high. My youth was spent in
giving to this growing land the element its body needed.

Now that body was sick. What was the matter with it? Lacking an
education, I was unprepared to say. When I left school my theory was
that every boy should learn a trade as soon as possible. Now I saw that
a trade was not enough. A worker needs an education, also. The trade
comes first, perhaps, but the education ought to follow on its heels.

During the next ten years of my life I was a worker and a student, too.
My motto was that every one should have at least a high-school education
and a trade.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE PUDDLER HAS A VISION

That caravan of railroad cars bearing the happy lodge members to their
meeting in the Rockies, had started a train of thought that went winding
through my mind ever after. In fancy I saw the envious Bannerman shaking
his fist at his thriftier, happier brothers. Should I denounce the
banding together of men for the promotion of fun and good fellowship?
Were these men hastening the downfall of America as the communist
predicted? Is not good fellowship a necessary feeling in the hearts of
civilized men?

Love of comrades had always been a ruling passion with me. I joined my
union as soon as I had learned my trade, the Amalgamated Association of
Iron, Steel and Tin Workers of North America. It was a long name, and we
liked every word in it. We felt the glow of brotherhood, and as I said
before, we used to share our jobs with the brother who was out of work.
The union paid a weekly benefit to men who had to strike for better
working conditions. At that time there were no death benefits nor any
fund to educate the children of members killed in the mills. When such
a death happened, the union appointed a committee to stand at the office
window on pay-day and ask every man to contribute something from his
wages. There is a charitable spirit among men who labor together and
they always gave freely to any fund for the widow and orphans. This
spirit is the force that lifts man above the beasts and makes his
civilization. There is no mercy in brute nature. The hawk eats the
sparrow; the fox devours the young rabbit; the cat leaps from under a
bush and kills the mother robin while the young are left to starve in
the nest. There is neither right nor wrong among the brutes because they
have no moral sense. They do not kill for revenge nor torture for the
love of cruelty, as Comrade Bannerman would in pray