Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers
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To Rousseau undoubtedly belongs the high honor of having thought
and written most powerfully, most originally and most practically
on the greatest of problems. His brain is the cornerstone of the
structure of intelligent educational methods.
He foreshadowed in his "Emile" Fourier's splendid principle of
"attractive industry." ----
THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY DEPENDS UPON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
HUMAN BRAIN THROUGH EDUCATION.
The intricate processes of thinking separate mankind from other
members of the animal creation.
Man is far from the animal in proportion as his brain is
cultivated. Even the animals themselves rank in their kingdom in
proportion to their brain activity.
William T. Harris said truly: "If man had let himself alone he
would have remained the monkey that he was. Not only this, but
if the monkey had let himself alone he would have remained a
lemur, or a bat, or a bear, or some other creature that now
offers only a faint suggestion of what the ape has become."
The elephant and the ape, among our humble animal brothers,
appear to have reached their limits of possibility in the way of
educational development. They still remain, and always will
remain, vastly inferior to their microscopic comrades--the ants
and bees and other insects.
The human race has barely begun the systematic study of the
problem of application, and systematic application of the truths
discovered and agreed upon. In proportion to our stature and
possibilities we are hideous ignoramuses compared with the ant in
the garden path.
The education of children is regulated not by their brain
formation and possible development, but by the wealth of their
parents, the parsimony of municipalities, the baleful influences
of tradition and the colossally stupid idea that thorough brain
cultivation is in some way antagonistic to material success.
The greatness of a nation depends upon the average mental power
of the nation's citizens, and mental power depends absolutely
upon education.
The man who doubts the importance of educating his son
thoroughly--if any such man now exists--is invited to consider
the following brief statement of facts:
The holders of slaves in the Southern States and outside of
America desired to keep their slaves down. They wanted them to
be content with slavery. They wanted them and their children to
remain willing, humble, helpless machines.
THEY PUNISHED AS A CRIMINAL ANY MAN WHO TAUGHT A SLAVE TO READ.
THEY KNEW THAT SLAVERY AND EDUCATION COULD NOT LONG ENDURE IN THE
SAME HUMAN BEING. ----
The ignorant man who has succeeded through natural force and
lucky opportunity is fond of asking these questions:
"What is the good of education? Of what practical use is
scientific training?" These men are admirably answered by Herbert
Spencer, to whose work they are referred.
A collection of Englishmen ruined themselves in the sinking of
mines in search of coal. They might have saved their money had
they known that a certain fossil which they dug up in abundance
belongs to a geological stratum below which no coal is ever
found. They went on digging cheerfully and wasting their money.
An acquaintance with that fossil and its meaning would have saved
their cash.
Some individuals spent one hundred thousand dollars trying to
save the alcoholic byproduct that distils from bread in baking.
They would have saved their money had they known that only a
hundredth part of the flour is changed through fermentation.
The study of biology is essential in the successful fattening of
cattle.
An "entozoon" seems to the practical man a foolish, imaginary
creature. But millions of sheep have been saved by the discovery
that one of these fancy scientific entozoa, pressing on the
brain, caused the sheep's death. When you know the entozoon you
can dig him out and save the sheep's life.
"My son's going to be an artist," says one proud father. "He
does not need to study a lot of scientific rubbish."
This parent does not know that the difference between a good and
a bad sculptor or painter is often based on knowledge or
ignorance of anatomy and mechanical principles. ----
Education is important to the individual because it means
development of the brain, development of capacity for production
and increased chances of success.
Education is important to the State because it means not only
COMPETENT citizens, but MORAL citizens.
The animal in us yields to the influence of education. Knowledge
and brutality are enemies. They do not dwell together.
The most important institutions in this country are the public
schools--the gymnasiums of human brains. The most important
citizens of the nation are the teachers.
The greatest criminals are the employers of child labor, because
they deny education, cut down in childhood the citizen's chance
of progress and success.
Work and vote for more and better public schools.
POVERTY IS THE FATHER OF VICE, CRIME AND FAILURE
These are days when men do their hardest work for money, when
they scramble and struggle and strike each other down in the
effort to reach wealth. And it is not possible to blame them.
