and to earn a living if the time came
when they had to do it. They have now no conception of the relative
values of even material things, what the things are made of or how they
are put together. For them hats, shoes, French novels and roast chicken
can be picked off the trees.

* * * * *

This utter ignorance of actual life not only keeps us at a distance from
the people of our own time but renders our ideas of history equally
vague, abstract and unprofitable. I believe it would be an excellent
thing if, beginning with the age of about ten years, no child were
allowed to eat anything until he was able to tell where it was produced,
what it cost and how it was prepared. If this were carried out in every
department of the child's existence he would have small need of the
superficial education furnished by most of our institutions of learning.
Our children are taught about the famines of history when they cannot
recognize a blade of wheat or tell the price of a loaf of bread, or how
it is made.

I would begin the education of my boy--him of the tango and balkline
billiards--with a study of himself, in the broad use of the term, before
I allowed him to study about other people or the history of nations. I
would seat him in a chair by the fire and begin with his feet. I would
inquire what he knew about his shoes--what they were made of, where the
substance came from, the cost of its production, the duty on leather,
the process of manufacture, the method of transportation of goods,
freight rates, retailing, wages, repairs, how shoes were polished--this
would begin, if desired, a new line of inquiry as to the composition of
said polish, cost, and so on--comparative durability of hand and machine
work, introduction of machines into England and its effect on industrial
conditions. I say I would do all this; but, of course, I could not. I
would have to be an educated man in the first place. Why, beginning with
that dusty little pair of shoes, my boy and I might soon be deep in
Interstate Commerce and the Theory of Malthus--on familiar terms with
Thomas A. Edison and Henry George!

And the next time my son read about a Tammany politician giving away a
pair of shoes to each of his adherents it would mean something to
him--as much as any other master stroke of diplomacy.

I would instruct every boy in a practical knowledge of the house in
which he lives, give him a familiarity with simple tools a