The argument for popular education is familiar and trite, and yet it
needs to be occasionally re-stated and enforced. There is no community
in which there is not a considerable number of persons grossly and
dangerously ignorant, and there are many communities in which the
majority of the people are in this condition. There is no community in
which the importance of general education is over-estimated; there are
unfortunately many communities in which education is held to be the
least important of public interests. A brief discussion of the subject,
therefore, can never be entirely out of place.
Before proceeding to the direct argument, let me notice some of the most
common objections.
It is a not uncommon opinion, that the business of education should be
left, like other kinds of business, to the laws of trade. It is said if
a carpenter is wanted in any community, or a blacksmith, or a tailor, or
a lawyer, or a doctor, carpenters, blacksmiths, tailors, lawyers, and
doctors will make their appearance. If a store is wanted, a store will
spring up. Why not a school-house? Those who use this argument forget
the essential difference between the two classes of wants to be
supplied. All men equally feel the distress, if naked, or hungry, or
sick, or suffering from any material want. The poor man, no less than
the rich, feels the pinchings of hunger, and will exert himself to
remedy the evil. The sick man, even more than the well, appreciates the
value of medicine and the necessity of a physician. Not so in the matter
of knowledge. A man must himself be educated, to understand the value of
education. There are exceptions, of course. Yet it is substantially
true, that the want of education is not one of those felt and pinching
necessities that compel men's attention, and that consequently may be
left to shift for themselves. A man who has himself enjoyed the blessing
of a good education, expects to provide schools for his children, as
much as he expects to provide for them food and clothing. The wants of
their minds are to him pressing realities, as much as are the wants of
their bodies. Not so with the ignorant and debased neighbors, who live
within stone's throw of his dwelling. They, from their own experience,
know nothing better, and are quite content, both for themselves and
their children, to live on in the debased condition in which we see
them. If these wretched creatures are ever moved to seek a higher style
of living and being, the movement must originate outside of themselves.
It is a case in which the man of higher advantages must think and act
for those below him. It is a case in which people have a pressing need
without knowing it, and in which consequently the laws of supply and
demand do not meet the emergency.
Another common opinion on this subject is that private enterprise is
adequate to meet the want. Private enterprise in education is not
indeed to be discarded. Where the community as a whole, in its organized
capacity, will do nothing, let individuals do what they can. In such
cases, let those who appreciate the advantages of education, concert
measures for the establishment of schools and the employment of
teachers, and for inducing parents who are indifferent to send their
children. By these private efforts, the community may be gradually
awakened to the importance of the subject, and so be induced to take it
up on their own account. But private benevolence is not sufficient for
so great a work. Private benevolence besides is apt to be fitful. It is
at best subject to interruption by death and by reverses of fortune,
while the cause is one which especially demands steadiness and
continuity. The means for educating a community or a city should no more
be subject to interruption, than the means of lighting it, or of
supplying it with water.
The argument for depending upon private enterprise for devising and
providing the means for popular education, would apply equally well to
matters of police, and to the protection of property. The strong-armed
and the sagacious can take care of themselves. The stout-hearted and the
good, by due concert and combination, could keep criminals in some
check, even in a country where there were no courts of justice, or
prisons, or detective police. But this is not the ordinary or the best
mode of accomplishing the end, nor could it in any case be thoroughly
efficient. The restraint and punishment of crime belong to society as a
whole, in its sovereign capacity. To the same society belongs the duty
of seeing that its members do not fall into degrading ignorance and
vice. God, in ordaining human society, had something higher in view than
merely providing for the punishment of crime. Our Heavenly Father would
have his children raised to the full enjoyment of their privileges as
social and rational beings, and he seems to have established society for
this very end, among others, that there may be an agency and a machinery
adequate and fitted to drag even the unwilling out of the mire into
which they have fallen. Without such an interposition on the part of
society as a whole, the work will not be done. The mass of the people
will remain in ignorance in every community, in which the community as
such does not provide the means of education and general enlightenment.
It is often urged against common schools, that they tend to impair
parental obligation. Let us look this objection fairly in the face. The
argument is stated as follows. If the community, in its organic capacity
as a civil government, provides systematically for the instruction of
the young, the system, just so far as it is successful and complete,
does away with the necessity for any other provision. The parent,
finding this work done to his hands, feels no necessity of looking after
it himself, and so gradually loses all sense of obligation on the
subject. Such a result, it is contended, is in contravention of the
plainest dictates of nature and the most positive teachings of religion,
both nature and religion requiring it as a primary duty of every parent
to give his child a suitable education.
