Robert H. Jackson Center

Address at Dedication of Jamestown High School Building

On Friday evening, November 15, 1935, Robert Jackson spoke at the dedication of the newly-constructed Jamestown High School building. His speech is contained in his papers in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., Box 32.

Address at Dedication of Jamestown High School Building

By Robert H. Jackson
Assistant General Counsel
Bureau of Revenue
United States Department of the Treasury
November 15, 1935

This building is dedicated tonight to the cause of helping to civilize ourselves—a task that is far from completed. I would be proud and happy if my part in these ceremonies could pass on to those who are to study in this new building a life-long curiosity for knowledge, a lasting dissatisfaction with one’s self, the inspiration to seek self-improvement by hard work and the courage to take responsibility. These are the precious jewels which I carried away from the old building and which I offer to return tonight.

Busy with our daily round of irritating concerns, we, generally, are thoughtless of the high purpose served by some of our familiar institutions. It is so with the school.

Durant, in reviewing the conditions that make civilization itself possible, says:

“And finally there must be education—some technique, however primitive, for the transmission of culture, whether through imitation, initiation or instruction, whether through father or mother, teacher or priest, the lore and heritage of the tribe—its language and knowledge, its morals and manners, its technology and arts—must be handed down to the young, as the very instrument through which they are turned from animals into men.”

“For civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end. Man differs from the beast only by education, which may be defined as the technique of transmitting civilization.”

“Let us, before we die, gather up our heritage, and offer it to our children.”

We inherit a fund of knowledge, philosophy and experience, to which the races of men in all ages have brought their contributions. Generation after generation has carried mankind onward in time and upward in civilization and then gone into the great silence. Each has struggled against greed and dishonesty, violence and crudeness, superstition and cynicism. Since primitive man first discovered how to make a fire, to the latest product of our laboratory, man has been inventing new tools to multiply his power. We trace government from rude origins, we find the law slowly substituting public justice for private revenge, and private ownership has displaced the commonwealth of primitive man.

We cannot trace the stream of our own culture to its very source, perhaps in the Far East, or in India. We first find it flowing westward from the Orient, already rich in law, government, moral teachings, religion, science, philosophy, art and letters.

Two thousand years before Christ, the powerful Hammurabi, law-giver of Babylon, decreed a Code of laws, many of which are so fundamentally just that they prevail today, and declared in a Prologue that sounds very modern, his purpose “to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak—to enlighten the land and to further the welfare of the people.” Asiatic peoples founded the sciences of language, astronomy, mathematics and medicine, and passed them to Egyptian, Greek, Arab and Jew.

The sands may cover Egyptian rules, but the inventions of glass and linen, paper and ink, the calendar and clock, geometry, the alphabet and the beginnings of metallurgy and engineering which they gave us are with us still.
Judea gave us religion, philosophy and faith, and much of our law, and set before the world what Durant, in a coldly secular estimate, has called “the loneliest, lowliest, and most impressive figure in history.”

Greece added art to science and beauty to knowledge and brought the conception of a free citizenship into statecraft.

Rome caught up to the older art, science and faith, backed them with political organization and spread them to the North and West, adding many original contributions, especially in the field of law and letters.

The Middle Ages were far from the “dark ages” too often assumed. Of course, there was, as there still is, much injustice and preventable hardship, needless war and cruelty, but the stream of culture flowed on through medieval periods, and widened. French and German, Slav and Norman, Scandinavian and Saxon, Spaniard and Italian and Celt—each enriched it after a fashion of his own. Faith founded cathedrals, a sense of justice wrought new laws, each nation developed its own sense of things beautiful and each struggled toward the good life.

The tiny stream first seen in Asia became an ocean tide as it reached the shores of America, bringing rich treasures from Oriental tent, Roman Forum and Feudal castle to those who have the ability to grasp the gifts from Time and Tide.

We have been, so far, selecting and borrowing more than creating. We have not always chosen wisely. We use crude and complex systems of weights and measures instead of the simple and scientific metric system that all continental peoples use. We cling to Fahrenheit’s awkward and accidental measure of temperature instead of the scientific centigrade. I do not mention these unwise choices in any expectation that they will be corrected. We prefer the awkward and cumbersome system we know to the simple one we would, as a nation, have to learn anew. But it might temper our conceit to reflect on the unwisdom of these simple choices, and raise in the American mind a doubt of the infallibility of our judgments.

