Manawatu Evening Standard.turning Circulation, 3.300 Copies Daily- SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1907. ADVICE FROM AMERICA.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8305, 8 June 1907, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard.turning Circulation, 3.300 Copies DailySATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1907. ADVICE FROM AMERICA.

Professor David Jordan, of the Leland-Stanford University, California, one of the greatest authorities on education in the United States, is at present on a visit to Australasia. He is just now in Sydney, and comes later on to New Zealand. The press reports of his addresses show that he is preaching a vigorous crusade against the lack of earnestness and tendency to pursue pleasure rather than attend to duty, which is a characteristic foature of the age. Dr. Jordan addresses himself to the youth who are the men of to-mor-row. In his first locture he spoke of "The Call of the Twentieth Century," and drew attention to the strenuous and complex conditions of life in our time, and pointed out that because life was so strenuous and complex it must be democratic. If we had something that needed doing we must find the man who could do that thing. We do not seek for a son of Lord This or the Earl of That, for a scion of some family which has lain on velvet for a thousand years. We want the man who can build the ship, establish the enterprise, invent the machine, carry the message to Garcia. We do not care what his name is, or where he came from, or who his father was, or where he got his education, if ho can do the work." Democracy meant opportunity—opportunity foiv the man to find the work he could do, opportunity for the work that needed to be done, to find the man who could do it. Democracy did not mean equality. It meant forever increasing inequality from an equal start. It meant equality before the law, a fair start, and a generous education for every child of the Commonwealth, and after that only the fair play of a fair competition. It was the man who did most for the community, for whom the community should do the most. The most that any community could do was to see fair play between man and man, and to look after great matters of common interest too large for the individual. As to the work for young men to do, Dr. Jordan referred to the wealth of opportunity in engineering, in commerce, in agriculture, in medicine, in law, in teaching, in journalism, and in all forms of applied science. Never before in the ] history of the world was the young man who could do things and who could be trusted to do them as they should bo done, so much in demand.

Dr. Jordan's words should come as an antidote to the cry for State assistance and supervision that we hear so much of. His visit to New Zealand should be an occasion of some moment.