OCR Text |
Show WEALTH WAITS THE GARNERING To every man there will come his daily bread in answer to his dally prayer, though It come from the milling mill-ing of wheat or be the salmon caught at the falls of the Spokane, without let or hindrance' from any power of earth. If there is food In plenty in one region, as by the fall of an avalanche ava-lanche down a mountnin, It will certainly cer-tainly seek consumption In another region. And this the American boy and girl owe to the good Providence and to the brave men who made this country one and have kept it one. It Is too much the blindness of our time to speak as If such a simple business busi-ness as daily food came to us as a matter of course. There Is, Indeed, a careless habit in which Americans often speak. Fourth of July orators and street-corner street-corner braggarts alike talk of the natural nat-ural products of this country almost In the tone of the emigrants who expect ex-pect to pick up a doubloon upon the sidewalk. One Is tempted to ask such braggarts why the country did not produce such wealth 100 years or 200 years ago. Why was Dakota then a desert? Why were the hills of Alabama only a hiding place for a few thousand Creek Indians? Why did they not forge the Iron under tlielr feet? Why did not the Iroquois In western New York pick from their trees the peaches and the pears such as have been growing there this autumn? The answer Is this: All the wealth of America comes to her from the work of her men and women. The victory which yields it Is their victory. vic-tory. It is the victory of spirit conquering con-quering matter. It comes in the daily miracle of daily life, where children of God, led by God, taught by God, alive in his life and fellow workmen with him, carry out his designs and subdue the earth. It Is neither sensible nor grateful to speak of teeming granaries, of Increasing In-creasing trade, of new mines, of oil, of Iron or of gas as If these things were wealth In themselves. They are only wealth when man strikes the rock and Its waters flow. And Uiis man must be not the savage man who cares only for his own personal per-sonal appetite. It must be man, the child of God, seeking n future better than today, determined to bring in a nobler age than that which he lives In. Edward Everett Hale. |