In meeting this objection, the friends of common schools agree with the
objector to the fullest extent in asserting the imperative, universal,
irrepealable duty of the parent to educate his own child. The duty is
not the less binding on the parent, because a like duty, covering the
same point, rests also on the community. The interests involved are so
momentous, that God in his wise ordination has given them a double
security. It is a case in which two distinct parties are both separately
required to see one and the same thing done. It is like taking two
indorsers to a note. The obligation of one indorser is not impaired,
because another man equally with himself is bound for payment If a child
grows up in ignorance and vice, while God will undoubtedly hold the
parent responsible, he will also not hold the community guiltless. Both
parties will be guilty before him, both parties will be punished. A man
is bound to maintain a certain amount of cleanliness about his
habitation. If he fails to do so, and if in consequence of this failure
the atmosphere around him becomes tainted and malarious, he and his will
suffer. Disease and death will visit his abode. But the consequences
will not end here. The infection will extend. The whole community will
be affected by it. The whole community, equally with the individual, are
bound to see that the cause of the infection is removed. The infection
will not spare the community because the individual has generated it,
nor will it spare the individual because the community has failed to
remove it. Each party has a duty and a peril of its own in regard to the
same matter.
The fact is, individuals and the community are so bound together, that
on many points their obligations lie in coincident lines. The matter of
education is one of these points. God has ordained the parental
relation, and has implanted the parental affections, for this very
reason, among others, that the faculties of the helpless young immortal
may have due training and development,--that this development may not be
left to chance, like that of a worthless weed, but may have the
protection and guardianship which are the necessary birthright of every
rational creature brought into being by the voluntary act of another.
But God has ordained society also for this same end, among others,
namely, that his rational creatures may have a competent agency, bound
by the laws and necessities of its own welfare to make adequate
provision for the instruction and education of every human being. The
one duty does not conflict with the other. The one obligation does not
impair the other. Both lie in coincident lines.
But, as a question of fact, is it true that common schools impair the
sense of obligation in the minds of parents in regard to the duty of
educating their children? I affirm the fact to be exactly the contrary.
Those communities in which there are no common schools, and in which the
people generally are in a state of deplorable ignorance, are precisely
those in which the sense of parental obligation on this point is at the
lowest ebb. Go to a region of country in which not one man in ten can
read and write, and you will find that not one man in ten will care
whether his children are taught to read and write. Those communities on
the contrary which have the best and most complete system of common
schools, and in which this system has prevailed longest and has taken
most complete hold of the public mind, are the very ones in which
individuals will be found most keenly alive to the importance of the
subject, and in which a parent will be regarded as a monster, if his
children are allowed to grow up uneducated.
The objection, therefore, has no foundation either in fact or in reason.
There is moreover another consideration not to be overlooked. In this
matter of education, it is after all but a small part which the school
does for a child. The main part of the child's education always takes
place at home. The teacher is at best only an aid to the parent,
supplementing the influences of the home and the street. The child is
taking lessons continually from the father and mother, whether they mean
it or not. Every teacher knows how much more rapidly a child improves at
school, whose parents are well educated, and how difficult it is to
teach a child who at home lives in an atmosphere of profound ignorance.
The mind of the one whose home is a region of darkness and intellectual
torpor, will be dwarfed and distorted, no matter what the efforts of its
teachers. The mind of the one, on the contrary, whose home is the abode
of intellectual light, warmth, and sunshine, will have a corresponding
growth and expansion at school. There is a continual unconscious
tuition, good or bad, received from the very atmosphere of the family.
Besides this, there is a great deal of direct, active duty to be
performed by the parent in the education of the child. No matter how
good the school, or how faithful the teacher, there always remains much
to be done by the parent, even in regard to the school duties. The
parent must see that lessons are prepared, that the child is properly
provided with books, that the meal times and the other arrangements of
the household are such as to help forward the child's studies. There are
a hundred things which the father and mother can do to help or to hinder
the work of the school. A child, whose parents give proper home
supervision over his studies, will, other things being equal, make twice
the progress of one whose parents give the matter no attention. The
community, therefore, in establishing common schools, does by no means
take the whole matter of education out of the hands of the parent. On
the contrary, it still leaves with him the most important and necessary
of the duties connected with the education of his children, while it
gives him aids for the performance of the remaining duties, which no
private means can ordinarily supply.
I come, however, to a much graver objection. It is urged against common
schools, as organized in this country, that religious instruction is
excluded from them, and that without this element they only tend to make
educated villains. Education, it is said, without the restraining and
sanctifying influences of religion, only puts into the hands of the
multitude greater power for evil. If this objection is valid, the most
enlightened and Christian communities of the world have made, and are
making, an enormous mistake. Yet the objection is urged with seriousness
by men whose purity of motive is above question, and whose personal
character gives great weight to their opinions. The objection originated
in England, where all attempts to make legislative provision for the
education of the common people have been steadily resisted by a
potential party in the established church. The arguments put forth in
the English religious journals have been reproduced in the journals
here, and have in many instances awakened the apprehensions of
serious-minded persons. It is worth while, therefore, to give the
subject some distinct consideration.