Few nations in history have had as good an opportunity to consciously and deliberately plan their culture as have we in America. The course of history and the growth of tradition have shaped the culture of most European nations. Conquests and revolutions, Crusades and migrations, royal ambitions and court intrigues have all burned impressions into the very thoughts and hearts of European peoples, and they can no more escape their history than an individual can escape his ancestors. John von Goethe, when Prime Minister of the Grand Duchy of Weimar, saw Europe a prisoner of its past and exclaimed, “Oh America, thou has’t it better than we, for thou has’t no history.”

It is the happy lot of America that she may, if she but will, build her destiny without being cramped or limited by the delirious course of European affairs. There, national cultures are so blended with racial hatreds and economic antagonisms, and their policies so governed by animosities that should have spent themselves generations ago, that they are dangerous guides and unsafe allies, and their culture can be fitted for our consumption only by filtering out the undemocratic elements.

Nor is it the part of wisdom to let our own history cramp our future or govern our present. The experience of any generation is useful only as a foundation on which the following generation may build. America must not appeal her living problems to her dead statesmanship. She must, rather, provide a current statesmanship equal to her current problems. Precedents are vicious when they supersede reason instead of being reason’s tools. Even an illiterate people can follow an old tradition, but in this country we have increased the number of our high schools from less than 100 at the beginning of the Civil War to over 6,000 at the close of the last century, primarily to throw about our democratic government the safeguard of a citizenship intellectually equal to the progressing problems of its age.

If you believe, as I believe, that democracy is the form of government best adapted to our people, then you must regard the public school as the most fundamental concern of our society. Leaders of a free people, sometimes, but not often, may be those who have inherited wealth and position and who have obtained education from private sources. Democracy will always call most of its leaders from the ranks of humble men, and to equip them it must provide free educational opportunity to the sons and daughters of disadvantaged homes.

Education is equally important to the masses to whom that leadership must make its appeal. Democracy calls upon all its people for constant self-discipline, sober judgment and industrious application to its problems. The function of the public school is nothing less than to preserve the capacity of American citizenship for free government.

Our forefathers knew that permanent government must be a progressing government, and in the Declaration of Independence said that “whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of” life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness “it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

That there might never be excuse for violence, and that changes which time brings to all institutions might be accomplished by intelligence rather than by force, the right to amend our Constitution was established as one of the most important rights secured by that document.

It is safe to say that an enlightened citizenship will not amend for trivial causes but that they will not hesitate to make changes whenever necessary to keep the government a servant of their happiness and their security.

Certainly, never in my time has democratic government faced such perils as today. Democracy has almost perished from the earth. On the one hand, it is assailed by the Communist who would destroy rights of property; on the other hand, it is assailed by the Fascist who would destroy liberty. Each of them has, in some part of the earth, established governments with some permanence; each has brought certain satisfactions to its people by the sacrifice of things which we hold dear; each has its host of imitators trying to push and pull America in one direction or the other. So long as they confine themselves to argument and persuasion, our Constitution protects them in doing so.

To avoid these rocks has not been easy, with the storms of depression raging on either side of the course, but it has been done. Some sacrifices have had to be made, some old privileges have been abolished, new restrictions on some kinds of exploitation have been created, but free government has been preserved. Outside of England, Scandinavia and Switzerland, there is no self-sustaining free government left in Europe. Revolution or dictatorship, open or under cover, has subverted every other government there.

The countries where freedom has survived are those with high levels of general education. Safety for free institutions is not in written constitutions but in the intelligence of the people. You may see many Latin American countries that have copied our Constitution almost literally, and yet have alternated between despotism and anarchy. No generation of men, however wise, can devise a political formulae like a Constitution which coming generations can apply to their problems mechanically as they can the multiplication table.

