i66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 mis- 

 ery 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 educa- 

 tion 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 difiQculties, 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 



