THE NEED OF EDUCATED MEN. 165 



the days of cotton and corn prosperity. We are told that our 

 whole industrial system, and the civilization of which it forms a 

 part, must be torn up by the roots and cast away. We are told 

 that the days of self-control and self-sufficiency are over, and that 

 the people of this nation are really typified by the lawless bands 

 rushing blindly hither and thither, clamoring for laws by which 

 those men may be made rich whom all previous laws of God and. 

 man have ordained to be poor. 



In these times it is well for us to remember that we come of 

 hardy stock. The Anglo-Saxon race, with its strength and vir- 

 tues, was born of hard times. It is not easily kept down ; the 

 victims of oppression must be of some other stock- We, who 

 live in America and who constitute the heart of this republic, are 

 the sons and daughters of "him that overcometh." Ours is a 

 lineage untainted by luxury, uncoddled by charity, uncorroded 

 by vice, uncrushed by oppression. If it were not so we could not 

 be here to-day. 



When this nation was born, the days of the government of 

 royalty and aristocracy were fast drawing to a close. Hereditary 

 idleness had steadily done its work, and the scepter was already 

 falling from nerveless hands. God said : " I am tired of kings ; I 

 suffer them no more." And when the kings had slipped from 

 their tottering thrones, as there was no one else to rule, the scep- 

 ter fell into the hands of the common man. It fell into our hands, 

 ours of this passing generation, and from us it will pass on into 

 yours. We are the common man, and you are his heir apparent. 

 You are here to make ready for your coronation, to learn those 

 maxims of government, those laws of human nature, without 

 which all administrations must fail ; ignorance of which is always 

 punishable by death. If you are to hold this scepter, you must be 

 wiser and stronger than the kings, else you too shall lose the scep- 

 ter as they have lost it, and your dynasty shall pass away. 



For more than a century now the common man has ruled 

 America. How has he used his power ? What does history tell 

 us of that the common man has done ? It is too soon to answer 

 these questions. A hundred years is a time too short for the test 

 of such gigantic experiments. Here in America we have made 

 history already, some of it glorious, some of it ignoble ; much of 

 it made of the old stories told over again. We have learned some 

 things that we did not expect to learn. We find that the social 

 problems of Europe can not be kept away from us by the quaran- 

 tine of democracy. We find that the dead which the dead past 

 can not bury are thrown up on our shores. We find that weak- 

 ness, misery, and crime are still with us, and that wherever weak- 

 ness is there is tyranny also. The essence of tyranny we have 

 found lies not in the strength of the strong, but in the weakness 



VOL. XLTI. 13 