In the first place, the facts are not exactly as stated by those making
the objection. Though little direct religious instruction may be given
in the common school, there is usually a large amount of religious
influence. A great majority of the teachers of our common schools are
professing Christians. Very many of them are among our most active
Sabbath-school teachers. Now a truly godly man or woman, at the head of
a school, though never speaking a word directly on the subject of
religion, yet by the power of a silent, consistent example, exerts a
continual Christian influence. In the second place, as a matter of fact,
direct religious teaching is not entirely excluded from our public
schools. I think, it by no means holds that prominent position in the
course of study which it should hold. But it is not entirely excluded.
The Bible, with very rare exceptions, is read daily in all our common
schools. It is appealed to as ultimate authority in questions of history
and morals. It is quoted for illustration in questions of taste. It is
in many schools a text-book for direct study. In the third place, nine
out of ten of the children of the week-day school attend the
Sabbath-school. The Sabbath-school supplements the instructions of the
week-day school. The case, therefore, is not that of an education purely
intellectual. Moral and religious instruction accompanies the
instruction in worldly knowledge. The Sabbath-school, the church, and
the family, by their combined and ceaseless activities, infuse into our
course of elementary education a much larger religious ingredient than a
stranger might suppose, who should confine his examination to a mere
inspection of our common schools, or to the reading of the annual
reports of our educational boards.
But apart from all these considerations, taking the question in its
naked form, is it true that mere intellectual education has the tendency
alleged? I do not believe it. The constitution of the human mind gives
no warrant for such an inference. Recorded, indisputable facts,
overwhelmingly disprove it. So far is it from being true that the mere
diffusion of knowledge has a tendency to make men knaves and infidels, I
believe the very opposite to be true. Knowledge is the natural ally of
religion. To hold otherwise, is to disparage and dishonor religion--to
imply, if not to say, that ignorance is the mother of devotion.
There is an inborn antagonism between the intellectual and the sensual
nature of man. If you give to the intellect no development, you leave
the senses as the ruling power. We see this strikingly illustrated in
the idiotic, who are for the most part disgustingly sensual. Among a
population grossly ignorant and uneducated, sensualism prevails in its
most appalling forms. The man is a sensualist, simply because he knows
no higher pleasures. He is degraded, because he has no motives to be
otherwise. He is barely above a brute. The amount of crime, of the
coarsest and most debasing character, among the uneducated peasantry of
England, is almost incredible. Here is a description of an English
peasant of the present day, given by a competent unimpeached witness,
himself an Englishman. I quote from a work on "The Social Condition and
Education of the People of England," by Joseph Kay, Esq., of Trinity
College, Cambridge, who was commissioned by the Senate of the University
to travel for the purpose of examining into the social condition of the
poorer classes. Says Mr. Kay: "You cannot address an English peasant,
without being struck with the intellectual darkness which surrounds him.
There is neither speculation in his eye nor intelligence in his
countenance. His whole expression is more that of an animal than of a
man. He is wanting too in the erect and independent bearing of a man. As
a class, our peasants have no amusements beyond the indulgence of sense.
In nine cases out of ten, recreation is associated in their minds with
nothing higher than sensuality. About one half of our poor can neither
read nor write, have never been in any school, and know little, or
positively nothing, of the doctrines of the Christian religion, of moral
duties, or of any higher pleasures than beer-drinking and
spirit-drinking, and the grossest sensual indulgence. They live
precisely like brutes, to gratify, so far as their means allow, the
appetites of their uncultivated bodies, and then die, to go they have
never thought, cared, or wondered whither. Brought up in the darkness of
barbarism, they have no idea that it is possible for them to attain any
higher condition; they are not even sentient enough to desire, with any
strength of feeling, to change their situation; they are not intelligent
enough to be perseveringly discontented; they are not sensible to what
we call the voice of conscience; they do not understand the necessity of
avoiding crime, beyond the mere fear of the police and the jail; they
have unclear, indefinite, and undefinable ideas of all around them; they
eat, drink, breed, work, and die; and while they pass through their
brute-like existence here, the richer and more intelligent classes are
obliged to guard them with police and standing armies, and to cover the
land with prisons, cages, and all kinds of receptacles for the
perpetrators of crime."
