Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/227

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THE SCHOOL DOCTOR AT HOME
201

peace. In vain the masses will ask for possession of the means of production. The power of producing is the factor in the problem of economic life which decides the fate of individuals and of classes. But the new education would offer the highest order of producing power to all who were able to win it. And in doing this it would not condemn all to one order of employment, but rather give life and meaning to all kinds of labour, and art, and learning. It would make clear how all these were made possible, and the need for them created in the first place, by work; how every kind of learning has its origin and source in the expanding life of a human being struggling for food, for clothing, and shelter, but struggling in such wise that at last he must unlock all the secrets of Nature, use her terrible forces for his own ends, and enter into close relations with all his fellows. All this will become plain to the masses when they cease to halt, as they halt to-day, in so far as their children are concerned, at the threshold of the modern world—hurrying their children of thirteen or fourteen into mills and into casual labour as if they feared to let them fairly escape out of the shadow of the Dark Ages.

Meantime they have to face the fact that their children are in many cases ill, and if not ailing