Address, “Human Efficiency”
Dr. Wallace—Mr. President, and Members of the Congress: It might not be amiss, before entering into a discussion of the subject proper, to recall the different subjects which have from year to year engaged the attention of the Conservation Congress, and to show how the choice of the subject for each different Congress was the natural and logical result of the discussion of the preceding Congress.
The first Congress was called, and the Congress itself was organized, as a forum in which the leading men of the Nation could discuss the problems raised by the Conservation Commission, appointed by Theodore Roosevelt at the suggestion of Gifford Pinchot, then holding the position of Chief Forester in the Department of Agriculture. His position as Forester enabled him to see the terrific waste going on in the management of our forests, and the various means by which the government forests were passing into the hands of individuals, subsequently to be wasted for private gain. He saw clearly that unless our forests were conserved and managed as are the forests of all other civilized nations, soil erosion would render future forest growth impossible, would fill our rivers with silt, dry up the streams in summer and convert them into raging torrents in winter, depriving us of water for irrigation, and diminishing in value the water power, or white coal, on which future generations must largely depend for power and transportation.
A forum was greatly needed in which the questions raised by this fearless idealist—to whom the Conservation of our resources for future generations is both wife and child—could be openly and fearlessly discussed by leaders and in the hearing of the American people. When the First Conservation Congress was called to meet in Seattle in 1909, naturally the main topic for discussion was the Conservation of the forests and of the water powers, which were then fast passing into the hands of great corporations.
By this time the public conscience was aroused. The people of the United States began to see clearly that we dare not go on in the future, looting and wasting our natural resources as we had done in the past. They began to realize that the generations of the unborn had rights in the oil, the coal and other minerals in that portion of the public domain that we had not as yet recklessly thrown away, or allowed to be stolen from us under forms of or in defiance of law. So the Second Conservation Congress was called in St. Paul, in 1910, as a forum in which the leading men of the nation could thresh out the problem as to whether these resources to which the American people at present held title should be administered by a Congress chosen by the people and speaking for the people, or whether they should be administered through an act of Congress by the several States in which the Government property happened to be located.
The historian of the future alone will be able to measure the beneficial results of the fierce conflict between those who would despoil these resources for private gain and those who would conserve them for future generations. We can, however, see some of the results in the change in the policy of our national administration, in the vigilant watch now maintained by the present Secretary of the Interior; by the success which crowned the efforts of Mr. Pinchot and others who kept constant watch over bills intended, by means of concealed jokers, to break down the fixed policy of the Government; and by the veto of the President of vicious bills which, notwithstanding the utmost vigilance, were enacted by the last Congress. This watch and guard over the heritage of the unborn could not have been maintained successfully, had it not been for the white light thrown upon the problem by the Second National Conservation Congress.
I was, unexpectedly to myself, chosen President of the Conservation Congress at the close of the St. Paul meeting; and with the consent and advice of my executive committee, in making out the program for the 1911 meeting in Kansas City, fixed the attention of the American people on the necessity for the Conservation of the fertility of the soil, and the development of a better social and family life among the tillers of the soil.
The time had come for the American people to understand that the rapid and regular advance in the cost of living was due mainly to the terrific waste of the fertility of the soil, that had been going on for more than a hundred years. It was time for the farmer to learn that he was not in a position to throw stones at the lumberman who had wasted our forests, or at the mine owner who is wasting one-third of the coal in the process of mining; that he, while a sharer in the cheapness of the products of forest and mine, had himself been mining the fertility of the soil, stored for his benefit through countless ages, and selling it at the bare cost of mining; and in doing so had built up cities the world over, which must cry for bread when the fertility of his soil became exhausted.
It is too early yet to measure the full results of this Kansas City Congress. This should be noted, however, that, whether the result of the discussions of this Congress or not, the people of the United States have shown an interest in agriculture and the maintenance of soil fertility which they had never shown before. Bankers, railroad officials, capitalists are beginning to see that unless the farmer receives encouragement and efficient aid, this nation will soon cease to be a factor in supplying other nations with food, and will gradually become a consuming instead of a producing country, so far as the products of the soil are concerned. We are beginning to see that unless a more satisfactory social life is established in the open country, the increasing disparity between rural and urban population must continue and the cost of living must go on increasing, and with it increasing discontent and social disturbance.
