THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM 3 



centage of the American people, but nevertheless was 

 an important factor in the evolution of the nation. 

 On the contrary, the public schools are for all classes 

 the children of all sorts and conditions of men. 

 The mingling of these children form one of the strong- 

 est ties that bind the American people together, but to 

 attempt to educate all the American children along 

 these academic lines, that is, that each grade pre- 

 pares a pupil for the next, and the next one school 

 for another and each school for still another, 

 neglecting the " Ninety and nine " to serve the one, 

 is not only futile, but a menace to democracy. Yet, 

 that seems to be the result, if not the purpose, of our 

 public school system as it is now conducted. 



That " man should eat his bread in the sweat of 

 his brow " applies to a very large percentage of the 

 human race, and I am not orthodox enough to believe 

 that it was meant as a curse. Next to a good mother, 

 I count my greatest earthly blessing that I was born 

 on a farm, " stranger alike to poverty and wealth/' 

 and with my hands labored there until I was twenty- 

 one years of age. 



As a large majority of all the children of the coun- 

 try must labor with their hands, it is a serious blunder 

 to ignore this fact in their education, and a still more 

 serious, if not a fatal, one to let their education be 

 such as to lead them away from manual labor. 



The public school being for all children, it should 

 respond to the needs of the average child. It is upon 

 the average citizen that the weal or woe of our country 

 depends. Hence, at whatever point the child's school 

 career be interrupted, whether at the end of the first, 



