Year
by year there is an appalling waste of good human material; and
thousands of those whom nature intended to be captains of industry are
relegated, in consequence of undeveloped or imperfectly trained
capacity, to the ranks, or become hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Many drift with other groups of human wastage to the unemployed,
thence to the unemployable, and so to the gutter and the grave. The
poor we have always with us; but the wastrel--like the pauper--"is a
work of art, the creation of wasteful sympathy and legislative
inefficiency."
We must be careful, however, in speaking of "the State" to avoid the
error of supposing that it is a divinely appointed entity, endowed
with power and wisdom from on high. It is, in short, the nation in
miniature. Even if the Legislature were composed exclusively of the
highest wisdom, the most enlightened patriotism in the country, its
enactments must needs fall short of its own standards, and be but
little in advance of those of the average of the nation. It must still
acknowledge with Solon. "These are not the best laws I could make, but
they are the best which my nation is fitted to receive." We cannot
blame the State without, in fact, condemning ourselves. The absence of
any widespread enthusiasm for education, or appreciation of its
possibilities; the claims of vested interests; the exigencies of Party
Government; and, above all, the murderous tenacity of individual
rights have proved well-nigh insuperable obstacles in the path of true
educational reform.
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