hero of the book, having invented an air-ship, flew away to South Africa
to escape the general demolition. This book was being circulated by
communists as a true picture of what the country was coming to.

These pamphlets came into my hands at a time when work was getting
scarcer every day and a million men like myself were moving about the
country looking for jobs. Then for the first time I realized my need for
a broader education. If these things were true, it was my duty to stop
chasing the vanishing job and begin to organize the workers so that they
might destroy the capitalists. But how could I know whether they were
true? I had no knowledge of past history. And without knowing the past
how could I judge the future? I was like the old man who had never seen
a railroad train. His sons took him thirty miles over the hills and
brought him to the depot where a train was standing. The old man looked
things over and saw that the wheels were made of iron. "It will never
start," he said. He knew that if his wagon had heavy iron wheels, his
team could never start it. But his sons said: "It will start all right."
They had seen it before; they knew its past history. Soon the train
started, gathered speed like a whirlwind and went roaring away down the
track. The old man gazed after it and then, much excited, he exclaimed.
"It will never stop!"

The wisest head is no judge unless it has in it the history of past
performances. I had not studied much history in my brief schooling. The
mills called me because they needed men. Good times were there when I
arrived, and as for hard times, I was sure they "would never start." Now
the hard times were upon us and panic shook the ground beneath our feet.
"It will never stop," men cried. Had they studied the history of such
things they would have known that hard times come and hard times go,
starting and stopping for definite reasons, like the railway train.

I had done the right thing in quitting school and going to the puddling
furnaces at a time when we needed iron more than we needed education.
The proverb says, "Strike while the iron is hot." The country was
building, and I gave it iron to build with. Railroads were still pushing
out their mighty arms and stringing their iron rails across the western
wheat lands. Bridges were crossing the Mississippi and spanning the
chasms in the Rocky Mountains. Chicago and New York were rising in new
growth with iron in their bones to hold them