It was during the panic in 1894 that the strike vote was defeated. We
worked on until the first of July, 1896, when our agreement expired.
By that time the tin mill was on its feet. The town of Elwood had grown
from a country cross-roads to a city of the first class. As president
of the union, I had steadily gained concessions for the workers. We were
getting paid every two weeks. It is not practical to pay oftener in the
tin trade. A man's work has to be measured and weighed, and the plate he
rolls on Saturday can not be cut and measured in time for him to get
his pay for it that week. For the pay envelope is handed to him Saturday
noon, and his Saturday's rolling will not go through the cutter until
Monday. He can not be paid for it until it is in shape to be measured.
So we were satisfied to be paid twice a month.
But the mill was now making big profits and we demanded a raise in pay.
The mill owners countered by refusing to “recognize” the union. They
would deal with the men only as individuals. A strike was called, and
the union won. We recovered our raise in pay and signed a new contract.
The strike was off in September after two long months of idleness, and
within a few days after the dust had settled we smelt the fireworks of
political oratory. I am telling it now as it appeared to me then, and of
course I beg the indulgence of those concerned.
Bryan, the bearcat of the Nebraska ranches, had roared with his ears
back, and the land was in a tumult. “Coin's Financial School” had
already taught the people that the “gold-bugs” owned the country and
that the people could save themselves from eternal serfdom only by
changing the color of their money. Bryan told the westerners that the
East was the “enemy's country” and that the gold standard was a game by
which the East was robbing the West, and the only way the people of
the West could save themselves was to move East and clip bonds or else
change the color of the money!
This is the way it looked to me as a working man, and I hope my good
friend Bryan will pardon me for writing of his “great paramount issue”
in a joking way. For after all it was a joke, a harmless joke--because
we didn't adopt it. I got excited by the threatened “remedy” and went
into politics. While the tin trade was on strike, crazy propagandists
from everywhere poured into Elwood and began teaching the men
bi-metalism, communism, bolshevism and anarchy. A communist propagandist
is like a disease germ; he doesn't belong in healthy bodies. If he gets
in he can't increase and is soon thrown out again. But let a strike
weaken the body of workers, and the germs swarm in and start their
scarlet fever.
As soon as the strike was won, I threw myself into the task of
combatting the rising tide of class hatred led by Bryan, representing
agrarians in a fight against bankers and industrialists. I was chairman
of the mill workers' Sound Money Club. Bryan was running for president
on a platform declaring that the laboring man should “not be crucified
upon a cross of gold.” No laboring man wanted to be. I was on the same
side of the fence with Bryan when it came to the crucifixion question,
but on the opposite side of the fence regarding the gold question. Of
course I knew little about finance, and could not answer the Nebraskan.
But had he advocated the free and unlimited coinage of pig-iron I could
have talked him into a gasping hysteria. For, we mill fellows figured
that this was exactly what Bryan's money theory amounted to. His farmer
friends had borrowed gold money from the bankers, spent it in drought
years plowing land that produced nothing, and then found themselves
unable to pay it back. They wanted to call silver and paper cash and pay
the debt with this new kind of money. He wanted a money system by which
a farmer could borrow money to put in his crop, then having failed to
raise a crop (I have mentioned the great drought years) could yet pay
back the money. But no farming nation can suffer great crop losses
without being set back financially and starved to where it hurts. You've
got to figure God's laws into your human calculations.
“Bryan might as well try to dodge the hungry days by advocating the free
and unlimited coinage of tomato cans,” is the way one of the fellows
put it; “then every man could borrow a dollar and buy a can of tomatoes.
After eating the tomatoes he could coin the can into a dollar and buy
another can of tomatoes. And so on until he got too old to eat, and
then he could use the last dollar from the tin can in paying back the
banker.” Schemes like that are all right for orators and agitators who
make their living with words. But farmers and iron workers know what it
is that turns clods into corn and what makes the iron wheels that bear
it to market. It is muscle applied with the favor of God.
Without labor, no crops. Without rain, no crops. It was world-wide crop
failures that finally brought the lean years of the nineties. The
return of big crops was already reviving the sick world. It rejected the
radicals' “remedy” and next year it was well. Had we taken that wrong
medicine in the dark it would have killed us. Thirty years later Russia
let them shoot that medicine into her arm and it paralyzed her. The
rain falls upon her fields and the soil is rich, but it brings forth no
harvest and the people starve.
Russia has had famines before, but they were acts of God. The rain
failed and there was no harvest. Their present famine is an act of man.
Labor ceased. And the ensuing hunger was man's own fault. Nations that
think labor is a curse, and adopt schemes to avoid labor, must perish
for their folly.
In 1896 we came within an inch of adopting financial bolshevism. This
taught me that a people are poorly schooled who can not tell the good
from the bad. The wise heads knew what was good for the country. Hard
work and good crops would cure our ills. But millions voted for a poison
that would have destroyed us. From that time on I dreamed of a new kind
of school, not the kind we had that turned out men to grope blindly
between good and folly. But a school based on the fundamental facts of
life and labor, the need of food and housing, and the sweating skill
that brings man most of his blessings. A school from which no man could
come out ignorant. That school should teach the eternal facts, and he
that denied the facts would then be known for a fool or a rogue--and not
be thought a Messiah.
I love sentiment, and I believe in God. And I believe that facts are
God's glorious handiwork. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will
set you free.” The man who shuns realities because they belittle him is
on the wrong road; he is hopelessly lost from the beginning.
CHAPTER XXX VIII. THE EDITOR GETS MY GOAT
Madison county, Indiana, was a Democratic stronghold outside the mill
towns, and a few farming townships. Free silver orators were telling
the farmers that under a gold standard no factory could run. The farmers
could see the smoke of the tin mills which had built a great city just
beyond their corn-fields. The silver men explained that smoke as “a
dummy factory set up by Mark Hanna with Wall Street money to make a
smoke and fool the people into thinking that it was a real factory and
that industry was reviving under a Republican tariff.” The orators
said the best proof that it was a sham mill lay in the fact that the
plutocrats claimed it was a tin mill, while “everybody knows it is
impossible to manufacture tin plate in America.”
My method of getting votes for the tariff was to take young Democrats
from the mill and transport them to Democratic rallies in the far corner
of the county where they heard their Democratic orators saying that the
mill was a sham put up to fool voters and that it was not manufacturing
any tin. When the young Democrats heard such rot they turned against
their party. They were farm boys who had been brought up in that county
and had quit the farm and gone into the tin mill because they could
earn twice as much making tin as they could farming. A worker at work
is hard-headed enough to know that when an orator tells him he is not
working and not earning any money, the orator is an ass. These lies
about fake factories hurt the Democrats by turning all the mill
Democrats into Republicans. This is the only method I have ever used in
campaigning. The Republicans carried the town. When, two years later,
I ran for city clerk, they passed around the rumor that I was a wild
Welshman from a land where the tribes lived in caves and wore leather
skirts and wooden shoes, and that I had had my first introduction to a
pants-wearing people when I came to America. They said that I had not
yet learned to speak English, could not spell my own name, and was
unable to count above ten.