The education and preparation of the masses for citizenship in America is essential to the preservation of our Democracy, because those reforms which from time to time are necessary to maintain that continuing consent of the governed which underlies all just government, do no originate with political leaders. The sentiment of the intelligent body of our people is always years in advance of that of our political leaders. The usual history of reform is America is that a few thoughtful men sense a wrong and speak up; but the wrong is always entrenched because somebody is gaining from it. So the leaders pay no attention to the minority, except, perhaps, to advertise them with abuse or ridicule. They are damned with epithets from the mouths of the respectable; they are “abolitionists” or “populists,” or lately whatever reform they may advocate, they are “communists” or “socialists.” From the plain people, however, sincere and thoughtful men get a hearing. If their ideas have no merit, they simply fail to take root, just as real communism and real socialism have never taken any root with our people. If the idea has merit, it attracts followers. As numbers are added unto them, political leaders begin to recognize an “issue” in it. Then there is a scramble for parties and leaders to appropriate the idea and claim they fathered it. The progress of the slave issue, the prohibition issue, and later the repeal issue, and many others, illustrates this democratic process. It is well illustrated by the history of our income tax. This tax was long advocated by economists and was in general use elsewhere in the world. By 1892, it was demanded by the Populists in their platform. As late as 1904, the Democrats refused to put it in their Parker platform. The Republicans had steadily opposed it, Choate argued to the Supreme Court that it was “communistic,” and that body held that it was unconstitutional. By 1907, both Democrats and Republicans were in a headlong race each trying to be first to enact it. The amendment to overthrow the decision of the Supreme Court was put through by the Republican President Taft and the law by the Democratic President Wilson. Thus, the very thing that was branded as “communistic” and “populistic” and “unconstitutional” by leaders of one decade was adopted as good American policy by both great parties in the next. Such is the process of democracy by which the people ultimately govern. What a contrast to the processes of dictatorship.

So generally have our reforms originated with the people themselves instead of with their leaders, that the historian Beard, reviewing all recent administrations, says:

“With every one of these Presidents are associated legislative acts of one kind or another; and yet it would be difficult to find a single statute which any of them originally conceived in general or in detail and made a party issue before the country. Presidents came and went, governors and legislatures came and went, but the movement of social forces that produced this legislation was continuous. It was confined to no party, directed by no single organization, inspired by no overpowering leadership. Such were the processes and products of American Democracy when the mind was left free to inquire, to propose and to champion.”

Therefore, in the interest of free government, there must be perfect freedom to champion good causes or bad ones, to advocate welcome or unwelcome ideas. Let us stand not only against any sort of interference by government with the right of free expression, but also against all forms of social pressure which are intended to force the minds of men or to deny a hearing for any cause.

The conservative Prime Minister of England, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, at Leeds, a week ago, referring to his old enemy, a former Prime Minister of the Socialist party, said:

“I have been made a little anxious as to democracy by noticing that the right of free speech has been denied to my friend Mr. MacDonald. That kind of action is very stupid. It is more than stupid, it is bad, and it is bad for this reason—the shouting down of people and refusing to hear argument that you do not like, that really is the seed-bed of dictatorship. It is the spirit that will not tolerate the opposite view, and no democracy can live if an opposite view is not tolerated. I do not believe that kind of thing will spread in this country.”

While education instills that toleration of the reasonably expressed views of others, and that discriminating judgment on which rests the welfare of the state, it also enriches the life of the citizen. We need increasing intellectual resources and interests as a people to keep the lengthening hours of leisure from becoming mere hours of idleness or mischief. Industry seems to be moving in the direction of the shorter working day and week. The surplus hours may bless or curse the individual and the community according to the use to which they are put.

Employed hours have their own discipline. At work all of us are sober, industrious and orderly. It is when the working day is over that one is thrown upon his own resources for amusement and discipline. When there is no supervision and no driving necessity to do the day’s work, each must make at his peril a choice between gainful or injurious use of time. Then it is that the paths divide between self improvement and self indulgence, between healthful recreation and evil companionship.

If I could leave one lesson with youth it would be this: your job today tells me nothing of your future—your use of your leisure today tells me just what your tomorrow will be. That lesson has been brought home to me in helping to pick men for important responsibilities. I have learned to look to men’s play more than to their work to learn what may really be expected of them.

The reason your today’s job tells me so little of your future is that no work you are doing today limits your chances for tomorrow. However humble, it still may be, if well done, a stepping stone to better things. You may tend a gas station today and head a great oil company tomorrow; you may run errands for a business today and not long away the business may work for you. Or you may have a position of trust today and waste your opportunity, so that you will run errands tomorrow. I repeat, your job tells me nothing.

