Various

“ Scientists competed for the infamous distinction of inventing appliances for murder by electricity, while in the domain of politics the sale of votes in the closing years of the decade was more notorious than at any period of the city’s history. In a society in which all things are commodities to be had for money, the labor power of stalwart men and tiny children, the innocence of delicately cherished girlhood, the marriage tie, the virtue of the servant, and the manhood of the statesman, it is eminently fitting that the record of progress should be kept officially in dollars and cents. ”

“ And with equal preparation, greater than these are possible in living, breathing humanity. Go in imagination from the gallery to the studio of the poor artist, watch him through the restless days, as he struggles with the conception of some grand ideal, and then see how patiently he moulds and remoulds the clay, and when at last, through weary years, the block of marble is transformed into an angel of light, he worships it, and weeps that he cannot breathe into it the breath of life. ”

“ It is the inexorable law of our civilization—the principle and formula even of social progress, that mechanical engines are to accomplish every operation of human labor which does not proceed directly from the mind. The hand of man is each day deprived of a portion of its original task, but this general gain is a loss for the particular and for the classes whose only instrument of labor is a pair of feeble arms. ”

“ This life is in truth the German idea in its utmost truth; it was life and power that these men wanted, the life born in them from their earliest hour and kept sacred through all time by their poetry, their song, their native tongue.
It is all this which is German and not Prussian. The Hohenzollerns have nothing to do with all this idealism,—and it is this which constitutes the peculiar and sovereign spirit of German unity to which the modern philosophy of Frederick II. was so long a stranger, and to which the Iron Chancellor became a hearty convert only at the close ”

“ But from the day of that disastrous experience in the Garden, clothing, and the necessities involved in it, has been the synonym of sorrow for women, and the needle stands as the visible token of disaster, sorrow, and wrong of every order—“the asp upon the breast of the poor.”
Civilization has always in the nature of things meant war. It is only out of the conflict of class with class, interest with interest, that advance comes. ”

“ Our religion must teach the brotherhood of the race, the essential oneness of humanity, and our government must be based on the broad principles of equal rights to all. A religion that seeks to make the people satisfied in their degraded conditions, and releases them from all responsibility for its continuance, is unworthy our intelligent belief, and a government that holds half its people in slavery, practically chained where they are born, in ignorance, poverty, and vice, is unworthy our intelligent support. ”

“ We cannot ignore the fact that for some reason they have failed to attain their natural and possible development.
Our educational theories, on paper and in text-books, are well-nigh perfect; in actual operation why should they fail? Like a great machine, fed with the material of thought, the crank turns, the wheels go round, and the whole world is a-buzz with the work and the noise, but the creature on whom all this power is expended, is only in rare instances a truly educated man or woman. ”

“ Only the perverted vision which leads New York’s most famous charitable institutions to imprison beggars and kidnap the children of the very poor in the name of philanthropy, can so confuse cause and effect. If we were civilized, if we were doing the nation’s work in an orderly manner, every recruit would be so much clear gain. It is the disorganization of our moribund industrial system which leaves no welcome for the immigrants save as the tenement-house agent may bleed them, and the sweating contractor “grind their bones to make his bread.” ”

“ But it was when “Miss Rachel” danced down in her silken skirts and met the master midway the line, and dropped a low courtesy, her full skirts settling about her like a great white umbrella, and the stately general bowed over his silver buckles like some royal knight of old, that Cæsar’s enthusiasm got the better of his indignation.
“Beat dat, Mr. Grundy!” he said, in a low, if enthusiastic, whisper, “beat dat, sar.” And Mr. Grundy pranced down again to “beat” the master in the “swing with the right” movement of the old-fashioned dance. ”

“ They do not object to railroads, and the constantly increasing facilities for travel and transportation; but they do object to laws and customs which make railroads a means of transferring the hard earnings of the farm to the coffers of money kings. The farmer has received comforts at the hands of our civilization, but he has paid a good price for them, not to the genius which created, but to the plutocrat who bought. It is not because the farmer is facing starvation that he moves politically; but because, in the midst of plenty, comparative poverty is his portion. ”

“ Let the routine work continue to be done, and, if necessary, in the routine fashion, but let every institution have on its Faculty one soul, at least, whose province is not to crush, but to cultivate and develop individual traits of mind and character. Such an instructor must not be ignorant of books, but that intricate book, the human heart, should be his special study, and he should know, not only what human beings are, but should be able to help them to grow into what God meant them to be. ”

