Is not this why so many reformers retire disappointed--men and women
of finest excellencies of purpose and practical and fruitful
thought--they have insisted in projecting their reforms from office or
parlor upon the masses without knowing those masses? It is as
impossible for the wisest man to be a statesman by confining himself
to his study and his weighty volumes and his careful abstract
thinking, as it is to be a chemist by reading about chemistry.

The laboratory, the test-tube, the actual contact with the real
materials and forces in nature, are essential to the scientist of
matter. This is much more true of the art of government. No man ever
lived so wise that association with the millions would not enrich his
wisdom mightily. And thus, page after page, we might go on pointing
out the value of contact with the people, whom, after all, it ought to
be your highest purpose to serve in some way.

For in all your doings never forget that, build you ever so cunningly,
young man, you have builded in vain if the work of your hands has not
helped humanity. Every occupation, trade, business, employment has its
reason in service of the people.

Grocery man, harness-maker, carpenter; doctor, lawyer, or railway man;
farmer, miner, or journalist; actor on the stage, teacher in the
school-room, preacher in the pulpit--all your effort is for the
service of the people, the ministering to their needs, the
enlightenment of their minds, the uplifting of their souls. And I
insist, therefore, that you shall know with the knowledge of kinship
this humanity with whom you are to work and _for_ whom you are to
work.