Surely it must be some hallucination of mind, which leads men to suppose
that the diffusion of knowledge among such a population, even though it
be only scientific and intellectual knowledge, can have any natural or
general tendency adverse to religion and morals. Apart, however, from
speculation, and as a pure question of fact, the recorded statistics of
crime point unmistakably the other way. Criminal records the world over
prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that the overwhelming majority of crimes
are committed by persons deplorably ignorant. Intellectual education,
therefore, I contend, even when deprived of its natural ally and
adjunct, religious training, has no natural tendency to produce knaves
and villains. On the contrary, it is a most efficient corrective and
restraint of the evil and debasing tendencies of human nature. If the
intellect is not so high a region in man's constitution as the moral
powers, which I readily grant, it is at least above the mere sensual
part, in which vice and crime have their chief spring and aliment. The
question fortunately is one susceptible of a direct appeal to facts. Who
are the men and women that people our jails and prisons? Are they
persons of education, or are they in the main persons deplorably
ignorant? What is the record of criminal statistics on this point?
I will quote a few of these statistics, from a great mass of similar
evidence lying before me.
Out of 252,544 persons committed for crime in England and Wales, during
a series of years, 229,300, or more than 90 per cent., are reported as
uneducated, either entirely unable to read and write, or able to do so
only very imperfectly; 22,159 could read and write, but not fluently;
and only 1085 (_less than one half per cent. of the whole_) were what we
call educated persons.
In nine consecutive years, beginning with the year 1837, only 28
educated females were brought to the bar of criminal justice in England
and Wales, out of 7,673,633 females then living in that part of the
United Kingdom; and in the year 1841, out of the same population, not
one educated female was committed for trial.
In a special commission, held in 1842, to try those who had been guilty
of rioting and disturbance in the manufacturing districts, out of 567
thus tried, 154 could neither read nor write, 155 could read only, 184
could read and write imperfectly, 73 could read and write well, and only
one had received superior instruction.
In 1840, in 20 counties of England and Wales, with a population of
8,724,338, there were convicted of crime only 59 educated persons, or
one for every 147,870 inhabitants. In 32 other counties, with a
population of 7,182,491, the records furnished _not one convict_ who had
received more than the merest elements of instruction.
In 1841, in 15 English counties, with a population of 9,569,064, there
were convicted only 74 instructed persons, or one to every 129,311
inhabitants, while the 25 remaining counties and the whole of Wales,
with a population of 6,342,661, did not furnish one single conviction of
a person who had received more than the mere elements of education.
In 1845, out of a total of 59,123 persons taken into custody, 15,263
could neither read nor write, and 39,659 could barely read, and could
write very imperfectly.
In the four best taught counties of England, the number of schools being
one for every seven hundred inhabitants, the number of criminal
convictions was one a year for every 1108 inhabitants. In the four worst
taught counties, the number of schools being one for every 1501
inhabitants, the number of convictions was one a year for every 550
inhabitants. That is, in one set of counties, the people were about
twice as well educated as in the other, and one half as much addicted to
crime. In other words, in proportion as the people were educated, were
they free from crime.
Thrift and good morals usually keep pace with the spread of intelligence
among the people. This has been the result in all those countries of
Europe where good common schools are maintained, as in Iceland, Norway,
Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and most of the German States.
Pauperism, with its attendant evils and crimes, is almost unknown in
those countries, while in England, where the common people are worse
educated than those of any Protestant nation in the world, pauperism has
become an evil which her wisest statesmen have given up as unmanageable.
In 1848, in addition to hundreds of persons assisted by charitable
individuals, no less than 1,876,541 paupers (_one out of every eight of
the population!_) were relieved by the boards of guardians of the poor,
at an expense from the public purse of nearly thirty millions of
dollars.
In our own country, the same pains have not been taken to collect
statistics on this subject, because comparatively little controversy
about it has existed here to call forth inquiry. We as a people have
generally taken it for granted that popular education lessens crime and
pauperism. Still, facts enough have been recorded to show the same
results here as elsewhere. When an educated villain is convicted, like
Monroe Edwards or Professor Webster, the fact becomes so notorious by
means of the press, that it is unconsciously multiplied in our
imagination, and we think the instances more numerous than they really
are. We never think of the scores of obscure villains that are convicted
every week all the year round. A quotation or two from the facts which
have been recorded, will be sufficient to satisfy us on this point.
In the Ohio penitentiary, out of 276 inmates, nearly all were reported
as ignorant, and 175 as grossly so.
In the Auburn prison, New York, out of 244 inmates, only 39 could read
and write.
In the Sing Sing prison, no official record has been made on this
point. But the Rev. Mr. Luckey, for more than twenty years chaplain of
the prison, is obliged by the prison regulations to superintend and read
all the letters between the prisoners and their friends. In this manner
he becomes personally acquainted with the condition of the convicts in
regard to education. He reported a few months since to the writer of
these pages, that while there are always some among the convicts who
have been educated, yet the great mass of them are stolidly ignorant.
There are usually between one and two hundred learning to read, and this
does not include the half of those who are unable to read, as the
attendance upon the class is voluntary, the accommodations are meagre,
and most of the prisoners are indifferent to their own improvement. Not
five in a hundred can write otherwise than in the most clumsy and
awkward manner, and with the grossest blunders in orthography, and not
more than two in a hundred can write a sentence grammatically. Out of
the 700 then in prison, only three were liberally educated, and two of
these were foreigners.