“ Allowing four generations to a century we have twelve generations of men who passed their lives in that one achievement. Was not the work of those who first evened the ground and laid the foundation-stones as important as of those who laid the capstones at last? Let us, then, begin in our day by the discussion of these vital principles of social science, to even the ground and lay the foundation-stones for the greatest wonder the world is yet to see,—a man in whom the appetites, the passions, the emotions are all held in allegiance to their rightful sovereign, Reason. ”

“ To be what the class is, to do what the class does, to be satisfied with knowing what the class knows, to have lost the sense of the value of the thing to be gained, and to measure by false standards, comes to be the rule, until the conceit of knowledge takes the place of the modesty of conscious ignorance, and the student becomes a drop in the annual out-pouring stream of so-called teachers, many of whom, in the highest sense, have never been genuine students at all. ”

“ For it is always the few who lead in religion, in morals, in art, in literature, in learning, in all high service. But these few now do it, not by despotic power, but only by influence; so all may be free. And there has never been a time in the world’s history when the most important things that were being done were of apparent utility in the eyes of the crowd. ”

“ True, they would patch up the old at as little cost as possible, merely to afford them a shelter until the new home was built. And all our special reform work to-day is but patching the old, until with a knowledge of the true laws of social science we can begin to build the new aright. There is much surface work we must do in reform, for decency’s sake, but all this patching up of ignorant, diseased, criminal, unfortunate humanity is temporary and transient, effecting no radical improvement anywhere. ”

“ Consider Homer and Virgil, Isaiah and Jesus, Dante, Shakespeare, Angelo, Copernicus, Galileo, Goethe, Luther, Servetus, Newton, Darwin, Spencer, Galvani,—had nationalism been dominant in their days, how long would it have been before the “intelligent public opinion” of the governing board of their departments would have had them up to show cause why they should not “go to work for a living”?
The progress of the world, up to the present hour, has always meant the larger and still larger freedom of the individual. This freedom has always had its evils. So all life has its disadvantages. ”

“ A noteworthy illustration of this is found in the fact that Wyoming, the only State where woman enjoys full franchise, has placed the age of consent at the legal age of majority, eighteen years, while Kansas, the State which more than any other approaches Wyoming in bestowing on women the rights of franchise, and where she exercises a greater influence in politics than any other American commonwealth save her younger sister, has also placed the age of consent at eighteen years. All the other States trail the banner of morality in the dust before the dictates of man’s bestiality. ”

“ The only way to kill this monster is to put the instruments of transportation under such control as only national ownership can give. Laws and agreements between the corporations have been proven, time and again, wholly ineffective even to lessen this great and corrupting evil.
In every conceivable way are the net revenues of the corporations depleted, and needless burthens imposed upon the public, but one of the worst is the system of paying commissions for the diversion of traffic to particular lines, often the least direct. ”

“ When later the dormant life that was underneath awoke, breathed, and became manifest, Sybel’s official tone no longer struck the true note; the heart of peoples had begun to beat, and disturbed its vibrations. Humanity was astir everywhere, and setting the barriers of etiquette at defiance.265 Not only were dry registers based on blue books insufficient, but the failure of the vital power that engenders other and further life began to be felt. ”

“ The great majority, however, come forth in the mental condition of the man, who laboriously climbs step by step of the tower, takes his bird’s-eye view of the field of learning, accepts the impressions made upon his mind by the vast picture and the vast mixture, and comes down to his own level again with no more real knowledge of that at which he has glanced than has the traveller who has taken a glimpse from the heights which he climbed, because the guide-book said this was “the thing to do.” ”

“ Ignorance and the vices that go with ignorance, want of thoroughness, unpunctuality, thriftlessness, and improvidence, are all in the count against the poorer order of worker, but for the most part they are living honest, self-respecting, infinitely dreary lives. This fact is emphasized in every Labor Report in which the subject of women wage-workers is treated, and impersonal as figures are usually counted to be, from each one sounds a warning which, if unheeded, must in the end mean the disaster to which these returns point as inevitable. ”

“ For womanhood I cherish the deepest love and reverence. Her exaltation means the elevation of the race. A broader liberty and more liberal meed of justice for her mean a higher civilization, and the solution of weighty and fundamental problems which will never be equitably adjusted until we have brought into political and social life more of the splendid spirit of altruism, which is one of her most conspicuous characteristics. ”

