The most important inst.i.tutions in this country are the public schools--the gymnasiums of human brains. The most important citizens of the nation are the teachers.

The greatest criminals are the employers of child labor, because they deny education, cut down in childhood the citizen's chance of progress and success.

Work and vote for more and better public schools.

POVERTY IS THE FATHER OF VICE, CRIME AND FAILURE

These are days when men do their hardest work for money, when they scramble and struggle and strike each other down in the effort to reach wealth. And it is not possible to blame them.

They are trying to escape from poverty, from a disaster worse than any prairie fire or other physical danger.

Dire poverty is the worst of curses. It combines every kind of suffering, physical, mental, moral, and in the end it means either death or degradation.

The great task of humanity is the abolition of poverty. The great benefactors of humanity are the great industrial organizers of this day, because, in spite of individual selshness,{sic} they are planning production on a scale that will in the end provide for all.

It is worth while to discuss and to realize what real poverty means. If we can realize its meaning every one of us must be more anxious to relieve, as far as we can, the poverty around us, and especially anxious to work for the social betterment that shall one day wipe out poverty forever

Poverty means dirt.

The thoughtless and comfortable have a way of saying: "The poor might at least be clean." But cleanliness is a LUXURY; it demands leisure and peace of mind, as well as bathtub, soap, hot water and good plumbing. The very poor cannot be clean.

Poverty means ignorance, and it means ignorance handed down from father to son.

Poverty means drunkenness. The pennies of POOR men and POOR women pay for more than half the vile whiskey, gin and other poisons that men buy to help them forget.

Poverty and its sister, Ignorance, fill the jails and the insane asylums.

Poverty is the mother of disease, and it fills the hospitals.

Tens of thousands of consumptives alone are murdered every year by poverty. They are too poor to do that which is required to save their lives. ----

The great men of the world do not emerge from poverty, from squalor.

They come from very modest homes, from the log cabin, and from the towpath, as advertised. They come from those whose fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers had at least enough to eat, and enough fresh air to give them pure blood and proper nourishment for their brains.

Poverty destroys ambition, inventive power and the capacity to struggle.

A starved body produces a starved brain. The greatest genius that ever lived could not think better than a child of ten if you deprived him of food for ten days.

What can you expect of the inferior minds that have been half fed through a lifetime, or through several generations?

Do you know what made the Revolution and changed conditions in France? It was not poverty. Not a single poor man was a leader in that Revolution. Every one of them was well fed, had a well- nourished brain--Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Desmoulins, Mirabeau--every one a well-fed brain in a vigorous body.

The labor unions and the great strikes, although sometimes unwise and unreasonable, are great blessings to the Nation. They compel the worker to get such pay as will feed himself and his children, giving the Nation well-fed brains. The Union is the enemy of poverty, and for that reason especially it is an agent for good.

As poverty breeds ignorance, so ignorance breeds poverty. The greatest enemy of poverty is the Public School. Work and vote, therefore, for public school betterment.

Miserable women walk the streets by thousands on cold Winter nights--poverty has put them there.

Hundreds of thousands of children are born only to struggle for a few years through a stunted infancy--poverty digs their graves.

For one genius that has fought and conquered in spite of poverty ten thousand have sunk out of sight in the fight against the worst of enemies.

Don't waste time extolling the blessings of poverty--use your energies to diminish poverty's curse, and to improve humanity by giving it the full efficiency which freedom from worry alone can give.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION PROVED IN LINCOLN'S CASE

The very old and very foolish saying, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," is disproved every day. Whenever you hear a man talk about "a little knowledge" ask him what he thinks about the danger of a great deal of IGNORANCE. Tell him this:

"THE SCHOOLING OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ALL TOLD DID NOT AMOUNT TO AS MUCH AS ONE YEAR."

The teaching was elementary, including reading, writing, ciphering, and very little of each one. It was picked up at odd times, when he could be spared from daily labor. Remember that when he was a lad his father used to hire him out to work on other men's farms for very little money.

With that little learning he built himself up into one of the greatest men in history, saved the nation, ended once and for all civilized recognition of slavery.

A little learning might possibly have been dangerous had he been one of the idiotic kind of men. It might have made him feel dissatisfied with the hard labor for which he was fit, without stimulating him to better things.

But Lincoln's little learning gave him no rest--it kept him constantly adding more learning to his little supply. ----

The self-pitying young man who thinks he has no chance may be interested in Lincoln's methods of getting ahead. He walked about twenty miles through the wilderness to borrow an English grammar. He could get no other books, so he read and re-read the statutes of Indiana. He wanted to teach himself to write well and think closely. He had never heard Bacon's saying: "Writing maketh an exact man," but he felt the truth of the fact for himself, and he was bound to write. He had no paper and could not afford to buy any.

At night, when his work was done, he would bend his huge six-foot-four frame close down by the firelight to write and cipher ON THE BACK OF A WOODEN SHOVEL.

When the back of the shovel was covered with writing he would shave a thin layer from it and begin writing once more. ----

It is a very useful thing for men occasionally to feel ashamed of themselves. If you want to feel ashamed of yourself, if you are complaining and whining, just picture to yourself Abraham Lincoln in his father's little hut, with no windows and no flooring, crouching by the fire and developing his mind by laborious writing on the back of a wooden shovel.

Children of twelve in schools, precocious little girls even of seven or eight, know much more than Abraham Lincoln knew when he was twenty-one years old.

With his "little knowledge" he grew and did the work that was to improve the condition of millions of men.

Don't be ashamed of your "little knowledge."

But do be ashamed if you do not add to it whenever you can, and especially if you fail to make it useful to your fellow-men.

KNOWLEDGE IS GROWTH

Consider to-day the CHEERFUL side of conditions on earth.

Every human being has his troubles and worries. The luckiest of us all yearns for what cannot be had, and sees much to regret.

But one splendid fact should always be borne in mind: THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY IS INCESSANT. WE ARE INFINITELY BETTER OFF NOW THAN WE HAVE BEEN BEFORE ON THIS EARTH, AND UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES OF IMPROVEMENT ARE AHEAD OF US.