Evening High School - Owl Yearbook (Reading, PA)

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CLASS OF IQ35 0 The Great Laboratory ALTER BAGEHOT, distinguished British scholar and essayist, long ago remarked that the United States is a great laboratory where self-evident truths are tested out from time to time. This is an apt, a per- fect description of the country as it is at the present time. The American people are paying the price of a long series of social and political, as well as economic blunders Our ancestors brought over slaves, and there are now twelve million descendants. We also have many millions foreign-born in this country and many millions more of foreign stock. Certainly no economic rearrangement, or even the adoption of a completely new or different economic system, can by itself go more than a little way in solving the racial and immigration problems. The economic system has been subiected to many stresses. Too many of us have expected the necessary adjustments to be made painlesslyg we have twisted and turned, hoped and wished and waited, instead of taking our medicine. The people today are beginning to be bewildered. They are wander- ing around in a helpless fog much longer than is necessary, and shall con- tinue to do so if their minds remain confused and indecisive. A great many of them are getting restless, with so much talk about depression. They want to go ahead, and they want business to go ahead, There has been a general back to the farm movement. The hope of success of this movement lies with the men of science. They can make our farms pay, revive and forward our industry, not by plowing under, by contracting, and by strait-jacket policies, but by suggestion and invention that will lead to expansion and give us more, not less. The many confused experiments now under way may, sometime in the future, twice repay all they have cost us. For, as a shrewd and experi- enced Western business man recently remarked: Nothing is created easi- ly, and both natural forces and human error stand in the way of easy crea- tion, easy interchange and easy distribution. There are no knots in the boards from the sawmill for him who is not engaged in that industry. There is no overburden of waste material, no pinching out of a productive vein of coal or precious metal for him who is not engaged in mining. The fish always bite for the man who never goes fishing. America recognizes the challenge. Every man, woman and child is a factor in this crucial laboratory experience from which must emerge a finer and better civilization for this and succeeding generations. Members of the Board of Directors: Through your kind efforts and active interest has this, our Commence- ment night, been made possible. We now take this opportunity to thank you and bid you farewell. Mr. Ford, Superintendent of Schools: To you, in a large measure, we owe the success of our educational en- THE OWL