“A French soldier lay dying on the battle-field, and a comrade kneeling by him asked what last word he wished carried to his wife and children. And the dying man said with his last breath: 'Tell them that I gave my body to the earth, I gave my heart to France and I gave my soul to God.'
“And so I say to you in the spirit of the French soldier that this, my body, I will give at last back to the iron earth, in whose deep mines and smoking metal shops my muscles took their form. This heart of mine that beats for liberty and equality I give--and give to its last beat--to the cause of equal education for our young. And my soul at last I shall render back unto my Maker knowing that I have served His cause as He has given me to see it.”
H. G. Wells has asked all scholars to unite in writing a “Bible of the New Education.” I am no scholar, but if Wells will take suggestions from an iron puddler, I offer him these random thoughts.
This generation is rich because the preceding generation stored up lots of capital. We are living in the houses and using the railroads that our fathers built by working overtime.
When labor loafs on the job it makes itself poor. We are not building fast enough to keep ourselves housed. Were it not for the houses our fathers built this generation would be out-of-doors right now, with no roof but the sky.
No matter who owns the capital, capital works for everybody. Ford owns the flivver factory, but everybody owns the flivvers. The oil king owns the gasoline, but he has to tote it to the roadside where every one can get it. Equal division is the goal that capitalism constantly approaches. No man wants all the gasoline. He wants six gallons at a time, with a service station every few miles. Capital performs this service for him. Under “capitalism,” so-called wealth is more equally divided than under any other system ever known.
Work is a blessing, not a curse. This country had the good luck to be settled by the hardest workers in the world. Their big production made us rich. If we slacken production we will soon be poor. The Indians owned everything in common. They did not work. And they were so poor that this whole continent would support less than two million of them. Thousands of Indians used to starve and freeze to death every hard winter.