“But of course the thought at once occurs to us, How can we be considering the high cost of the necessaries of life?  It will be seen at once that the question is at bottom an economic one.  You must have a living wage, and how can there be a living wage unless we admit the principle of collective bargaining.  It is because I believe in the principle of collective bargaining that I have come here to-night to say to you working-men that I believe this strike is justifiable.

“I must leave to other speakers many interesting aspects of this subject, and confine myself to the aspect which the committee asked me to consider more in detail, namely, Juvenile Delinquency in its relation to Foreign Immigration.  The relation is a real one.  Statistics prove that among immigrants the proportion of the juvenile element is greater than among the native-born.  This increase in juvenility gives opportunity for juvenile delinquency from which many of our American communities might otherwise be free.  But is the remedy to be found in the restriction of immigration?  My opinion is that the remedy is to be found only in education.

“It is our interest in education that has brought us together on this bright June morning.  Your teacher tells me that this is the largest class that has ever graduated from this High School, You may well be proud.  Make your education practical.  Learn to concentrate, that is the secret of success.  There are those who will tell you to concentrate on a single point.  I would go even further.  Concentrate on every point.

“I admit, as the gentleman who has preceded me has pointed out, that concentration in cities is a great evil.  It is an evil that should be counteracted.  As I was saying last evening to the Colonial Dames,—­Washington, if he had done nothing else, would be remembered to-day as the founder of the Order of the Cincinnati.  The figure of Cincinnatus at the plough appeals powerfully to American manhood.  Many a time in after years Cincinnatus wished that he had never left that plough.  Often amid the din of battle he heard the voice saying to him, ‘Back to the Land!’

“It was the same voice I seemed to hear when I received the letter of your secretary asking me to address this grange.  As I left the smoke of the city behind me and looked up at your granite hills, I said, ’Here is where they make men!’ As I have been partaking of the bountiful repast prepared by the ladies of the grange, your chairman has been telling me something about this community.  It is a grand community to live in.  Here are no swollen fortunes; here industry, frugality, and temperance reign.  These are the qualities which have given New England its great place in the councils of the nation.  I know there are those who say that it is the tariff that has given it that place; but they do not know New England.  There are those at this table who can remember the time when eighty-two ruddy-cheeked boys and girls trooped merrily to the little red schoolhouse under the hill.  In the light of such facts as these, who can be a pessimist?