The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume IX Part 26

We spend more for schools per head than any nation in the world. And the common school is the breath of life.

Great Britain spends one dollar and thirty cents per head on the common schools; France spends eighty cents; Austria, thirty cents; Germany, fifty cents; Italy, twenty-five cents, and the United States over two dollars and fifty cents.

I tell you the schoolhouse is the fortress of liberty. Every schoolhouse is an a.r.s.enal, filled with weapons and ammunition to destroy the monsters of ignorance and fear.

As I have said ten thousand times, the school-house is my cathedral. The teacher is my preacher.

Eighty-seven per cent, of all the people of the United States, over ten years of age, can read and write. There is no parallel for this in the history of the wide world.

Over forty-two millions of educated citizens, to whom are opened all the treasures of literature!

Forty-two millions of people, able to read and write! I say, there is no parallel for this. The nations of antiquity were very ignorant when compared with this great Republic of ours. There is no other nation in the world that can show a record like ours. We ought to be proud of it. We ought to build more schools, and build them better. Our teachers ought to be paid more, and everything ought to be taught in the public school that is worth knowing.

I believe that the children of the Republic, no matter whether their fathers are rich or poor, ought to be allowed to drink at the fountain of education, and it does not cost more to teach everything in the free schools than it does teaching reading and writing and ciphering.

Have we kept up in other ways? The post office tells a wonderful story.

In Switzerland, going through the post office in each year, are letters, etc., in the proportion of seventy-four to each inhabitant. In England the number is sixty; in Germany, fifty-three; in France, thirty-nine; in Austria, twenty-four; in Italy, sixteen, and in the United States, our own home, one hundred and ten. Think of it. In Italy only twenty-five cents paid per head for the support of the public schools and only sixteen letters. And this is the place where G.o.d's agent lives. I would rather have one good schoolmaster than two such agents.

There is another thing. A great deal has been said, from time to time, about the workingman. I have as much sympathy with the workingman as anybody on the earth--who does not work. There has always been a desire in this world to let somebody else do the work, nearly everybody having the modesty to stand back whenever there is anything to be done. In savage countries they make the women do the work, so that the weak people have always the bulk of the burdens. In civilized communities the poor are the ones, of course, that work, and probably they are never fully paid. It is pretty hard for a manufacturer to tell how much he can pay until he sells the stuff which he manufactures. Every man who manufactures is not rich. I know plenty of poor corporations; I know tramp railroads that have not a dollar. And you will find some of them as anarchistic as you will find their men. What a man can pay, depends upon how much he can get for what he has produced. What the farmer can pay his help depends upon the price he receives for his stock, his corn and his wheat.

But wages in this country are getting better day by day. We are getting a little nearer to being civilized day by day, and when I want to make up my mind on a subject I try to get a broad view of it, and not decide it on one case.

In 1860 the average wages of the workingman were, per year, two hundred and eighty-nine dollars. In 1890 the average was four hundred and eighty-five. Thus the average has almost doubled in thirty years. The necessaries of life are far cheaper than they were in 1860. Now, to my mind, that is a hopeful sign. And when I am asked how can the dispute between employer and employee be settled, I answer, it will be settled when both parties become civilized.

It takes a long time to educate a man up to the point where he does not want something for nothing. Yet, when a man is civilized, he does not.

He wants for a thing just what it is worth; he wants to give labor its legitimate reward, and when he has something to sell he never wants more than it is worth. I do not claim to be civilized myself; but all these questions between capital and labor will be settled by civilization.

We are to-day acc.u.mulating wealth at the rate of more than seven million dollars a day. Is not this perfectly splendid?

And in the midst of prosperity let us never forget the men who helped to save our country, the men whose heroism gave us the prosperity we now enjoy.

We have one-seventh of the good land of this world. You see there is a great deal of poor land in the world. I know the first time I went to California, I went to the Sink of the Humboldt, and what a forsaken look it had. There was nothing there but mines of brimstone. On the train, going over, there was a fellow who got into a dispute with a minister about the first chapter of Genesis. And when they got along to the Sink of the Humboldt the fellow says to the minister:

"Do you tell me that G.o.d made the world in six days, and then rested on the seventh?"

He said, "I do."

"Well," said the fellow, "don't you think he could have put in another day here to devilish good advantage?"

But, as I have said, we have got about one-seventh of the good land of the world. I often hear people say that we have too many folks here; that we ought to stop immigration; that we have no more room. The people who say this know nothing of their country. They are ignorant of their native land. I tell you that the valley of the Mississippi and the valleys of its tributaries can support a population of five hundred millions of men, women, and children. Don't talk of our being overpopulated; we have only just started.

Here, in this land of ours, five hundred million men and women and children can be supported and educated without trouble. We can afford to double two or three times more. But what have we got to do? We have got to educate them when they come. That is to say, we have got to educate their children, and in a few generations we will have them splendid American citizens, proud of the Republic.

