education
hateful to me. Education in the wrong direction can destroy a nation and
wreck the happiness of the world. The German worker was taught that he
would get rich, not by patient toil, but by taking by force the wealth
that others had created.

On my return from France, where I had witnessed the Hindenburg drive
into the heart of France, I addressed the Iron Workers in their national
convention. "I am glad," I said, "that I was born an iron worker and not
a Chancellor of Blood and Iron. For the iron I wrought has helped build
up a civilization, while the German's 'Blood and Iron' has sought to
destroy it.

"France stands knee-deep in her own blood while the iron of Germany is
being hurled into her breast. Iron Workers of America, to you has God
given the answer to the German thunderbolt. The iron of the republic
shall beat down the iron of the kings. Wherever I walked behind the
battle lines in France I told them I was an iron worker and I gave them
this message for you:

"'The American iron worker will not fail you. We have been taught to
believe in justice as the German believes in might. We will back up our
soldiers with ships and guns until Kaiserisim is beaten. We will set the
workers of Germany free--free from their foul belief in murder and in
kings. And when we have bound up our wounds we will build a new world
that shall be a freer world than man has ever known.'

"I have dedicated my life to this purpose. We will build this freer
world by the right instruction of our young. Education is of two kinds,
one kind is good and the other is poison. A poisonous education took
but one generation to turn the German working men into a race of
blood-letters. Wrong education tears a nation down. Right education will
build it up. One generation of right education will remake the world.
Who will furnish this new education? I, for one, will do my share, and
more. My heart is in this one cause, and my whole life from now on shall
be devoted to it.

"You will hear me speaking for it on every rostrum and in every
schoolhouse in America. I have been handicapped in life because I had no
education. But it is better to have no education than a false one, for
I was left free to know the truth when I found it. I went into the mills
when I should have been in school. As a working man I have helped get
better conditions for the worker. Think how much more I could have done
if I had had an education. Your leaders have done m