For thirty years we spent, on an average, one million dollars a day in
building railroads.--I want you to think what that means. All that money
had to be dug out of the ground. It had to be made by raising something
or manufacturing something. We did not get it by writing essays on
finance, or discussing the silver question. It had to be made with the
ax, the plow, the reaper, the mower; in every form of industry; all to
produce these splendid results.
We have railroads enough now to make seven tracks around the great
globe, and enough left for side tracks. That is what we have done here,
in what the European nations are pleased to call "the new world."
I am telling you these things because you may not know them, and I did
not know them myself until a few days ago. I am anxious to give away
information, for it is only by giving it away that you can keep it. When
you have told it, you remember it. It is with information as it is
with liberty, the only way to be dead sure of it is to give it to other
people.
In 1860 the houses in the United States, the cabins on the frontier, the
buildings in the cities, were worth six thousand million dollars. Now
they are worth over twenty-two thousand million dollars. To talk about
figures like these is enough to make a man dizzy.
In 1860 our animals of all kinds, including the Illinois deer--commonly
called swine--the oxen and horses, and all others, were worth about one
thousand million dollars; now they are worth about four thousand million
dollars.
Are we not getting rich? Our national debt today is nothing. It is like
a man who owes a cent and has a dollar.
Since 1860 we have been industrious. We have created two million five
hundred thousand new farms. Since 1860 we have done a good deal of
plowing; there have been a good many tired legs. I have been that way
myself. Since 1860 we have put in cultivation two hundred million acres
of land. Illinois, the best State in the Union, has thirty-five million
acres of land, and yet, since 1860, we have put in cultivation enough
land to make six States of the size of Illinois. That will give you some
idea of the quantity of work we have done. I will admit I have not done
much of it myself, but I am proud of it.
In 1860 we had four million five hundred and sixty-five thousand farmers
in this country, whose land and implements were worth over sixteen
thousand million dollars. The farmers of this country, on an average,
are worth five thousand dollars, and the peasants of the Old World, who
cultivate the soil, are not worth, on an average, ten dollars beyond the
wants of the moment. The farmers of our country produce, on an average,
about one million four hundred thousand dollars' worth of stuff a day.
What else? Have we in other directions kept pace with our physical
development? Have we developed the mind? Have we endeavored to develop
the brain? Have we endeavored to civilize the heart? I think we have.
We spend more for schools per head than any nation in the world. And the
common school is the breath of life.
Great Britain spends one dollar and thirty cents per head on the common
schools; France spends eighty cents; Austria, thirty cents; Germany,
fifty cents; Italy, twenty-five cents, and the United States over two
dollars and fifty cents.
I tell you the schoolhouse is the fortress of liberty. Every schoolhouse
is an arsenal, filled with weapons and ammunition to destroy the
monsters of ignorance and fear.
As I have said ten thousand times, the school-house is my cathedral. The
teacher is my preacher.
Eighty-seven per cent, of all the people of the United States, over ten
years of age, can read and write. There is no parallel for this in the
history of the wide world.
Over forty-two millions of educated citizens, to whom are opened all the
treasures of literature!
Forty-two millions of people, able to read and write! I say, there is
no parallel for this. The nations of antiquity were very ignorant when
compared with this great Republic of ours. There is no other nation in
the world that can show a record like ours. We ought to be proud of
it. We ought to build more schools, and build them better. Our teachers
ought to be paid more, and everything ought to be taught in the public
school that is worth knowing.
I believe that the children of the Republic, no matter whether their
fathers are rich or poor, ought to be allowed to drink at the fountain
of education, and it does not cost more to teach everything in the free
schools than it does teaching reading and writing and ciphering.
Have we kept up in other ways? The post office tells a wonderful story.
In Switzerland, going through the post office in each year, are letters,
etc., in the proportion of seventy-four to each inhabitant. In England
the number is sixty; in Germany, fifty-three; in France, thirty-nine; in
Austria, twenty-four; in Italy, sixteen, and in the United States, our
own home, one hundred and ten. Think of it. In Italy only twenty-five
cents paid per head for the support of the public schools and only
sixteen letters. And this is the place where God's agent lives. I would
rather have one good schoolmaster than two such agents.
There is another thing. A great deal has been said, from time to time,
about the workingman. I have as much sympathy with the workingman as
anybody on the earth--who does not work. There has always been a desire
in this world to let somebody else do the work, nearly everybody having
the modesty to stand back whenever there is anything to be done. In
savage countries they make the women do the work, so that the weak
people have always the bulk of the burdens. In civilized communities
the poor are the ones, of course, that work, and probably they are never
fully paid. It is pretty hard for a manufacturer to tell how much he
can pay until he sells the stuff which he manufactures. Every man who
manufactures is not rich. I know plenty of poor corporations; I know
tramp railroads that have not a dollar. And you will find some of them
as anarchistic as you will find their men. What a man can pay, depends
upon how much he can get for what he has produced. What the farmer can
pay his help depends upon the price he receives for his stock, his corn
and his wheat.
But wages in this country are getting better day by day. We are getting
a little nearer to being civilized day by day, and when I want to make
up my mind on a subject I try to get a broad view of it, and not decide
it on one case.
In 1860 the average wages of the workingman were, per year, two hundred
and eighty-nine dollars. In 1890 the average was four hundred and
eighty-five. Thus the average has almost doubled in thirty years. The
necessaries of life are far cheaper than they were in 1860. Now, to my
mind, that is a hopeful sign. And when I am asked how can the dispute
between employer and employee be settled, I answer, it will be settled
when both parties become civilized.
It takes a long time to educate a man up to the point where he does not
want something for nothing. Yet, when a man is civilized, he does not.
He wants for a thing just what it is worth; he wants to give labor its
legitimate reward, and when he has something to sell he never wants more
than it is worth. I do not claim to be civilized myself; but all these
questions between capital and labor will be settled by civilization.
We are to-day accumulating wealth at the rate of more than seven million
dollars a day. Is not this perfectly splendid?
And in the midst of prosperity let us never forget the men who helped
to save our country, the men whose heroism gave us the prosperity we now
enjoy.
We have one-seventh of the good land of this world. You see there is a
great deal of poor land in the world. I know the first time I went to
California, I went to the Sink of the Humboldt, and what a forsaken look
it had. There was nothing there but mines of brimstone. On the train,
going over, there was a fellow who got into a dispute with a minister
about the first chapter of Genesis. And when they got along to the Sink
of the Humboldt the fellow says to the minister:
"Do you tell me that God made the world in six days, and then rested on
the seventh?"