common life, are as good as we-if not better. America has been made by such as they-men who were poor, ignorant, hard-working, but full of energy and hope. Our fathers were probably such as theyof another race and speech, perhaps, with other ideas and traditions behind them, but essentially the same in their belief in progress and democracy, in liberty and equality for all. The glory and hope of America lies in the fusion of races here going on; from that blending of types, if accelerated by mutual kindness and forbearance and understanding, there may spring a race, the American race of the future, with a destiny beyond that of any race the world has yet known.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Booker Washington, Up from Slavery.

W. E. B. Du Bois, Darkwater; The Souls of Black Folk.
P. L. Haworth, America in Ferment, Chap. V.
J. M. Mecklin, Democracy and Race Friction.
H. J. Seligmann, The Negro Faces America.
Stephen Graham, The Soul of John Brown.
H. M. F. H. Jackson, A Century of Dishonor.
Frances Kellor, Immigration and the Future.
H. G. Wells, The Future in America, Chap. IX.
Mary Antin, They Who Knock at Our Gates.

T. S. Adams and H. L. Sumner, Labor Problems, Chap. III.
Jenks and Lauck, The Immigration Problem.

H. P. Fairchild, Immigration.

E. A. Steiner, The Immigrant Tide; On the Trail of the Immigrant.

F. J. Warne, The Immigrant Invasion.

C. S. Cooper, American Ideals, Chap. VIII.

D. S. Lescohier, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 123, p. 483.

W. E. Weyl, in Harper's Magazine, vol. 129, p. 615. (Reprinted, abridged, in Fulton, op. cit., p. 47.)

CHAPTER X

EDUCATION FOR ALL

OF all the aspects of equality in America there is none in which we have taken more pride than in our universal free education. Our educational system is crude as yet, and only in the making. But America has always believed passionately in education. Our rich men have vied with one another in founding colleges and universities, poor men have sacrificed much that their children might have schooling. Nearly a century ago Cobden wrote, "The univer sality of education in the United States is probably more calculated than all other things to accelerate their progress towards a superior rank of civilization and power."

It has been said that the typical American phrase is, "I want to know!" Certainly the typical American does want to know, believes, indeed, in what a recent essayist has called "the moral obligation to be intelligent." He believes in the educability of common men, and in the importance for the common welfare that the common man be educated. Washington, in his Farewell Address, bade his countrymen promote, "as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened."

It is, indeed, true that the mistakes of democracy have always been due, essentially, to the ignorance of the people, the lack of a widespread enlightenment on political and social matters. The one source of fear for the Republic is the apprehension lest our people are not intelligent and well-informed enough to meet successfully the exigencies that may arise. The answer of America to these fears must be, "we will make the people intelligent and well-informed." The motto graven on the exterior of the Boston Public Library should be stamped upon our hearts: "The Commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty."

In purely financial terms, education pays. The boy who stays in school until he is eighteen has received, on the average, by the time he is twenty-five, two thousand dollars more than the boy who left school at fourteen, and is earning at twenty-five, nearly a thousand dollars a year more. From this age onward his salary is likely to rise still more rapidly, while that of the boy who left school at fourteen is likely to rise but little.

A similar ratio holds between community-earnings and the general education. Where education is longest and most widespread, there is industrial efficiency and national wealth. The backwardness of Russia, of Turkey, of Mexico is fundamentally due to lack of education. In our own country the productivity and wealth of our several States is in a pretty constant ratio to the amount of schooling of their inhabitants. For example, the average schooling given, some years ago, in Massachusetts was about seven years, and the average daily productiveness of the citizens of that State was eighty-five cents. For Tennessee in the same year the average schooling was

about three years and the average daily productiveness thirty-eight cents.

There is a certain tendency among our "self-made" men and their admirers to belittle the value of schooling. And we must admit that a boy of exceptional force has often, when favored by opportunity, made his way to wealth and eminence without the advantages of formal education. This was oftener possible, however, in the frontier and formative conditions of American life than it is now. More and more the successful man must be an expert, must depend upon exact knowledge rather than solely upon personal force and cleverness. A study of Who's Who in America reveals the fact that "out of the nearly 5,000,000 uneducated men and women in America, only 31 have been sufficiently successful in any kind of work to obtain a place among the 8,000 leaders catalogued in this book. Out of 33,000,000 people with as much as a common-school education, 808 were able to win a place in the list, while out of only 2,000,000 with high-school training, 1,245 have manifested this marked efficiency, and out of 1,000,000 with college or university training, 5,768 have merited this distinction." That is to say, a man with college education is eight hundred times as likely to become a notable factor in his country's life as an unschooled man.

We have spoken only of the more conspicuous fruits of education. They are such as to justify the words of Chancellor Kent: "A parent who sends his son into the world uneducated and without skill in any art or science does a great injury to mankind as well as to his own family; for he defrauds the community of a useful citizen and bequeaths to it a nuisance." Far the greater number of our paupers and prosti

tutes and criminals come from the ranks of the uneducated. Victor Hugo once said that every school that is opened causes a prison to be closed. A Sing Sing prisoner recently declared, "Most of the inmates of the prisons are there because they could not compete successfully with others. They did not know how to meet the conditions of free life."

But in addition to these social aspects of education, its value in enhancing the personal life should not be forgotten. Education gives interests, adds to our resources, helps us to an innocent and profitable use of our leisure. Nothing is more pathetic than the waste of leisure hours on the part of men and women who have never cultivated a taste for reading, for art or music, or any of the higher activities of the mind. "The educated man is one whose life is characterized by increasing richness, safety, and control." He is "at home in the world, has at least a part of it under his intelligent control, and has opened up to him new avenues of intellectual and emotional enjoyment."

He

The educated man is an intelligent consumer. is not the dupe of unscrupulous advertisers and dealers; he knows what is good from what is shoddy or inferior. He is safe from the wiles of quacks and charlatans-notoriously numerous in America. He is relatively free from superstition and prejudice. His life has range and variety and dignity.

It is important to emphasize this enrichment and safeguarding of the personal life that results from a liberal education, because there is a strain in American thought and character that looks upon "culture" as impractical and useless. We are, in general, of the "motor type"; our men are happiest "in the harness", and are apt to be lost and resourceless when on a va