Page:May Walden - Socialism and the Home (1900).pdf/26

 26 anything about it, ask questions and then repeat the facts you have learned to your neighbor or your children. It will fix the matter in your own mind to do this, for we never know how little we understand a subject until we try to tell some one else about it. If you are a shop or factory girl, a clerk or bookkeeper, or have any similar work, learn yourself and then teach your associates that your interests and hers are identical with those of every other hand and brain worker in the world, no matter what nationality, color or sex. Learn to look upon all other workers as comrades, and neither scorn nor envy them. Remember that you need their help and they need yours to liberate the working class from slavery. If you are a school teacher, be thankful for your opportunity and teach history to the young people under your care, not from the capitalist standpoint, but from the standpoint of a class-conscious wage-worker; teach that a good character is more to be desired than great riches; teach lofty aims and ideals instead of the principles of commercialism. Teach that we are not here to make profit out of our fellow creatures, but to love and mutually serve and benefit each other. Among your fellow teachers, arouse a sentiment in favor of free text books, free lunches, free clothing, less wasteful methods of education, consolidated schools for the rural districts, free transportation and the like.

There is work for all, whatever talent or ability you may possess, and to the limit of your enthusiasm and endurance. Work in the way that suits you best, by talking, singing, speaking, writing or thinking, only remembering the three principles of International Socialism which are to be mastered and never forgotten. These are:

1. ECONOMIC DETERMINISM—that people are molded by the conditions which surround them; hence we must provide the best conditions possible to every human being, giving each one