Throughout the State of New York, in 1841, the ratio of uneducated
criminals to the whole number of uneducated persons was twenty-eight
times as great as the ratio of educated inhabitants.
In view of the facts which have been given, and which might be
multiplied to almost any extent, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion
that mere intellectual education has some power to restrain men from the
commission of crime. Assuredly, ignorance and sin are natural adjuncts
and allies.
Schools undoubtedly cost something. The community that undertakes to
educate the masses, or the individual that undertakes to educate his
children, must expect to have a serious bill to pay. It is a pernicious
folly to inculcate the contrary. The advocate of popular education, who
tries to persuade people into the experiment, under the assurance that
the expense will be trifling, misleads his readers, and puts back the
cause which he would fain put forward. But there is a most significant
_per contra_ in the account, and on this there is no danger of dwelling
too much. Nothing is so costly as crime, and no preventive of crime is
more efficient than education. Schoolhouses are cheaper than jails,
teachers and books are a better security than handcuffs and policemen.
There are educated villains, it is true. But they are rare, and they
attract the greater attention by the very fact of their rarity. But go
into a prison, or a criminal court, or a police court, and see who they
are that mainly occupy the proceedings of our expensive machinery of
criminal justice. Nine-tenths of those miserable creatures are in a
state of most deplorable ignorance. Degraded, sensual, with no knowledge
of anything better than the indulgence of the lowest passions, without
mental resources, or any avenue to intellectual enjoyment, they often
resort to crime from sheer want of something better to do. When Dr.
Johnson was asked, "Who is the most miserable man?" his reply was, "The
man who cannot read on a rainy day." There is profound meaning in the
answer. The man who has been educated, who not only can read, but has
acquired a taste for reading, and for reading of a proper kind, is
rarely driven into low and debasing crime. He has resources within
himself, which are a counterpoise to the incitements of his animal
nature. His awakened intellect and conscience also make him understand
more clearly the danger and guilt of a life of crime. Many of the deeds
which swell the records of our criminal courts spring from poverty, as
every criminal lawyer well knows, and there is no remedy against extreme
poverty so sure as education. The old adage says that knowledge is
power. It is also wealth. A man with even an ordinary, common school
education, can turn himself in a hundred ways, where a mere ignorant
boor would be utterly helpless. The faculties are developed, ingenuity
is quickened, the man's resources are enlarged. An educated man may be
tempted to crime, but he is not driven into it, as hundreds are daily,
by mere poverty, or by an intolerable hunger of the mind for enjoyment
of some kind.
Schools, then, especially schools in which moral and religious truth is
inculcated, are the most powerful means of lessening crime, and of
lessening the costly and frightful apparatus of criminal administration.
As schoolhouses and churches increase in the land, jails and prisons
diminish. As knowledge is diffused, property becomes secure, and rises
in value. A community, therefore, is bound to see that its members are
properly educated, if for no other reason, in mere self-defence. The
many must be educated, in order that the many may be protected. A great
city is just as sacredly bound to provide for its teeming population the
light of knowledge, as it is to provide material light for its streets.
The one kind of illumination, equally with the other, is an essential
part of its police. No matter what the cost, the dark holes and alleys
must be flooded with the light of truth, before which the owls and bats
and vampyres of society will be scattered to the winds. A great city
without schools would be a hell,--a seething caldron of vice, impurity,
and crime. No man of sound mind would choose such a place for the
residence of himself and family, who had the means of living in any
other place. If we could suppose two cities entirely equal in other
respects, but in one of them a superior and costly system of free
schools, while the other spent not a dollar upon schools, but depended
solely upon the rigors of the law and the strong arm of avenging justice
for restraining the ignorant and corrupt masses, can there be any doubt
which city would be the safest and most desirable place of residence?
Whatever view of this subject may be taken in other countries, we in
this country are shut up to the necessity of popular education. We at
least have no choice. Universal suffrage necessitates universal
education. If we do not educate our people, educate universally, educate
wisely and liberally, we can hardly expect to maintain permanently our
popular institutions. The man's vote, who cannot read the names on the
ballot which he throws into the box, counts just as much in deciding
public affairs as yours, who are versed in statesmanship and political
economy. He is a partner in the political firm. You can neither withdraw
from the firm yourself, nor can you throw him out. In the absence of
general education, this tremendous power of suffrage is something
frightful to contemplate. "The greatest despotism on earth," says De
Tocqueville, "is an excited, untaught public sentiment; and we should
hate not only despots, but despotism. When I feel the hand of power lie
heavy on my brow, I care not to know who oppresses me; the yoke is not
the easier, because it is held out to me by a million of men."
