Education, it will be said, is the only real solvent to the range of problems discussed in this book, most other agencies of social and economic reform being of doubtful efficacy and, if they tend to postpone educational effort, positively harmful.

There is much truth in this view.

But it must be remembered that the backward condition of our economic life is due mainly to the fact that our educational systems have had little regard to our history or economic circumstances.

We must, therefore, at this stage in our national development give to education a much wider interpretation than that which is usually applied to the term.

We cannot wait for a generation to grow up which has been given an education calculated to fit it for the modern economic struggle, even if there were any probability that the necessary reforms would soon be carried against the prejudices which are aroused by any proposal to train the minds, or even the hands and eyes, of the rising generation.