They are trying to escape from poverty, from a disaster worse
than any prairie fire or other physical danger.
Dire poverty is the worst of curses. It combines every kind of
suffering, physical, mental, moral, and in the end it means
either death or degradation.
The great task of humanity is the abolition of poverty. The
great benefactors of humanity are the great industrial organizers
of this day, because, in spite of individual selshness,{sic} they
are planning production on a scale that will in the end provide
for all.
It is worth while to discuss and to realize what real poverty
means. If we can realize its meaning every one of us must be
more anxious to relieve, as far as we can, the poverty around us,
and especially anxious to work for the social betterment that
shall one day wipe out poverty forever
Poverty means dirt.
The thoughtless and comfortable have a way of saying: "The poor
might at least be clean." But cleanliness is a LUXURY; it
demands leisure and peace of mind, as well as bathtub, soap, hot
water and good plumbing. The very poor cannot be clean.
Poverty means ignorance, and it means ignorance handed down from
father to son.
Poverty means drunkenness. The pennies of POOR men and POOR
women pay for more than half the vile whiskey, gin and other
poisons that men buy to help them forget.
Poverty and its sister, Ignorance, fill the jails and the insane
asylums.
Poverty is the mother of disease, and it fills the hospitals.
Tens of thousands of consumptives alone are murdered every year
by poverty. They are too poor to do that which is required to
save their lives. ----
The great men of the world do not emerge from poverty, from
squalor.
They come from very modest homes, from the log cabin, and from
the towpath, as advertised. They come from those whose fathers
and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers had at least enough
to eat, and enough fresh air to give them pure blood and proper
nourishment for their brains.
Poverty destroys ambition, inventive power and the capacity to
struggle.
A starved body produces a starved brain. The greatest genius
that ever lived could not think better than a child of ten if you
deprived him of food for ten days.
What can you expect of the inferior minds that have been half fed
through a lifetime, or through several generations?
Do you know what made the Revolution and changed conditions in
France? It was not poverty. Not a single poor man was a leader
in that Revolution. Every one of them was well fed, had a well-
nourished brain--Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Desmoulins,
Mirabeau--every one a well-fed brain in a vigorous body.
The labor unions and the great strikes, although sometimes unwise
and unreasonable, are great blessings to the Nation. They compel
the worker to get such pay as will feed himself and his children,
giving the Nation well-fed brains. The Union is the enemy of
poverty, and for that reason especially it is an agent for good.
----
As poverty breeds ignorance, so ignorance breeds poverty. The
greatest enemy of poverty is the Public School. Work and vote,
therefore, for public school betterment.
Miserable women walk the streets by thousands on cold Winter
nights--poverty has put them there.
Hundreds of thousands of children are born only to struggle for a
few years through a stunted infancy--poverty digs their graves.
For one genius that has fought and conquered in spite of poverty
ten thousand have sunk out of sight in the fight against the
worst of enemies.
Don't waste time extolling the blessings of poverty--use your
energies to diminish poverty's curse, and to improve humanity by
giving it the full efficiency which freedom from worry alone can
give.
THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION PROVED IN LINCOLN'S CASE
The very old and very foolish saying, "A little knowledge is a
dangerous thing," is disproved every day. Whenever you hear a
man talk about "a little knowledge" ask him what he thinks about
the danger of a great deal of IGNORANCE. Tell him this:
"THE SCHOOLING OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ALL TOLD DID NOT AMOUNT TO AS
MUCH AS ONE YEAR."
The teaching was elementary, including reading, writing,
ciphering, and very little of each one. It was picked up at odd
times, when he could be spared from daily labor. Remember that
when he was a lad his father used to hire him out to work on
other men's farms for very little money.
With that little learning he built himself up into one of the
greatest men in history, saved the nation, ended once and for all
civilized recognition of slavery.
A little learning might possibly have been dangerous had he been
one of the idiotic kind of men. It might have made him feel
dissatisfied with the hard labor for which he was fit, without
stimulating him to better things.
