moving about the country looking for jobs. Then for the first
time I realized my need for a broader education. If these things
were true, it was my duty to stop chasing the vanishing job and
begin to organize the workers so that they might destroy the
capitalists. But how could I know whether they were true? I had
no knowledge of past history. And without knowing the past how
could I judge the future? I was like the old man who had never
seen a railroad train. His sons took him thirty miles over the
hills and brought him to the depot where a train was standing.
The old man looked things over and saw that the wheels were made
of iron. "It will never start," he said. He knew that if his
wagon had heavy iron wheels, his team could never start it. But
his sons said: "It will start all right." They had seen it
before; they knew its past history. Soon the train started,
gathered speed like a whirlwind and went roaring away down the
track. The old man gazed after it and then, much excited, he
exclaimed. "It will never stop!"

The wisest head is no judge unless it has in it the history of
past performances. I had not studied much history in my brief
schooling. The mills called me because they needed men. Good
times were there when I arrived, and as for hard times, I was
sure they "would never start." Now the hard times were upon us
and panic shook the ground beneath our feet. "It will never
stop," men cried. Had they studied the history of such things
they would have known that hard times come and hard times go,
starting and stopping for definite reasons, like the railway
train.

I had done the right thing in quitting school and going to the