SRsi LC 191 3oyce - V.l ^.ncl thf^ Southern Branch of the University of California Los Angeles Form L 1 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below NOV §4 192? • t DETERIORATION A^a> THE ELEVATION OF MAN THROUGH KACE EDUCATION. BY SAMUEL ROYCE. TKK SACREDNESS OF HUMAM LIPE INCREASES WITH CTVILIZATIOM. ' /"' ao IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. L THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. BOSTON : LEE & SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 1880. O^t. /3o 2^ COPYRIGHT, 1877, ^' SAMUEL ROYCE. V. I DEDICATED TO MRS. ELIZABETH THOMPSON, THE PATRIOT AND PHILANTHROPIST, WHO DEVOTES HER ENERGIES TO THE ELEVATION OF THE MASSES THROUGH INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION, AND LABORS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE CHARACTER OF THE MEN AND WOMEN OF AMERICA THROUGH THE KINDERGARTEN, BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE; OB, LETTER OF INTRODUCTION. My Child : — Amid the severe pressure of daily labors and cares I have tended you. Under depri- vation and humihation I had but a cheerful coun- tenance for you. Many a long winter's n-ight I have watched over you, nursed and taught you un- til the sun rose, and my weary head without repose entered upon the struggle of the day. It is time you go forth and stammer your lesson to the world. Your dress is simple, for service and not for parade, but your armor shall make you strong in battle. There is no loss of force. The life and spirit of my sweet little Julia, which floated away from her Avhile I attended to you and your wants, will be with you ; and however much you may be abused, never mind, if only thereby other children will be treated more tenderly, and will be kept alive and be made happy. The perishing masses are the import of thy mes- sage ; nothing can save them but an Education aiming in all its parts at the preservation of the individual and the race. Nothing but the solidar- ity of mankind, or, in more homely pbjase, the V vi PREFACE. feeling of mutual responsibility, can give stability to society tottering to its very base. Want almost general can only be allayed by industry as uni- versal. Home, the school of great and small, health of body and mind, city and country, in- stitutions, and whatever influences the well-be- ing of individuals and States ; the jail, the hos- pital, the battlefield, the shop and the banking- house, the past as well as the present, whatever touches man, is part of thy message — be brief, but hide nothing. Proclaim the true spirit and principle of Educa- tion ; when you will have done that, the people will know the rest, as Education embraces the whole of life, and ten thousand times ten thousand rules would leave the subject as incomplete as ever. When your message, burdened with facts and figures, fatigues the listener, retire not unwillingly to the shelf, satisfied that the solidity of thy argu- ments will secure to your message another hearing. And now, child of my riper age, of many labors and anxious hours, I trust you and your message to justice that never fails in the end. May success attend you, not for my sake, nor for your sake, but for the sake of the Education of the Race, and the saving of the masses that perish to-day. THE AUTHOR. PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. New York City, Novetnber, 1879. Twice thou hast gone forth on thy mission. If thy work was arduous, still it was not wholly with- out success. For since thy message has been de- livered, some of the most baneful prejudices have lost some of their hold upon the educational world ; industrial Education has received more proper atten- tion, and the dwellings of the people and their san- itary condition have been seriously looked into. A third time thou art sent forth to plead for the per- ishing masses ; stand by them and suffer with them, if there be need, but falter not, knowing that thine is the victory. The Author. CONTENTS TO VOLUME I. PART I. RACE DETERIORATION. Symptoms and Causes of Deterioration . . . .13 Rate of Mortality 18 Rate of Insanity 22 Rate of Crime 29 Blindness and Deaf-muteism 38 Unfitness for Military Service 39 Factory Population 41 Consumption 42 Scrofula 45 Changes of Mortality Rates 47 General Deterioration 48 Pauperism 49 Remedies ..... Education and Race Preservation Degenerated Tribes . Degeneracy in Tenement-houses The Evolution of Education 58 62 65 66 67 PART 11. HEREDITY AND RACE EDUCATION. Heredity 69 Race Education Defined .,.,... 76 Race and Scholastic Education . , . . .80 Race and Scholastic Education Compared . . .82 Systems of Education ....... 90 Race and Individual Education 100 Race Education Further Expounded .... 