Carl Schurz

“ It will be a blessing to this country to have men who can stop to think in repose. It is unemployed leisure that demoralizes and contaminates. Pleasure is a good and necessary thing in the material and moral order of things. But it is the pursuit of nothing but pleasure, without any work to earn a right to it, that turns it into a social poison. The great war that education has to carry on in society is a war against the brutal self-assertion of vulgar wealth, with no quarter for the pleasure-hunting idler, and merciless contempt and ridicule for the snob. ”

“ In England, while the suffrage is not universal, the government is really controlled by a public opinion expressing itself in a majority of votes. But although the suffrage is not confined to the wealthy and educated, the wealthy and educated are virtually intrusted with the execution of its verdict. It is indeed no longer the aristocracy that enjoys that privilege, but the plutocracy; not birth but property. By the reform acts of 1832 and 1867, the suffrage has indeed been diffused among many. But the many still look up with traditional reverence to the few for the exercise of their power. ”

“ There is nothing that, like such a study, charms and fructifies the imagination with impulses of active public spirit, warms the heart with a large sense of duty and noble ambition, and quickens the mind not only with valuable knowledge — for the history of governments contains the science of government — but also with a thirsty desire to advance from inquiry to inquiry and to add to the studied lessons of the past a clear understanding of the problems of the present. ”

“ Since that time the American people have lost their taste for that naïf jubilant self-glorification which had been the characteristic tone of our popular oratory. The old Fourth of July speech with its magnificent confidence of a tremendous destiny, with its glowing pictures of irresistible power and unprecedented greatness no longer has its ancient charm. Its imitations, which we shall hear at rare times, lack the power of spontaneity and strike the ear tame and stale. A more sober, inquiring, critical, not to say anxiously doubting temper has come upon our days. ”

“ But it is not upon political discussion and action alone that higher education has to impress its stamp; it is also upon the habits, the enjoyments, the tastes, the morals of society. I have already pointed out how the accumulation of wealth had in a great measure changed the original frugality and simplicity of our habits, not only among the rich, but also among those who are affected by their example; and how a change in our habits of life would be apt in its turn to touch the relations between the different conditions of men and the working of our institutions. ”

“ Here everybody feels himself as good as anybody else. Here the masses have from generation to generation been accustomed to the exercise of political power in their own right and in their own way, — at least in the way they tolerate, if they do not in every respect specifically direct it. Here the opinion of the masses, in the broadest sense of the term; the way in which they feel and think or understand their interests, or misunderstand them, as the case may be, expressed in the greatest number of votes, are the real power that controls the government. ”

“ What a student can learn at college he should so learn that it impress him with a profound sense of his ignorance. The more a man knows well the more keenly he feels how little he knows and how much more he ought to know. Among the noblest and most fruitful moments of a man's life are those when a deep and keen consciousness of his own ignorance most seriously disturbs him, for those moments stimulate the healthiest thirst for knowledge. ”

“ There is a popular tradition in America which is of inestimable value. It is that every man must have some useful occupation, and that he who has none and who, while still able to work, lives only for his pleasure, is not entitled to respect. It is true, with accumulating wealth the number of men of leisure will steadily grow among us. But this, in itself, is not to be deplored, so long as leisure does not mean idleness. It is to men of leisure well employed that England owes many of her proudest illustrations. ”

“ Will not the poor, seeing the avenue to prosperous independence, formerly open, now blocked, will they not remember that, in universal suffrage, they possess the power which democratic institutions vest in numbers, and will they not use that power to upset the rights of property, to strip the rich, and thus to possess themselves of what they may desire? ”

“ With the accumulation of wealth the old simplicity of life and frugality of habit have ceased to be general. We see the overgrown millionnaire by the side of millions of men toiling for subsistence; the luxury of the palace exciting the envy not only of struggling poverty, but also of impatient greed; a feverish chase after riches gradually invading all walks of life and unsettling the integrity of the government as well as of society ”

“ Men who have risen from very modest circumstances will but in rare cases lose their sympathy with the class of society to which they once belonged. Many of them will not only remain simple and frugal in their habits, but also keep alive in their hearts a sense of obligation to the community in which they enjoyed fortunate opportunities, and whose combined progressive energy, facilitated the growth of their own prosperity, — a consciousness, in other words, that their own wealth in a certain sense does not altogether belong to themselves alone. ”

“ The business of teaching should be looked upon and treated as a profession, aye, as one of the most honorable and important of all professions, and persons of ability and ambition should be encouraged to prepare themselves for and to stay in that profession, not only be social regard, but also by simple remuneration. [Applause.] A despotic government may think it consistent with its aims to starve the schoolmaster. A republic, whose government is controlled by the opinion of the people, will disgrace as well as endanger itself if it fails to respect and support him. ”

