of our national prosperity, the future prosperity of Ameri- 

 ca depends absolutely upon the application of science and edu- 

 cation to industry. For three full centuries America has lived 

 upon the spoils of conquest and inherited wealth and resources, 

 and for three full centuries America has wasted her substance 

 or scattered it abroad. But even among nations there is a 

 limit to inherited wealth. The land which flowed with milk 

 and honey is now almost a barren waste, supporting only wan- 

 dering bands of marauding Arabs and villages of beggars. 



Truly the two most characteristic attributes of rich young 

 America are wastefulness and bigotry. Other nations have 

 risen to positions of world-power and influence and fallen 

 again to poverty, ignorance, and insignificance. Thus far 

 American history has been in large part a repetition of the 

 history of nations long since gone to decay. 



Following the rise and fall of the great empires of Babylon, 

 of Carthaginia, and "of Greece, the Roman Empire also rose and 

 fell. From what cause? Some tell us that the fall of those 

 great empires was due to the development of pride and im- 

 morality among their peoples, forgetting the fact that civi- 

 lization tends rather toward peace and security, and that uni- 

 versal education depends and must depend upon material pros- 

 perity. Poverty is at once helpless and soon ignorant. 



History tells us that Roman agriculture declined until a 

 bushel of seed brought only four bushels in the harvest, 

 declined until the high civilization of the Mediterranean 

 countries passed into the Dark Ages which covered the face 

 of the earth for a thousand years, until the discovery of a New 

 World brought new supplies of food, renewed prosperity, and 

 new life and light to Western Europe; but the Dark Ages still 

 exist for most of your own Aryan race in Russia and in India, 

 where, as an average, day by day, and year by year, more peo- 

 ple are hungry llian live in the United States, where the average 

 wage of a man is fifty cents a month, where famine rages always, 

 and where the price of wheat sometimes rises to a ])oint where 

 six months' wages of a working man are required to buy one 

 bushel. This is the condition where the absolute needs of the- 