We have no more patriotic men under the flag than the men who came from other lands, the hundreds and thousands of those who fought to preserve this country. And I think just as much of them as I would if they had been born on American soil. What matters it where a man was born? It is what is inside of him you have to look at--what kind of a heart he has, and what kind of a head. I do not care where he was born; I simply ask, Is he a man? Is he willing to give to others what he claims for himself?

That is the supreme test.

Now, I have got a hobby. I do not suppose any of you have heard of it.

I think the greatest thing for a country is for all of its citizens to have a home. I think it is around the fireside of home that the virtues grow, including patriotism. We want homes.

Until a few years ago it was the custom to put men in prison for debt.

The authorities threw a man into jail when he owed something which he could not pay, and by throwing him into jail they deprived him of an opportunity to earn what would pay it. After a little time they got sense enough to know that they could not collect a debt in this way, and that it was better to give him his freedom and allow him to earn something, if he could. Therefore, imprisonment for debt was done away with.

At another time, when a man owed anything, if he was a carpenter, a blacksmith or a shoemaker, and not able to pay it, they took his tools, on a writ of sale and execution, and thus incapacitated him so that he could do nothing. Finally they got sense enough to abolish that law, to leave the mechanic his tools and the farmer his plows, horses and wagons, and after this, debts were paid better than ever they were before.

Then we thought of protecting the home-builder, and we said: "We will have a homestead exemption. We will put a roof over wife and child, which shall be exempt from execution and sale," and so we preserved hundreds of thousands and millions of homes, while debts were paid just as well as ever they were paid before.

Now, I want to take a step further. I want, the rich people of this country to support it. I want the people who are well off to pay the taxes. I want the law to exempt a homestead of a certain value, say from two thousand dollars to two thousand five hundred, and to exempt it, not only from sale on judgment and execution, but to exempt it from taxes of all sorts and kinds. I want to keep the roof over the heads of children when the man himself is gone. I want that homestead to belong not only to the man, but to wife and children. I would like to live to see a roof over the heads of all the families of the Republic. I tell you, it does a man good to have a home. You are in partnership with nature when you plant a hill of corn. When you set out a tree you have a new interest in this world. When you own a little tract of land you feel as if you and the earth were partners. All these things dignify human nature.

Bad as I am, I have another hobby. There are thousands and thousands of criminals in our country. I told you a little while ago I did not blame the South, because of the conditions which prevailed in the South. The people of the South did as they must. I am the same about the criminal.

He does as he must.

If you want to stop crime you must treat it properly. The conditions of society must not be such as to produce criminals.

When a man steals and is sent to the penitentiary he ought to be sent there to be reformed and not to be brutalized; to be made a better man, not to be robbed.

I am in favor, when you put a man in the penitentiary, of making him work, and I am in favor of paying him what his work is worth, so that in five years, when he leaves the prison cell, he will have from two hundred dollars to three hundred dollars as a breastwork between him and temptation, and something for a foundation upon which to build a n.o.bler life.

Now he is turned out and before long he is driven back. n.o.body will employ him, n.o.body will take him, and, the night following the day of his release he is without a roof over his head and goes back to his old ways. I would allow him to change his name, to go to another State with a few hundred dollars in his pocket and begin the world again.

We must recollect that it is the misfortune of a man to become a criminal.

I have hobbies and plenty of them.

I want to see five hundred millions of people living here in peace. If we want them to live in peace, we must develop the brain, civilize the heart, and above all things, must not forget education. Nothing should be taught in the school that somebody does not know.

When I look about me to-day, when I think of the advance of my country, then I think of the work that has been done.

Think of the millions who crossed the mysterious sea, of the thousands and thousands of ships with their brave prows towards the West.

Think of the little settlements on the sh.o.r.es of the ocean, on the banks of rivers, on the edges of forests.

Think of the countless conflicts with savages--of the midnight attacks--of the cabin floors wet with the blood of dead fathers, mothers and babes.

Think of the winters of want, of the days of toil, of the nights of fear, of the hunger and hope.

Think of the courage, the sufferings and hardships.

Think of the homesickness, the disease and death.

Think of the labor; of the millions and millions of trees that were felled, while the aisles of the great forests were filled with the echoes of the ax; of the many millions of miles of furrows turned by the plow; of the millions of miles of fences built; of the countless logs changed to lumber by the saw--of the millions of huts, cabins and houses.

Think of the work. Listen, and you will hear the hum of wheels, the wheels with which our mothers spun the flax and wool. Listen, and you will hear the looms and flying shuttles with which they wove the cloth.

Think of the thousands still pressing toward the West, of the roads they made, of the bridges they built; of the homes, where the sunlight fell, where the bees hummed, the birds sang and the children laughed; of the little towns with mill and shop, with inn and schoolhouse; of the old stages, of the crack of the whips and the drivers' horns; of the ca.n.a.ls they dug.

Think of the many thousands still pressing toward the West, pa.s.sing over the Alleghanies to the sh.o.r.es of the Ohio and the great lakes--still onward to the Mississippi--the Missouri.