Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/179

Rh men who are greedy—drunk with the intoxication of wealth and power—we sometimes are told that wealth and power are criminal. There are some that hold that thrift is folly and personal ownership a crime. In the new Utopia all is to be for all, and no one can claim a monopoly, not even of himself. There may be worlds in which this shall be true. It is not true in the world into which you have been born. Nor can it be. In the world we know the free man should have a reserve of power, and this power is represented by money. If thrift ever ceases to be a virtue, it will be at a time long in the future. Before that time comes, our Anglo-Saxon race will have passed away and our civilization will be forgotten.

A man should have a reserve of skill. If he can do well something which needs doing, his place in the world will always be ready for him. He must have intelligence. If he knows enough to be good company for himself and others, he is a long way on the road toward happiness and usefulness. To meet this need our schools have been steadily broadening. The business of education is no longer to train gentlemen and clergymen as it was in England, to fit men for the professions called learned as it has been in America. It is to give wisdom and fitness to the common man. The great reforms in education have all lain in the removal of barriers. They have opened new lines of growth to the common man. This form of university extension is just beginning. The next century will see its continuance. It will see a change in educational ideals greater even than those of the revival of learning. Higher education will cease to be the badge of a caste, and no line of usefulness in life will be beyond its helping influence.

The man must have a reserve of character and purpose.

He must have a reserve of reputation. Let others think well of us, it will help us to think well of ourselves. No man is free who has not his own good opinion. A man will wear a clean conscience as he would a clean shirt, if he knows his neighbors expect it of him. He must have a reserve of love, and this is won by the service of others. "He that brings sunshine into the lives of others can not keep it from himself." He must form the ties of family and friendship, that, having something at stake in the goodness of the world, he will do something toward making the world really good.

When every American citizen has reserves like these, he has no need to beg for special favors. All he asks of legislation is that it keep out of his way. He demands no form of special guardianship or protection. He can pay as he goes. The man