Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/62

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50
AMERICAN SYNDICALISM

capital is loosened, reforms in every variety will fail to reach the heart of the disorder.

Again, two generations have passed since Cobden's glowing prophecies about freedom applied to trade. If he could repeat his long journey today, it would be to look upon a greedy scramble for market restrictions scarcely without exception. We know what Thomas Jefferson thought that popular educative agencies, such as public libraries, would bring about. We have these institutions far beyond his dream. In Massachusetts scarcely a hamlet is so small as to be without its public library. Some commonplace towns have two or three, and one town upon Cape Cod has five. These and the people's schools have wrought their service, but every deeper human and social problem remains about as obstinate as before. So little has universal suffrage met the earlier hopes, that half the educated people one meets distrust it, and would hail its restriction with downright satisfaction. We turn back to the first writers upon some new phase of education,—let us say, manual training or the kindergarten. The first messages were like a new and conquering religion. They had the promise of some stately reconstruction which a single generation might bring about. In Cambridge, I have just listened to two very high authorities on these special forms of training. They know the changes these have brought about, and they do not undervalue them, but their estimates are very cool and balanced. Another lecturer was on fire with the new anarchistic emphasis in child rearing of Madam Montessori. The listener guessed that after a decade or two, he also would speak calmly and