These charges printed in the opposition paper offered me my only chance
for election. I went to all my meetings with a big slate. I asked my
audience to call out numbers. I wrote down the figures and then did sums
in arithmetic to prove that I could count. I would ask if there was a
school-teacher in the audience (there was always one there). He would
rise, and I would ask him to verify my calculations. I would also have
him ask me to spell words. He would give me such words as “combustion,”
“garbage disposal,” “bonded indebtedness” and so on. I would spell the
words and write them on the slate. He would then ask me questions in
history, geography and political economy. Then the school-teacher would
turn to the crowd and say:
“Friends, I came to this meeting because I had read that Mr. Davis is an
ignorant foreigner unfitted for the duties of city clerk. I find to
my surprise that he is well informed. I am glad we came here and
investigated, for we can all rest assured that if he is elected to the
office, he is entirely capable of filling it.”
I handled the money and kept the books for the union, and this work in
addition to my campaign efforts wore me down at last. Two nights before
the election I decided that I had small chance of winning. I was on the
Republican ticket, and the Republicans had been in office four years
and their administration had proved unfortunate. There had been rich
pickings for contractors in that new and overgrown city, and the people
blamed the Republicans and were determined on a change.
I was passing the office of the opposition editor late at night after
canvassing for votes all day. I thought of the nasty slurs he had
written about me and my whole ancestry. I had fought hard to educate
myself and had been helpful to others. My self-respect revolted under
this editor's malicious goading. I happened to see him in his front
office, and on a sudden impulse, I went in, took hold of his collar, and
gave him a good licking.
The next day he bawled me out worse than ever. He said I was not only
a wild Welshman and a blockhead, but what is more deadly still, I was a
gorilla and an assassin.
And the next day I was elected.
CHAPTER XXXIX. PUTTING JAZZ INTO THE CAMPAIGN
I will go back and relate more details of my race for office. Having won
the nomination, I thrilled with pleasure and excitement, but I was at
a loss as to how to begin my campaign for election. Should I hope for
support among the white-collar classes in the “swell” end of town, among
the merchants and mill owners or only in the quarter where the workers
lived?
The first act of a candidate is to have cards printed and pass them out
to every one he meets. My cards bore my name and my slogan: “Play the
game square.” I argued that the workers should take part in the city
government. I quit the tin mill and went around making speeches. And as
there were no movies, and the men had nothing to do evenings but listen
to speeches, it was no trouble at all to find an audience. I learned
that a politician or an orator has the same appetite for audiences that
a drunkard has for gin. When is an orator not an orator? When he hasn't
got an audience. I found that when a horse fell down on the street and
a crowd gathered to pick it up, somebody began “addressing the gathering
on the issues of the day.”
Now I know why the cranks from everywhere swarm into any region where a
strike is on. They are seeking audiences. They have no love for humanity
except that portion of humanity which is forced to be an audience for
their itching tongues. I have known rich Jawbone Janes to travel half
across the continent to harangue a poor bunch of striking hunyaks. These
daughters of luxury wanted one luxury that money could not buy. The
luxury of chinning their drivel to an audience. You can't buy audiences
as you buy orchids and furs. Accidents make audiences. When a horse
falls down and a crowd gathers, he'll be up again and the crowd gone
before a girl from Riverside Drive can come a hundred miles in a
Pullman. But when the job falls down, the strike crowd sticks together
for days. This gives the crack-brained lady opportunity to catch the
Transcontinental limited and get there in time to pound their ears
with her oratory. She prefers a foreign crowd that can not understand
English; they are slower to balk on her. Not understanding what she
says, it fails to irritate them greatly. I know of one radical rich girl
who boasts she has spread the glad tidings to audiences of thousands
representing every foreign language in America. She still hopes some
time to catch an audience that understands her own language. That would
be a little better fun, she thinks; but still the joy of talking is the
main thing, so it matters little whether their audience understands. She
wants her audiences to be alive, that's all; she doesn't care much what
they're alive with.
When the worker comes to understand that these “leaders” from high
society care nothing for him but only want a prominence for themselves
and have no natural talents with which to earn that prominence, then
the worker will get rid of that tribe forever. Bill Haywood lacked the
qualities that made Sam Gompers a labor leader. Bill decided to be a
leader without qualifying for it, and history tells the rest.
I circulated among the audiences that were listening to other candidates
and waited for the men to express their opinions. I heard one stalwart
old fellow declare he was going to vote for Jazz. “Jazz is the fellow we
want for City Clerk,” I heard him tell his comrades. I had never heard
of Jazz in those days: Jazz was decidedly a dark horse. But the man was
strong for him and wanted his friends to vote the same way.
There is a trick that was often used in small-town elections. When the
“reform element” made a fight on the “old gang” it was customary for the
gang to lie down and place the name of the new man on the ticket. The
reformer thought the gang beaten and that his own election was sure, so
he didn't make a hard campaign. But the gang quietly passed around word
to scratch the name of the reformer and to write in the name of a gang
candidate in the secrecy of the polling booth.
Was this trick being played on me? Were they now passing around the word
to scratch me and write in the name of their friend, Jazz, who had not
come out as a candidate before? I edged in closer to the man who was
boosting Mr. Jazz for my job, and after listening for a while I learned
that “Jazz Davis” was the man he was electioneering for. He caught sight
of my face and said: “There he is now.”
“My name isn't Jazz,” I said. I handed him my card. It read:
JAS. J. DAVIS
“What is it then?” he asked.
I saw that I would lose a vote if I humiliated him. So I laughed and
said: “Yep, I'm him. I was just kidding. I'm mighty glad to have your
support. Have a cigar.”
But I went away worried. My personal friends knew me as Jimmy. The
men electioneered and handed cards to thought my name was Jazz. On the
ballot my name would appear JAMES. Between “Jimmy,” “Jim,” “James” and
“Jazz” my fellows would find lots of room for confusion. Every vote that
I lost on that account would be due to my own carelessness.
It taught me the lesson of exactness. I never again put out any puzzling
language, but tried to stick to words that could not be misunderstood.
CHAPTER XL
FATHER TOOK ME SERIOUSLY
There was an interval of nearly five months between the time of my
election, which was in May, and the date of taking office in September.
I decided to use this time to improve my qualifications for the job. I
returned to the old home town of Sharon and took a course in a business
college. Again I walked the old familiar paths where as a boy I had
roamed the woods, fished the streams, brought the cows along the dusty
road from pasture and blacked the boots of the traveling dudes at the
hotel.
There is a great thrill for the young man who comes home with a heart
beating high with triumph, to see the love and admiration in his
parents' eyes. Father shook my hand and said. “You're a good boy, Jimmy,
and I'm proud of you. I always knew you'd make your mark.”