105 Race Education and Division of Labor . ^ . .Hi Woman's Work 112 The School and the Home 115 IX Contents. The Development of Education Our Civilization and Deterioration Education and Individualism . Race Education and Hygiene . 117 119 121 124 PART III. KINDERGARTEN AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. Kinderg-;irten 133 Education and Social Science . . . • . .146 Industrial Education 152 The Progress of Industrial Education . . . 161 Industrial Education in the United States . . . 170 PART IV. THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION. Trades and Tools our Civilizers First Improvements ..... Modern Conveniences and Foods . Progress in Cotton and Iron Manufactures Progress of Manufactures in the United States Industry and general Civilization Industry, Science, and Education Industry, its Work and Cycles . War and Army Mortality .... Mortality in Public Institutions. Industry as a Deteriorator. . . , Suicide ....... Social Murder Supreme Law of Humanity Slaughter-pen Civilization Humanity Suffering ..... The Sanctity of Human Life PART V. THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION. The Progress of General Eflucation . Cost of Education and Crime .... Does our Common Education Prevent Crime . 185 188 196 201 203 205 206 208 222 226 229 231 235 238 241 242 248 251 261 263 Contents. XI Does our Common Education Prevent Pauperism Intellectual Pleasures Education and the State ..... Education and our Financial Crisis . Eras of Civilization The School the Miniature of the World . The Period of Crime and of Education Our Wordy Education Education and Industrial Labor Race Education described .... The Education of the old Greeks The Education of Massachusetts The Demands of Race Education Race Education and a Rational Idealism . The Claims of Classical and Scientific Education The Proper Employment of Time . Men and Women, and their Spheres. Industry, Health, Comfort, and Happiness The Science of Things The Cultivation of Altruism . PART VI. THE PEOPLE AND THEIR HOMES Home the Climate of Man Home in City and Country Home and Property .... Manufacturing in Rural Diitricts Commerce and Starvation in England The City the Workman's Ruin. Condition of Operatives in French towns Condition of Operatives in English towns Tenement houses in New York City. Tenements in Boston and other towns Tenement house Mortality in New York City Industrial Building Societies Degradation of Laborers in Cities . Epidemics from Crowding Sins and Evils of Crowding 263 264 265 266 269 269 270 271 272 291 292 294 295 298 303 332 334 335 335 337 348 349 352 352 354 355 358 365 369 379 384 386 392 399 401 Xll Contents. Infant Mortality and Crowding. Crime and Crowding Misleading Averages Mortality in City and Country . Cities with More Deaths than Births Surplus of Births in City and Country Cholera and Density of Population . Births and Deaths in London . Infant Mortality in New York City and in Table of Births, Deaths, Fertility, &c. Vitality in City and Country Growth of Cities .... Legislative Restrictions against Crowding Vitality in its Moral Bearings . the Country 402 404 404 405 407 407 408 408 409 410 411 412 415 418 PART VII. THE SCOURGES OF HUMANITY. Drunkenness Deteriorating the Race Drunkenness and Expectation of Life Drunkenn-ess and Rates of Insanity. Causes and Prevention of Drunkenness . The Virus of the Social Evil Spread and History of this Poison . Cause and Prevention of this Evil Standing Armies Deteriorating Nations . Prisons ....... Trade Diseases and their Preven-tion Employment of Children in Factories Our Resources and our Greed . Crime and Education .... Crime, Pauperism, and Insanity Increasing Ratio of Increase and Birth Decreasing . Blindness, Mental Disorders, and the School Crime and Industry Moral Basis of Education .... Manufacturing in the Country . Crowding and Crime .... 424 429 430 431 437 438 444 448 448 448 458 460 461 462 468 471 472 475 476 477 EDUCATION: A SOCIAL STUDY VOLUME I. The nature, function and importance of public education under the po^uers, possibilities, dangers and responsibilities of modern civilization are as yet not half understood. Six dull hours daily passed upon school benches are but a parody upon Education, whicJi shotdd be as real and fnultifarious as life is; aye, it must be life itself lived tinder the eye of the State and its ministers, who are to fashion our outer as well as our inner life, the one by rightly starting our practical activities, and the other by effectually regulating our passions, and thus remove the double source of human woe, outer want and inner misery, a consummation to be brought about by the co-opera- tion of men who havj before their eye the love and fear of Cod as well as the good of thtir fellow beings. New York City, November, 1879. INTRODUCTION. Deterioration is the foundation of our work, which we bring forward, that we may convince