My successor and his executive committee, with their wide experience in practical affairs, saw clearly that if we are to restore fertility to our wasted soils, if we are to do anything worth while for the Conservation of our resources of any kind or character, there must be an increase in the efficiency of the individual. They therefore wisely chose the subject of “Vital Resources” as the main center around which discussion must revolve at the present Conservation Congress.
The subject of Vital Resources opens up a very wide field for investigation and discussion. Various subjects in the group have been discussed and others will be, by specialists who have given their particular subject years of conscientious and close study. So when only last week I was urged to make this address instead of discussing a minor phase of the subject, there was nothing left for me but a general discussion of the subject of Human Efficiency.
Man, after all, is the biggest thing on this planet. The farm people are always bigger than the farm. No matter how rich by nature the farm may be, it will lose fertility if the farmer is not big enough. The first-class farmer will take an inferior piece of land and in time bring it up to his own measure. If the farmer does not fit the farm, it will in time come up to or decline to his measure. The average production of the soil is the expression of nature’s opinion of the fitness of the man who tills it for a term of years. The most severe condemnation of the American farmer is the fact that, with some of the richest soils in the world, he has so wasted its fertility that he is crying out for commercial fertilizers; while the “heathen Chinee” has farmed for at least forty centuries, and has maintained his soil fertility without the use of commercial fertilizers.
If any great business has attracted attention by its success, one always asks: Who’s the man or men behind it? The greatness of this nation is measured not by its soil, its mines, its forests, its water powers, but by the efficiency of its people. This is true of all nations. The cynical Bismark, who always cast covetous eyes on Holland, is said once to have remarked that the way to redeem Ireland was to transport the Dutch to the Emerald Isle and transport the Irish to Holland; that the Dutch would make Ireland an earthly Paradise, while the Irish would not keep up the dikes except with the help of the Germans, who would in that case soon have a seaport.
The only way by which you can restore the wasted fertility of the soil and the waste of our forests and develop properly our mineral resources; the only way in which we can as a nation take the place to which we are entitled—that of leader in the world’s trade and commerce—is by increasing to the utmost limit human efficiency, physical, mental and moral. These three are ineradicably linked together, because they are integral parts of every human being. We can not develop fine human beings physically without the development of the intellect and the soul; nor can we develop either the intellectual or the moral to the limit without taking care of the body.
If we are to have the maximum of efficiency in the man, the child must be well born, must be free from incurable diseases, mental, moral or physical. To every generation of human beings is given by an allwise Ruler the power to foreordain the character and quality of the generation to come. The coming generation is as helpless in our hands as clay in the hands of the potter. By marriage parents decree the personality of their children. By “personality” I mean the inherent tendencies—physical, mental and moral—which, when developed wisely or unwisely, make or mar the character. In that little pink lump of humanity—the pride of the father and the joy of the mother—are bound up in various combinations the incidents, passions and capacities of the parents. It is this which gives its awful sacredness and tremendous possibilities to marriage.
The State by the extent to which it discourages and represses vice and crime, by the extent to which it prevents and controls disease, by the extent to which it encourages the marriage of the fit and prevents the marriage of the unfit, foreordains the character of the next generation. I know that I am approaching ground but little trodden, in which many fear to tread, and to tread on which is by many deemed sacrilege. But if we are to be a virile nation, strong in body, in intellect and in morals, the truth must be told fearlessly; and there is no more fitting place to tell it than where the people of this Congress are making a study of our vital resources.
To put the matter with brutal frankness: The State must soon determine whether the hardened criminal shall be allowed to take an active part in foreordaining the character of future generations; whether the manifest degenerate, whether that degeneracy be the result of being badly born or of vice or crime, shall be allowed to breed degenerates; whether those afflicted with incurable and transmissible disease shall be allowed to transmit them to a helpless posterity.
