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.”