The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and PoliticalLane, Franklin K.
History
The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political
Lane, Franklin K.
United States -- Politics and government -- 1913-1921; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
Then, too, we need a study made of the health conditions of our
children,--of the reason for the large percentage of undeveloped
and subnormal children who are brought to our schools, and the
larger number who do not reach maturity. ... Underfed boys and
ignorant boys are the ones who turn to Bolshevism. We can not
stand pat and let things drift without their drifting not to the
"good old days" but to bad new days.
Why should not our system of taxation be subject for the
profoundest study? ... We must find ways by which the individual
may have tools for production which his skill and foresight and
thrift have created and yet take for society in taxes what society
itself gives. ... There must come to society an increasingly large
portion of the wealth created by each generation through
inheritance taxes. Thus all our boys and girls will start the race
of life more nearly at the scratch. This will be for the making of
the race and for the enriching of the whole of society. Yet there
must be saved, surely, the call upon the man of talent for every
ounce of energy that he has and every spark of imagination.
We want our soldiers and sailors to be more certain of our
gratitude and to have an opportunity to realize their own ambition
for themselves. We must not be driven into any foolish or
impossible course by the pressure of a desire to win their votes.
On the contrary, the pressure should come from us who had not the
opportunity to risk our lives, that those who did take such risk
shall be highly honored. For those who will identify themselves
with the tilling of the soil, there should be farms, small yet
complete, for which they can gradually pay on long time. For
others there should be such education for professional or
industrial life as they desire. For others, a home, not a
speculation in real estate, but a piece of that American soil for
which they fought. For these things we can pay without extra
financial strain, if we dedicate to this purpose merely the
interest upon the monies which other nations owe us. The extent of
our willingness to help these men is not to be measured by their
request but rather by our ability and their lasting welfare. ...
We are to extend our activities into all parts of the world. Our
trade is to grow as never before. Our people are to resume their
old place as traders on the seven seas. We are to know other
peoples better and make them all more and more our friends,
working with them as mutually dependent factors in the growth of
the world's life. For this day a definite foreign policy must be
made, one that is fair; to which none can take exception. Our
people shall go abroad for their good and the good of other lands,
with their skilled hands and their resourceful minds, and their
energetic capital, and they must be assured of support abroad, as
at home, in every honest venture.
TRUE AMERICANISM
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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