“ Let us listen for a moment to those political thinkers, most of whom are speaking to us from abroad, who, while recognizing the naturalness of the growth of democratic republican government from the original condition of society in the American colonies, are in the habit of expressing grave doubts as to its durability. So far, they say, you have succeeded tolerably well, notwithstanding your great civil war. You have grown rich and powerful, and your republican government stands. ”

“ And yet is it not also true that in spite of all this restlessness and these adverse conditions, an eager and active desire and endeavor for the attainment of higher culture manifest themselves not only in the older and wealthier cities and the seats of learning, but everywhere from the large country town to the frontier settlement, and not merely in such trivial fancies as the painting of sunflowers upon earthen pots, but in an earnest and grasping pursuit of knowledge and in a quickly advancing cultivation also of the graces of life? ”

“ Of this responsibility each generation has its share, and in each generation the largest share will fall upon those whose intelligence and knowledge should take the lead in the movements of opinion.
When endeavoring to conceive the grandeur of the prospect before you and of the task that has fallen to your lot, never fear to be called idealists, for your ideals cannot be too high, nor your enthusiasm too warm, nor your ambition of duty too eager. ”

“ I am far from saying that free discussion gives absolute command of the field to the wise men. On the contrary, it also calls out the fools and the mischief-makers. But it makes them less dangerous than they otherwise would be, just by calling them out and making them show how foolish and mischievous they are. But it is essential to this end that they be there confronted by the wise men. Neither do I assert that the conclusions evolved by discussion are always the wisest. ”

“ The influences which work upon one part of society are not by any fixed wall of division shut off from the others. There is, therefore, nothing except wise self-restraint to keep those who are not rich from yielding to the temptation of doing as much as possible as the rich do, and of appearing as they appear. The result of all this is that in a democratic country large accumulation of wealth ill employed will at the same time tend to demoralize society and to develop the germs of dangerous antagonisms between its different classes or conditions. ”

“ Look at this country and this people, as they stand in the history of the world, and you will in all soberness be bound to say that no part of mankind has ever had a greater opportunity before it than we have. It is the opportunity to secure freedom, civilization, peace and happiness to more human beings than ever enjoyed these blessings before. ”

“ There are the tremendously powerful railroad and telegraph corporations on the one side, and on the other the so-called anti-monopoly movements, which for a time strongly agitated our agricultural population, and now constantly spring up in a variety of forms — evidently gathering force, not from the skill or wisdom of their leaders, but from a deep-seated and wide-spread feeling that the power of the large corporate bodies controlling the means of transportation has grown so great as to oblige the people to look for protection against its arbitrary exercise. ”

“ For the scholar is very much needed in politics, and he is needed in mass. That those who have knowledge should make the influence of that knowledge felt in the discussions by which public opinion is formed and the government controlled, is of vital necessity, especially now when the real or fancied antagonisms of different classes and conditions begin to agitate society. Ignorance has impulses; it requires knowledge to have convictions. The impulses of ignorance are sometimes a motive power for good, sometimes a merely destructive force. ”

“ With us the real contest lies elsewhere. It is between wealth as such and education, between the superiority of mere money and the superiority of mind. If the tone and habits of society are determined, if the examples that stimulate imitation are set by brutal wealth, that is by men who are only rich and who would be nothing were they not rich, society will be in danger of being demoralized by a tendency in the direction of coarse display and vicious indulgence. There is nothing more vulgar in his being and his influence than a vulgar rich person of great pretensions. ”

“ There has lately been some spirited discussion called forth by the assertion of an English writer of note that, in point of culture and refinement, the American people were sadly deficient. In one sense this is true, and it is but natural that it should be true. It was but yesterday that, in the largest part of this country, the people had to subdue the wilderness and to wring bare existence from the unbroken forces of nature. ”

“ Do not the press and platform today furnish more powerful agencies of influence upon the public mind than ever before? Do we not see at this very moment one popular insurrection after another battering the strongest fortresses in which that vicious system has intrenched itself? ”

“ At the very time when the college was founded their apprehension of Old World interference with the concerns of their new home had suggested the first thought of an independent union in New England. They wanted to stand on their own feet. They wanted real self-government. Did not their instinctive foresight tell them that this would be a government of public opinion, and that, to be safe under all circumstances, it must be one of instructed public opinion? ”

“ History knows of more than one community of rough tillers of the soil and artisans, and small traders, who maintained in orderly and successful working, barring occasional turmoils, a democratic social and political organization without any effective system of popular organization without any effective system of popular or of higher education to open to them wider fields of inquiry and invention, or to aid them in the solution of problems of government. ”