Dawning of the Twentieth Century

Oration by Jessie O. Thatcher, 1897
First Woman Graduate
Fifth Annual Commencement
Oklahoma A & M College

We are standing now in the dying light of the 19th century and in the dawning of the 20th. If you and I could have chosen when to exist, I think there could have been no more inspiring time than now. Look back fifty years and from the dim twilight of the tallow candle we now stand in the brilliant electric light of this year eighteen hundred and ninety seven. Look back still farther, and we find that the battle of New Orleans was fought over two weeks after the treaty of peace was signed with England because there was no communication between the countries. Now New York and London talk together as mere face to face. A dynamite explosion or a murder in London is read here in the evening paper an hour after it happened, and by our time several hours before it really occurred. We talk with our dear friends a hundred miles away as though they were in the next room. We catch their voices and the laughter of their merry mirth. We travel in elegant cars, sleep on luxurious beds, and dine better than the kings of old. Our railroads carry us all over this great country, even in mid-winter, without the least discomfort. Look back again, and we see our ancestors making their way in comfortless stages over terrible roads, taking days where we now require only as many hours.

But we must not think this process has been easy. In all probability, if it had been predicted seventy-five years ago, the prophet would have been mobbed or thrown into jail. Nor has this progress come from conservatism, it has come from the persistent efforts of enthusiastic radical men and women with ideas in their brains and with courage in their hearts to make them practical.

The first steamship that crossed the Atlantic brought Dr. Lardners [sic] book proving that the ocean steamship was an impossibility. This would, indeed, be strange reading now, when twice a week a fleet of ocean steamers leave New York City for the different ports in Europe.

The nineteenth century has the sublimest closing of any century the world has ever beheld. Let us glance for a moment at the endings of some previous centuries. Something over a hundred years ago was the contest between France and England for the American colonies, which resulted in the latter's independence. Soon after, the constitution was adopted by the states and they began existence as a distinct nation. The states were poor, and the great debt of the war darkened the dawn of the new country. Previously, colonial wars had caused much disturbance. King William's War occurring just at the close of the 17th century and Queen Ann's War just at the beginning of the 18th. In Europe about this time occurred the Great Northern War, followed by the fall of Sweden. At the close of another century we see the European nations rivaling each other in exploring and colonizing the New World, and we also see the hardships and sufferings which the settlers must endure. So we find the closing of every such era, each previous one being darker and more terrible than the one which follows it.

This is the evening of the 19th century; but the twilight is brighter than the morning was. We can see in every year development and advancement. Perhaps the greatest improvement has been in education, especially for the women, not in one country alone but in almost every civilized country of the world. Even the seminaries, academies, and high schools for women are the development of the present generation, except in the U.S. where they were made possible before the middle of the century. It is true, amazing as it may seem, that for one hundred and thirty-five years after public schools were established in Boston for boys, girls were not even admitted to learn reading and writing. In England no provision was made for their secondary education until 1867. It was not better in France till 1880. Germany is the "the last and only great nation of culture which leaves its women under the oppression of the Middle-age fetters, keeping closed against them the institutions of higher learning." There can be no doubt that the opportunities afforded women for secondary education stimulated the demand for higher education and made it possible. The desire of earnest young women for the best culture was answered by the opening of colleges and universities in the leading nations.

Education is the one all-important thing, paramount to everything else; for, in the few words of Seneca "as the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without culture, so the mind without cultivation can never produce much good fruit." We know not whether the human mind is growing STRONGer with time or not, but we do know that its practical applications are becoming more numerous and comprehensive every day. In this connection, must be mentioned the great inventions, and, what is perhaps, still more important, the discoveries of numerous abstract principles. Perhaps the greatest inventions have been in agricultural machinery. We cannot but wonder when we think of the way in which farming was done 75 or even 50 years ago, and the machinery then used, as compared with methods, and machinery employed today. About that time, the base mention of such achievements was considered the wildest theory of a diseased imagination. Now nothing is too wonderful to be believed, not too strange to happen.

Thus we see that the whole tendency of the present era is upward. The mental development of the next century will be more complex, and will bring versatility on a higher plane than has yet been known. As the race learns to eliminate things which retard its upward progress, new and more valuable tendencies will come to take their places. This is an age of practical progress. In addition to the improvements already mentioned, there is a counterline no less real in a higher sphere. Parents are beginning to ask what to do with their children; the result is greater mental development and greater happiness; and the higher tendency is gaining momentum with every day life. The world has been ignorant of the brain, ever since its beginning; but there is now an advance toward developing its faculties. The higher our faculties become, the greater will be our happiness; and those who seek for happiness from other sources will be mistaken. The future race, will perhaps, be one of specialists. This will be necessary on account of the vast amount of knowledge involved, but, in all probability, the whole volume of human knowledge will be gradually rewritten and condensed, so that it will be very much more accessible than it is now. The sciences themselves will be scientifically systematized, and by the aid of that system it will be possible for the future specialist to be better versed in all departments than the specialist of today is in his own. Knowledge is largely a matter of facility. We all know thousands of things that we have no consciousness of having learned; they are matters of habit. So it will be with science. With each new step along the main road of knowledge, new bypaths will be discovered and explored. This will bring not only greater knowledge, but the ability to apply that knowledge well.

In the words of Patrick Henry "We have no way of judging the future but by the past"; and, as great things have been accomplished in the past, we may be quite sure that still greater things will come from the future.

"The world is growing better
No matter what you say,
The light is shining brighter
In one refulgent ray;
And though deceivers murmur
And turn the other way
We know the world grows better
And better every day."

Hail, then Twentieth Century, and hasten on thy coming! Go to thy grave, oh, Nineteenth Century! A century that shall ever be remembered for the accomplishment of so many wonders, for the inauguration of so many high achievements, for burying slavery, and ushering in the reign of liberty. A century that had a Lincoln who wrote his name among the stars as a lover of the free. A century that had its Greely, its Garfield, and its Grant; a century that had its great statesmen Wester, Clay, and Calhoun. A century that had its Elizabeth Barrett Browning whose verses wedded together Italy and England,. A century that had its Harriet Beecher Stowe whose "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has been read only less widely than the Bible.

In every field of art and science and literature, of human industry and human struggle, stand forth the mighty achievements of sincere and godly men, of brave and tender women. A few more days and we shall step across the threshold of your wondrous possibilities. God grant that we may be worthy of that century of greatness and live up to the high level of our vast inheritance!

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