Education: How Old The New

by James J. Walsh

All this organization of the workmen was accomplished by the university men of the time. They were mainly clergymen, but they had in them not only the wish, but the faculty to help those around them, and so there arose the beautiful creations of that time in art, architecture, literature and political freedom which did so much for the masses of the people. There were more students at the universities at the end of the thirteenth century to the population of the various countries of Europe than there are at the present time. That seems impossible, but so do all the other achievements of the thirteenth century,--their cathedrals, their arts and crafts, their [{423}] universities, their literature,--until you go back to study them. There is absolutely no doubt about these statistics. These university men were trained to self-government and to the government of others in the university life of the time. They took that training out with them, not for selfish purposes alone, but for the help of others. What they accomplished is to be found in the social uplift that followed. There is scarcely a right or a development of liberty that we have now that cannot be found, in germ at least, often in complete evolution, in the thirteenth century. The Supreme Courts of most of our states still make their decisions following the old English common law which was laid down in that century.

But it will be said, while so much was done for the workman, have we not heard that his wages were a few cents, almost nothing, and that his hours were long and he was little better than a slave? Only the first portion of this has any truth in it. He did get what seems to us a mere pittance for his day's wages. As pointed out by M. Urbain Gohier, the French socialist, when he visited this country to lecture a few years ago, the workmen of this time had already obtained the eight-hour day, the three eights as they are called, eight hours of work, eight hours for sleep and eight hours for themselves. Besides they had the Saturday half-holiday, or at least, after the Vesper hour, work could not be required of them, and there was more than one holy-day of [{424}] obligation every two weeks, on which they did not work, and on the Vigil of which work ceased at four o'clock. As for their wages, by Act of Parliament they got fourpence a day at the end of the century and this does not seem much, but the same Act of Parliament set the minimum wage and the maximum price that could be charged for the necessities of life. A pair of hand-made shoes could be bought for fourpence, and no workman can do anything like that for a day's wage at the present or usually for more than double his daily wages. A fat goose cost but twopence halfpenny, and when the father of a family can buy two fat geese for his daily wages, there is no danger of the family starving. Our wages are higher, but the necessities of life have gone up so high that the wages can scarcely touch them.

In the parliament that passed these laws the greater proportion were college men. I suppose probably three-fourths of the members of both houses had been at the university. Now that the question of the abolition of the House of Lords is occupying much attention, we sometimes hear of it as a mediaeval institution. It is spoken of as an inheritance from an earlier and ruder time. I wonder how much the people who talk thus know about the realities. They must be densely ignorant of what the House of Lords used to be. At the present moment there are in the English House of Lords 627 members, only [{425}] 75 of whom do not owe their position directly or solely to the accident of birth. Even about half of this seventy-five can only be selected from the hereditary nobility of Scotland and of Ireland. In the Middle Ages it was quite different. Until the reformation so-called the Lords Spiritual formed a majority of the House of Lords. They consisted not only of the bishops but of the abbots and priors of monasteries and the masters of the various religious and knightly orders. This upper chamber of the olden time was elected in the best possible sense of the word. They were usually men who had risen from the ranks of the people and who had been chosen because of their unselfishness to be heads of religious houses and religious orders. There were abuses by which some of these Lords Spiritual obtained their places by what we now call pull, but the great majority of them were selected for their virtues, and because they had shown their power to rule over themselves had been chosen to rule over others.

They were men who could own nothing for themselves and families, and in whom every motive, human and divine, appealed to make life as happy as possible for others. They were all of them university men. Compare for a moment the present House of Lords with that House of Lords and you will see the difference between the old time and the present. No wonder England was merry England, no wonder historian [{426}] after historian has declared that the people were happier at this time than they have ever been before or since, no wonder men had leisure to make great monuments of genius in architecture, in the arts and in literature. No wonder the universities, in the form in which they have been useful to mankind ever since, were organized in this century; no wonder all our rights and liberties come to us. Great generations of the university men nobly did their work.

