otesting that he would never scrub a floor
for any man. He went ahead and scrubbed the floor still saying that he
wouldn't. That lad was weaker than the leader. He went wherever he was
led. The leader was a boy who made his own decisions. He was ashamed
of calling off the strike, but he did it because he felt the strike was
wrong.

This is the Mooseheart idea of education. Every boy must use his own
judgment. He faces every fact that he will face in life, and by the time
he is eighteen his judgment is as ripe as that of the much older average
man. The Mooseheart boys are not selected students. They come from the
humblest families, from homes that have been wiped out early. But the
training at Mooseheart is so well adapted to human needs that these
orphans soon outstrip the children of the more fortunate classes.
They become quick in initiative, sturdy in character and brilliant in
scholarship. Visitors who come from boys' preparatory schools where the
children of the rich are trained for college are amazed to find these
sons of the working people so far ahead of the young aristocrats. The
Mooseheart boys as a group have the others beaten in all the qualities
that go to make a young man excellent. We have prepared them for life.

CHAPTER XLVIII. BUILDING A BETTER WORLD BY EDUCATION

And so the great dream of my life has been realized. In youth I saw the
orphans of the worker scattered at a blow, little brothers and sisters
doomed to a life of drudgery, and never to see one another again. No
longer need such things be. The humblest worker can afford to join an
association that guarantees a home and an education to his children. In
Mooseheart the children are kept together. Family life goes on, and with
it comes an education better than the rich man's son can buy.

As individuals, the Moose are not rich men, but in cooperation they
are wealthy. They have a plant at Mooseheart now valued at five million
dollars, and they provide a revenue of one million two hundred thousand
a year to maintain and enlarge it. They received no endowment from state
or nation. They wanted to protect their children and they found a way to
do it. They based their system of education on the actual needs of men.
They know what life is, for they have lived it. In mine and field and
factory they had tasted the salty flavor of real things, and they built
a school that has this flavor.

The war drove home a lesson that will forever make false