs, the "broadcaster" gave forth loud exclamations of disgust and anger. Likewise, if a man ground the end of his finger down instead of the hatchet head he was making, it was only an exhibition of human nature for him to relieve pressure by a few polite (?) expressions. This is the primitive counterpart of the proverbial modern golfer's vocabulary of expletives. As society grew more complicated, it was found that a few signs were not enough to convey the fine shades of meaning. Man began to associate certain sounding grunts with various objects. This made the meaning more clear. Then man went on, not realizing what he was doing for future generations. He threw in a few adjectives, and other groans called verbs, and prepositions, and so on down the list. Vocal language then became the craze, but it was soon apparent that this was not enough. When tribes began to communicate with each other, the fallability of man's memory was observed. When the Ug-Wumps sent their best runner over to Big Mouths to invite them to dinner, and when said runner, after traveling a hundred miles or so, found that he couldn't remember whether it was a banquet or a battle, it was decided that something must be done about the matter. A Pow-wow was held and the tribe artist was commissioned to draw up the invitations thereafter. This he did in a very simple but artistic way. If the invitation was one to dinner, he made an excellent wooden imitation of a turkey leg, gave it to the runner and the deed was done. If the tribe wished to convey a challenge of war, he filled a snake skin with arrows to send. Later the same defect became apparent in written language as it had in spoken: it wasn't complicated enough. If the tribe wished to tell the other tribe of the big collision between its pet trained ostrich and a neighboring prize zebra, a simple representation would not do. So the tribe artist was again called in. The result was that symbols were used for sounds and a great deal could be said by writing. 9