The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12): Dresden Edition—PoliticalIngersoll, Robert Green
History
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Political
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
I am telling you these things because you may not know them, and I did
not know them myself until a few days ago. I am anxious to give away
information, for it is only by giving it away that you can keep it. When
you have told it, you remember it. It is with information as it is
with liberty, the only way to be dead sure of it is to give it to other
people.
In 1860 the houses in the United States, the cabins on the frontier, the
buildings in the cities, were worth six thousand million dollars. Now
they are worth over twenty-two thousand million dollars. To talk about
figures like these is enough to make a man dizzy.
In 1860 our animals of all kinds, including the Illinois deer--commonly
called swine--the oxen and horses, and all others, were worth about one
thousand million dollars; now they are worth about four thousand million
dollars.
Are we not getting rich? Our national debt today is nothing. It is like
a man who owes a cent and has a dollar.
Since 1860 we have been industrious. We have created two million five
hundred thousand new farms. Since 1860 we have done a good deal of
plowing; there have been a good many tired legs. I have been that way
myself. Since 1860 we have put in cultivation two hundred million acres
of land. Illinois, the best State in the Union, has thirty-five million
acres of land, and yet, since 1860, we have put in cultivation enough
land to make six States of the size of Illinois. That will give you some
idea of the quantity of work we have done. I will admit I have not done
much of it myself, but I am proud of it.
In 1860 we had four million five hundred and sixty-five thousand farmers
in this country, whose land and implements were worth over sixteen
thousand million dollars. The farmers of this country, on an average,
are worth five thousand dollars, and the peasants of the Old World, who
cultivate the soil, are not worth, on an average, ten dollars beyond the
wants of the moment. The farmers of our country produce, on an average,
about one million four hundred thousand dollars' worth of stuff a day.
What else? Have we in other directions kept pace with our physical
development? Have we developed the mind? Have we endeavored to develop
the brain? Have we endeavored to civilize the heart? I think we have.
We spend more for schools per head than any nation in the world. And the
common school is the breath of life.
Great Britain spends one dollar and thirty cents per head on the common
schools; France spends eighty cents; Austria, thirty cents; Germany,
fifty cents; Italy, twenty-five cents, and the United States over two
dollars and fifty cents.
I tell you the schoolhouse is the fortress of liberty. Every schoolhouse
is an arsenal, filled with weapons and ammunition to destroy the
monsters of ignorance and fear.
As I have said ten thousand times, the school-house is my cathedral. The
teacher is my preacher.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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