Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/178

166 of the weak. We find that in the free air of America there are still millions who are not free—millions who can never be free under any government or under any laws, so long as they remain what they are. The remedy for oppression, then, is to bring in better men, men who can not be oppressed. This is the remedy our fathers sought; we shall find no other. The problem of life is not to make life easier, but to make men stronger, so that no problem shall be beyond their solution. It will be a sad day for the republic when life is easy for ignorance, indolence, and apathy. It is growing easier than it was; it is too easy already. There is no growth without its struggle. Nature asks of man that he use his manhood. If a man puts no part of his brain and soul into his daily work, if he feels no pride in the part he is taking in life, the sooner he leaves the world the better. His work is the work of a slave, and his life the waste of so much good oxygen. The misery he endures is Nature's testimony to his worthlessness. We can not save him from Nature's penalties. Our duty toward him may be to temper justice with mercy. This is not the matter of importance. Our duty toward his children is to see that they do not follow his path. The grown-up men and women of to-day are in a sense past saving. The best work of the republic is to save the children. The one great duty of a free nation is education—education wise, thorough, universal; the education, not of cramming, but of training; the education which no republic has ever given, and without which all republics must be in the whole or in part failures. If this generation should leave as its legacy to the next the real education, training in individual power and skill, breadth of outlook on the world and on life, the problems of the next century would take care of themselves. There can be no collective industrial problem where each man is capable of solving his own individual problem for himself.

In this direction lies, I believe, the answer to all industrial and social problems. Reforms in education are the greatest of all reforms. The ideal education must meet two demands: It must be personal, fitting a man or woman for success in life; it must be broad, giving a man or woman such an outlook on the world as that this success may be worthy. It should give to each man or woman that reserve strength without which no life can be successful because no life can be free. With this reserve the man can face difficulties, because the victor in any struggle is he who has the most staying power. With this reserve he is on the side of law and order, because only he who has nothing to lose can favor disorder or misrule. He should have a reserve of property. Thrift is a virtue. No people can long be free who are not thrifty. It is true that thrift sometimes passes beyond virtue, degenerating into the vice of greed. Because there are