The danger from this source is intensified by the immense immigration
from abroad which is going on, and which bids fair very greatly to
increase. The great majority of those who seek our shores, come here
ignorant. With little knowledge of any kind, and with no knowledge
whatever of the nature of republican institutions, these men, almost at
once, are made sharers of the popular sovereignty, with all its
tremendous powers of peace and war, order and anarchy, life and death.
Not to have a system of public education, by which these ignorant and
dangerous masses shall be enlightened, and shall be assimilated to the
rest, and to the better part, of the population, is simply suicidal. Our
national life hangs upon our common schools.
Besides this grave political consideration, affecting the interests of
the entire body politic, and the question of the success and stability
of our national institutions, there is another consideration coming home
closely and individually to each man's personal interests. Where the law
of trial by jury prevails, every citizen, whether educated or ignorant,
takes part in the administration of justice. Twelve men, taken
indiscriminately from the mass of the people, or if with any
discrimination, taken more frequently from the lower walks of life than
from the higher, are placed in a jury box to decide upon almost every
possible question of human interests. The jury decides your fortune,
your reputation. The jury says whether you live or die. Go into a court
of justice. Are they light matters which those twelve men are to
determine? Look at the anxious faces of those whose estates, whose good
name, whose worldly all hangs upon the intelligence of those twelve men,
or of any one of them. What assurance have you, save that which comes
from popular education, that these men will understand and do their
duty? Who would like to trust his legal rights or his personal safety to
the verdict of a jury of Neapolitan lazzaroni?
In a few short years, the idle boys who are now prowling about the
streets and alleys of our towns, the wharf-rats of our cities, will be a
part of our jurymen. Is it of no consequence to me, whether their minds
shall be early trained and disciplined, so that they will be capable of
following a train of argument, or of comprehending a statement of facts?
How is it possible to administer justice with any degree of fairness and
efficiency, where the majority of those who are to constitute the
jurymen and the witnesses are stolidly ignorant? By common law, every
man has a right to be tried by his peers. Let law then provide that
those shall, in some substantial sense, be my peers, on whose voice my
all in life may depend.
But let us recur once more to the economical part of the argument. When
a community is taxed for the support of common schools, the question
naturally rises among the taxpayers, Is the system worth the cost? Does
the community, by the diffusion of knowledge and education, gain enough
to counterbalance the large expense which such education involves? Even
if this question could not be answered in the affirmative, it would not
follow that common schools should be dispensed with. Common schools are
needed as the best and cheapest protection against the crimes incident
to an ignorant and degraded population. Common schools are right and
proper, because without them the majority of those created in the image
of God will never attain to that noble manhood which is their rightful
inheritance. But the argument will receive additional force, if it can
be shown that general education increases the wealth of the community.
That education does have this effect is evident, I think, from two
independent lines of argument. First, an intelligent, educated man is
capable individually of achieving greater material results than one who
is ignorant. Secondly, the general diffusion of intelligence through a
community leads to labor-saving inventions, and thus increases its
producing power.
In regard to the first line of argument, some curious and instructive
facts were collected a few years since by the late Horace Mann. His
inquiries were directed to the efficiency of operatives in factories, a
class of men who would seem to require as little general intelligence as
any kind of laborers. It was found that, as a general rule, those
operatives who could sign their names to their weekly receipts for
money, were able to do one-third more work, and to do it better, than
those who made their mark. Nor is this at all to be wondered at. There
is no kind of work, done by the aid of human muscle, that is purely
mechanical. Mind is partner in all that the body does. Mind directs and
controls muscle, and even in emergency gives it additional energy and
power. No matter how simple the process in which an operative may be
engaged, some cultivation of his mental powers is needed. Without it he
misdirects his own movements, and mistakes continually the orders of his
superintending workman. A boy who has been to a good common school, and
has had his mental activities quickened, and whose mind has been
stimulated and roused by worthy motives, not only will be more
industrious for it when he becomes a man, but his industry will be more
effective. He will accomplish more, even as a day laborer, than the mere
ignorant boor. When we come to any kind of skilled labor, the difference
between the educated and the ignorant is still more apparent. An
intelligent mechanic is worth twice as much as one ignorant and stupid.