In order that the State may act wisely, it is time for a most thorough and searching investigation of existing conditions, material and moral, which lead to crime; the extent to which criminal tendencies are transmissible—criminal tendencies, mark you, for crime itself is not transmissible; what proportion of our crimes are due to intemperance, and to what extent the unbalanced state of mind which makes self-control impossible, and leads to crime, is due to inheritance. It will no longer do to say as some do: that intemperance, by killing off the unbalanced and weakling, rids society of an encumbrance; nor that nameless diseases weed out of the race those unable to maintain self-control. While all this is in a certain sense true, it furnishes no argument for abating zeal in repressing these crimes against humanity. That terrible saying of Anne of Austria: “God does not pay at the end of every week, but at last He pays,” finds striking illustration in the fate that sooner or later befalls the intemperate and the impure.
On one subject there is no need of any investigation. We must either adopt such measures as will insure as far as possible that the coming generation shall be well born, or we will compel our posterity to pay the price, as we are paying it now. We stand before the world today convicted of having more murders, more suicides and far more lynchings in proportion to our population, than any other civilized nation on the face of the globe; and also with having, speaking generally, by far the most corrupt city governments. Is it not time for us to investigate and see why we thus stand condemned in the eyes of the nations, and to what extent we are breeding crime, the crime that is our disgrace? For be assured that we must in all cases pay the price, not in cold cash alone, but in blasted lives and ruined homes and a lower degree of human efficiency. If we are to be a great nation, worthy of our blood inheritance and worthy of our material resources, our children must be well-born.
If we are to secure that measure of human efficiency that will enable us to make full use of our inheritance, whether of blood or material resources, we should see to it that the coming generation is not merely well born, but well fed. The farmer is wise in that he takes special care of the young things that come on his farm. He builds a lamb creep, that the young lamb may get feed denied its dam. He sorts his pigs into convenient sizes, and shuts them out of the feeding places until the feed is properly placed, and then lets them all in at once, so that they may all have equal opportunity. He does not allow the weanling colt to take its chance with the selfish and unprincipled horses in the stalk field. He protects his colts and gives them food “convenient” for them. If an unruly beast in his stock yard tyrannizes the young and robs them of their food, he does the sensible thing. He dehorns the unruly. He will tolerate no oppression about his farm. In this he is wise; wise, because he knows that if he fails to do this, the red flag of the sheriff will sooner or later stand above his door, and the farm will be sold to some man who will handle it more wisely.
The State has a similar responsibility for taking care of the young. Whatever may be their endowment by nature, that is, by birth, they need the nurture which is necessary to bring out and develop fully the gifts of nature. The State should smite anything that stands in the way of the proper nurture or feeding of the young. If the State is to prosper, it must protect the weak against the encroachments of the strong; and of all classes, the children of the State need its protection most.
If organized capital provides so little pay for labor, that the laboring man can not properly feed his children, then the State should dehorn that organized oppressor, as the farmer dehorns the unruly bull or boss cow. No profits to the individual or the organization, even though they be members of the State, can compensate for the robbery of the children of the State. If the State on investigation finds that the money that should purchase food for the young goes into the till of the publican, then the State should smite the publican in its wrath—not the individual publican, who perhaps may feel that he is earning his bread in the only way for which he is fitted, but the system which makes it necessary for the prosperity of the producer of intoxicating liquors, to corrupt so many hundred of our youth for every thousand dollars of invested capital. (Applause.)
If we have a system existing, whether in the State or the Nation, which can thrive only on the debauchery of the young and on the robbery of the child, by taking that which should go for food to support it, then it is time that the State and the Nation should control it to a point where it can neither seduce the young or rob the child; and that point is suppression. We must do that or do worse, namely, pay the price. We are in fact paying that now. The individual who will not keep account of his expenses is in danger of bankruptcy, no matter how great his resources; and the State which refuses to count the cost of any institution or system which tends to debauch morals, and corrupt the young, is on the way to destruction. For there is no avoiding the payment of the cost, whether we keep account or not; and that cost is not merely the dollars and cents, but starved children, blasted lives, broken hearts, ruined homes, increase of poverty and an increase of criminality, which is beyond the possibility of mathematics to compute. The State can afford to tolerate nothing whatever that stands in the way of proper nurture of the young; nor can it safely endure anything which tends to dwarf them physically, mentally or morally. (Applause.)