But Lincoln's little learning gave him no rest--it kept him
constantly adding more learning to his little supply. ----
The self-pitying young man who thinks he has no chance may be
interested in Lincoln's methods of getting ahead. He walked
about twenty miles through the wilderness to borrow an English
grammar. He could get no other books, so he read and re-read the
statutes of Indiana. He wanted to teach himself to write well
and think closely. He had never heard Bacon's saying: "Writing
maketh an exact man," but he felt the truth of the fact for
himself, and he was bound to write. He had no paper and could
not afford to buy any.
At night, when his work was done, he would bend his huge
six-foot-four frame close down by the firelight to write and
cipher ON THE BACK OF A WOODEN SHOVEL.
When the back of the shovel was covered with writing he would
shave a thin layer from it and begin writing once more. ----
It is a very useful thing for men occasionally to feel ashamed of
themselves. If you want to feel ashamed of yourself, if you are
complaining and whining, just picture to yourself Abraham Lincoln
in his father's little hut, with no windows and no flooring,
crouching by the fire and developing his mind by laborious
writing on the back of a wooden shovel.
Children of twelve in schools, precocious little girls even of
seven or eight, know much more than Abraham Lincoln knew when he
was twenty-one years old.
With his "little knowledge" he grew and did the work that was to
improve the condition of millions of men.
Don't be ashamed of your "little knowledge."
But do be ashamed if you do not add to it whenever you can, and
especially if you fail to make it useful to your fellow-men.
KNOWLEDGE IS GROWTH
Consider to-day the CHEERFUL side of conditions on earth.
Every human being has his troubles and worries. The luckiest of
us all yearns for what cannot be had, and sees much to regret.
But one splendid fact should always be borne in mind: THE
PROGRESS OF HUMANITY IS INCESSANT. WE ARE INFINITELY BETTER OFF
NOW THAN WE HAVE BEEN BEFORE ON THIS EARTH, AND UNLIMITED
POSSIBILITIES OF IMPROVEMENT ARE AHEAD OF US.
The progress of humanity has been like that of an individual
climbing the paths of a steep mountain. At every turn there are
fresh dangers and difficulties to be overcome, fresh
complications for which the traveler is prepared only by his
courage and determination.
But every step takes the traveler higher up, out of the dark
valley, toward the light at the top, and every danger overcome
makes it easier to deal with the dangers to follow.
In its long fight the human race has encountered many enemies.
At one time in Europe one single epidemic destroyed half of
all the population. But we have struggled on; through science we
have almost conquered disease, and the plagues of the past are
unknown among us.
In olden times brutal superstition, disguised as religion,
dwarfed men's minds, punishing, with atrocious cruelty, the crime
of independent thought and apparently making impossible any
mental growth in the face of bigotry and monstrous persecutions.
But to-day bigotry begins to give place to true religion; the
burning alive and protracted torture which disgraced all the
religions of Europe until recently have ceased, probably forever.
Mankind in its travels has progressed as far as the stage of
independent thought. If a creature still lives that would take
the life of another because that other thinks differently from
himself he dares not confess his criminal thought.
A few centuries ago the great majority of all human beings were
slaves or serfs. The noblest of human brains, those of the Greek
philosophers, wrote and lived in the midst of slavery. Even as
great a man as Aristotle could not conceive a society based on a
non-slave-holding system.
But except in some African jungle, here and there among savage
and semi-savage races, no man is a slave now. And where slavery
does exist it exists in stagnant pools of humanity, and it exists
side by side with the other monsters, cruel superstition and
widespread disease, that progressive humanity has left behind.
----
Every century of which the history has been preserved shows us
its horrid side of life, its cruelties, its sufferings without
number. But each succeeding century shows also some one point
gained, some one hideous feature of life eliminated.
The enemy of the world to-day, the monster in the path of
progress, is organized greed, the insane desire of a few men to
take from others, and for themselves, what they do not need.
The trust, seeking through capital to reintroduce slavery under
another form, and to establish the tyranny of money in place of
the tyranny of swords and bullets, represents the present
problem.
This problem, like all the others, will be solved in its turn.
It will be found that the great danger did good as well as harm,
and that, on its overthrow, only good was left behind it.
The diseases that once destroyed men forced them to live a decent
life of cleanliness. Those diseases frightened human beings out
of filth into respect for themselves as the rulers of the world.
