44 



DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



good carpenter, the good blacksmith, the good mechanic, the good farmer, 

 really do fill the most important positions in our land, and that it is an 

 evil thing for them and for the nation to have their sons and daughters 

 forsake the work which, if well and efficiently performed, means more than 

 any other work for our people as a whole. One thing that I would like to 

 have you teach your pupils is that whether you call the money gained salary 

 or wages does not make any real difference, and that if by working hard 

 with your hands you get more than if you work with your head only, it 

 does not atone for it to call the smaller amount salary. 



"I would not have you preach an impossible ideal; for if you preach an 

 ideal that is impossible you tend to make your pupils believe that no ideals 

 are possible and, therefore, you tend to do them the worst of wrongs — to 

 teach them to divorce preaching from practice, to divorce the ideal that 

 they in the abstract admire from the practical good after which they 

 strive. Teach the boy and girl that their business is to earn their own 

 livelihood. Teach the boy that he is to be the homemaker; the girl that 

 she must ultimately be the homekeeper; that the work of the father is to 

 be the bread winner, and that of the mother the housekeeper; that their 

 work is the most important work by far in all the land; that the work of 

 the statesman, the writer, the captain of industry and all the rest is con- 

 ditioned first upon the work that finds its expression in the family, that 

 supports the family. So teach the boy that he is expected to earn his own 

 livelihood; that it is a shame and a scandal for him not to be self-depend- 

 ent, not to be able to hold his own in the rough work of actual life; teach 

 the girl that so far from its being her duty to try to avoid all labor, ail 

 effort, it should be a matter of pride to her to be as good a housewife 

 as her mother was before her." 



From the beginning we have had two schools in our educational sys- 

 tem just as we have had in our political system — the School of Conser- 

 vatism and the School of Innovation. Emerson tells us that these two 

 schools which divide the state are very old, and have disputed the posses- 

 sion of the world ever since it was made; that this quarrel is the subject 

 of civil history; that it agitates every man's bosom with opposing ad- 

 vantages every hour; that it may be safely affirmed of these two metaphy- 

 sical antagonists, that each is a good half, but an impossible whole; and 

 that each exposes the other, but, in a true society, in a true man, in true 

 progress, both must combine. 



There are still some good people who think that any kind of manual 

 labor is degrading; who by some kind of false logic have convinced them- 

 selves that selling farm and garden products is much more dignified em- 

 ployment than growing them, or that standing behind a counter measuring 

 off tape and calico is more refined and elevated work than standing behind 

 a loom weaving them. According to Horace Mann it is every way creditable 

 to handle the yardstick and measure tape; the only discredit comes in 

 having a soul whose range of thought is as short as the stick and as 

 narrow as the tape, and the Carnegie Survey, of Vermont, was right when 

 it said that there was something radically wrong in a school system in an 



