taking the place of numberless messengers, runners, and
errand boys, and with a population, too, vastly in excess of the
population when old-fashioned methods prevailed, the fact stands out
that labor has never been in greater demand and has never commanded
higher wages than to-day.

With a proper organization of industry it seems to me that it must
ever be so--certainly as far ahead as we can look into the future.
When a machine is invented which enables one man to do the work it
formerly required two men to do in producing some sheer necessity for
mankind, an extra man is released or freed to serve mankind by the
production of some comfort or luxury, or by ministering to the things
of the mind and the spirit.

And it is the duty of society and government, it may be said just
here, to facilitate this result, to provide education and equality of
opportunity so that each man will work where his effort will mean most
in human service. Knowledge or education not only cuts the shackles
which chain a man down to a few occupations, not only sets him free to
labor where he can work best, but is also itself a productive
agency--a tool with which a man may work better.

Take the simple fact that cowpeas gather nitrogen from the air: a man
may harness this scientific truth, use it and set it to work, and get
results, profits, power, from it, as surely as from a harnessed horse
or steam engine. And so with every other useful bit of knowledge under
heaven. Knowledge is power.

{181}

[Illustration: "SOCIETY BELLES" OF MINDANAO, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.]

[Illustration: A STREET SCENE IN MANILA.]

{182}

[Illustration: TWO KINDS OF WORKERS IN BURMA .]
One of the pleasures of being "on the road to Mandalay" was to see
the--

"Elephints a-pilin' teak
In the sludgy, squdgy creek"

The elephants of Rangoon are as fascinating as the camels of Peking.
But one never gets hardened to the every-day Oriental spectacle of
human beings harnessed like oxen to weary burdens, many of which
make those in the lower picture look light by comparison.

{180 continued}

All this doctrine Asia has rejected, or has never even got to the
point of considering. In America a motorman or conductor by means of
tools and knowledge--a street-car for a tool and the science of
electricity for knowledge--transports forty people from one place to
another. These men are high-priced laborers considered from an
Oriental standpoint an