SUMMER MEETING. 97 



those of Lincoln than they are now, greater now than when these 

 young raen and women reach my age, and I am far from being old. 



If you wish to see what we are coming to in this country, cast 

 your eye upon Europe. There the competition is so great, opportunity 

 is so small that men cannot get to the front at ail without superior 

 natural abilities and without superior education. It takes superior 

 ability magnificently educated to get to the top. So it will be here be- 

 fore any of these younger ones reach the age of three score years and 

 len. There are men to-day in prominent positions who could not reach 

 the same prominence twenty years hence with their present equip- 

 ment. 



It seems to me that as our State moves forward in material pro- 

 gress, that the demand for education is going to become greater and 

 greater ; fathers should remember that their sons will have a harder 

 struggle for success than they have had, and every father, it seems to 

 me, should strive to give his son that advantage which comes through 

 education. President Wing, of Cleveland, who hasn't a great deal to 

 do, as I have, and hence has time to work up all sorts of statistics for 

 others who are busy men to use, has calculated that of all the college 

 graduates in this country, from the earliest statesman down to the 

 present day, including foot ball enthusiasts and spider-legged dudes, 

 that one out of every forty has reached such prominence as to have a 

 sketch of his life put in Appleton's Encyclopaedia of American Bio- 

 graphy, whereas in all the other men of this present century, from the 

 earliest statesman to the present time, but one out of ten thousand has 

 reached such prominence. 



I have used figures, and they are correct, but should you throw 

 them away and say that one in four hundred, instead of one in forty, 

 and for those who havn't been been in college, say one in .four thou- 

 sand, instead of ten thousand, and still the figures show that college 

 education does pay ; it secures to the young reasonable prominence, 

 modest wealth, usefulness and character in life. There never was a 

 time in the history of our country when the need was greater than it 

 is to today for really strongly educated men. It cannot be denied that 

 more than half, at least half, of the wealth of our country, is possessed 

 by less than one thousand men. Sneer who may, for I know some 

 would sneer at such a statement, but it cannot be denied that the 

 rich are growing relatively richer and the poor are growing relatively 

 poorer, and that is a statement that no sneer will dismiss, and if pres- 

 ent tendencies are not suppressed, it will be worse twenty years from 

 now than it is today. It can not be denied that the pools, trusts and 



H--7 



