THE SOLVING PRINCIPLE OF INDUSTRY.

By J. M. DEVERS, of De Pauw University.

BIOGRAPHICAL.

J. M. Devers was born July 19th, 1875, at Yankton, South Dakota. When he was four years old his parents made a homestead entry in Bon Homme county, of the same State. Here he attended district school only a few months each year, but his twenty-five years of farm life developed a rugged character that has distinguished so many of our Western pioneers. His academic education was received at Dakota University, now Dakota Wesleyan. In the fall of 1901 he entered De Pauw University, and received his bachelor's degree in June, 1905. In his senior year Mr. Devers won home and State contests, and at Monmouth, Illinois, with his oration entitled, "The Solving Principle of Industry," he won first honors for the fifth time for De Pauw University and sixth time for the State of Indiana. Mr. Devers is a member of the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity. At present he is connected with the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, and intends to enter upon the study of law.

THE ORATION.

Delivered at the Inter-State Oratorical Contest at Monmouth, Illinois, May 4, 1905, taking first prize. Judges: Dr. W. A. GRANVILLE, Rev. JOHN M. FULTON, Prof. C. H. FRENCH, Dr. JAMES E. DAVIS, Dr. F. A. HALL, and Hon. SAM F. WRIGHT.

Outlined against a bleak Siberian plain there moves a solitary figure-a figure world-renowned as that of the greatest living apostle of freedom; hoary, stooped, venerable with years, this lonely exile, toiling behind his patient oxen, stands for a philosophy of life, is the enemy of the court, the idol of the peasant, and the cynosure of the world.

This self-renounced autocrat has vitalized labor with dignity and inspired it with hope by becoming himself the greatest embodiment of the simple life. More a doer than a dreamer, more a priest than a potentate, he stands forth, an antithesis to wrong-Tolstoi, the nobleman of the plow.

But there is another philosophy of life, a philosophy painted by Millet upon an immortal canvas. The picture, not of a nobleman with upturned face and eternal hope, but of a barren plain and on that plain a being brutalized by labor, bereft of hope. A shape so dread that the mattock in its hand cries out:

"Who made this toiler dead to rapture and despair?

Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop."

These are the two philosophies of life which have ushered in and must usher out the conflict of the industrial problem.

The struggle of man has ever been against limitations. It has been his thought to destroy them; he has succeeded only in surmounting them. The history of the struggle has been the record of man's emancipation from the argument of the war-club, the persuasion of the firebrand, the art of cannibalism; to the argument of justice, the persuasion of truth, the art of arbitration. From a lawenslaved subject he has come forth a law-making citizen: from a condition of superstition and creedtorture to an ennobling worship of the living God.

Thus has man attained political and religious liberty-the conflict for industrial liberty is not yet won.

Joined together in the productive world are two mighty agencies: Capital, formed of intellectual power in the possession of wealth, and physical effort in the nature of toil, called Labor. From these two forces come the grandeur of earth. Everywhere stand monuments of their skill. They have erected statues upon pedestals and domes upon capitols. They have caught the Falls of Niagara in the palm of their iron hand and poured it out as easily as the running sands of an hourglass. They have compelled the mountains to yield up their secrets and the sea to yield up its thoughts on invisible tongues, wireless and alone.

And yet, in all this apparent harmony of achievement, there is bitter discord in achieving. The mind of man has not yet reached the altitude of intelligence where it can grasp the truth that the completest aim of the individual is found in the welfare of others. Individualism does not realize that above the survival of the fittest is an ethical law, proclaiming that behind the hand which swings the hammer, stands a soul that guides the hand, a personality striving towards an ideal. Except through a recognition of this immutable law no pacification can come. Each member must be brought to know the inviolable nature of the other. The power of Capital is brain plus money; the power of Labor is brain plus sinew;

but the constitution of Nature underlying these couplets of production declares the separability of mind and money, the inseparableness of mind and muscle. From the artist, painting frescoes on great cathedrals, to the laborer, toiling in the gravel-pit, the directing and controlling activity of the mind is a preeminent factor. On the other hand, it is easy to separate mind and money, to decree: "Money operate here, brain operate there; money be idle, brain be active." Wealth may be placed in the hands of another, toil and toiler are forever one. The link is inevitable: mind and muscle must perform together. Sunder them, and you have the imbecile and the idiot; unite them, and you have an enlightened personality. Every achievement of mind and body extols its human maker. Many of the world's grandest achievements have had their inception amid the hammer-strokes of a crowded factory. James Watt saw the wraith of a steam-engine through the puffing mists of an escape-pipe. Eli Whitney picked the principles of the cotton-gin from the planter's fingers, while Thomas Edison, in his wonder workshop, has chiseled the sun into a million. electric satellites.

But the moral imperative of this sacred duality is neither openly recognized, nor generally observed. "Humanity in the delirium of a passion for gain has swerved at a yellow gleam across the world, and where it smote the plowshare in the field, the plowman left his plowing and fell down before it;

where it glittered on her pail, the milkmaid left her milking and fell down before it." The phantom of this dream has led all classes astray. The rich have grown opulent and oppressive; the poor have returned with ashes in their hands. The factory hand goes home at night to return to the shop again; no time, no courage, for a thought on life; a scanty meal, a hard bed, a heavy sleep, another day, mark the changeless round of his life. The sweatshop victim threads her hours, her years, her thoughts, her life into some princely garment while her employer worships in a gilded church. Thus the industrial pendulum swings in dreary beats from suffering toilers to thoughtless aristocracy. Why all this ceaseless struggle? What means this endless quest for gold? Have we forgotten the feast of Belshazzar? Is man, upon whose brow reason is enthroned, to become a crucible for the melting of earth and stone? Against such conclusions humanity protests.

Our country stands before the world, a forum of liberty. Equality is our blood-right; justice, our shibboleth. We condemn the wanton extortion of Capital and legislate protection for Labor. But theory and practice conflict. We must read more profoundly into the philosophy of life if we would understand the hidden ethics of the social order. History has inscribed the judgment, that not states, nor creeds, but man himself is the highest end of life. Behold! the Greeks built a Parthenon of marble, and then de