men of the necessity of aiming at race amehoration. Certainly, the gradual descent from the meridian of life to natural death is but an inevitable process of individual deterioration, and when, again, whole species and genera of plants and animals become extinct, as the geological strata attest, that is general deterioration. The whole of life, therefore, is a constant struggle of the individual and the race against a world of hostile forces ever tending to deteriorate them. A healthy rural population crowding into un- wholesome city quarters, and transmitting to an en- feebled progeny a constitution deteriorated by the conflux of adverse circumstances is not unworthy the attention of men. The removal of the preventable causes of deterio- ration becomes the more urgent in this country, where a comparatively new soil and a foreign climate conspire against the exogenous white race, as has been noticed from Buffon down to our day, and is patent to every observer from the lesser development of the muscular system, the narrow chest, the pale face, the delicate constitution, the I o IN TROD UCTION. premature dental decay, the greater frequency of consumption, especially among the female sex, and the small fertility even of foreign born women after their acclimatization. Society and the uieatis of preventing ever present tnorbid tendencies from settling itito abnormal and anti-social formations must be the chief study of the future teacher in our normal colleges. We recognize the importance of the study of man, but, alas ! look for it in musty chronicles instead of in the living present spread out before us like a feast. We might just as well seek the key to the enigma of life among rattling bones. What a world of thought the structure of a pros- perous society presents to us ! and what lessons are to be compared in importance to those the morbid conditions of society offer us. The application of physical, mental and social hygiene to tJie pJiysical, mental and social degeneracy as manifested by an excessive rate of mortality, insanity, pauperism and crime is the great work of the teacher. This truth is sure of finding acceptance at last, as we are beginning to be oppressed with taxes for the erection of hospitals, mad-houses, jails, poor houses, asylums for the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the idiotic, etc., etc., all the fruit of sin or our indif- erence for man, his happiness, or misery. The very word Education in our day suggests the school, studies, hieroglyphics, and what not. The writer of this work sets out with an inquiry into the condition of the people, and from a vast IN TROD UCTION. 1 1 array of facts relative to the increase of the rate of mortality, insanity and the deepening dye of crimi- nality comes to the conclusion that the human race is threatened by degenerating tendencies. The author next gives a rapid sketch of the opin- ions of the great thinkers of the world — past as well as present — concerning the cardinal principles of Education, and proceeds to establish his own doctrine of Race Education, or Hereditary Culture. He endeavors to prove that the preservation of the human race. is the primary function of Education, He shows that a true Education must be organic and of a nature to become hereditary. He con- trasts the proposed Race Education with our pres- ent scholastic tatooing. He sketches the history of general and industrial Education, as well as of civilization. The claims of classical and scientific Education are fully examined. The necessity of organizing kindergartens is dwelt upon ; woman's work in society and civilization is shown, and Education exhibited as a social science. Pauperism is considered as the great deteriorator of the race, which must be combated by industrial Education. The homes of the people and their scourges are considered. The social problem is examined in connection with aesthetic culture and art industrial Education, and its true nature and magnitude are dwelt upon, and the danger threatening Society is pointed out. A hollow and self-seeking literary foppery fills the heads, empties the hearts, and weakens the hands of men. Work is the coordination of all the powers of man, educating them all, and developing 12 INTRODUCTION. in him the capacity and the will to serve mankind efficiently. The world, says Francis Bacon, has grown old with age, and goes to school to the lo- quacious childhood and puerilities of the boyish Greeks ; this is trifling, contemptible, and degrad- ing to modern civilization. Their science is but sophistry, and their history a fable ; all idle, fruit- less talk, without a single experiment to elevate or assist mankind. It is like the countenance of a virgin with monsters fastened to the womb, bring- ing forth barking questions and nothing else. Such