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through graft, special privilege and corrupt legislation. No one 

 can deny that this evil bites down to the very heart of our form 

 of government, because it takes power away from the small free- 

 holder of land. No one can deny that we men of middle age and 

 older have let this thing get past us, while we neglected the real 

 duties of citizenship. No one can deny that in some way we have, 

 up to this year, somehow found ourselves unable to make our young 

 men see as we did just what was coming. The last campaign for 

 the first time in forty years put a real moral issue into public life. 

 That was essentially what it meant, and the response to it justifies 

 what I have claimed about the need of a sentiment in public life. 

 We know that the future of this country, all we have and all that 

 we cherish, lies in the hands of children and younger men and 

 women. Some of you who are rich and think you are great, may 

 say that the future of Pennsylvania lies in the great vaults of 

 Philadelphia, in the great iron foundries of Pittsburgh, in your coal 

 mines, or even in the orchards on your hillsides. You are wrong. 

 It lies in the hands of little children who are playing to-day on 

 your streets or on your farm, and the childhood which these chil- 

 dren enjoy will determine the future of your republic. For they 

 are the nation, and put into a sentence, the supreme duty of grown 

 up men and women is to see that every child has the God given 

 right to a fair childhood, and that every young man and every 

 young woman has the God given right to labor with self-respect and 

 independence. The first great duty of citizenship therefore is one 

 of understanding. My friend the old soldier said he could not 

 make the next generation following him understand. Let us fairly 

 comprehend w^hy. 



Emerson remains the great American philosopher, because 

 he fired many short sentences at the truth, and usually hit the bull's 

 eye. He puts our thought into a few words. ''Manual labor is the 

 study of the external world. The advantage of riches remains with 

 him who procured them, and not with the heirf' When a man 

 starts with nothing and obtains a competence, he becomes uncon- 

 sciously the master of it. The property may be money, land, exper- 

 ience or reputation, but the man who acquires it knows the value 

 of every dollar or every atom of it, because he has weighed and 

 sampled it drop by drop of his blood and sweat. And thus it be- 

 comes his slave, but when he turns it over to his untrained son, 

 what was the slave of the father becomes the master of the boy. 

 The problem for each generation as one follows another along the 

 avenue of the years is this old problem of taking the slave of the 

 father as a master, conquering it by character and toil, and making 

 it in turn a slave. That is the whole story of historical development. 

 As I read old history, it seems to me one long, monotonous record 

 of building up great cities which prospered for a time only to be 

 pulled down when finally the time came when the son was unable to 

 conquer and dominate the slave of his father. Rome, Carthage, 

 Athens, all rose to power over the dead body of that thing which 



