¶It is not too much to say that the most characteristic work of the Republic is that done by the educators, by the teachers, for whatever our shortcomings as a Nation may be—and we have certain shortcomings—we have at least firmly grasped the fact that we cannot do our part in the difficult and all-important work of self-government, that we cannot rule and govern ourselves unless we approach the task with developed minds, and with what counts for more even—with trained characters. You teachers make the whole world your debtors.
¶Of your profession this can be said with more truth than of any other profession barring only that of the minister of the Gospel himself. If you—you teachers—did not do your work well this Republic would not endure beyond the span of the generation.
¶Moreover as an incident to your avowed work, you render some well-nigh unbelievable services to the country. For instance, you render to the Republic the prime, the vital service of amalgamating into one homogeneous body the children alike of those who are born here and of those who come here from so many different lands abroad. You furnish a common training and common ideals for the children of the mixed peoples who are here being fused into one nationality.
¶It is in no small degree due to you and to your efforts that we of this great American Republic form one people instead of a group of jarring peoples. The pupils, no matter where they or their parents were born, who are being educated in our public schools will be sure to become imbued with that mutual sympathy, that mutual respect and understanding, which is absolutely indispensable for the working out of the problems we as a people have before us.
¶And one service you render which I regard as wholly indispensable. In our country, where altogether too much prominence is given to the mere possession of wealth, we are under heavy obligations to such a body as this[[A]] which substitutes for the ideal of accumulating money the infinitely loftier, non-materialistic ideal of devotion to work worth doing simply for that work’s sake.
¶I do not in the least underestimate the need of having material prosperity as the basis of our civilization, but I most earnestly insist that if our civilization does not build a lofty super structure on this basis, we can never rank among the really great peoples.[[28]]
A Square Deal
and
The Nobility
of
Parenthood
In our modern industrial civilization there are many and grave dangers to counterbalance the splendors and the triumphs. It is not a good thing to see cities grow at disproportionate speed relatively to the country; for the small land owners, the men who own their little home, and, therefore, to a very large extent, the men who till farms, the men of the soil, have hitherto made the foundation of lasting National life in every State; and, if the foundation becomes either too weak or too narrow, the superstructure, no matter how attractive, is in imminent danger of falling.
¶¶But far more important than the question of the occupation of our citizens is the question of how their family life is conducted. No matter what that occupation may be, so long as there is a real home and so long as those who make up that home do their duty to one another, to their neighbors, and to the State, it is of minor consequence whether the man’s trade is plied in the country or the city, whether it calls for the work of the hands or for the work of the head.
¶But the Nation is in a bad way if there is no real home, if the family is not of the right kind, if the man is not a good husband and father, if he is brutal or cowardly or selfish; if the woman has lost her sense of duty, if she is sunk in vapid self-indulgence or has let her nature be twisted so that she prefers a sterile pseudo-intellectuality to that great and beautiful development of character which comes only to those whose lives know the fulness of duty done, of effort made, and self-sacrifice undergone.