“I haven't made much of a mark, dad,” I laughed. “City clerk isn't much.
County recorder is what I'm aiming for.” In fact, I had gone so far as
to dream of being auditor of the state of Indiana.
A jolly old uncle who was there and who was looked on as the sage and
wit of the Welsh settlement, began kidding me.
“From city clerk to county recorder is only a step, Jimmy,” he said.
“Next you'll be governor, and then president.”
Father took it seriously.
“You'll never be president, lad,” he said, “because you wasn't born in
this country.” He seemed to think that was the only reason. He turned
to my uncle and explained regretfully: “Of all my boys, only one has
got the full American birthright. My youngest boy, Will, is the only one
that can be president.”
“Well,” said the jolly old uncle, “the rest of 'em can be government
officers.”
Even this joke father took as a sober possibility. I saw then the full
reason why he came to America. He wanted to give his boys boundless
opportunities. A humble man himself, he had made all his sacrifices to
broaden the chances for his children. This was a lesson to me. I could
not repay him. I could only resolve to follow his example, to stand for
a square deal for children everywhere.
Mother was as pleased with my humble success as was father. When I sat
down to the table she apologized for her cooking and said:
“After the fine food you have been eating in the big hotels, you will
find our table pretty common.”
“You're wrong, mother,” I said. “The best food I ever had I got right
here at your table. You've never lived in boarding-houses, but father
has. He knows that it's a rough life, and they don't feed you on
delicacies. Hotel cookery is not like the cookery in the Old World. Over
there they make each dish as tasty as they can, and good eating is
one of the main objects in life. But Americans don't like to eat. They
begrudge the time they have to spend at the table. They get it over
as soon as they can. They seem to take it like medicine; the worse the
medicine tastes, the better it is for them. An egg is something that is
pretty hard to spoil in the cooking. Yet some of these boarding-house
cooks are such masters of the art that they can fix up a plate of steak,
eggs and potatoes and make them all as tasteless as a chip of wood. I've
had this kind of fare for the last few years, and getting back to your
table is the best part of home-coming.”
Father was still a puddler, and to show my appreciation of all he had
done for me, I went into the mill every afternoon that summer and worked
a heat or two for him while he went home and rested in the shade.
The workout did me good. It kept my body vigorous and cleared my brain
so that my studies were easy for me, and I advanced with my education
faster than ever before.
This proved to me that schooling should combine the book stuff with the
shop work. Instead of interfering with each other, they help each other.
The hand work makes the books seem more enjoyable.
CHAPTER XLI. A PAVING CONTRACTOR PUTS ME ON THE PAVING
I was the only Republican elected that year. But for this exception the
Democrats would have made a clean sweep of the city. If the editor had
not charged me with being illiterate I would neither have been nominated
nor elected. When I appeared before audiences in the “swell end” of town
and wrote my lessons on my little slate, I gained their sympathy. They
believed in fair play. And I found I had not lost their support by
thrashing the editor.
Nearly all of the mill workers in Elwood voted for me. I supposed that
I had made many personal enemies among the men by refusing to take their
grievances up with the bosses when I thought the men were wrong. But the
election proved they were my friends after all. The confidence of my
own fellows pleased me greatly. Later on, the men as a further token of
their good will clubbed together and gave me a gold watch. This gave me
greater joy, no doubt, than Napoleon felt when, with his own hand, he
placed a gold crown upon his head.
When it came time to qualify and be sworn into office I found trouble.
The Republican boss was disgruntled because only one Republican was
elected while the Democrats got everything else. He wanted me to give up
the office. “Let the tail go with the hide,” he said. “Let 'em have it
all.” His idea was to give the Democrats a closed family circle, so that
when temptation came along, they would feel safe in falling for it. He
feared that a Republican in the house to watch them would scare them
away from the bait. He wanted them to take bribes and be ruined by the
scandal, and that would bring the Republicans back to power. It was a
good enough way to “turn the rogues out” by first letting them become
rogues, but my heart was not set on party success only. I believed in
protecting the public. So I went ahead and got bondsmen to qualify me.
But as often as I got men to sign my bond, the boss went them and got
them off again. A firm of lawyers, Greenlee & Call, stood by me in my
struggle to make my bond. These men were ten years older than I. I was
twenty-five. They acted as godfathers to me. They gave me the use of
their library, and throughout my term as city clerk I spent my nights
poring over their law books. I became well grounded in municipal law
and municipal finance. I was able to pay back their kindness some years
later when C. M. Greenlee aspired to be judge of the Superior Court of
Madison County. I went to the convention as a delegate and worked hard
for Judge Greenlee until he was nominated, and elected.
The city administration of which I was a member let many contracts. As
I said before, a cross-roads town had become a city and there were miles
of paving and sewer to put in, and scores of public buildings to go up.
Old Francis Harbit was the Democratic mayor, and he didn't intend
that the contractors should graft on the city nor give boodle to the
officials. I remember one stirring occasion. There was a big contract
for sewers to be let, and if a certain bid should go through, the
contractor would profit greatly. Big Jeff Rowley (I'll call him) was the
grafting contractor who had ruined the Republican administration. He was
six feet, two inches tall in his stocking feet. He had put in his
sealed bid and then had approached everybody with his proposition. His
overtures were scorned and he was told that we were not out for boodle
but were “playing the game on the square” (that had been my campaign
slogan). It finally dawned on the corrupt old bully that the lowest bid
would get the contract. He then came into my office and took down his
bid to revise it. It was such a big contract that he could not afford to
lose it. I told him that if his bid was not back in time I would so note
it.
Bids were to be opened that night and read by me before the mayor and
council. I was familiar with every detail of the law governing municipal
bonds and contract letting. We had advertised that bids must be
filed before seven-thirty that evening. Big Jeff took down his bid at
seven-fifteen and filed his new bid at seven forty-five; fifteen minutes
after the legal time limit.
The council was in session and hundreds of citizens were there to
protest against any more deals in letting contracts at exorbitant
prices. I opened and read aloud the various bids, including that of the
big boss, Jeff Rowley, adding that Jeff's bid had been filed too late to
be legal.
“You lie!” he screamed. “You're a Welsh liar, and I'll kill you for
this!” The threat was heard by the council and the citizens. But the man
seemed so terrible that no one dared reprimand him.
A few moments later the city attorney sent down to the clerk's office
for some blanks. Jeff was waiting behind a corner of the hall. He hit me
a blow in the neck that knocked me four yards. It was the “rabbit blow”
and he expected it to break my neck. The hard muscles that the puddling
furnace put there saved my life. I sprang up, and he came after me
again. I seized the big fellow by the ankles and threw him down. Then I
battered his head against the floor until I was satisfied that he could
do me no more harm. He went home and took to his bed.
He announced that when he got out he would charge me with assault. I
went before the mayor and offered to plead guilty to such a charge.