We owe the cleanness and decent temperate living of to-day, as
well as our knowledge of medical science, to the diseases that
formerly destroyed the people.
The hideous travesties called religion which relied for their
power on superstition, fire and sword appeared to block all
spiritual development among men. These religions have passed
away; only the vital, true religious principle is left--the
command laid upon men to feel toward each other as brothers, to
worship the ONE and benevolent power that rules the world.
A few years or centuries from now the trust problem will be
solved, and that particular monster will lie dead on its ledge of
rock back in the pages of history. And men will know that to the
great danger and brutality of to-day they owe much of their
progress and happiness.
When the trust goes commercial greed will go with it. It will
have killed the hideous theory of competition, with its swindling
of the public, its cutting of wages, its general mean, petty,
treacherous tradesmen's warfare. ----
Every human being should read history intelligently, if only for
the encouraging effect on the mind.
In every direction, and in spite of foolish croakers, the human
race has improved.
Good men and women deplore the drunkenness of to-day, and they do
right. But for their own satisfaction and encouragement they
should know that in comparison with former times the drunkenness
of to-day amounts to nothing.
Where one man drinks too much in these days, a thousand men and a
thousand women were frightfully drunk a few years ago.
Drunkenness, which formerly attacked the most useful of human
beings--doctors, statesmen, poets, the best mechanics--is
confined now to a feeble fragment of humanity made weak by
disease, hereditary influence, discouragement or imperfect
organization.
More important than this encouraging development is the changed
attitude of the public mind toward the drinking habit.
Twenty-five centuries ago a Greek philosopher, to make heaven
attractive, described the table at which heroes sat in a
never-ending, blissful state of drunkenness.
To-day even the meanest man is ashamed to have it known that he
is drunk, and the most hopeless drunkard would ask no greater
favor than that some one should make it impossible for him ever
to drink again.
There is a criminal conspiracy, called the Beef Trust, which
thrives on the needs and privations of the whole people. It is a
blot on humanity. Do what you can to destroy this evil. But do
not be made bitter by it. Your age is a happier one than others.
In France, not so long ago, human beings were punished for eating
the bodies of men that had died of the plague, and strict laws
were issued to stop that kind of cannibalism. The Beef Trust age
is an improvement on that age, is it not? High prices are
bad, but not as bad as hideous, widespread starvation. ----
Human selfishness and heartlessness are criticised to-day, and
the criticism is just. Yet, MORALLY, the human race has
improved more than in any other way.
We see to-day callous, heartless men spending millions upon their
personal pleasures, paving insufficiently the laborers whose work
enriches them, and robbing the public whose patience makes the
great fortunes possible.
But the worst plutocrat of to-day is an angel compared with the
mildly vicious men of olden times.
Your selfish man to-day only asks for a yacht and some race
horses, mild forms of dissipation. A thousand years ago the
vicious man demanded and exercised the power of life and death
over those who surrounded him, and his mildest fit of irritation
cost the life of some helpless human being.
Men are ill-paid to-day, but their condition is Paradise compared
to the slavery of their predecessors. ----
You should daily criticise yourself and others, and do what you
can in your little sphere as preacher, politician, editor or
private individual to help along humanity's progress.
But remember always for your encouragement that the world is
improving steadily. It never stands still; it never goes
backward. And there are no limits to our future improvement,
thanks to our inborn love of what is right and to the steady
influence of EDUCATION.
A WHISKEY BOTTLE
How should a whiskey drinker talk to his son? If he talked as he
feels he would hold up the flat, brown bottle and say:
"My boy, you know that I am a poor man and have nothing to leave
to you or your mother.
"The difference between myself and the successful men who have
passed me is this:
"I have gone through life with this bottle in my hand or in my
pocket. They have not."
A man comes into the world prepared to do his share of the
world's work, well or ill, as his brain and his physical strength
may decide. Of all his qualities the most important practically
is BALANCE.
The whiskey in that bottle destroys balance, mental and physical.
It substitutes dreaming and foolish self-confidence for real
effort.
It presents all of life's problems and duties in a false light.
It makes those things seem unimportant which are most important.
