A community is the better for
being discontented, for being dissatisfied with what it has. I do not
mean the petty, daily, nagging, gnawing sort of discontent, but a broad,
courageous sort of discontent which believes that everything which is
done can and ought to be eventually done better. Industry organized for
service--and the workingman as well as the leader must serve--can pay
wages sufficiently large to permit every family to be both self-reliant
and self-supporting. A philanthropy that spends its time and money in
helping the world to do more for itself is far better than the sort
which merely gives and thus encourages idleness. Philanthropy, like
everything else, ought to be productive, and I believe that it can be. I
have personally been experimenting with a trade school and a hospital to
discover if such institutions, which are commonly regarded as
benevolent, cannot be made to stand on their own feet. I have found that
they can be.
I am not in sympathy with the trade school as it is commonly
organized--the boys get only a smattering of knowledge and they do not
learn how to use that knowledge.
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