The mayor protested against it. He said I had done the right thing in
protecting the honor of the city, and that the citizens would not permit
my action to cost me money. The local banker took up a collection to pay
my fine in case a fine should be assessed against me.
My salary as city clerk was forty dollars a month. My wages in the tin
mill were seven dollars a day. A week in the mill would have brought me
more than a month's pay in the city office. But I hoped the clerkship
would lead to something better.
One incident that happened while I was city clerk I have already
related. The city attorney almost sent a man to jail because he couldn't
understand the lawyer's questions. I put the lawyer's language into
simpler words, and the man then understood and quickly cleared himself
of the charge against him. At another time, the mill owners petitioned
for the vacation of an alley because they wanted to build a railroad
switch there to give access to a loading-out station of the mill.
“I suppose,” their representative told me, “that since this would be
a favor to the mill, and you were opposed by the mill owners, you will
hand it to us in this matter.”
“Why should I?” I asked. “Don't you think you ought to have this alley?”
“Certainly we do, or we wouldn't have asked for it.”
“Do you think the city needs the alley worse than you do?”
“No. It is an alley only on paper. There are no residences there and
nobody needs the alley but us.”
“But you think because I am a labor man and you are a mill owner, and
you and I have had many hot fights over wage questions, that I will
fight you on this just for spite?”
“Such things have been done.”
“Well, I am not spiteful. Many a time I have made the men mad at me by
being fair to you. Spite and malice should have no place in dealings
between employer and employee. If you had a chance, would you give the
men a dirty deal just for spite?”
“We're business men,” he said. “And we never act through malice, but we
often expect it from the other side.”
“Well, don't expect it from me. As a city official my whole duty is to
the city. If we give you that railroad switch it will help the mill and
can't hurt the city. Without your mills there would be no city here, and
all the alleys would be vacated, with grass growing in them. If I took
advantage of my city job to oppress your mill business, I would be two
kinds of a scoundrel, a public scoundrel and a private one. I favor the
vacation of the alley and when the council meets next Wednesday I am
sure they will do this for you.”
CHAPTER XLII. THE EVERLASTING MORALIZER
I played the game fair throughout my term of office. I hate dishonesty
instinctively. I like the approval of my own conscience and the approval
of men. This is egotism, of course. I claim nothing else for it. I am no
prophet. I do not claim to be inspired. The weaknesses that all flesh
is heir to, I am not immune from. I write this story not to vindicate my
own wit nor to point out new paths for human thought to follow. I am a
follower of the old trails, an endorser of the old maxims. I merely
add my voice to the thousands who have testified before me that the old
truths are the only truths, and they are all the guidance that we need.
I am an educator of the young, not an astounder of the old; and it is
for the boys and girls who read my book that I thus point the morals
that life's tale has taught me.
Had I proved unfaithful in my first office I could not have gone to
higher offices. My opponents would have “had something on me.” As
secretary of labor, I am called on to settle strikes and to adjust
disputes between employers and employee. I could do nothing if either
side distrusted me. But since both sides believe me to be honest, they
get right down to brass tacks and discuss the cases on their merits
only. Sometimes the employees ask too much, sometimes the employers.
When either side goes too far I feel free to oppose it.
I approach each problem not only from the economic but from the human
angle. I took my guidance from the words of President Harding, when he
said:
“The human element comes first. I want the employers to understand
the hopes and yearnings of the workers, and I want the wage earners to
understand the burdens and anxieties of the wage payers, and all of them
must understand their obligations to the people and to the republic. Out
of this understanding will come social justice which is so essential to
the highest human happiness.”
The Labor Department has been able to settle, after candid argument,
thousands of disputes saving millions of dollars for workers and
employers and relieving the public from the great loss and inconvenience
that comes with strikes and industrial war. I have but one aim, and that
is justice. I know but one policy, and that is honesty. I am slow to
reach decisions. I must hear both sides. I want the facts, and all the
facts. When all the facts are in my mind the arguing ends; the judgment
begins. I judge by conscience and am guided by the Golden Rule. Decision
comes, and it is as nearly right as God has given me power to see the
right.
Out of four thousand disputes handled by the Department, three thousand
six hundred were settled. These directly involved approximately three
and one-half million workers and indirectly many others. At first
seventy per cent. of the cases were strikes before conciliation was
requested. Now, in a majority of the cases presented, strikes and
lockouts are prevented or speedily adjusted through our efforts.
This was due to perfect candor in talking. Honest opinions were honestly
set forth. Both sides took confidence in each other, and both sides
accepted my suggestions, believing them sincere and fair. And so I say
to the young men that honesty is the best policy because it is the only
policy that wins. The communists tell the young that honesty is not the
best policy. They say that the rich man teaches the poor to be honest so
that the rich can do all the stealing. They say that the moral code is
“dope” given by the strong to paralyze the weak and keep them down.
It is not so. Honesty is the power that lifts men and nations up to
greatness. It is a law of nature just as surely as gravity is a natural
law. But one is physical nature and the other moral nature. A fool can
see that physical laws are eternal and unbreakable. The wise can see
that the moral law is just as powerful and as everlasting.
Had I not won the people's confidence while I was city clerk of Elwood,
Indiana, my public career would have ended there. But after four years
in that office I aspired to be county recorder. The employers who once
had feared that I would be unfair, now said, “Davis is the man for the
job,” and so I got their vote as well as the vote of the workers, and I
was elected to that higher office by a great majority.
CHAPTER XLIII. FROM TIN WORKER TO SMALL CAPITALIST
During my term as county recorder at Anderson, Indiana, I saved money. I
was unmarried and had no dissipations but books, and books cost little.
I had lent money to several fellows who wanted to get a business
education. By the year 1906, or ten years after I quit the mill, the
money I had lent to men for their education in business colleges had
all come back to me with interest. All my brothers had grown up and left
home, and mother wrote that I ought not to send so much money to her
as she had no use for it. Although unmarried, I had bought a house, and
still had several thousand dollars of capital. So from time to time when
some friend saw an opportunity to start a business in a small way, I
backed him with a thousand dollars. My security in these cases was my
knowledge of the man's character. Some of these ventures were in oil
leases in which my chance of profits was good and they ranged from
novelty manufacture down to weekly newspapers in which no great profit
was possible. So many of the ventures thrived, that by the time I
was forty I was rated as a prosperous young man. This gave me a great
confidence in myself and in the institutions of this country. A land
where a boy can enter the mills at eleven, learn two trades, acquire a
sound business education and make a competence in his thirties is not
such a bad country as the hot-headed Reds would have us believe. I was
now launched on a business career and my investments were paying me
much larger revenues than I could earn at my trade. It was a rule of the
union that when a man ceased to work in the iron, steel or tin trades
he forfeited his membership. However, the boys thought that Mahlon M.