is antiquity, in the words of the great Chancellor, and such is the Education of our youths, who should be trained to will and to do and to save a perishing race. Climate, soil and mineral resources, or the country and its products, determine our wants and our character through industry, which leagues man with nature, and individuals with nations, making them free, rich, and powerful, or poor, miserable slaves. And yet while the masses cry for bread, instead of educating them into strong and active men who know how to extract wealth from earth, water, air, and all the elements and forces, we train them into mocking-birds, crazing the age with the broken notes of sweet songsters dead a thousand or more years, forgetting that the harmony of the soul springs from the harmonies of life, and that the lower elements are the soil in which the higher get their growth, lessons not to be set aside in an economic age, the lawand order of which are the evolution of moral from material values. DETERIORATION THE ELEVATION OF MAN. RACE EDUCATION. PART I. RACE DETERIORATION. Writers and thinkers, according to their stand- point or method of investigation, base their sys- tems of Education upon religious or philosophical principles, as God-likeness, duty, humanity, useful- ness, happiness, etc. Most children are not educated at all. They are simply taught the three R's. Many are brought up to get along in the world, no matter how the world gets along ; and a small minority is taught in schools devoted to the promotion of learning, but regardless to the advancement of humanity, while denominational schools care more for the propaga- tion of their peculiar tenets than for anything else ; and only the fewest children are educated upon anthropological principles. Upon a careful study of the social condition of (13) 14 Race Deterioration. the people, we venture to advance the principle that the general tendency of human deterioration must be counteracted by Race Education aiming directly at race amelioration. Statistics prove that a deterioration of the physi- cal, mental and moral tone of mankind, induced by the present state of civilization, is undermining the race. Many Utopian theories have been advanced against the various ills of society, but a race ame- liorating Education alone can stop humanity in its downward career. Pauperism, with all the misery and barbarity in- separable from it ; drunkenness, crime and insanity, a growing morbidity, leading through heredity to race deterioration, and a fearful infant as well as adult rate of mortality, such are the tendencies that surround us on all sides, and must be com- bated by Race Education. Maintaining, as we do, that the one great aim of Education must be to counteract the cause of human deterioration, the first step in our inquiry must be to prove the actual existence of such fatal agencies. Deterioration is contingent on our pres- ent state of civilization, as labor, especially in fac- tories, is productive of metal, mineral, vegetable or animal dust and deleterious gases, all favoring phthisis. Not infrequently rank poison, such as Race Deterioration. 15 copper, lead, arsenic, phosphorus, etc., have to be handled and are absorbed by the system. Many manufacturing processes require degrees of heat or moisture varying from what the human body can well bear; and often the posture of the laborer, attending one or another technical operation, inter- feres with the free action of one or more organs. Mines, barracks, damp and dark tenements, filthy lanes, crowded towns and factories, penitentiaries, want, commercial crises, epidemics, poverty, misery, degradation, drunkenness, tobacco, opium, and other influences too numerous for mentioning, contribute to this deterioration. It would open too wide a field for discussion were we to enter upon these and kindred causes of human deterioration, the existence of which alone concerns us here, and which we shall prove by the rising rate of mortality as well as of insanity and by the nature of crime. The profound Morel says: "My conviction is that in the majority of cases the insane are of a deteriorated constitution, suffering from a long line of hereditary degeneracy." Everywhere, the same writer continues, insanity increases, so does gen- eral paralysis, and a general collapse diminishes the chances of curability. Hysteria and hypochondria, often accompanied with a suicidal mania or ten- dency, are becoming alarmingly common among l6 Race Deterioration. the working people and even in the country. The increase of misdemeanors, crime against property, juvenile criminality, and a physically degenerated community that has not men enough fit for the service, are incontrovertible facts, alarming Euro- pean governments and engaging their most earnest attention. A brigade raised