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man may be unlearned and very useful.
The object of education is not to fill a man's mind with facts; it is to teach him how to use his mind in
thinking. And it often happens that a man can think better if he is not hampered by the knowledge of the past.
It is a very human tendency to think that what mankind does not yet know no one can learn. And yet it must
be perfectly clear to everyone that the past learning of mankind cannot be allowed to hinder our future
learning. Mankind has not gone so very far when you measure its progress against the knowledge that is yet to
be gained--the secrets that are yet to be learned.
One good way to hinder progress is to fill a man's head with all the learning of the past; it makes him feel that
because his head is full, there is nothing more to learn. Merely gathering knowledge may become the most
useless work a man can do. What can you do to help and heal the world? That is the educational test. If a man
can hold up his own end, he counts for one. If he can help ten or a hundred or a thousand other men hold up
their ends, he counts for more. He may be quite rusty on many things that inhabit the realm of print, but he is
a learned man just the same. When a man is master of his own sphere, whatever it may be, he has won his
degree--he has entered the realm of wisdom.
* * * * *
The work which we describe as Studies in the Jewish Question, and which is variously described by
antagonists as "the Jewish campaign," "the attack on the Jews," "the anti-Semitic pogrom," and so forth, needs
no explanation to those who have followed it. Its motives and purposes must be judged by the work itself. It is
offered as a contribution to a question which deeply affects the country, a question which is racial at its
source, and which concerns influences and ideals rather than persons. Our statements must be judged by
candid readers who are intelligent enough to lay our words alongside life as they are able to observe it. If our
word and their observation agree, the case is made. It is perfectly silly to begin to damn us before it has been
shown that our statements are baseless or reckless. The first item to be considered is the truth of what we have
set forth. And that is precisely the item which our critics choose to evade.
Readers of our articles will see at once that we are not actuated by any kind of prejudice, except it may be a
prejudice in favor of the principles which have made our civilization. There had been observed in this country
certain streams of influence which were causing a marked deterioration in our literature, amusements, and
social conduct; business was departing from its old-time substantial soundness; a general letting down of
standards was felt everywhere. It was not the robust coarseness of the white man, the rude indelicacy, say, of
Shakespeare's characters, but a nasty Orientalism which has insidiously affected every channel of
expression--and to such an extent that it was time to challenge it. The fact that these influences are all
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traceable to one racial source is a fact to be reckoned with, not by us only, but by the intelligent people of the
race in question. It is entirely creditable to them that steps have been taken by them to remove their protection
from the more flagrant violators of American hospitality, but there is still room to discard outworn ideas of
racial superiority maintained by economic or intellectually subversive warfare upon Christian society.
Our work does not pretend to say the last word on the Jew in America. It says only the word which describes
his obvious present impress on the country. When that impress is changed, the report of it can be changed. For
the present, then, the question is wholly in the Jews' hands. If they are as wise as they claim to be, they will
labour to make Jews American, instead of labouring to make America Jewish. The genius of the United States
of America is Christian in the broadest sense, and its destiny is to remain Christian. This carries no sectarian
meaning with it, but relates to a basic principle which differs from other principles in that it provides for
liberty with morality, and pledges society to a code of relations based on fundamental Christian conceptions
of human rights and duties.
As for prejudice or hatred against persons, that is neither American nor Christian. Our opposition is only to
ideas, false ideas, which are sapping the moral stamina of the people. These ideas proceed from easily
identified sources, they are promulgated by easily discoverable methods; and they are controlled by mere
exposure. We have simply used the method of exposure. When people learn to identify the source and nature
of the influence swirling around them, it is sufficient. Let the American people once understand that it is not
natural degeneracy, but calculated subversion that afflicts us, and they are safe. The explanation is the cure.
This work was taken up without personal motives. When it reached a stage where we believed the American
people could grasp the key, we let it rest for the time. Our enemies say that we began it for revenge and that
we laid it down in fear. Time will show that our critics are merely dealing in evasion because they dare not
tackle the main question. Time will also show that we are better friends to the Jews' best interests than are
those who praise them to their faces and criticize them behind their backs.
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CHAPTER XVIII
DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY
Perhaps no word is more overworked nowadays than the word "democracy," and those who shout loudest
about it, I think, as a rule, want it least. I am always suspicious of men who speak glibly of democracy. I
wonder if they want to set up some kind of a despotism or if they want to have somebody do for them what
they ought to do for themselves. I am for the kind of democracy that gives to each an equal chance according
to his ability. I think if we give more attention to serving our fellows we shall have less concern with the
empty forms of government and more concern with the things to be done. Thinking of service, we shall not
bother about good feeling in industry or life; we shall not bother about masses and classes, or closed and open
shops, and such matters as have nothing at all to do with the real business of living. We can get down to facts.
We stand in need of facts.
It is a shock when the mind awakens to the fact that not all of humanity is human--that whole groups of
people do not regard others with humane feelings. Great efforts have been made to have this appear as the
attitude of a class, but it is really the attitude of all "classes," in so far as they are swayed by the false notion of
"classes." Before, when it was the constant effort of propaganda to make the people believe that it was only
the "rich" who were without humane feelings, the opinion became general that among the "poor" the humane
virtues flourished.
But the "rich" and the "poor" are both very small minorities, and you cannot classify society under such heads.
There are not enough "rich" and there are not enough "poor" to serve the purpose of such classification. Rich
men have become poor without changing their natures, and poor men have become rich, and the problem has
not been affected by it.
Between the rich and the poor is the great mass of the people who are neither rich nor poor. A society made
up exclusively of millionaires would not be different from our present society; some of the millionaires would
have to raise wheat and bake bread and make machinery and run trains--else they would all starve to death.
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