Garland--a puddler who went to Congress--and myself had done noteworthy
service to the labor cause, and they passed a resolution permitting us
to remain in the organization. Mr. Garland served six years in Congress
and died during his term of office. I still carry my membership and pay
my dues.
I was in France when the great Hindenburg offensive in the spring of
1916 overwhelmed the Allies. The French soldiers I met were worried
and asked what word I brought them from America. I said: “I am an iron
worker and can speak for the workers. Their hearts are in this cause.
They will work as one man until all the iron in the mountains of America
is hurled into the belly of the Huns.”
The war was an iron war. The kaiser had the steel and the coal that move
armies. France lacked these, and the Germans thought she was doomed.
They cut the French railroads that would have brought the troops and
munitions to defend Verdun. Then the Germans attacked this point in
overwhelming numbers. But the French troops went to Verdun without
the aid of railroads. The Germans did not dream that such a thing was
possible. But America had given the world a new form of transportation,
trains that run without rails and with-out coal. Motor-trucks, driven by
gasoline, carried the troops and munitions to Verdun. And so, after all,
the genius of America was there smiting the crown prince to his ruin
long before the first American doughboy could set foot in France.
For years the names of oil king and iron master have been a hissing and
a byword among the hot-heads in America. Yet oil king and iron master
filled a world with motor lorries. The blessings these have brought to
every man are more than he can measure. We mention this as one: They
stopped the Germans at Verdun and saved our civilization. It was an iron
war and our iron won.
My days were spent at forge and puddling furnace. The iron that I made
is civilization's tools. I ride by night in metal bedrooms. I hear the
bridges rumble underneath the wheels, and they are part of me. I see
tall cities looking down from out the sky and know that I have given a
rib to make those giants. I am a part of all I see, and life takes on an
epic grandeur. I have done the best I could to build America.
If God has given it to the great captains to do more than the privates
to make the plan and shout the order, shall I feel thankless for my
share of glory? Shall I be envious and turn traitor and want to crucify
the leaders that have blessed mankind?
I am content to occupy my secondary station, to do the things that I
can do, and never to feel embittered because other men have gifts far
surpassing mine.
CHAPTER XLIV. A CHANCE TO REALIZE A DREAM
On October 27, 1906, I joined the Loyal Order of Moose at
Crawfordsville, Indiana, and a new chapter in my life began. The purpose
of the Order was merely social, but its vast possibilities took my
imagination by storm. For I believed that man's instinct for fraternity
was a great reservoir of social energy which, if harnessed aright, could
lift our civilization nearer to perfection.
On the night of my election and initiation to membership, the Supreme
Lodge was in convention and they requested me to make a talk. I
suggested a scheme to save the wastage of child life resulting from the
death of parents and the scattering of their babies; and also to provide
for the widows and aged. This problem had haunted me from boyhood when,
as I have told, I was the bearer of death news to the widows and orphans
of the mill town. I felt that the Loyal Order of Moose could cope with
this problem. They elected me supreme organizer and put me in charge
of the organization work, and after several years I showed so much zeal
that the office of director general was created and I was put in full
charge.
The Order was then nineteen years old, having been founded in St. Louis
as chartered in 1888, in Louisville, Kentucky. It had thrived for a
while and then dwindled. At the time I joined there were only two lodges
surviving, with a total roll of some two hundred and forty-six members.
I set to work with great enthusiasm, hoping to enroll a half million
men. This would make the Order strong enough to insure a home and an
education for all children left destitute by the death of members. In
fancy I again beheld the vision of long trains of lodge men going to
their yearly meeting, but this time, in a city of their own building,
and over the gateway to this red-roofed town I saw the legend:
THE CITY OF HAPPY CHILDREN
But alas for dreams! Any one can have them, but their realization is not
always possible. The men in the Moose before me had fought vainly for
these high ideals. At the end of my first year as director general I had
not made one-tenth the progress I had hoped for. Figuring on the rate
of progress I was making, I saw that a lifetime would be too short to
accomplish anything. It was then that I would have despaired, if my
Welsh blood had not been so stubborn. I summoned new courage and went on
with the work. At the end of the fourth year I began to see results
from my preliminary efforts. The convention of 1910 showed that the
membership was eighty thousand, distributed among three hundred and
thirty-three lodges. It was resolved to start the actual work of
founding an educational institution. A tax of two cents a week was
laid on members and later increased to four cents. Land was bought,
a building erected and in 1913 the school was dedicated by Thomas
R. Marshall, Vice-President of the United States. There were eleven
children established in the home. Soon the lodge membership increased
enormously. Having passed the hundred thousand mark it swept on to the
half million goal. The “Mooseheart idea,” as we called it, had caught
the imagination of the men. To-day the city of Mooseheart in the Fox
River Valley, thirty-seven miles west of Chicago, is the home of more
than a thousand fatherless children and one hundred and fifteen mothers
who are there with their children, and several old men whose working
days are over. The dream of the Moose has come true. In many ways the
“City of Happy Childhood” is the most beautiful and the most wonderful
city in the world.
CHAPTER XLV. THE DREAM COMES TRUE
What kind of school is Mooseheart? That can not be answered by making
comparisons, for it is the only school of its kind. When the Moose
committee met to decide what sort of school it would build, somebody
suggested a normal school, a school to teach the young how to become
teachers.
I objected. “The world is well supplied with teachers,” I said.
“Everybody wants to teach the other fellow what to do, but nobody cares
to do it. Hand work will make a country rich and mouth work make it
poor. All the speeches I have ever made have never added a dollar to the
taxable value of America. But the tin and iron I wrought with my hands
have helped make America the richest country in the world. The Indians
were philosophers and orators; they could outtalk the white man every
time. But the Indians had no houses and no clothes. They wouldn't work
with their hands. A race that works with its hands has run the Indian
off the earth. If we quit working now and try to live on philosophy,
some race that still knows how to work will run us out of this country.
The first law of civilized life is labor. Labor is the giver of all good
things. Let us teach these orphans how to apply their labor, and after
that all things will be added unto them.”
And so we established a pre-vocational school where the young people
are taught farming, carpentry, cement construction, blacksmithing, gas
engine building and dozens of other fundamental trades that nourish our
industrial life, a life that draws no nutriment from Greek or Latin. I
am not opposed to literature and the classics. I make no war on the dead
languages. The war that killed them did the business. Why should I come
along and cut off their feet, when some one else has been there and cut
off their heads? But as an educator I promote the industrial trades,
because they educated and promoted me. I have done well in life, and if
you ask me how I did it, I'm telling you. Industry first and literature
afterward. And if you wish to see that kind of school in action, you can
see it at Mooseheart, Illinois.
There is a school with more than a thousand students, boys and girls
of various ages, ranging from one month to eighteen years. Some of
the students were born there, the mother having been admitted with
her youngsters soon after the loss of the father. Each lad will get an
introduction to a dozen trades, and when he selects the one that fits
him best, he will specialize in that and graduate at eighteen, prepared
for life. This education is the gift of more than half a million foster
fathers. The Moose are mostly working men, and so they equip their wards
for industrial life, and then place them on the job.
