34 CONSERVATION THROUGH ENGINEERING. 



as to human beings. And once given a foundation of health there is 

 no other course by which this policy may be effected than to place 

 at the command of every one the means of acquiring knowledge. The 

 whole people must turn in that direction. We should enable all, 

 without distinction, to have that training for which they are fitted by 

 their own natural endowment. Then we can draw out of hiding the 

 talents that have been hidden. The school will yet come to be the 

 first institution of our land, in acknowledged preeminence in the mak- 

 ing of Americans who understand why they are Americans and why 

 to be one is worth while. 1 



1 Assistant Secretary Herbert Kaufman before the Senate Committee on Education 

 presented facts and figures which accentuate the seriousness of the national situation. 

 Among other things he said : 



" The South leads in illiteracy, but the North leads in non-English speaking. Over 17 

 per cent of the persons in the east-south Central States hare nerer been, to school. 

 Approximately 16 per cent of the people of Passaic, N. J., must deal with their fellow 

 workers and employers through interpreters. And 13 per cent of the folk in Lawrence 

 and Fall Hirer, Mass., are utter strangers in a strange land. 



" The extent to which our industries are dependent upon this labor is perilous to all 

 standards of efficiency. Their ignorance not only retards production and confuses admin- 

 istration, but constantly piles up a junk heap of broken humans and damaged machines 

 which cost the Nation incalculably. 



" It is our duty to interpret America to all potential Americans in terms of protection 

 as well as of opportunity ; and neither the opportunities of this continent nor that 

 humanity which is the genius of American democracy can be rendered intelligible to 

 these 8,000,000 until they can talk and read and write our language. 



" Steel and iron manufacturers employ 58 per cent of foreign-born helpers ; the 

 slaughtering and meat-packing trades, 61 per cent ; bituminous- coal mining, 62 per cent ; 

 the silk and dye trade, 34 per cent ; glass-making enterprises, 38 per cent ; woolen mills, 

 62 per cent ; cotton factories, 69 per cent ; the clothing business, 72 per cent ; boot and 

 shoe manufacturers, 27 per cent ; leather tanners, 57 per cent ; furniture factories, 59 

 per cent ; glove manufacturers, 33 per cent ; cigar and tobacco trades, 33 per cent ; oil 

 refiners, 67 per cent ; and sugar refiners, 85 per cent. 



"You will agree with me that future security compels attention to such concentra- 

 tions of unread, unsocialized masses thus conveniently and perilously grouped for 

 misguidance. 



" They lire in America, but America does not live in them. How can all be ' free and 

 equal ' until they hare free access to the same sources of self-kelp and an equal chance 

 to secure them? 



" Illiteracy is a pick-and-shovel estate, a life sentence to mentality. Democracy may 

 not have fixed classes and survive. The first duty of Congress is to preserve opportunity 

 for the whole people, and opportunity can not exist where there is no means of in- 

 formation. 



" It is a shabby economy, an ungrateful economy that withholds funds for their 

 betterment. The fields of France cry shame upon those who are content to abandon 

 them to their handicap. 



" The loyal service of immigrant soldiers and sailors commit us to instruct and 

 nationalize their brothers in breed. 



" The spirit in which these United States were conceived insists that the Republic 

 remove the cruel disadvantage under which so many native boras despairingly carry on. 



" How may they reason soundly or plan sagely ? The man who knows nothing of 

 the past can find little in the future. The less he has gleaned from 'human experience 

 the more he may be expected to duplicate its signal errors. No argument is too ridiculous 

 for acceptance; no sophistry can seem far-fetched to a person without the sense to 

 confound it. 



" Anarchy shall never want fer mobs while the uninformed are left at the mercy 

 of false prophets. Those who have no way to estimate the worth of America are 

 unlikely to value its institutions fairly. Blind to facts, the Wildest one-eyed argument 

 can sway them. 



" Not until we can teach our illiterate millions the truths about the land to which 

 they have come and in which they were born shall its spirit reach them not until 

 they can read cau we set them right and empower them to inherit their estate. 