Many years ago a very instructive fact on this point came under my own
personal observation. A gentleman of my acquaintance had frequent need
of the aid of a carpenter. The work to be done was not regular
carpentry, but various odd jobs, alterations and adaptations to suit
special wants, and no little time and materials were wasted in the
perpetual misconceptions and mistakes of the successive workmen
employed. At length a workman was sent who was a German, from the
kingdom of Prussia. After listening attentively to the orders given, and
doing what he could to understand what his employer wanted, Michael
would whip out his pencil, and in two or three minutes, with a few rapid
lines, would present a sketch of the article, so clear that any one
could recognize it at a glance. It could be seen at once, also, whether
the intention of his employer had been rightly conceived, and whether it
was practicable. The consequence was, that so long as Michael was
employed, there was no more waste of materials and time, to say nothing
of the vexation of continued failures. Michael was not really more
skilful as a carpenter than the many others who had preceded him. But
his knowledge of drawing, gained in a common school in his native
country, made his services worth from fifty cents to a dollar a day more
than those of any other workman in the shop, and he actually received
two dollars a day, when others in the same shop were receiving only a
dollar and a quarter. He was always in demand, and he always received
extra wages, and his work even at that rate was considered cheap.
What was true of Michael in carpentry, would be true of any other
department of mechanical industry. In cabinet-making, in shoe-making, in
tailoring, in masonry, in upholstery, in the various contrivances of tin
and sheet iron with which our houses are made comfortable, in
gas-fitting and plumbing, in the thousand-and-one necessities of the
farm, the garden, and the kitchen, a workman who is ready and expert
with his pencil, who has learned to put his own ideas, or those of
another, rapidly on paper, is worth fifty per cent. more than his
fellows who have not this skill.
The example of this man was brought vividly to my mind at a later day,
in Philadelphia, when an important educational question was under
discussion. Rembrandt Peale had two dreams, each worthy of his genius.
One was to paint a Washington which should go down to posterity; the
other was so to simplify the elements of the art of drawing that young
boys and girls might learn it as universally as they learn to read and
write. He spent long years in maturing a little work for this purpose,
no bigger than a primer or a spelling-book, and a determined effort was
made on the part of some of the friends of popular education to
introduce the study into the primary public schools of Philadelphia. It
was introduced into the High Schools. But its benefits were limited to a
comparatively small number. The hope and the aim of the friends of Mr.
Peale's project were to make the study an elementary one--to make a
certain amount of proficiency in drawing a test of promotion from the
lower schools to the schools above it. This would have placed "Graphics"
alongside of the copy-book and the spelling-book. After struggling for
several years with popular prejudice, the friends of the scheme were
obliged to abandon it as hopeless. The idea was too much in advance of
the times. Could the plan have succeeded, and could the entire youthful
population of that great city, which is preeminently a mechanical and
manufacturing centre, have grown up with a familiar practised skill in
the use of the pencil, in ordinary, off-hand drawing, such as our friend
Michael had, there can be no question that it would have added untold
millions to the general wealth. If every boy and girl in that great
metropolitan city were now obliged to spend as much time in learning to
draw as is spent in learning to spell, and at the same age that they
learn to spell, I do soberly believe that the addition to the wealth of
the city, by the increased mechanical skill that would be developed,
would be worth more than the entire cost of her public schools, although
they do cost well-nigh a million of dollars annually.
What is true of drawing, is true of every branch and accomplishment
necessary to a complete education. A man is educated when all his
capacities bodily and mental are developed, and a community is educated
when all its members are. Now if we could imagine two communities, of
exactly equal numbers, and in physical circumstances exactly equal as to
climate, soil, access to markets, and so forth, and if one of these
communities should tax itself to the extent of even one-fourth of its
income in promoting popular education, while the other spent not a
dollar in this way, there can be little doubt as to which community
would make the most rapid advances in wealth and in every other
desirable social good.
We happen to have on this subject one most striking and significant
record. In 1670, the English Commissioners for Foreign Plantations
addressed to the Governors of the several colonies a series of questions
concerning the condition of the settlements under their charge. One of
these questions related to the means of popular education. The answers
of two of the Governors are preserved. One of them, the Governor of
Connecticut, ruled a territory to which nature had not been specially
propitious. Its climate was bleak, its coast rockbound, its soil blest
with only ordinary fertility. The other territory, Virginia, had an
extraordinary amount of natural advantages. It had fine harbors,
numerous navigable streams, a climate more temperate by several degrees
than its rival, the soil in its lowlands and valleys unsurpassed in any
of the Plantations for its capacity to produce wheat, corn, and tobacco,
its mountains filled with untold treasures of lime, iron, and coal,
(and, it now seems, with petroleum also,) and withal that wonderful
variety of natural resources, which seems best suited to stimulate and
reward the productive industry of its inhabitants.
The Governor of the less favored colony replied to the Royal
Commissioners, as follows: "_One-fourth_ of the annual revenue of the
Colony is laid out in maintaining free schools for the education of our
children." The policy thus early impressed upon the colony has been
maintained with steadfast and almost proverbial consistency to this day,
that region being known the world over as the land of schoolmasters. The
Governor of the other colony replied, "I thank God, there are no free
schools, nor printing, and I hope we shall not have, these hundred
years." To this policy she also has until lately only too faithfully
adhered. Now what is the result?