A boy that knows how to build concrete houses will not have to sleep
in haystacks. If every high-school boy in America was a carpenter and
cement builder how long would the housing shortage last? “The birds of
the air have their nests,” says the Bible. And we know why they have
them. Every bird knows how to build its nest. Nature teaches them their
trade. But men must learn their trades in school. I visited a college
once and saw how Greek was taught. They showed me a clay model of
ancient Athens and pointed out the house that each philosopher and poet
lived in thousands of years ago. “Where are the houses,” I asked the
graduates, “that you are going to live in to-morrow?” “Heaven only
knows,” they said. “We'll have to take our chances in the general
scarcity; our fate is on the knees of the gods.” The luck of the
Mooseheart boy is not on the knees of the gods; it is in his own hands.
I visited the Latin department and heard of Rome's ancient grandeur.
“The Romans,” they told me, “were not philosophers, but builders.
They built concrete roads to the ends of the earth. But their soldiers
brought back malarial fever from Africa. It destroyed the builders
and their secret perished with them. Eighty years ago concrete was
rediscovered.” I asked the students: “Do you know how to make concrete?”
“I'll say we don't,” they answered. And that's how much good their Latin
education had done them.
The Mooseheart boys know how to make those concrete roads and how
to build the motor-trucks that travel on them. “Transportation is
civilization.” We teach civilization at the Mooseheart school. We
teach art, too. But what is art without civilization? The cave men were
artists and drew pictures on their walls. But you can't eat pictures.
There is a picture on every loaf of bread. You always slice the colored
label off the loaf and eat the bread and throw the art away. The
Russians quit work a few seasons ago, and now they are selling their art
treasures cheap to the roughneck nations that stuck to the pick-ax and
the plow. The moral is: Keep working and you'll get the chromo. This
truth was taught at Mooseheart long before the Russians saw the point
and awarded us their picture gallery.
What I want to emphasize is that we are not opposed to art and
literature. All men want them; need them. We teach how to get them.
CHAPTER XLVI. THE MOOSEHEART IDEA
The majority of the Moose are men in the mechanical trades. But the
primary trade, the one on which all others rest, is agriculture. The
men knew this, and so they founded Mooseheart on the soil. It is an
agricultural school. It occupies more than a thousand acres in the
richest farming region of Illinois. The first thing the students learn
is that all wealth comes out of the earth. The babies play in the
meadows and learn the names of flowers and birds. The heritage of
childhood is the out-of-doors. I heard of some children in the city
who found a mouse and thought it was a rabbit. But when the city-born
children come to Mooseheart they come into their own. They trap rabbits
and woodchucks, fight bumblebees' nests, wade and fish in the creek and
go boating and swimming in the river and the clear lake.
When a boy gets old enough to leave the kindergarten and start in the
primary school he mixes agricultural studies with his books. First he
plants a small garden and tends it. Then he is taught to raise chickens.
Next he learns swine husbandry and then dairying and the handling of
horses. The girls learn poultry-raising, butter-making, gardening,
cooking, dressmaking and millinery.
After the boy has had a general course in all the branches of
agriculture he is permitted to specialize in any one of them if he wants
to. He can make an exhaustive study of grain farming, dairying, stock
breeding, bee culture, horticulture and landscape gardening.
After this grounding in agriculture, which all the boys must have,
the student gets an introduction to the mechanical trades. Then he may
select a particular trade and specialize. The usual grammar-school and
high-school courses are taught to all the students, also swimming and
dancing and music, both vocal and instrumental. The kindergarten has a
babies' band, and both the girls and boys have their own brass bands and
orchestras.
Students are graduated when they are eighteen. Up to that time they are
permitted to stay and learn as many trades as they can. Learning comes
easy in such a school as Mooseheart, and many of the boys go out with
two or more finished trades. Music is one of the trades that the boys
double in. We have graduated many fine musicians, but none who didn't
know a mechanical trade as well and, on top of it all, he knew how to
run a farm. Such a boy can serve his country in peace or war. Before men
can eat they have to have food, and he knows how to raise it. To enjoy
their food they must have a house to live in, and he knows how to build
it. After a house and food comes music. This lad can play a tune for the
cabaret.
One of Mooseheart's earliest graduates made a high record in his
academic studies and mastered the trade of cook, pastry cook,
nurseryman, cement modeler, cornetist, saxophone player and landscape
gardener. He was brilliant in all these lines and ready to make a living
at any one of them. And if all these trades should fail, he was yet a
scientific farmer and could go to the land anywhere and make it produce
bigger crops than the untrained man who was born on the soil.
What other school in the world will give a boy at eighteen an equipment
like that? I ask this, not to disparage the old-fashioned schools, but
to call their attention to what the new are doing.
CHAPTER XLVII. LIFE'S PROBLEMS
Mooseheart is at once a farm, a school and a town. The boys help handle
the crops and herds under the guidance of the experts who teach the
classes in agriculture. For extra work in the fields the boys receive
pay. They save their money to buy the tools of their trade. The bandsmen
when they graduate go out with fine instruments bought with their own
earnings during their school years. “Preparation for life” is the
one aim of Mooseheart. Therefore at Mooseheart the boy or girl will
encounter every problem that he will encounter in his struggle in the
wider world. Nothing is done for him that he can do for himself. He is
taught no false theories. But every fact of life is placed before him
in due time. The first wealth of facts comes to these city-bred children
when they are set down in the middle of this great, busy, beautiful
farm. John Burrows says: “No race that does not take to the soil can
long hold its country. In the struggle for survival it will lose its
country to some incoming race that loves the soil.” Already the Japanese
farmers in California have shown that if we should let them in they
would take this whole country in a few years. They drive the American
farmer out because they have a passion for the soil, and they turn their
whole families in to till it. What is the answer? Teach our young to
love the soil and to till it well, or else an alien race will take away
their heritage. The first lesson in Mooseheart is to till the soil.
But in addition to being a farm, Mooseheart is a town. The young folk
live in cottages and do their own cooking and house-keeping. There are
no great dormitories where hundreds sleep, and no vast dining-room where
they march in to the goose-step. We are preparing them for a free life,
and the only place they use the goose-step is in the penitentiary.
Mooseheart is a town instead of an institution. All “institutionalism”
is cast away. In each cottage is a group of boys or a group of girls
living under family conditions. They are not all of the same age; some
are big and some are little, and the big ones look after the little
ones. Each cottage has its own kitchen and orders its own supplies from
the general store. The girls' cottages have each a matron (sometimes a
widow who with her little ones has been admitted to Mooseheart), and she
advises the girls how to do the buying and the cooking.
