West Night High School - Echo Yearbook (Cincinnati, OH)

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at once adjust itself to continuous high-pressnre effort indoors. Nature works by evolutionary methods and not by revolutionary measures. Then, too, the worker formerly knew a whole job rather than a part of it; he performed a great variety of functions in the completion of his task, instead of endlessly repeating the same operation. Under our present highly organized industrial conditions, a worker feeds material into a machine, or he makes piece after piece of the same kind. winds coil after coil, and why he does it he need not know and is not told. And these two factors. the sudden grouping of workers indoors, after centuries of life in the open, and the hpart work rather than the tiwhole work method of production, explain, in a measure, the spirit of unrest. This protest, however, is not against work. but against work without light, physical and mental. It has been pointed out that one of the fundamental laws of nature. governing the progress of civili- zation is the law of energizing labor. Briefly stateth the law is this: Mankind must do energizing work or retrogress. A condition which dees not require men to do work at all is contrary to natural law and a bar to civilization. A condition which requires mankind to do enervating work is just as bad and probably worse. By enervating work. I mean that type Of work which develops the habit cells in the brain at the expense of the active thinking cells. Automatic machine work is a type of this enervating work. This type of work is increasing rapidly under modem industrial conditions, For example, the Monday morning family washing in the open air, involving all operations, is energizing work. Piece work in com- mercial laundries in superheated rooms and other unsanitary conditions is eiiervating. The situation then Sifts down to this: Energizing work is decreasing: eiiervating work is increasing. In spite of the warm- ings of history, we are rapidly dividing mankind into a staf? of mental workers and an army, of purely physical workers. The physical workers are becoming more and more automatic, with the sure result that their minds are becoming more and more lethargic, XVhat then is the lesson of today? The immense increase in the area of civilized activity to-day. so that it is nearly coterminuous with the world's surface; the immense increase in the velocity of the worldis movemeutear-e all these to mean that the crash will be more complete and terrible, and that the answer will be in the negative? Of this we can be certain, that we will not fall unless we earn and deserve our end. There is no necessity for us to fall if only we have wit, courage and honesty. We can hew our own destiny. And When we pause to realize that there are about 1,800,000 school children in the United States, and that 1,700,000 of this number leave school at an age when the law permitsethe majority of Whom 33

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Oration tlTHE SIGNS OF THE TIME. GEORGE W. B URN s. T is universally the case that those who have lived under a given condition for a period of time, and who are satisfied with things as they are, are not only adverse to change, but as a rule take a superfi- cial view of any indications of Change. This springs partly from incapacity to see, but more from unwillingness. At the time of the French Revolution, the nobility and land owners long refused t0 believe that there was going to be a destructive storm, and they were not fully convinced until most of what they had considered permanent was swept away. Whether, had they understootl the full purport of the early indications of trouble, they could have avoided the bloody upheavals that came is a question. Our own revolution is another instance. If King George and his adviaers, instead of supposing they had a few unreasonable rebels to deal with, had taken account of the forces at work beneath the surface, recognized the situation and consented to reasonable concession, they might have changed the course of history. Now History teaches us that one of the prime dangers to civilization has been its tendency to cause the loss of the manly virtues, and if we are to learn a lesson from the great upheavals of the past ages, if we are to have a progressive civilization, the men of to-day and 0f the future need many qualities. We need first of all, and most important of all, the qualities which stand at the base of individual, of family life, the fundamental and essential qualitiesethe homely, everyday, all important virtues. If the average man will not work. if he has not in him the power and will to be a good husband and father; if the average woman is not a good housewife and mother of healthy children, then the state will be in jeopardy. no matter what may be its brilliance of artistic attainment and material achievement That we are gradually approaching a change is evidenced by the spirit of political, social and economic unrest. While we may not like it and may shut our eyes to it, nevertheless there is an ominous sound in the land as Of physical workers protesting. At least. there is not the song of healthy labor, swinging its way along in good will and contentment, Some of the causes of this condition are evident. It is only within the past two generations that men have worked in masses within walls, and it does nut seem reasonable to suppose that, after centuries of selfetlirectetl work largelyin the open. humanity can 32

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go into this enervating class of workeit will at once become apparent that the situation is, indeed, grave, and must receive immediate attention if we are to march safely forward. That we are alive to the situation is evidenced by the general movement to counteract the evils brought about by modern industrialism. We are beginning to understand that this great body of physical workers must be recognized not as an individual unit for private gain, but on the contrary as members Of a social community in which the interests of every individual are inextricably linked; and to elevate the cultural and industrial standard of the community, we must begin by giving every man a thorough training in his life work. To meet this condition, the Public Schools of the country are establishing co-Operative and continuation schools, which take instruction to the boy or girl already on the job, and thus reaching a class of students who hitherto have been a waste to the public school system. These schools have been the means of making the spirit of labor brighter. and the indications are that they will have a tremendous reflex action for the good upon our civilization. And the signs of the time are that we are recognizing facts, learning to understand the forces at work, and by co-operating with them, will be enabled to guide and restrain them so that whatever is to come, by way of change. will he worked out with a minimum of friction. violence and loss. 34