He was a free man, and yet he had come within an
inch of going to jail. All because he didn't know what "previous to the
eighth and immediately subsequent thereto" meant.

The man was an expert puddler. A puddler makes iron bars. They were
going to put him behind his own bars because he couldn't understand
the legal jargon. Thanks to the great educational system of America the
working man has improved his mental muscle as well as his physical.

This taught me a lesson. Jargon can put the worker in jail. Big words
and improper phraseology are prison bars that sometimes separate the
worker from the professional people. "Stone walls do not a prison make,"
because the human mind can get beyond them. But thick-shelled words do
make a prison. They are something that the human mind can not penetrate.
A man whose skill is in his hands can puddle a two hundred-pound ball of
iron. A man whose skill is on his tongue can juggle four-syllable words.
But that iron puddler could not savvy four-syllable words any more than
the word juggler could puddle a heat of iron. The brain worker who talks
to the hand worker in a special jargon the latter can not understand has
built an iron wall between the worker's mind and his mind. To tear down
that wall and make America one nation with one language is one of the
tasks of the new education.

If big words cause misunderstandings, why not let them go? When the
stork in the fable invited the fox to supper he served the bean soup in
a long-necked vase. The stork had a beak that reached down the neck of
the vase and drank the soup with ease. The fox had a short muzzle and
couldn't get it. The trick made him mad and he bit the stork's head off.
Why should the brain worker invite the manual worker to a confab and
then serve the feast in such long-necked language that the laborer can't
get it? "Let's spill the beans," the agitator tells him, "then we'll all
get some of the gravy."

This long-necked jargon must go. It is not the people's dish. With foggy
phrases that no one really understands they are trying to incite the
hand worker to bite off the head of the brain worker. When employer and
employee sit together at the council table, let the facts be served in
such simple words that we can all get our teeth into them.

When I became secretary of labor I said that the employer and employee
had a duty to perform one to the other, and both to the public.

Capital does not always mean employer. When