Page:Carl Sandburg - You and Your Job (1910).pdf/17

Rh all children who enter the public schools of America do not enter high schools. Those are the figures. Here is your poetry:

From the sweat of their brow the desert blooms

And the forest before them falls;

Their labor has builded humble homes,

And cities with lofty halls,

And the one owns cities and houses and lands,

And the ninety and nine have empty hands.

The one big fact that spreads itself all over the history of the last century is the change from individual production to social production. Marvelous inventions of machinery have come. Fingers of brass and arms of steel are now turning out articles once made by the fingers and arms of men and women. Where the workmen used to own their tools and one man did all the work on a given article, to-day they gather in regiments and brigades of hundreds and thousands under one roof. Two hundred and sixty needles per minute, six million match sticks per day, five hundred garments per day, each by a machine tended by one little boy. One man can produce boots and shoes for 1,000 people. One man can produce bread for 200 people. One man at a linotype machine does the work formerly done by eight men. One horseshoe machine displaces 500 men working by hand. This displacement of men, and this increased producing power, is found in almost every industry. Along with this improvement in production has come improvement in transportation