The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram., 1914-02-19
Your Power House


Man is not creator He cannot bring into
existence that which not. Without some
thing to work WITH he is as helpless as a babe.
His sole means of achievement is in cooperating
with the forces of nature already in existence
and with giving new shape to the things which
he finds about him.
The sailor fashions the lumber from the for
est into a ship He weaves the fibres of the field
into sails but he cannot make the wind to blow.
Does he then sit helpless and hopeless on the
shore? No. He contrives to adjust his sails in
such a way that when the wind comes up it will
push him about wherever he wishes to go.
An engineer cannot create coal. Neither can
he cause water to exist But he can put the
coal under the water and change the water into
steam. He can turn the steam into his piston
chambers and make it push him across the con-
tinent.
Man is strong not because he can bring
himself to the forces of nature that already
ist His power is in proportion to his ability to
cooperate with nature. There are two secrets
of human success. One is to understand what
the forces of nature are and what they will do
under given circumstances. The sailor must un-
derstand the nature of wind and how it acts The
engineer must know what water does when it is
changed into steam and how to get the stored up
energy out of the COAL
The other secret is to know how he may be
able to adjust himself to these forces already in
existence in such way as to get them to work
for him.
The farmer cannot make seed germinate,
but he can contrive to put it in such position
that nature will do it for him. The doctor
not disease, but he can so direct some nat
is IN
knowing how to make gravitaton, heat expan-
sion, gases, chemical energies and all these var
ious natural forces be his slaves and servants
that give to him his ability to drive tunnel
through the Alps, to make canal across Pana-
ma and to build city of six million souls.
But how is the young man or woman to gain
this difficult knowledge? How is he to learn all
about the complexities of the various natural
forces? How can he become skilled in contriving
such devices will enable him to set these fore
to work?
The race was many hundreds of thousands of
years in discovering these difficult things and
if youth sets out to discover them all over
again for HIMSELF he will never be able to get
past the ABC's of them
1t just for the purpose of avoiding such
wasteful effort and needless experience that
books were invented. Just as the vegetable en-
ergy of long past ages stored up in COAL so
is the knowledge and experience Of centuries of
human effort stored up in books. And the young
man who is wise and doesn't want to waste his
energy in useless efforts will make of books
Just the engineer makes Of coal. He will
say to himself, 81 going to study this book
and take advantage of the knowledge that my
forefathers spent centuries of work and pain
in discovering
A city library is therefore mine of energy
and power and the young woman with q
grain of sense will it to the limit. He will
be able to put to use the knowledge gained by the
human of what the forces of nature and OF
human society He will there learn how tt
contrive those Devices either of machinery or o
social institutions which can enable him to coop
crate with those forces He will discover it to be
veritable power-house.
Young man, if someone gave you a coal mine
you would be digging down after it's stored u1
energy inside of month. But the city has gver
you something greater than a coal mine some
thing greater than all mines put together. 1t ha!
given you the of repository in which the
knowledge and inventions of all past ages arr
stored up. If you are wise, you will not waste
moment in making full use of it.
Dancing
L.