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.”