But your leisure hours either limit your prospects or they make your advancement certain. Life is highly competitive, business and government are in constant search (even in bad times) for men who know, who stand up under responsibilities, who have courage and character. But they demand that men prepare for positions before obtaining them. They do not expect one to learn wholly by the costly process of trial and error. You should not be misled by talk of advancement through “pull” or relationship, nor even politics. That is the gospel of the misfit, to explain his failure. The fact is that responsibility comes to one who is prepared for it as certainly as harvest follows seed time. To give responsibility to one who is not prepared merely injures the appointing power and humiliates the one advanced. Even politicians know that.

You can make happy use of free hours and at the same time find yourself, through the printed page, in the company of the good minds who are remaking our sciences and arts, who are carrying on government and law as progressive studies, who are beating new paths for trade, and making new ways to spare life its drudgery. If your unreturning moments of freedom are wasted, then life will prove too fast for you. We have insurance against the risks of employment, but the risks of leisure are the greater and uninsurable hazards.

Very soon my generation, now in mid-life, will hand over to you who are students now the responsibilities of economic, political and cultural life. Along with the treasures that are your heritage, we hand you many problems that neither we, nor our fathers, have been able to solve. Do not let that discourage you. You can make no greater failure than we have.

Somehow we have not even been able to keep the peace. After a war “to make the world safe for Democracy,” we find there is little democracy left. After a “war to end war,” we find Europe seething with militarism again and only waiting some dramatic collision of lawless forces to break into strife again. The nations are nursing old grievances, raiding each other’s currencies, starving each other with tariffs and economic blockades. It is certainly a peace that passeth understanding.

Nor is this the only disappointed hope. We felt that our technical accomplishments had banished the age-old fear of plague, pestilence and famine. Preventive medicine conquered plague while the art of preserving and transporting foods conquered famine. And then, without epidemic or crop failure, without fire, hurricane or flood, without the physical destruction of any property whatever, we saw savings swept away, homes lost, and the things we had given our lives to, broken. We saw individual want in the midst of collective plenty, and found ourselves surrounded by surpluses and starvation.

Yet our scholarship has not given us any satisfactory reason for these cycles of depression that have swept over the world at intervals since the Napoleonic wars. Are they preventable? If so, why did our statesmen leave us without remedy? Are they due to some strange malady in the constitution of our industrial capitalism that foretells its dissolution or modification? If so, to what must we turn? Our scholarship and statesmanship on this most vital of concerns are only confusion of tongues.

And then to cap the climax, along come men like Einstein and turn the world of science upside down. That citadel of pure reason and conclusive demonstration and undoubted axioms is now a madhouse. We hear of the mysterious fourth dimension in which a man may get up tomorrow morning before he goes to bed to night and may pass into a safe without opening the door. Scientists now tell us of a fabulous substance that is swifter than light, so it may first travel to its destination and then wait and watch itself approach itself. Einstein tells us that straight lines are curved and that parallel lines do meet. It is now taught that nothing absolute exists and that everything is relative to something else. Who now can blame Pontius Pilate for asking “what is truth?”

I am back to where I started, with the statement that the civilization of ourselves is far from complete. This school is built to help equip you for your part in completing it. In this building we will offer to deliver your heritage of arts and sciences, learning and letters, law and philosophy. Guard and multiply this treasure. Learning you may gain without taking it away from any other; you may divide your own with others and still have all of it left; it may be given away and yet none can receive it except through his own work. The more one has, the more he knows he has missed. It is wealth no thief can take away and no depression can wash out. How rich you will become in this kind of treasure is wholly dependent upon your own effort.

An unending precession of youth will pass these portals with high resolve and promise and hope. Some will go out to fulfill their dreams of wealth, of adventure, of fame or of research for nature’s undiscovered secrets. It is from such hopeful material that the race is constantly renewed.

The road our race must take is often rough and our goal a mirage that retreats as we approach, but there can be no such thing as failure to one who values the game rather than the score; there is no defeat for him who counts a good fight a nobler thing than mere victory. A man once prayed that he be given all things so that he might enjoy life. In answer he was given life, so that he might enjoy all things.

Life will always be comfortable and worthwhile if we can look at it with Robert Louis Stevenson, who said:

“A strange picture we make on our way to our chimaeras, ceaselessly marching, grudging ourselves that time for rest; indefatigable, adventurous pioneers. It is true that we shall never reach the goal; it is even more than probable that there is no such place; and if we lived for centuries and were endowed with the powers of a god, we should find ourselves not much nearer what we wanted at the end. O toiling hands of mortals! O unwearied feet, traveling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessing; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”