Young men, you are graduating from a college that is literally a lineal descendant of those old-time universities. You have had the training of heart and of will as well as of mind that was given to these students of the olden times. You have been taught that the end of life is not self, but that life shall mean something for others as well as yourself, that every action shall be looked at from the standpoint of what it means for others as well as for yourselves, and that you shall never do anything that will even remotely injure others.

You are not only going to lead honest but honorable lives. You are going to be true to yourselves first, but absolutely faithful to others. They are telling a story in New York now that, perhaps, some of you have heard. It is of the young man who had graduated at the head of his class at the high school and delighted his old father's heart. He kept up the good work, and came out first in his class at college. Then, when [{427}] he led a large class at the law school, you can understand how proud the old gentleman was. Tom came home to practise law in a long-established firm where there was an opening for him. Some six months later he said, one day, to his father, "Well, I made $10,000 to-day," and the old gentleman said, "Well, Tom, that is a good deal of money to make. I hope you made it honestly." The young man lifted his head and said, "You can be sure that I would not make it dishonestly." "That is right," the old man said. "Tell us how it came about." Then Tom told how he knew that a trolley line was going to run out far from town and that he had secured an option on some property through which it was going to pass. "You know old Farmer Simpson out on the Plank Road?" he said. "His boys have left him and gone to the city; he cannot work his farm any longer himself, and he cannot hire men for it, and he wants to get rid of it. I got positive information yesterday through one of our clients that a trolley line is going out through that farm. When I went out to see the old man he knew me at once, spoke about you, and when I offered to try to sell the farm for him and suggested the advisability of signing an option on it to me at a definite figure, so that I may be able to close the price with any one who wanted it, he signed at once at a ridiculously low figure because, though, as he said, he did not care to sign the papers for lawyer folk, [{428}] he knew I was different. I have got the farm at so low a price that $10,000 is the smallest profit I can look for. I think I will get that profit out of the company for the right of way, and then I will have the rest of the farm for myself. It will make a mighty nice country place."

Then there was a pause. The old gentleman did not lighten up any over the story, as Tom seemed to think he would. After a minute's silence the old man said, "Well, Tom, that was not what I sent you to college and law school for, to come out here and take advantage of my old neighbors. I thought that you would be helpful to us all, and that there would be more of happiness in the world because of your education. You may call that transaction honest, and perhaps it is legal, but I know that it is dishonorable. Tom, if you don't give Farmer Simpson back his option I do not think I want you to live here with me any more. Somehow I couldn't feel as if I could hold up my head if ever I passed Farmer Simpson and his wife, if you did. You may act as his attorney if you will and take a good fair fee for it, but you must not absorb all the profits just because the old man is in trouble and is glad to trust an old neighbor's son."

Of course Tom's father was dreadfully old-fashioned and out of date. Of course there are some people who will say that this sort of thing is quixotic. Now, this sort of thing is what higher education should mean, and does mean, in a [{429}] Catholic college. Your principles are not taught you for the sake of exercises of piety, nor attendance at religious duties. These you have got to do anyhow, but they are meant to inflow into every action of your life and to make the basic principle of them all, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

You are graduating from a Catholic college with high aims, you have had many advantages, more than are accorded usually in our time to men of your years in the training of heart and will as well as intellect, and much is expected of you. You are rich in real education and a stewardship of great intellectual and moral wealth is given over to you, and you must be better than others and be, above all, ever helpful to others. Your education was not given for your benefit, but for that of the community. Your neighbors are all round you. See that at the end of your life they shall all be happier because you have lived. If you do not do so you shall sadly disappoint the hopes of your teachers and, above all, you shall be false to the trust that has been confided to you.

Pass on the torch of charity. Let all the world be dear to you in the old-fashioned sense of that dear old word charity, not merely distantly friendly in the new-fangled sense of the long Greek term philanthropy. Be just while you are living your lives and you will not have the burden of philanthropy that so many rich men are now complaining of in your older years, and, above all, [{430}] you will not have the contempt and aversion of those who may accept your bounty, but who know how questionably you acquired the means of giving it and are not really thankful.