The State, however, will always succeed best by removing the causes that lead to improper nurture, or to the formation of vicious or criminal habits. The State can not endure poverty, grinding poverty, among any class of its people; nor can it endure having its children poorly housed. The slum is the enemy of the State and of every citizen of the State. The vice and crime of the slum reach out to the west end or the east end or the avenue, or wherever the wealthy and prosperous congregate, thus saying to all men: We are brothers. The poverty-stricken may well say: If you will not give us our rights, if you grind our faces, we will not merely levy toll on your pocketbooks, but we will infect you with our vices.
If we are to have the highest efficiency in the next generation, the State (and by the State I mean the government, whether State or National) must see to it that infancy is protected from the abominations of soothing syrup, and “sleep-easy,” that usurp the place of the catnip tea and other herbs which soothed infantile pains in the days of our grandmothers. It is useless to expect efficiency, if we pour into the innocent lips of unsuspecting childhood the habit-forming drugs which benumb the brain, stifle sensibility, and lay the foundation for incurable vices when the babe has grown to manhood. Let us get back to the ideals of the ancient psalmist, who, contemplating the future of the chosen people, uttered the prayer that “our sons shall be as plants grown up in their youth, and our daughters as cornerstones fashioned after the similitude of a palace.” That is, a plant carefully cultivated, spreading freely, its roots drawing sustenance from the soil beneath, its leaves drawing sustenance from the air and sunshine, bracing itself against the storm; the daughters the cornerstones of the home, with all the adornment that we bestow on a palace fit for the abode of royalty. Let us go back to this ancient ideal, if we are to be a happy people, whose God is Jehovah.
If we are to maintain human efficiency, the State must lay a heavy hand on the venders of impure food. After what Dr. Wiley has told you, there is no need for me to enlarge on this cause of inefficiency. Suffice it to say, there was a time in the memory of some of the older men, when there was no pure food question. Our oatmeal, our cornmeal, our flour came from our own farms. There was no shorts in our buckwheat, no white earth in our flour. If our meats were tainted, it was due to our own negligence. In these latter days we have become by force of circumstances more completely “members one of another,” drawing our food from all parts of the habitable earth; and hence the State must protect us from imposition. If we are to reap the benefits which come from the modern system of division of labor, we must not quibble about the expense involved in enforcing honesty in those who feed us.
If we are to have efficiency in the generation now entering upon the stage, or in the one to follow, we will need to make radical changes in our system of education. No matter what the natural endowment, it will be comparatively inefficient unless properly developed. Education does not consist of putting in but of drawing out. Culture is simply the proper development of the gifts of nature. All children are born with the capacity for doing, and doing well, some small part of the work that needs to be done in this great world of ours. This capacity is usually indicated by a strong preference for that kind of work. The capacity for doing is largely a matter of inheritance, and education is simply the development of this capacity. No education which fails to develop what is in the child is worth having; but no matter what may be the natural endowment, the capacity to govern in State or Nation, or to build a road, or to plow a straight furrow, or polish a pin, every child must have put into his possession the tools by which he can secure that education which will fit him for his life work. He must know how to read, that he may be in touch with his fellow-man. He must know how to write, that he may communicate his thoughts to other men. He must know how to reason, that he may put this and that together and draw conclusions. These lie at the foundation of all education.
Some education is acquired in mastering the “Three R’s,” namely, the power to observe—to see things—to tell what is seen and to draw conclusions; but the “Three R’s” are, however, merely the tools by which we ourselves afterwards acquire an education. In spite of all the money we spend on rural education (in my State from 42 to 50 per cent. of all rural taxes), our children neither read well nor write well nor reason well. How can they when our rural schools average twelve pupils, most of them less than ten, and often five, three, or only two or one pupil, and are taught mainly by persons themselves but poorly educated, and who are teaching simply to acquire the experience necessary to secure a position in a city school. Neither the reading nor the writing nor the arithmetic of these schools has any connection with the farm nor any relation to farm life, nor is the teacher as a rule in sympathy with that life. Yet this is all the education that 90 per cent. of the farmborn will ever receive.
