Chương 135: The Courage to Face the Morning

Four hours later, in downtown Scranton.

Arthur walked into a commercial bank that was still barely operating.

He stepped out of the teller's counter and took out his checkbook.

He planned to withdraw three thousand dollars in cash to purchase much-needed smokeless coal, high-calorie food, and antibiotics for the miners in the tent area who were about to freeze, and to fund his upcoming long expedition.

He signed his name on the check and pushed it through the slot.

The cashier was a middle-aged man wearing thick-rimmed glasses.

He took the check, checked the account information, then turned around, picked up the old-fashioned crank phone, dialed the New York headquarters number, and authorized the large interstate withdrawal.

A few minutes later, the cashier hung up the phone, her expression turning very strange.

He returned the signed check through the window.

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Kennedy. The New York headquarters has just—rejected this withdrawal authorization."

Arthur frowned slightly: "Refuse authorization? I have tens of thousands of dollars in cash in my account."

The teller lowered her voice, her tone visibly tense: "The head office's clearing manager clearly instructed over the phone that your personal settlement account is currently under a compliant temporary freeze." All funds under your name cannot be transferred across state lines, nor can even a single dollar be withdrawn in cash.

All credit limits were also cancelled simultaneously.

Arthur stood in the bank lobby and immediately understood the reason.

He was very familiar with the operating rules of the US financial system.

This sudden and comprehensive freeze, without any court summons, is definitely not a simple financial error, nor is it a case of the bank's one-sided greed.

This means that the state apparatus has taken notice of him and has begun to carry out extremely precise attacks in the gray areas of the law.

Arthur walked out of the bank. He reached into his coat pocket and found only forty-two dollars in change and a few coins.

The $42 wasn't enough to buy even a tenth of the first-aid supplies needed for the tent area, nor was it enough for him to drive his fuel-guzzling Ford pickup truck to the Midwest.

Washington bureaucrats cut off his main artery.

They tried to trap him in this dead city covered in black snow with the most realistic hunger and poverty, so that he would witness the true power of the combination of capital and state violence.

Arthur got into the driver's seat of the Ford pickup truck, but he wasn't flustered.

"Trying to lock me up with a bank? You know nothing about real communication studies."

There's no point in a protracted war. He must break this economic blockade as quickly as possible.

He started the engine and drove the pickup truck back to St. Peter's Church.

He needed to immediately change his writing strategy and leverage the vast American publishing network and independent newspapers to launch a monetization campaign that wouldn't require going through the banking system.

Arthur returned to the dimly lit side room of the church.

He is extremely short of money and time is of the essence.

He decided to write a popular article that perfectly met the current public's psychological needs, was superficially devoid of any political sensitivity, and was eagerly sought after and paid for by hundreds of independent newspapers and local magazines across the United States.

A bowl of extremely strong "chicken soup for the soul".

If the article becomes popular enough, he can get various newspapers to deliver the money to him cleanly through a federal system that no one would dare to freeze easily.

Arthur closed his eyes and quickly searched his mind for those globally popular inspirational classics from his past life.

He set his sights on Dale Carnegie's groundbreaking 1948 book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

The series, especially the chapter on how to overcome extreme anxiety, "How to Stop Worrying and Start Your Life."

In 1930, when bankruptcies and the unemployed were jumping off bridges everywhere, nothing was more marketable than teaching people "how to survive in dire straits."

Arthur took a deep breath, inserted the letter, and began typing rapidly on the keyboard.

He packaged Carnegie's core psychological concepts into an extremely touching and tear-jerking story.

He gave this article a very inspiring title: "The Courage to Face the Morning".

At the beginning of the article, he did not use a grand narrative, but instead described an extremely ordinary scene: Late last night, on a bridge in Brooklyn, I encountered a man who was about to end his life.

His name was John, and he used to own a small hardware store. The stock market crash destroyed his ledgers, and the bank foreclosed on his house.

He looked at the cold river water below the bridge and told me he couldn't bear to see his wife's despairing eyes and his children's empty plates when the sun rose tomorrow.

Arthur then shifted his focus, presenting a psychological survival principle that has been regarded as a golden rule by countless people in later generations: "Live in a completely independent world today."

I handed John a cigarette and said, "John, the reason you feel overwhelmed is because you're trying to shoulder yesterday's debts and tomorrow's fears with your today's shoulders. The human spine wasn't designed to bear that weight."

In this devastating winter, don't think about next month's rent, don't think about what to do next year.

Those distant fears will devour you alive. What we need to do is break life down into tiny, manageable pieces.

With an iron will, we will firmly shut the doors between yesterday and tomorrow!

You only need to live in today, in these twelve hours from now until you go to sleep tonight.

Arthur infused the article with an extremely powerful spiritual force: When you wake up today, all you need to think about is how to find even a penny, how to bring home a loaf of bread for the children.

When you focus all your energy on living each day to the fullest, you'll find that even in the darkest of times, during the Great Depression, an American can still maintain his dignity.

As long as you have the courage to face the morning, winter cannot bury you.

This article, "The Courage to Face the Morning," is a perfect inspirational piece that focuses on individual psychological reconstruction and teaches people how to survive in ruins.

After completing the final draft, Arthur immediately rushed to the telegraph office.

He spent the last twenty dollars in his pocket to send the article of more than a thousand words to Isabella urgently.

At the end of the telegram, he included an explanation: [Isabella, my bank account has been secretly frozen. The reprint rights to this article are being sold to independent newspapers, evening papers, and magazines in all second- and third-tier cities across the United States. The price can be lowered, but cash settlement is required.] Do not use any bank's corporate account. Immediately exchange all royalties received for USPS bearer money orders at the post office.

These drafts were divided into a dozen or so ordinary ordinary envelopes and mailed to St. Peter's Church in Scranton, addressed to Father Els.

Tell the guys to get the printing presses ready; this chicken soup for the soul is going to sell like hotcakes.

This is Arthur's solution to break the deadlock.

The postal system is a federal infrastructure that is strictly protected by the U. S. Constitution.

Unless someone can obtain a treason arrest warrant issued by the Supreme Court, no one has the right to dismantle private letters, let alone freeze hundreds or thousands of bearer postal money orders mixed in with massive amounts of mail.