By referring to the tables accompanying the Census of 1860, we find the
following significant facts.
1. The average cash value of land was not quite $12 an acre in one
commonwealth (Virginia), and a little over $30 an acre in the other.
2. One commonwealth sustained only five inhabitants to every hundred
acres of her soil, the other sustained eighteen inhabitants to every
hundred acres.
3. The value of all property, real and personal, averaged by the
population, was in one commonwealth $496 to every inhabitant, in the
other $965 to every inhabitant.
4. The value of all property, real and personal, averaged by the acre,
was in one commonwealth less than $26 to the acre, in the other more
than $177 to the acre.
To which facts I may add, what is true, though not in the Census, it was
the invention of Eli Whitney, a travelling schoolmaster from
Connecticut, that has trebled the value of land in nearly every Southern
State.
I have been endeavoring to show that popular education, though it is
expensive, tends to national wealth. The argument is that an educated
population is capable of producing greater material results than a
population uneducated can produce. The example of Eli Whitney, just
referred to, suggests the other line of argument, which I shall now
notice briefly in conclusion. This second argument is, that the general
diffusion of intelligence in a community tends to quicken invention, and
leads to the discovery of those scientific principles and of those
ingenious labor-saving machines, by which the productive power of the
community is so greatly multiplied. The cotton-gin, the steam-engine,
the sewing-machine, and the reaping-machine would never have been
invented in a nation of boors. It is not asserted that every boy who
goes to school will become an inventor. But it is as certain as the laws
of mind and matter can make it, that inventions abound in a nation in
proportion to its progress in science and the general spread of
intelligence among the masses. Multiply common schools and you multiply
inventions. How much these latter increase man's producing power, and
so add to the aggregate of human wealth, it is needless to say. The
invention of Watt alone has quadrupled the productive power of the whole
human race. The aggregate steam-power of one single country, Great
Britain, equals the muscular capacity for labor of four hundred millions
of men--more than twice the number of adult males capable of labor on
our planet. Its aggregate power throughout the earth is equal to the
male capacity for manual work of four or five worlds like ours. The
commerce, the navigation, the maritime warfare, the agriculture, the
mechanic arts of the human race, have been revolutionized by this single
invention not yet a century old.
The application of scientific truths to the common industries of life is
becoming every day more and more a necessity. The village carpenter, no
less than the builder of the Niagara Suspension Bridge, makes hourly
reference to scientific laws. The carpenter who misapplies his formulae
for the strength of materials, builds a house which falls down. The
properties of the various mechanical powers are involved in every
machine. Every machine, indeed, it has been well said, is a solidified
mechanical theorem. The surveyor in determining the limits of one's
farm, the architect in planning a house, the builder in planning his
estimates, and the several master workmen who do the carpentry, masonry,
and finishing, are all dependent upon geometric truths. Bleaching,
dyeing, calico-printing, gas-making, soap-making, sugar-refining, the
reduction of metals from their ores, with innumerable other productive
industries, are dependent upon chemistry. Agriculture, the basis of all
the other arts, is in the same condition. Chemical knowledge, indeed, is
doing for the productive powers of the soil what the application of
steam has done for the increase of mechanical power. The farmer who
wishes to double his crops, finds the means of doing so, not in
multiplying his acres, but in applying a knowledge of the laws of
chemistry to the cultivation of the soil already possessed. Even
physiology is adding to the wealth of the farming interest. The truth
that the production of animal heat implies waste of substance, and that
therefore preventing the loss of heat prevents the need for extra
food--which is a purely theoretical conclusion--now guides the fattening
of cattle. By keeping cattle warm, fodder is saved. Experiments of
physiologists have proved, not only that change of diet is beneficial,
but that digestion is facilitated by a mixture of ingredients in each
meal. Both these truths are now influencing cattle-feeding. In the keen
race of competition, the farmer who has a competent knowledge of the
laws of animal and vegetable physiology and of agricultural chemistry,
will surely distance the one who gropes along by guess and by tradition.
A general diffusion of scientific knowledge saves the community from
innumerable wasteful and foolish mistakes. In England, not many years
ago, the partners in a large mining company were ruined from not knowing
that a certain fossil belonged to the old red sandstone, below which
coal is never found. In another enterprise, L20,000 were lost in the
prosecution of a scheme for collecting the alcohol that distils from
bread in baking, all of which might have been saved, had the parties
known that less than one hundredth part by weight of the flour is
changed in fermentation.
But it is not necessary to multiply illustrations. Suffice it to say, in
conclusion, I hold it to be a most manifest truth, that the general
education of a community increases largely its material wealth, both by
the direct effect which knowledge has upon individuals in making them
individually more productive, and by the increased control which the
diffusion of knowledge gives to mankind over the powers of nature. A
nation or a state is wisely economical which spends largely and even
lavishly upon popular education.