IT DULLS THE CONSCIENCE, WHICH ALONE CAN MAKE MEN DO THEIR DUTY
IN SPITE OF TEMPTATION, AND STRUGGLE ON TO SUCCESS IN SPITE OF
EXHAUSTION.
Keep away from this bottle, and keep away from those who praise
it. He who hands it to his fellow man is a criminal, and he
who hands it to a young man is a worse criminal and a villain.
----
It is a well-established fact that in the usual order of events
drunkenness would be handed down from father to son, and hundreds
of thousands of families would be ultimately wiped out by
whiskey.
It is not true, fortunately, that the son of a drunkard actually
inherits drunkenness fully developed. But a drunkard gives to
his son weakened nerves and a diminished will power, which tend
to make him a drunkard more easily than his father was made a
drunkard before him.
The great safeguard of a drunkard's children undoubtedly lies in
the warning which they see every day in their home and in the
earnest advice which the man who drinks will give to all young
people if he have any conscience left.
If the man who drinks would save his own children from the same
danger, he can do so better than any other. He need not lose
their respect by telling them of his own mistakes, if these
mistakes have been hidden from them. Let him simply tell them,
without personal reference, what he knows about whiskey, its
effects on a man's happiness, success, self-respect and physical
comfort.
Whiskey gives a great many things to men. Of these gifts here
are a few:
Lack of friends, lack of will, lack of self-respect, lack of
nervous force--lack of everything save the hideous craving that
can end only with unconsciousness, and that begins again with
increased suffering when consciousness is restored. ----
Fathers and mothers blessed with self-control and with good
children should use the picture of a drinking man as a useful,
moral lesson in talking to boys and girls from seven to twenty
years of age.
Children are impressed most easily through their imaginations.
An intelligent father or mother can produce upon a child's
receptive mind an impression that will last for years.
With the fear of whiskey there should be impressed upon children
sympathy and sorrow for the unfortunate drunkard.
One of the ablest men, and one of the most earnest in America,
said to his friends very recently:
"I never drink, as you know. But when I see a man lying drunk
in the gutter, I know that he has probably made that very day
a harder effort at self-control, a nobler struggle to control
himself, than I ever made in my life. He has yielded and fallen
at last, but only because all of his strength is insufficient to
overcome the disease that possesses him."
Teach your children that drunkenness is a horrible disease, as
bad as leprosy. Teach them that it can be avoided, that the
disease is contracted in youth through carelessness, and that it
is spread by those who encourage drinking in others. Tell them
that the avoiding of whiskey is not merely a question of morals
or obedience to parents, but a question involving mental and
physical salvation, success in life, happiness, and the respect
of others.
THOSE WHO LAUGH AT A DRUNKEN MAN
How often have you seen a drunken man stagger along the street!
His clothes are soiled from falling, his face is bruised, his
eyes are dull. Sometimes he curses the boys that tease him.
Sometimes he tries to smile, in a drunken effort to placate
pitiless, childish cruelty.
His body, worn out, can stand no more, and he mumbles that he is
GOING HOME.
The children persecute him, throw things at him, laugh at him,
running ahead of him.
GROWN MEN AND WOMEN, TOO, OFTEN LAUGH WITH THE CHILDREN, nudge
each other, and actually find humor in the sight of a human being
sunk below the lowest animal.
The sight of a drunken man going home should make every other man
and woman sad and sympathetic, and, horrible as the sight is, it
should be useful, by inspiring, in those who see it, a
determination to avoid and to help others avoid that man's fate.
----
That reeling drunkard is GOING HOME.
He is going home to children who are afraid of him, to a wife
whose life he has made miserable.
He is going home, taking with him the worst curse in the
world--to suffer bitter remorse himself after having inflicted
suffering on those whom he should protect.
AND AS HE GOES HOME MEN AND WOMEN, KNOWING WHAT THE HOME-COMING
MEANS, LAUGH AT HIM AND ENJOY THE SIGHT. ----
In the old days in the arena it occasionally happened that
brothers were set to fight each other. When they refused to
fight they were forced to it by red-hot irons applied to their
backs.
We have progressed beyond the moral condition of human beings
guilty of such brutality as that. But we cannot call ourselves
civilized while our imaginations and sympathies are so dull that
the reeling drunkard is thought an amusing spectacle.
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