Little education this for the mighty task of feeding the world at prices that those not on farms can afford to pay. If the farm boy was so thoroughly drilled in reading that he could read to himself with understanding and read to others with expression, if he could express his thoughts so clearly and fully that the dullest could understand, if he could see things as they are, and tell accurately what he sees, he would in time without further teaching become a leader of men.
The farmborn, however, usually fares better than the townboy in the race of life. In growing up in the open country he learns what books can not teach—the know-how, so far as farm operations are concerned—and needs but to learn the reason why. The townborn, as a rule, has no opportunity to acquire the know-how by following the occupation of their parents; and hence much of his school life is spent in acquiring information which, apart from its educational value, is of no sort of use to him in after life. What the farmborn need, if they are to be efficient in life, is an opportunity to learn in a secondary school in the open country the reason why. What the townborn need is secondary education which will fit them for the work they are to do. If our farmborn are to be efficient, they must have centralized schools taught by teachers who have selected teaching as their life work and are paid accordingly, and thus be able to acquire in the open country a secondary education that will enable them to see clearly the reason why they should plow, or sow or feed. If our townborn are to be efficient, they must have in addition to a thorough mastery of the “Three R’s,” which is the birthright of every child, such training as will fit them for their life work.
The misery of our system, whether in town or country, is that it assumes that the chief end of man is to figure in some one of the so-called “learned” professions. So the high school is keyed up to the standard of admission to the college and university. The grade school exists to qualify pupils for admission to the high school. Hence the surplus of doctors without patients, at a time when humanity is learning how to avoid needing a doctor; of lawyers when men are fast learning to keep out of law.
In short, the end and aim of all education in the future must needs be efficiency in the line of the chosen vocation. The great lack of our present system is the failure to give the child a complete and thorough mastery of the tools by which any education worth while must be acquired: the ability to read with understanding, to express itself, whether in speech or writing, so that all may understand; the ability to see what is to be seen and tell it in plain English, and to put this and that together and draw a just conclusion.
I need not say that no training for efficiency is complete that does not involve the ethical as well as the intellectual and material. This is a Christian nation, and the ethics of Christianity should be taught in every school as well as in every home. We may not, and should not teach the dogmas or doctrines of any sect or denomination. We must forever keep separate the Church and the State; but underlying all these creeds and denominations there is an ethical standard which all but the criminal or would-be criminal accept; and this should be taught, because it embraces our highest ideals of manhood and womanhood and citizenship.
The crimes of which we are rightly ashamed are due largely to the fact that the jealousy of the churches toward each other has heretofore prevented the teaching of ethics to the children in our schools. Without the practice of ethics, without the striving to realize moral ideals, there can be no moral efficiency, and without moral efficiency intellectual efficiency may become productive of evil instead of good. An educated brain without an educated conscience is a source of danger to the public welfare. It is high time for the churches and all good people to get together and agree on ethical standards to be taught in every school, that will put moral as well as intellectual training in the coming generation.
I have touched merely the high places of the subject of human efficiency. I have endeavored to say that if the generation which is to follow us and carry on our work is to be efficient, the children must be well born and well fed, protected from the vampires that endeavor to suck their lifeblood, and must have an opportunity to develop their natural capacity by an education and training—physical, mental and moral—that will enable them to do the world’s work with profit to themselves and their fellow-man. (Applause.)
President White—In Denver, Colorado, some twelve years ago, there was found a friend for children; there was found a judge who believed that in the child brought before him for some breach of law, he could see something divine, that he could see the soul, the germ of the future man, the germ of a future life—something to redeem. He believed he could see why Christ said, “Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” He had faith in the child, and when he found it necessary, in the way of discipline, to send them to the reform school, he placed faith in them; he told them to go out to the reform school, and he would be up to see how they were getting along after awhile. He developed character from the start, and it soon became noised around. In every paper, in every magazine, all over the world the name of Judge Ben B. Lindsey, of Denver, Colorado, was known. (Applause.)
I now have the pleasure to introduce to you Judge Lindsey, who will speak on the subject “Is the Child Worth Conserving?” (Prolonged applause.)