In the boys' cottages there is a proctor to advise them and usually a
woman cook. The boys who care to can learn cookery and household buying
under her supervision. All the boys do their own dishwashing, sweeping
and bed-making. Once three boys about fourteen years old went on strike
because the proctor asked them to scrub the dining-room floor on their
knees. They thought this work would degrade them, and they started
toward the superintendent's office. On the way they met me and told me
their troubles.
“I think it is all right for a young man to scrub a floor on his
knees,” I said. “I've done it for my mother many a time. I have been
a bootblack. But it didn't hurt my character. You are going to the
superintendent for his opinion. He is a Harvard man, but he worked his
way through school and one of his jobs was bellboy in a hotel. Had
he been too proud to work as a servant he would never have gotten the
education that makes him head of this great school. Didn't you ever
scrub a floor on your knees? You can see the dirt come out with the
suds and you can watch the grain of the wood appear, where before it
was hidden by dust and grease. If you never saw that, you have missed
something that I have seen many a time. To know how to scrub a floor is
as much a part of your education as to know how to sandpaper a floor and
varnish it. We could hire this work done better than you can do it,
but that wouldn't be giving you a chance to learn the work. Now I'm not
telling you boys to go back and do the work if you don't want to. Use
your own judgment. But fellows that balk on a job never go far. A balky
man is like a balky horse, everybody gets rid of him as quickly as they
can. A quitter is never given a good job. They always keep him in a
place where it doesn't make any difference whether he quits or not.”
The leader of the boys said: “Aw, piffle, cut it out. We might as well
be scrubbing the floor as listening to this talk. Come on, fellows.” He
led them back, one of them protesting that he would never scrub a floor
for any man. He went ahead and scrubbed the floor still saying that he
wouldn't. That lad was weaker than the leader. He went wherever he was
led. The leader was a boy who made his own decisions. He was ashamed
of calling off the strike, but he did it because he felt the strike was
wrong.
This is the Mooseheart idea of education. Every boy must use his own
judgment. He faces every fact that he will face in life, and by the time
he is eighteen his judgment is as ripe as that of the much older average
man. The Mooseheart boys are not selected students. They come from the
humblest families, from homes that have been wiped out early. But the
training at Mooseheart is so well adapted to human needs that these
orphans soon outstrip the children of the more fortunate classes.
They become quick in initiative, sturdy in character and brilliant in
scholarship. Visitors who come from boys' preparatory schools where the
children of the rich are trained for college are amazed to find these
sons of the working people so far ahead of the young aristocrats. The
Mooseheart boys as a group have the others beaten in all the qualities
that go to make a young man excellent. We have prepared them for life.
CHAPTER XLVIII. BUILDING A BETTER WORLD BY EDUCATION
And so the great dream of my life has been realized. In youth I saw the
orphans of the worker scattered at a blow, little brothers and sisters
doomed to a life of drudgery, and never to see one another again. No
longer need such things be. The humblest worker can afford to join an
association that guarantees a home and an education to his children. In
Mooseheart the children are kept together. Family life goes on, and with
it comes an education better than the rich man's son can buy.
As individuals, the Moose are not rich men, but in cooperation they
are wealthy. They have a plant at Mooseheart now valued at five million
dollars, and they provide a revenue of one million two hundred thousand
a year to maintain and enlarge it. They received no endowment from state
or nation. They wanted to protect their children and they found a way to
do it. They based their system of education on the actual needs of men.
They know what life is, for they have lived it. In mine and field and
factory they had tasted the salty flavor of real things, and they built
a school that has this flavor.
The war drove home a lesson that will forever make false education
hateful to me. Education in the wrong direction can destroy a nation and
wreck the happiness of the world. The German worker was taught that he
would get rich, not by patient toil, but by taking by force the wealth
that others had created.
On my return from France, where I had witnessed the Hindenburg drive
into the heart of France, I addressed the Iron Workers in their national
convention. “I am glad,” I said, “that I was born an iron worker and not
a Chancellor of Blood and Iron. For the iron I wrought has helped build
up a civilization, while the German's 'Blood and Iron' has sought to
destroy it.
“France stands knee-deep in her own blood while the iron of Germany is
being hurled into her breast. Iron Workers of America, to you has God
given the answer to the German thunderbolt. The iron of the republic
shall beat down the iron of the kings. Wherever I walked behind the
battle lines in France I told them I was an iron worker and I gave them
this message for you:
“'The American iron worker will not fail you. We have been taught to
believe in justice as the German believes in might. We will back up our
soldiers with ships and guns until Kaiserisim is beaten. We will set the
workers of Germany free--free from their foul belief in murder and in
kings. And when we have bound up our wounds we will build a new world
that shall be a freer world than man has ever known.'
“I have dedicated my life to this purpose. We will build this freer
world by the right instruction of our young. Education is of two kinds,
one kind is good and the other is poison. A poisonous education took
but one generation to turn the German working men into a race of
blood-letters. Wrong education tears a nation down. Right education will
build it up. One generation of right education will remake the world.
Who will furnish this new education? I, for one, will do my share, and
more. My heart is in this one cause, and my whole life from now on shall
be devoted to it.
“You will hear me speaking for it on every rostrum and in every
schoolhouse in America. I have been handicapped in life because I had no
education. But it is better to have no education than a false one, for
I was left free to know the truth when I found it. I went into the mills
when I should have been in school. As a working man I have helped get
better conditions for the worker. Think how much more I could have done
if I had had an education. Your leaders have done much for the iron
workers because they could see farther than the common man. The worker
with an education can see far. He can judge quickly and be guided
rightly, for he has knowledge to guide him. I have knelt and prayed to
God to direct me. Now I know He has answered my prayer. My mission is to
bring to the poor man's boy the ample education that the rich man gives
his son. Equal education will make men equal in the gaining of wealth.
Education is Democracy.
“A French soldier lay dying on the battle-field, and a comrade kneeling
by him asked what last word he wished carried to his wife and children.
And the dying man said with his last breath: 'Tell them that I gave my
body to the earth, I gave my heart to France and I gave my soul to God.'
“And so I say to you in the spirit of the French soldier that this, my
body, I will give at last back to the iron earth, in whose deep mines
and smoking metal shops my muscles took their form. This heart of
mine that beats for liberty and equality I give--and give to its last
beat--to the cause of equal education for our young. And my soul at last
I shall render back unto my Maker knowing that I have served His cause
as He has given me to see it.”
CHAPTER XLIX. CONCLUSION
H. G. Wells has asked all scholars to unite in writing a “Bible of the
New Education.” I am no scholar, but if Wells will take suggestions from
an iron puddler, I offer him these random thoughts.
This generation is rich because the preceding generation stored up lots
of capital. We are living in the houses and using the railroads that our
fathers built by working overtime.
When labor loafs on the job it makes itself poor. We are not building
fast enough to keep ourselves housed. Were it not for the houses our
fathers built this generation would be out-of-doors right now, with no
roof but the sky.
