Norfolk High School - Milestone Yearbook (Norfolk, NE)

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24 THE MILESTONE. Great leaders have always been self directed. Behind every great success may be found a strong personality developed by education. The great achievements of the world are due to the progressive spirit of the few. Emerson says: “Every institution is but the length and shadow of one man.’’ The doctor must have an education, medical and surgical, in order that he may be eminent in his profession. A clergyman must have a broad and classical education. The attorney must be an orator as well as versed in all that pertains to law. Diplomats must be educated; for in many serious questions we depend upon them tor decisions. Therefore, rulers and people are under an oblligation to God and man to educate the young in order that they may become good men and women. A man who fails to do this is an enemy to his country. Luther says: “It is a Divine command from God that children be brought up to His praise and word.” The father who permits his son to roam the streets of a city and become acquainted with low, vulgar and vicious habits which may in time lead to the penitentiary, is an accomplice in the crime of his son. He might have prevented all this with the exercise of paternal authority and by educating his son to higher ideas. The education we have already given the people creates the necessity of giving them more. What has been done has awakened new and unparalleled energies These forces are not mechanical which expend their activity and subside to rest, but they are spiritual forces endued with an indistinguishable principle of life and progression. Education must be universal in order that we may be a successful nation. It is well when the wise discover new truths, but how much better to widely diffuse the truths

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THE MILESTONE. 2:i ignorance often cause strikes and riots. Idleness also means indifference to the rights of others and loss of self respect. Education not only secures the means of subsist-rnce, but effectually takes away the inducements of idleness and vice. But education does not necessarily mean book-lore. It means knowledge along some certain line or lines of work. If you would have success you must have knowledge; and the greater the field of work you are engaged in, the more knowledge is necessary for success. Washington and Lincoln, Edison, Astor and Field, Vanderbilt and Gould, were men who never received a collegiate education. Yet they were educated along theii several lines, which education was gained by hard work. Ruskin says: “If you want knowledge you must toil for it; if food you must toil for it; if pleasure you must toil for it; toil is law.” These men spent their energies along their several lines of work and succeeded in making their lives successful. But riches are of no benefit to a man without a cultured mind. True happiness depends upon the beneficent use of wealth, directed by the educated and cultured mind. Capitalists the world over, give preference to the skilled and educated laborer, even though at an increased compensation; because an uneducated or unskilled laborer will waste more in machinery and material than the difference in wages, and therefore is the more expensive of the two. Educated laborers seeing their advantage are less liable to engage in strikes and riots. A man to be successful must be able to withstand competition. Education will the better fit him for this struggle. For the man or company of men having the most knowledge of the subject in hand will be sure to triumph in the end.

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THE MILESTONE. 25 already discovered. Every addition to knowledge is an addition to human power. And while the philosophers are discovering new truths millions may be propogated among the people. Diffusion then, rather than discovery, is the duty of our nation. Each one of us with a fitting education is capable of adding something to the sum of human happiness or of subtracting something from the sum of human misery. Many great souls among them there are who may become instruments of turning the coarse of nations as rivers of waters are turned. The whole land must be watered by streams of knowledge. It is not enough to have here and there a beautiful fountain playing in palace gardens, but let it come like the abundant moisture of the clouds upon the thirsty earth. The man who does not obtain, or who does not help others to obtain an education is false to the first duties of American citizenship. In this country education is a duty. Liberty rests on the intelligence of the people. Qualification of voters should be as great as the qualification of governors, and come first in the natural order. How can we expect the fabric of our government to stand if vicious materials are daily wrought into its frame work? Education and knowledge, the power to think and enjoy the thoughts of others, have long since transformed a cottage into a palace. In the earliest history of man this impulse began to make noble all who bowed to it. It has ornamented whatever it has touched, and what it has always done it will always do. It displaces nothing of life’s good, but many of its evils. It destroys idleness. It plucks the charm from vice. It quenches the thirst for riches. It brings us nearer to all times and nations and binds us by tender ties to a noble living and a noble death.