Learn to remember

    
"I am the people, the mob"
Carl Sandburg
 
 
I AM the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world      is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of       the world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The           Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will             stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
    I forget. The best of me is sucked out and             wasted.
    I forget. Everything but Death comes to me          and makes me work and give up what I have. And     I forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a        few red drops for history to remember. Then- I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I,      the People, use the lessons of yesterday and          no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.