Facts and Fictions of Life

by Helen H. Gardener

It is well that, in his present state of angry unrest, he feels that he has but to organize and elect his own representatives to help enact just and repeal unjust laws as they bear upon his own immediate needs. But for this outlet to his feelings, and this hope for his own future, the labor troubles would be troubles indeed, and every additional book read by labor, every new schoolhouse built for labor, would but add flame to fire. But education brings with it—when taken into practical life—a certain sense of the responsibilities of life and of the relations of things.

The laborer begins to argue, "Am not I partly responsible for my own condition? Is not my salvation in my own hands and in the hands of my fellows? We are units in our own government. We are in the majority numerically, and we are, therefore, at least partially responsible for not only what we do, but for that which is done to us."

It is this feeling that sobers and steadies while it inspires the so-called working classes to-day.

If, with their present enlightenment, ambitions, and needs, laboring men felt themselves wholly irresponsible for the present or future legislation, riots and lawlessness would be the inevitable result. A sense of responsibility alone makes educational development safe either in individuals or in classes.

Witness the truth of this in the lives of the "gilded youths" of all countries whose sharpened wits are not steadied by, or applied in, any useful occupation. The results are disastrous to themselves and to those who fall under their sway or influence.

Broadened ambitions, sharpened mental capacities, developed intellectuality, demand corresponding outlets and responsibilities. Lacking these, education is but an added danger. Especially is this true in a Republic where the theory of legal and political equality is held. At the present time there are but two wholly irresponsible classes in our republic—Indians and women.

I place the Indians first because it has recently been decided in South Dakota that if an Indian (male) will "accept land in severalty," he thereby becomes a sovereign, and is henceforth presumed to have sufficient interest in the welfare of his government and the stability of affairs in general to entitle him to be looked upon as a desirable citizen, capable of legislating and desiring to legislate wisely for the public weal.

Since the government has not yet come to believe that any amount of land in severalty entitles women to so much confidence, and since the lack of responsibility develops in woman, as in man, a reckless and wanton spirit, we have the spectacle of this irresponsible element taking property laws into its own hands, and proudly destroying in public the belongings of other people where those belongings chanced to be in the form of beverages which these women disapproved of as articles of merchandise and use. And we have seen, farther, the grave spectacle of courts of law which will not or dare not enforce the law for their punishment.

The due recognition of property rights is one of the earliest developments of personal, legal, and political responsibility. The negro notoriously disregarded these when his own human rights and individual responsibility were unrecognized. His desires were likely to be the measure of your loss.

He is not the light-fingered being that he was. Mine and thine have a new meaning for him since—for the first time in his life—"thine" has any meaning to his one-time master.