or write because he was probably born in a country district ten miles from the nearest school, or if he was born in the shadow of a public school he literally had to scratch the earth from the time he could crawl in order to get something to eat. He has no education and no special training of any kind because he has had no opportunity to secure either. Having had no special training all he is able to do is to carry heavy loads.
Probably at twenty-five he is a physical wreck from under-feeding, exposure and overwork. But suppose he is one of the few who has kept his strength. What can he do? Carry more heavy loads; that is all. He can get perhaps fifty cents a day carrying heavy loads and all the effort of a Hercules cannot better the price, for all he has is brawn, and brawn is cheap as dirt in Mexico. I have seen men "making an effort." I have seen them work until I could see the glazing of their eyes, I have seen them put forth such efforts that their chests rose and fell with explosive gasps, I have seen them carry such heavy weights that they tottered and fell in the street, in which way they are crushed to death, sometimes, by the thing above them. They were putting forth their best efforts in the only thing they knew because they had never had an opportunity to learn anything else, and they were dying just as fast as those others who did as little as possible to live. The point is that they never enjoyed the opportunities at the start that we accept as a birthright. Imagine, if you can, the majority of our American schools being suddenly swept away, imagine a change from your condition of partial work partial leisure to one of all work and no leisure, imagine your earning power as insufficient to feed any mouth but your own, imagine each mouth in the family needing a separate pair of hands to feed it