“ Those who are familiar with the campaign plans of the dominant parties in these days, the shameless misrepresentation of facts by party organs, the open use of large sums of money to keep so-called leaders in line, and the tremendous power of public patronage can understand how much of demagogism in every community the farmers have had to meet and overcome in order to conquer an eighty thousand majority. ”

“ To many teachers the mind of youth is, in reality, an unexplored region, and until we have a change in this respect, and learn that the knowledge of books is only the beginning of wisdom, and that the true knowledge must include also that of the living book,—the student entrusted to our care,—we have scarcely learned the alphabet of true education. ”

“ One such woman in every institution for the education of girls holds really the future destiny of those girls in her own hand, for her life among them could have but one dominant desire,—that of helping them to be the thing God meant. Practically living out that desire she becomes, not the restraint and destroyer of their natural vitality of thought and feeling, but the guide and director of all their native forces into every beautiful field of learning, and into the highest type of development possible for woman, under present limitations, to attain. ”

“ What we have to do is to consider work for women as a whole, with all that it involves for womankind. It is not alone the worker herself, but the woman who uses the product of the worker’s labor that should understand what obligation is laid upon her. ”

“ The rich must be taught that they have no right to live in luxury while others starve. The poor must be taught that they, too, have inalienable rights on this green earth, the right to life, liberty, and happiness, and to the fruits of their own industry, and it is the imperative duty of each class to concede the one and demand the other. ”

“ If family peculiarities are transmitted to the third and fourth generation, the grandson clothed with the same gait, gesture, mode of thought and expression as the grandfather he has never seen, it is evident that each individual may reap some advantage and development from those predecessors whose lives in all matters great and small are governed by law, by a conscientious sense of duty, not by feeling, chance, or appetite.
If there is a class of educators who need special preparation for their high and holy duties, it is those who assume the responsibilities of parents. ”

“ In no other country—unless it be under the same system in Canada—are nine tenths of the people taxed to pay the travelling expenses of the other tenth. By what right do the corporations tax the public that members of Congress, legislators, judges, and other court officials and their families may ride free? Why is it that when a legislature is in session passes are as plentiful as leaves in the forest in autumn? ”

“ Science has vindicated our right to discuss freely whether our ancestors were apes; let it be as free to ask whether our posterity shall be idiots, dwarfs, and knaves, and if not, by what change, if any, in our social institutions, such wretched results may be avoided. Gatton in his work on “Heredity,” says our present civilization is growing too complicated for our best minds even to grasp, and to meet successfully the issues of the hour, humanity must be lifted up a few degrees, as speedily as possible. ”

“ The origin of ideas was long a disputed point with different schools of philosophers. Locke took the ground that the mind of every child born into the world is like a piece of blank paper; that you may write thereon whatever you will, but science has long since proved that such idealists as Descartes were nearer right, that the human family come into the world with ideas, with marked individual proclivities; that the pre-natal conditions have more influence than all the education that comes after. ”

“ But the class prejudice and selfishness of the farmer has been greatly over-estimated by his political enemies. His sub-treasury bill and plan for loaning money on real estate, to be sure, are intended to afford immediate relief to the farmer; but he believes, in his soul, that they would result in great advantage to the whole business world. He says, moreover, that condemnation of his plans comes with bad grace from the men who are even now supporting a financial system which delivers the money of the country over to the few and trusts them to distribute it among the many. ”

“ We find the faculties, we find the modifications produced by the training, but we look in vain for the man. With all our multiplied facilities for producing a324 trained and disciplined nature, what we think we have a right to expect,—but what we do not find,—is a creature conscious of his own great heritage, conscious of his kinship with all humanity, of his kingship over the universe, of his power to grapple with the world outside of himself, and of his rightful dominance over both the life without and the grander life within. ”

“ If she has not the heart to love the child and to let the child love her, and so to lay foundation for the larger loving, that, by and by, shall out-reach and take in the whole humanity of God, then we will not say she has mistaken her calling, but her own process of education has been defective and she has much to learn.
Such threefold development for heart, hand, and brain of the little child makes preparation for the next higher steps of educational work. Whatever form the training may assume, the individuality of the human soul should be kept inviolate. ”

“ By far the most menacing feature of continued corporate ownership is the power over the money markets which it places in the hands of unscrupulous men, any half dozen of whom can, at such a time as that following the failure of the Barings, destroy the welfare of millions, and plunge the country into all the horrors of a money panic. ”