The sons will come out all right; they always do when they have a shiftless dad and a good mother. And somehow in this great open splendid Western country there is opportunity for such boys.
The big men here were all poor a short time ago. Their grandfathers were rich, their fathers spent their inheritance, they suffered poverty and want and their extremity was the son's spur to ambitious activity.
In the car are four young sports coming home from college on a vacation. Their daddies are all oil kings, and these youngsters will inherit fortunes.
Those youngsters who were playing Indian will get on in the world; these four young millionaire kids will go broke; their heads are not shaped right; their jaws slant back; it isn't in them. I know something of character.
Bye-bye, Mamma, with your little cabin and your boys; some day you will have peace and plenty.
Those four oil Johnnies will marry girls who have plenty and some day those girls will have to do the family washing.
The wheel turns, it's the history of the past. From shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations.
Lincolns, Garfields, and Edisons came from just such little cabins and just such rough, hard, bare life as I have been seeing this afternoon.