ork make it
poor. All the speeches I have ever made have never added a dollar to the
taxable value of America. But the tin and iron I wrought with my hands
have helped make America the richest country in the world. The Indians
were philosophers and orators; they could outtalk the white man every
time. But the Indians had no houses and no clothes. They wouldn't work
with their hands. A race that works with its hands has run the Indian
off the earth. If we quit working now and try to live on philosophy,
some race that still knows how to work will run us out of this country.
The first law of civilized life is labor. Labor is the giver of all good
things. Let us teach these orphans how to apply their labor, and after
that all things will be added unto them."

And so we established a pre-vocational school where the young people
are taught farming, carpentry, cement construction, blacksmithing, gas
engine building and dozens of other fundamental trades that nourish our
industrial life, a life that draws no nutriment from Greek or Latin. I
am not opposed to literature and the classics. I make no war on the dead
languages. The war that killed them did the business. Why should I come
along and cut off their feet, when some one else has been there and cut
off their heads? But as an educator I promote the industrial trades,
because they educated and promoted me. I have done well in life, and if
you ask me how I did it, I'm telling you. Industry first and literature
afterward. And if you wish to see that kind of school in action, you can
see it at Mooseheart, Illinois.

There is a school with more than a thousand students, boys and girls
of various ages, ranging from one month to eighteen years. Some of
the students were born there, the mother having been admitted with
her youngsters soon after the loss of the father. Each lad will get an
introduction to a dozen trades, and when he selects the one that fits
him best, he will specialize in that and graduate at eighteen, prepared
for life. This education is the gift of more than half a million foster
fathers. The Moose are mostly working men, and so they equip their wards
for industrial life, and then place them on the job.

A boy that knows how to build concrete houses will not have to sleep
in haystacks. If every high-school boy in America was a carpenter and
cement builder how long would the housing shortage last? "The birds of
the air have their nests," says the Bible. And we k