STATE POMOEOGICAL SOCIETY. 21 



but I am going to say to you tonight, my friends, that there 

 are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of boys coming up 

 in our State who are interested in material things, who are 

 going to enter into the great productive industries, and it is 

 the business of our school system to adapt itself to the needs 

 of these boys and girls, so that the boy who has a trend toward 

 electricity, or toward farming, or toward any other of those 

 interests which engage the attention of our people will have a 

 chance to discover that and will not by and by find himself 

 stranded in some profession that is already overcrowded. 



We reaHze, I think, better than we used to, that we are not 

 going to need a large number of presidents, we are not going 

 to need a large number of statesmen, but we are going to need 

 millions and millions and millions of every day people to do 

 the every day work of an every day world. And the thing 

 which I want our school system here in Maine to do is to show 

 these boys and girls that there is an honorable work to be done 

 outside of the so-called learned professions. We realize that 

 the great majority, more than ninety per cent of our people, 

 are to be engaged in the handling of material things; they are 

 to work in our mills and factories, on our farms, and I believe, 

 my friends, that we ought not to have a system of education 

 that shall all the time be saying to our boys and girls, "Get off 

 the farm, get out of the shop, get out of the mill, get out of 

 the factory, shun hard work." No. We want a system of 

 education which will point out to those boys and those girls 

 that the object of getting an education is not to avoid the 

 necessity of work. The object of an education is to enable 

 one to find his work and to do that work in the best possible 

 way after it has been found. It has been very well pointed 

 out here tonight by the Governor of our State, that this State 

 of ours has met with great losses in men and women. I don't 

 like to think of the responsibility that may rest upon our schools 

 for this state of affairs. I don't like to think that may be our 

 schools here in Maine have been saying to boys and girls, "Get 

 an education that will fit you for a profession, get an educa- 

 tion that will enable you to keep a starched collar position and 

 avoid the kind of hard work that your fathers have had to do." 

 We often have a great deal to say about the crops of our State. 

 I have heard the saying, and so have you, that other states 



