Humanly Speaking | Page 5

the aptitudes and graces
formerly supposed to be
the result of heredity and
environment.
The duty of each teacher to
consult daily a card catalogue
of duties, beginning with Apperception and
Adenoids and going on to
Vaccination, Ventilation,
and the various vivacious variations on the

three R's.
The obligation resting upon the well-to-do citizen not
to leave for his country place, but to remain in the
city in order to
give the force of his example, in
his own ward, to a safe and sane
Fourth of July.
The obligation resting upon every citizen to write to
his Congressman.
The obligation to speak to one's neighbor who may
think he is living a moral life, and who yet
has never written to his
Congressman.
The obligation to attend hearings at the State House.

The obligation to protest against the habit of employees
at the State House of professing ignorance
of the location of the
committee-room where
the hearings are to be held; also to protest
against
the habit of postponing the hearings after one has
at great
personal inconvenience come to the State
House in order to protest.

The duty of doing your Christmas shopping early
enough in July to allow the shop-girls to enjoy
their summer vacation.

The duty of knowing what you are talking about, and
of talking about all the things you ought to know
about.
The
obligation of feeling that it is a joy and a privilege
to live in a country where eternal vigilance is
the price of liberty, and
where even if you have
the price you don't get all the liberty you pay
for."

I was a little troubled over this effusion, as it seemed to indicate that
Bagster had reached the limit of elasticity. A few days later I received a
letter asking me to call upon him. I found him in a state of uncertainty
over his own condition.
"I want you," he said, "to listen to the report my stenographer has
handed me, of an address which I gave day before yesterday. I have
been doing some of my most faithful work recently, going from one
meeting to another and helping in every good cause. But at this meeting
I had a rare sensation of freedom of utterance. I had the sense of
liberation from the trammels of time and space. It was a realization of
moral ubiquity. All the audiences I had been addressing seemed to flow
together into one audience, and all the good causes into one good cause.
Incidentally I seemed to have solved the Social Question. But now that
I have the stenographic report I am not so certain."
"Read it," I said.
He began to read, but the confidence of his pulpit tone, which was one
of the secrets of his power, would now and then desert him, and he
would look up to me as if waiting for an encouraging "Amen."
"Your secretary, when she called me up by telephone, explained to me
the object of your meeting. It is an object with which I deeply
sympathize. It is Rest. You stand for the idea of poise and tranquillity
of spirit. You would have a place for tranquil meditation. The thought I
would bring to you this afternoon is this: We are here not to be doing,
but to be.
"But of course the thought at once occurs to us, How can we be
considering the high cost of the necessaries of life? It will be seen at
once that the question is at bottom an economic one. You must have a
living wage, and how can there be a living wage unless we admit the
principle of collective bargaining. It is because I believe in the principle
of collective bargaining that I have come here to-night to say to you
working-men that I believe this strike is justifiable.
"I must leave to other speakers many interesting aspects of this subject,

and confine myself to the aspect which the committee asked me to
consider more in detail, namely, Juvenile Delinquency in its relation to
Foreign Immigration. The relation is a real one. Statistics prove that
among immigrants the proportion of the juvenile element is greater
than among the native-born. This increase in juvenility gives
opportunity for juvenile delinquency from which many of our
American communities might otherwise be free. But is the remedy to
be found in the restriction of immigration? My opinion is that the
remedy is to be found only in education.
"It is our interest in education that has brought us together on this
bright June morning. Your teacher tells me that this is the largest class
that has ever graduated from this High School, You may well be proud.
Make your education practical. Learn to concentrate, that is the secret
of success. There are those who will tell you to concentrate on a single
point. I would go even further. Concentrate on every point.
"I admit, as the