The high state of culture arrived at by the Mizora people rendered a
luxurious style of living a necessity to all. Many things that I had
been brought up to regard as the exclusive privileges of the rich, were
here the common pleasure of every one. There was no distinction of
classes; no genteel-poverty people, who denied themselves necessities
that they might appear to have luxuries. There was not a home in Mizora
that I entered--and I had access to many--that did not give the
impression of wealth in all its appointments.
I asked the Preceptress to explain to me how I might carry back to the
people of my country this social happiness, this equality of physical
comfort and luxury; and she answered me with emphasis:
"Educate them. Convince the rich that by educating the poor, they are
providing for their own safety. They will have fewer prisons to build,
fewer courts to sustain. Educated Labor will work out its own salvation
against Capital. Let the children of toil start in life with exactly
the same educational advantages that are enjoyed by the rich. Give them
the same physical and moral training, and let the rich pay for it by
taxes."
I shook my head "They will never submit to it," was my reluctant
admission.
"Appeal to their selfishness," urged the Preceptress "Get them to open
their college doors and ask all to come and be taught without money and
without price. The power of capital is great, but stinted and ignorant
toil will rise against its oppression, and innocence and guilt will
alike suffer from its fury. Have you never known such an occurrence?"
"Not in my day or country," I answered "But the city in which I was
educated has such a history. Its gutters flowed with human blood, the
blood of its nobles."
She inclined her head significantly. "It will be repeated," she said
sadly, "unless you educate them. Give their bright and active minds the
power of knowledge. They will use it wisely, for their own and their
country's welfare."
I doubted my ability to do this, to contend against rooted and inherited
prejudice, but I resolved to try. I did not need to be told that the
rich and powerful had a monopoly of intellect: Nature was not partial to
them, for the children of the poor, I well knew, were often handsomer
and more intellectual than the offspring of wealth and aristocratic
birth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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