No matter who owns the capital, capital works for everybody. Ford owns
the flivver factory, but everybody owns the flivvers. The oil king owns
the gasoline, but he has to tote it to the roadside where every one
can get it. Equal division is the goal that capitalism constantly
approaches. No man wants all the gasoline. He wants six gallons at a
time, with a service station every few miles. Capital performs this
service for him. Under “capitalism,” so-called wealth is more equally
divided than under any other system ever known.
Work is a blessing, not a curse. This country had the good luck to be
settled by the hardest workers in the world. Their big production made
us rich. If we slacken production we will soon be poor. The Indians
owned everything in common. They did not work. And they were so poor
that this whole continent would support less than two million of them.
Thousands of Indians used to starve and freeze to death every hard
winter.
The white man who doesn't want to work is sick. He needs a dose of
medicine, not a dose of the millennium. The Bible says that in the sweat
of his face man shall eat bread. When labor loafs, it injures labor
first and capital last. For labor grows poor to-day while the capitalist
gets poor to-morrow. But to-morrow never comes. The capitalist can turn
laborer and raise himself a mess of pork and beans.
The laborer who does not turn capitalist and have a house and garden for
his old age is lacking in foresight.
Men will never be equal. John L. Sullivan had many fights, and John
always whipped the other fellow, or the other fellow whipped John.
When all men are equal, every prize fight will end in a draw, and every
batter will knock as many home runs as Babe Ruth.
“There is enough already created to supply everybody if it were equally
divided.” Yes. And there is enough ice at the North Pole to cool off the
Sahara Desert if it were equally divided. There is enough water in the
seven seas to flood the six continents if it were equally divided.
The time to quit work and divide the wealth is just two weeks before the
end of the world. For the world's surplus of supplies is just two weeks
ahead of starvation. Wheat is being harvested in one country or another
every week in the year. And yet with all the hard work that men can do,
they can not boost the world's supply of bread so as to increase our two
weeks' lead on the wolf of famine. The wolf is ever behind us only two
weeks away. And if we stumble for a moment, he gets nearer.
American machinery enabled the western farmer to raise and harvest as
much wheat as twenty Russian peasants. In India where wheat is raised
by hand, the labor of one family will only feed one family. But in the
Dakotas, the labor of one man will deliver in Chicago enough flour to
feed three hundred men a year. This increase in man's power to produce
wheat caused the world's population to double itself since McCormack
invented the reaper. The Chinese and Hindu millions who would have
starved to death, have been fed, and that's why they're with us to-day.
The natural limit of population is starvation. The more bread the more
mouths, less bread, fewer people. Europe and the Orient reached the
starvation limit before America was settled. A bad crop meant a famine,
and a famine started a plague. This plague and famine would sweep off
a third of the population, and the rest could then raise food enough to
thrive on. England and Wales have had famines, Ireland has had famines,
France has had famines, Russia has a deadly famine after every bad crop
year, while in India and China famine is a chronic condition.
America has never had a famine. But we are not exempt from famine.
In the year 1816, known as the year of
“eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death,” the crops failed throughout
America because of freezing weather all summer long. Little or no food
was raised and the Americans would have perished from famine had it not
been for the wild meat in the woods. The people lived on deer and bear
that winter. To-day if our food supply fails we can not live on venison.
No country is by natural law exempt from famine. Our famine will come
when we fill this country as thickly as men can stand; China and India
have so filled themselves. Famine awaits us when we repeat their folly.
That day will come soon unless we bar the unworthy from our gates.
But cold weather and crop failure are not the only things that could
bring a famine in America. Slacking in production has the same effect as
crop failure. A farmers' strike could bring a famine. A railroad strike
could do the same. Many men advocate a combination farmers' strike
and railroad strike to destroy capital (that is, to destroy the food
supply). Don't get impatient, boys. You shall have your famine, if you
will wait long enough. And the less work you do while you are waiting,
the sooner it will come. Nature is never whipped. Nature will take a
crack at you, if you leave an opening. The generation that went before
you worked ten to fourteen hours a day; they battled face to face with a
raw continent in their fight with Nature. And by their muscle they drove
Nature back and she surrendered. She went down like crumpled Germany,
and she signed a treaty. Hard were the treaty terms our fighting fathers
made with Nature. They took an indemnity. She delivered to them more
houses than her cyclones had destroyed, she furnished them millions of
cattle in place of the wild deer and buffalo. She yielded up her
coal regions to warm them in payment for the torture her winters had
inflicted. By this treaty she gave them everything she had and promised
to be good.
We are the inheritors of the good things of that peace treaty. We were
born rich; we revel in the “reparations” that our fathers wrung from a
conquered Nature. But Nature, like Germany, is not really whipped. If we
relax, she will default on her payments. As long as Nature is not really
whipped, her treaty is a scrap of paper. Nature, right now, is preparing
for a come-back. She will not arm openly, for we would then arm to meet
her. She is planning to attack us by a method that is new. She will
weaken us by propaganda, and when we are helpless she will march over us
at will.
Who then are the propagandists that Nature is using to undermine the
race that conquered her? Communists, slackers, sick men and fools.
The man who says let us “quit work and divide our cake and eat it” is
opening the way for Nature to strike suddenly with a famine. The man who
advocates “one big strike” to destroy our capital is the secret agent of
starvation. Nature when up in arms can sweep men off like flies. She has
always done it and she always will, unless man uses his intelligence and
his cooperation to fight the evils in Nature and not to fight his fellow
men.
“Capitalism,” as the communists call it, is an imperfect system. But
it is the only system that has banished famine. Under communism and
feudalism there was hunger. Under capitalism the world has been able to
feed twice as many mouths as could be fed before.
Capitalism found a world of wood and iron ore, and made it into a world
of steel. How? It puddled the pig-iron until the dross was out, and the
pure metal was bessemered into steel. Now the task is to purify men
as we have purified metals. Men have dross in their nature. They
break under civilization's load. A steel world is hopeless if men are
pig-iron. There is greed and envy and malice in all of us. But also
there is the real metal of brotherhood. Our task is to puddle out
the impurities so that the true iron can be strong enough to hold our
civilization up forever.
I have been a puddler of iron and I would be a puddler of men. Out of
the best part of the iron I helped build a stronger world. Out of the
best part of man's metal let us build a better society.
I have no new cure for the ills of humanity.
Life is a struggle, and rest is in the grave.
All nature is in commotion; there is wind and rain; and out of it comes
seed harvest. The waters of the sea are poured in thunder wrack upon the
hills and run in rivers back into the sea. The winds make weather, and
weather profits man. When will man's turmoil cease, when will he find
calm? I do not know. I only know that toil and struggle are sweet, and
that life well lived is victory. And that calm is death.
Man must face an iron world, but he is iron to subdue it.
The lessons of my life were learned at the forge and I am grateful for
my schooling.
“Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of Life
Our fortunes must be wrought,
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.”