Over forty-two millions of educated citizens, to whom are opened all the treasures of literature!
Forty-two millions of people, able to read and write! I say, there is no parallel for this. The nations of antiquity were very ignorant when compared with this great Republic of ours. There is no other nation in the world that can show a record like ours. We ought to be proud of it. We ought to build more schools, and build them better. Our teachers ought to be paid more, and everything ought to be taught in the public school that is worth knowing.
I believe that the children of the Republic, no matter whether their fathers are rich or poor, ought to be allowed to drink at the fountain of education, and it does not cost more to teach everything in the free schools than it does teaching reading and writing and ciphering.
Have we kept up in other ways? The post office tells a wonderful story. In Switzerland, going through the post office in each year, are letters, etc., in the proportion of seventy-four to each inhabitant. In England the number is sixty; in Germany, fifty-three; in France, thirty-nine; in Austria, twenty-four; in Italy, sixteen, and in the United States, our own home, one hundred and ten. Think of it. In Italy only twenty-five cents paid per head for the support of the public schools and only sixteen letters. And this is the place where God's agent lives. I would rather have one good schoolmaster than two such agents.
There is another thing. A great deal has been said, from time to time, about the workingman. I have as much sympathy with the workingman as anybody on the earth—who does not work. There has always been a desire in this world to let somebody else do the work, nearly everybody having the modesty to stand back whenever there is anything to be done. In savage countries they make the women do the work, so that the weak people have always the bulk of the burdens. In civilized communities the poor are the ones, of course, that work, and probably they are never fully paid. It is pretty hard for a manufacturer to tell how much he can pay until he sells the stuff which he manufactures. Every man who manufactures is not rich. I know plenty of poor corporations; I know tramp railroads that have not a dollar. And you will find some of them as anarchistic as you will find their men. What a man can pay, depends upon how much he can get for what he has produced. What the farmer can pay his help depends upon the price he receives for his stock, his corn and his wheat.
But wages in this country are getting better day by day. We are getting a little nearer to being civilized day by day, and when I want to make up my mind on a subject I try to get a broad view of it, and not decide it on one case.
In 1860 the average wages of the workingman were, per year, two hundred and eighty-nine dollars. In 1890 the average was four hundred and eighty-five. Thus the average has almost doubled in thirty years. The necessaries of life are far cheaper than they were in 1860. Now, to my mind, that is a hopeful sign. And when I am asked how can the dispute between employer and employee be settled, I answer, it will be settled when both parties become civilized.
It takes a long time to educate a man up to the point where he does not want something for nothing. Yet, when a man is civilized, he does not.
He wants for a thing just what it is worth; he wants to give labor its legitimate reward, and when he has something to sell he never wants more than it is worth. I do not claim to be civilized myself; but all these questions between capital and labor will be settled by civilization.
We are to-day accumulating wealth at the rate of more than seven million dollars a day. Is not this perfectly splendid?