The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1919-01-14
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION
proposed by the Palm Beach Post)
Thinkers


The fact is that those who go to the
legislature are. in the proportion of
about 85 per cent, pure patriots.
They, or at least eighty-five pei
cent of them, are willing to devote a
part of their time to a conscientious
effort to make things better for eve
rybody in the state; to put aside their
private business for the public bust
ness; to give their time without pay
to the public service, voting them
Selves just about enough money out
of the public treasury to cover ex-
penses; to suffer the personal discom-
fort of being away from home in order
that life may, by their efforts, be
made happier for all who dwell to-
gether in communities; to forget their
own troubles for a while and worry
themselves with the troubles of
others.
Their breasts boast not of decora~
tive hardware, their brows are bare
of victor's laurel and martyrs crown;
Sbut their palms show some corns
gathered at the peoples work bench,
and their feet bear blisters raised by
the rough roads leading to the coun-
try of the common good.
Leaving out the fifteen or twenty
who go because it is for somebody's
interest for them to be there, the
eighty or ninety who unselfishly gath
er at Tallahassee in the spring Of
every odd year to make laws for US
are the only ones who do any plain or
solid thinking for the common good.
True this thinking may not be Gas
broad as church door nor as deep as
a WELL" but it is all we have got, for,
no other eighty or ninety men of
whatsoever might of mind, are do
ing it.
In Japan they have the elder states
men doing the public thinking. In
the state of Oregon they have a
board of thinkers doing the same
thing. In the steel trust they have
the retired presidents and chairmen
of directors doing the general think
ing for the good of the company.
None of these have been observed to
be at all backward in going forward
so as to get under the trellis when
graves are getting ready to drop off
the vines.
In Florida we have gathered around
the college campus In Gainesville
and Tallahassee a highly-organized,
well-trained, Woodworking body of
men and boys and women, young and
younger, thinking, thinking, think
ing, for ten or twelve hours each week
day for nine months out of every
year. Their whole object is to learn
how to think by thinking-which they
know to be the only way to do it.
Most of their thinking is done about
things that are past, things that are
dead, things that are abstract. These
are nice things to think about, but the
human mind is not big enough to con-
tain all the thoughts that the millions
OF human minds that have gone be-
fore us have let loose, so learning how
to think is the best, way we can do to
get wise. This fixes US so we can
think when it's up to us to come
through with our share of the worlds
work.
Live things, present things and con-
crete things are just as good movers
of the gray molecules as those other
kind, and in addition, this line. of
thinking satisfies the great American
craving for getting somewhere.
Extension work gives the faculty
and the students of the universities
and the colleges a chance to make
their thinking useful as well as orna-
mental.
With the patriots in the legislature
and the zealots in the halls that face
the campus, combined in thought on
public problems, we soon won't have
any to worry US, because we won't
have any,