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Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Franklin Lane, Meeting Challenges of Life After War, Aug. 20, 1919

From The University of North Carolina News Letter, Chapel Hill, N.C., Aug. 20, 1919

The Test of a Man

By Franklin K. Lane

The test is to be in peace what it was in the time of war. Are you fitted for the fight? The man who knew how knowledge could be converted into power was the man for whom there was unlimited call. So it is increasingly to be.

To be useful is to be the test that society will put. Each man’s rights are to be measured, not by what he has, but by what he does with what he has. The honors—the Croix de Paix—the richest rewards will go to the capables, those who are not standardized into “men machines,” those who dare to venture and learn to lead.

But all must work, and this duty to work and respect for work should be the earliest lesson learned. And it should be taught in school, not as an homily, but in a living way, by tying work with instruction, making the thing learned apply to something done.

I should like to see the day when every child learned a trade while at school, trained his mind and his hand together, lifted labor into art by the application of thought. To be useful is the essence of Americanism, and against the undeveloped resource, whether it be land of man, the spirit of this country makes protest.

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