The Alaska daily empire., 1919-01-15

sheltered repose, will come only to those who themselves have earned it.. This is the inevitable tendency of democracy.
 The thought is not new to America It is American, for here we have climbed the rough road of experience together, each jostling the other and pushing the weak aside. To the swift and to the strong there will al ways come the premiums, but to the cunning and to the greedy there will be given less and less of op. portunity.
 The test is to be in peace as it was in the time of war. Are you fitted for the fight? The man who knew how knowledge could be con- verted into power was the man for it is increasingly to be. To be use. ful is to be the test that society will put. Each mans rights are to be measured not by what he has but by what he does with what he has The honors-the croix de paix-the richest rewards will go to the capables, those who are not standardized into men machines" those who dare to ven ture and learn to lead. But all must work, and this duty to work and re- spect for work should be the earliest lesson earned. And it should be taught in the school, not as a homily but in a living way, by tieing work with instruction, making the thing learned to apply to something done I should like to see the day when every child learned trade while at school, trained his mind and his hand together, lifted labor into art by the application of thought.
 To be useful is the essence of Americanization, and against the un- developed resource, whether it be land or man, the spirit of this coun- try makes protest.
 Now, this can not be taught out of a book. It is a matter of touch, Of feeling, like the growth of friend ship. Each man is approachable in a diff ferent way, appealed to by very con tradictory things. One man re- aches America through a baseball game, another through a church, a saloon, a political meeting, woman, la bor union, a picture gallery, or some thing new to eat. The difficulty is in finding the meeting place where there is no fear no favor, no utter for motives. and, above all, no soul insulting patronage of poor by rich, of black by white, of younger by elder, of foreign born by native born. of the unco' bad by the unco' good. To meet this need the schoolhouse has been turned into community center. It is a common property, or should be. All feel entitled to it's use. When we were younger this kind of machinery was not nee essary, for we were fewer in num- Der, lived in small communities, and felt common independence which made each one a trumpet blowing herald of democracy. Today, how ever, there must be some thought given and some money expended in even having an opportunity to touch the hand of fellow man.
 r believe that more and more thought should be given to our school system as the most serviceable in strumentality we possess for the de- velopment of a better America. It has been, we must confess. very much taken-for-granted institution. It is probably of all our inventions the one of which we are most proud, and like other of our inventions we have not realized the greatness of it's possibilities. We have become accustomed to hearing it spoken of us as the heart of the Nation. But this figure must be taken with very definite limitations. It is the be ginning of things for the boys and the girls, but to the man and the woman it is almost thing outside of life. This should not be so, fo' it may be the very center of the so