University of Wisconsin Superior - Gitche Gumee Yearbook (Superior, WI)

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V. crucible than that of American institutions could so many various elements be poured without the destruction of the crucible itself. To the England from which came the Pilgrim Fathers, we owe an everlasting debt of gratitude for the strong basic elements of our crucible. There, first among the nations of Europe, were asserted the rights of the many against the rights of the few. And there, from Magna Charta to the Bill of Rights, the rights of the many gained in ascendency until monarchy was but a check upon democracy. When the fathers of the American constitution constructed “the most perfect piece of work ever struck off at one time by the mind and purpose of man,” they cut off from monarchy and aristocracy the last vestige of their inheritance of the ages, and made the will of the people supreme. From England we received our body of common law, and from the same England we received the spirit of the laws—the spirit of “fair play.” To the mother who gave our nation birth, then, be everlasting thanks; for “Law is the deep, august foundation, whereon peace and justice rest.” Add to English law perfected the principle of religious toleration ingrained in the American system—the principle which permitted Puritan, Huguenot, and Catholic to unite in the formation of our national government, and the principle which has freed us from the Old World curse of religious feuds. Much we owe in the development and maintenance of American institutions to this toleration which holds sacred to every man his choice in the worship of his God. The nineteenth century bequeathed to civilization many precious gifts, but none more close to human welfare than the principle of universal education, the gift of America. Democracy brought forth the first application of this principle; for no democracy can long exist without it. In a government by the people, “ignorance is a crime,” for ignorance, a necessity to the existence of despotism, strikes at the heart of democracy. America, through free schools, is lifting and shall continue to lift the ignorant and morally uncertain masses into the clear realm of reason and rectitude of purpose. With the greatest instrument ever possessed by any people, this nation shall produce the mightiest intellectual and moral host the world has ever seen. English law, religious toleration, and our system of public instruction afforded the opportunity for the making of the America of today, and in them lies the making of the America of tomorrow. Put into this institutional crucible the suppressed and hidden powers of peoples of eighty races. What infinite possibilities shall leap to light! What mighty forces shall come into action! What glorious works shall be wrought! But who shall watch over the molten and seething mass? Who shall see the promises of gold in the mixture? and the evidences of impurities? Who shall draw off the dross and mold the gold? We, the already assimilated Americans. We, who number among our ancestors many Old World races. From as many sources come these new people. Peasantry from the hogs of Ireland, from the squalid villages of Italy, from rugged Norway, from the plains of Hungary and Poland and Finland, wanderers from the old Grecian cities, worn toilers from Sweden and Germany, Jews from out the realm of Russian oppression, blindly seeking for the better thing—all these alien hordes, congregated in the tenements of the “slums,” working in factories and in mines, arc the substances with which we, as the chemist, must work. The clods of many nations—a million and a half added in 1907 to the already innumerable throng; men whose nobler and finer instincts have GI TCI IE GUMEE PACE SEVEN

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died to teach that the world is growing better; died to point out the way to th “great, far-off Event towards which the whole creation moves,—when the blindir veil of ignorance and superstition shall be rent in twain, when the dastardly care of the scaffold shall be terminated forever, when politics shall be clean, and juri unbribed; when woman shall have CAT CHE GUM EE “Set herself unto man, Like perfect music unto noble words; When man and woman Sit side by side,—full summ’d in all their powers, Distinct in individualities— But like each other—even as those who love. Then comes the statelier Eden back to man. OSHK.OSH+ THE CRUCIBLE OF THE NATIONS BERT N. WELLS N the dim light of medieval tradition, there is revealed to us the figui of the aged alchemist, who wills to draw from his many elemen the gold for eager men. He gazes intently at the materials befoi him. He takes one element; he rejects another; he puts the chose ones into the melting-pot. Strong as the molten mass within is hot, the crucible holds to the shape its maker gave it. The fusio is accomplished, and with infinite patience the process is repeated agai and again. Fired by the hope of a golden gleam, the man grows gray with the endle: selection and endless mixture of the substances at his hand. '1 here is a modern chemist whose material is human beings, whose crucible w« shaped in a new and better mold and tried in the furnace of civil war, whose cn is the gold of national character. It is given to this American people with its crucibl of Anglo-Saxon institutions to search out the character elements of the myriads c foreigners within our borders, to eliminate all that is base and unworthy in then to preserve the qualities that arc good, and to fuse them into one mighty whole,-into a more perfect civilization than the world has ever seen—more perfect becau incorporating more of the elements of a complete humanity. God has given to no people the solution of a greater problem. War will n( solve it. All the force of a million arms cannot accomplish it. Only by the wa of brotherly love, of broad human sympathy and deep human insight, will the gol be secured. To no other people could such a task be entrusted, and into no othc pace six

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lain dormant under the load of centuries of monarchy and aristocracy; cattle in the yoke of landlordism; brute beasts of burden; men with tiger passions of resentment against that law which made them economic and political slaves, and against all laws—these arc the materials with which we must deal. Tremendous task! We ask “What mysterious hand Has thus uprooted from their ancient place These myriad exiles, cast them on our shore, And what the purpose?” We glimpse the answer in the poet’s second query: “Shall our country be The crucible of nations whence a race Shall issue in dim ages to restore God’s image to mankind, and make men free?” But the immensity of the task appalls us. Wc turn to the great social laboratories in the large cities—the social settlements—where, through experience in direct contact and work with these strangers to our customs, we may learn of the temperaments and possibilities of the alien and of the ways of dealing with him to make the most of him. We come to a hopeful attitude. There wc learn that in bringing about a solution of the alien’s problem of assimilation wc solve a great American problem; that through lifting him from the dormancy of many generations wc broaden and raise American civilization. May not the Celtic and Latin elements of this great contact and mixture of cultures soften and idealize the material nature of the American? May we not be gentler in our thoughts and feelings because of the addition of the Slavic elements? May not the golden calf cease to be our idol and we become more able to enjoy the beautiful things of life? With our broader natures shall we not be more scientific, more progressive, more daring in all lines in the search for infinite truth? If these arc worthy ends, and if wc desire that these new peoples shall make the most of themselves in the service of mankind, then these strangers within our gates must be made to realize that they arc to live in America and not underneath America. Picture this huge mass from the peasantry of Europe crowded into the unhygienic tenements in the “slums” of our great cities. Picture then the broad and fertile plains of the West and the riches of the undeveloped South. A monstrous inconsistency! Wc must sec that these followers of the plow, trained by centuries of work with the soil, shall find occupation suited to the powers within them. Picture the children of these aliens working at the same never-ending tasks day after day in the tenements. Picture them in the glass works of southern New Jersey. Think of hands delicately sensitive to every artistic impulse picking coal in the mines of Pennsylvania. What a waste of living genius through lack of opportunity! Lest the hope of America—the second generation—be dwarfed in youth, we who think of America’s future must see to it that these builders of the future arc brought within the influence of the school, and there by a full and free development raised from the thralldom of circumstances into the kingdom of mastery. There, through Industrial Education, wc must train the mind, that when it secs a human need, it may body forth in imagination the instrument to fill that need; there we must train the hand, that it may shape into physical form the creature of the imagination. Give this education PACE EICHT