The Higher Powers of Mind and SpiritTrine, Ralph Waldo
Religion
The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit
Trine, Ralph Waldo
Mind and body; New Thought
With these vast acres ready for them large numbers could, under a wise
system of distribution, be sent on to the great West and Southwest, and
more easily and directly now since the Panama Canal is open for
navigation. Allotments of these lands could be assigned them that they
could in time become owners of, through a wisely established system of
payments. Many of them would thereby be living lives similar to those
they lived in their own countries, and for which their training and
experience there have abundantly fitted them. They would thus become a
far more valuable type of citizens--landowners--than they could ever
possibly become otherwise, and especially through our present
unorganised hit-or-miss system. They would in time also add annually
hundreds of millions of productive work to the wealth of the country.
The very wise system that was inaugurated some time ago in connection
with the Coast Defence arm of our army is, under the wise direction of
our present Secretary of War, to be extended to all branches of the
service. For some time in the Coast Artillery Service the enlisted man
under competent instruction has had the privilege of becoming a skilled
machinist or a skilled electrician. Now the system is to be extended
through all branches of the military service, and many additional trades
are to be added to the curricula of the trade schools of the army. The
young man can, therefore, make his own selection and become a trained
artisan at the same time that he serves his time in the army, with all
expenses for such training, as well as maintenance, borne by the
Government. He can thereby leave the service fully equipped for
profitable employment.
This will have the tendency of calling a better class of young men into
the service; it will also do away with the well-founded criticism that
army life and its idleness, or partly-enforced idleness, unfits a man
for useful industrial service after he quits the army. If this same
system is extended through the navy, as it can be, both army and navy
service will meet the American requirement--that neither military nor
naval service take great numbers of men from productive employment, to
be in turn supported by other workers. Instead of so much dead timber,
they are all the time producing while in active service, and are being
trained to be highly efficient as producers, when they leave the
service.
Under this system the Federal Government can build its own ordnance
works and its own munition factories and become its own maker of
whatever may be required in all lines of output. We will then be able to
escape the perverse influence of gain on the part of large munition
industries, and the danger that comes from that portion of a military
party whose motives are actuated by personal gain.
If the occasion arises, or if we permit the occasion to arise, Kruppism
in America will become as dangerous and as sinister in its influences
and its proportions, as it became in Germany.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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