Free The Child Buyer by John Hersey

kids than it is among their parents. Right today, if it was up to me to sell a program of idealism, hard work, and sacrifice for the sake of a distant goal, and if I had to choose between selling this program to youngsters or middle-aged people, I wouldn't hesitate a minute to pick on the young ones. All right, people can say I'm a starry-eyed visionary, an ivory-tower character, who doesn't know what life really is. I doubt that. I was born on a Western Connecticut milk farm that went broke when I was ten years of age. I missed a few meals from time to time. After high school I attended college through various means, chiefly by working at night in a cotton mill. I've worked summers and spare times, in shops, in cotton mills, as a dishwasher, in dairies, driving trucks, and even, once, in a foundry. I've run crews for the State agriculture service. I've worked as a member of C.I.O. unions, and I've been out on strike. And I've slaved at the books. Oh, yes, I've worked. I've got a B.A. and a B.S. and four master's degrees and a Ph.D. During the Depression I couldn't get summer jobs, so I took nine straight summer quarters at Silvcrbury College; everything they offered came up on rotation, and I took it all, not for degrees but to learn it, to know it. And listen, I've been a teacher for nearly half a century: that's where if you've been in an ivory tower, you come out. I don't think I qualify as an ivory-tower person. I've seen characters that would make your hair stand on end. I reject any ivory-tower classification for myself. If I'm an educational visionary it's not from having been shut in an ivory tower but from rubbing elbows with people who've succeeded through educational endeavor. I'm not soft. Don't think I'm a softy, just because I believe in people. I can be rough and tough when it's needed:
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    THE CHILD BUYER
    listen: I'm not at all averse to having a little humor going in my school, but I don't have the slightest intention of having a noisy school, and one tap of my pencil on my desk in my office will bring a hush to the whole building/
    Mr. BROADBENT. You told Mr. Jones all this?
    Dr. GOZAR. I did!
    Senator VOYOLKO. What about the kid?
    Dr. GOZAR. Yes, I talked to the child buyer about Barry, too. I asked him, did he want to know how I got interested in Barry Rudd? Well, here's how. I work in the biology lab at Wairy High two hours before breakfast every morning. You see, when I first got to college, at Silverbury, I got the idea of being a biologist, to work for the U.S. conservation service. I took two bachelor's degrees, one in biology and one in history, because I figured I wanted to know what I was conserving—a B.S. and a B.A. I worked extra on it and got both degrees in one year; not combined but double. All the time I worked nights in a cotton mill. My shift got off at two in the morning, so I could do some studying before I turned in. I only had eight a.m. classes three times a week. I could get a solid four hours' sleep and be blessed with ordinary good health, and I have maintained that average ever since, to the present time. Four hours of sleep a night. This means I save four hours per night over the usual individual, and when you calculate that I've been doing that for half a century, it works out that I've enjoyed some seventy-five thousand hours of life most people miss. I could sleep longer quite readily, but I've set myself. And I thrive on it. I've been out from work exactly six days in all these years—I had an operation for piles in my late forties.
    Senator MANSFIELD. About the child, if you please, Doctor.
    Dr. GOZAR. Yes. I've kept up the habit of doing research work in biology. I like the search in research; a research person is a person looking for something intelligently—but it's fun, too.
    Did you know, my dear Mr. Chairman, that 'research* and 'circus' are related etymologically? Know who told me that? Barry! Words are his daily bread. Anyway, one morning two years ago, it'll be