among the weavers in England measured mostly less than five feet. At Spitalfields, the men are not good enough for cannon fodder. " The constitution of these de- generated men," says Dr. Mitchell, " does rapidly descend to the size of the Lilliputians; the old men among them surpass in strength the young ones." At Birmingham the men cannot be said to be all sick, but neither are they all well. Among 613 men, only 238 were approved for the service. The spinners and weavers are stunted and rickety. So they are in France and ever}'^where else. Upon investigation, scrofula, diseases of the digestive or- gans and inflammatory affections of the eyes are most common. Abortions and distortions of the spi- nal column are almost universal among the working people. Often the children manifest an early arrest of their faculties; they learn but little, and even of this they soon lose every recollection. Often three to four years are not sufficient for these degenerates to learn a little reading and writing. Their lan- guage, their morals, their conduct are all low, loose, Race Deterioration. 17 and shameless.^ All about them is degenerate. Their pale physiognomies are mute, hard, showing nothing but resolution to persevere in evil. These types shock us ; and well they may, for they are personifications of the degeneracy of our race, caused by evils which are more fraught with danger for modern society than the invasion of the bar- barians was for ancient Rome. This degeneracy might be stopped if society would consent to be anything else but a machine, grinding humanity, even at the risk of conjuring up a revolution, to which the present state of affairs must lead sooner or later. Having described the symptoms of human de- terioration among the English working people, Morel proceeds to trace the same symptoms in France, where he finds the masses to have lost the power and inclination for fixing their attention upon subjects of a higher order. Such is the imbecility of the young or their intellectual faculties that the priest has to defer their confirmation. In Rouen, as in most manufacturing cities of France, the population is born and develops under conditions favorable for the formation of phthisis, cancer, in- flammation of the kidneys and of the digestive organs, hysteria, chlorosis, and general, progressive paralysis. The factory children are puny, their intelligence torpid; and most characteristic is the 1 8 Rate of Mortality. degeneracy which slowly, but surely, undermines the health of body, mind, and morals of the population, visibly nearing a fatal transformation into a fixed order of diseased specimens deviating from the nor- mal type of humanity, in whom the average intel- lectual life is low ; and the double characteristic of their moral and physical shortcomings is reflected in the form of the body as well as in the disposition of the mind. In the absence of regenerating meas- ures these diseased specimens are bound to form progressive types of degeneration. Having established the progressive hereditary de- terioration of the normal type of humanity among the masses, and the necessity as well as the possi- bility of a complete regeneration by the removal of fatal causes, from the labors of Morel, we pro- ceed to the still higher authority of a million statis- tical facts, and we shall set out with those of mortality rates as best studied, and the sure indi- cators of the vitality and the ameliorating or dete- riorating tendencies of the world. RATE OF MORTALITY. To those who consider mortality rates a senti- mental question, we would recall the words of Europe's greatest statistician : " The people them- selves are by far the most important capital of the State ; and the industrial capital stored up in the Rate of Mortality. 19 living generation surpasses the sum of all other species of capital. Every injury to the physical condition of the people is a loss of the noblest capital of intelligence and physical strength of the nation, and is an absolute destruction of capital." Dr. Engel, to whom we have just referred, has established the average age at death in Prussia to have been as follows : 1821-1830 28.39 years. 1831-1840 28.34 " 1841-1850 27.23 '* 1851-1860 26.40 " In Bavaria lived, after the first year, of 1,003 born, 1841-1848 . . 701 children. " 1848-1855 . . 697 " 1 85 5-1 862 . . 681 " " 1 862-1869 . . 673 In Basel, Switzerland, survived the first year of 1,000 born, 1 821-1840 . . 879 children. " " 1841-1850 . . 830 " " I 860-1 86 5 . . 802 " I 866-1 870 . . 783 Marc d'Espine shows the expectation of life for Geneva to have been as follows : 1814-1836 47.29 years. 1838-1845 43.62 " In Wurtemberg lived, after the first year, of 1,000 born, 1 846-1 8 56 . . 697 children. " 1858-1866 . . 646 " 1 866-1 868 . . 640 20 Rate of Mortality. In Muhlhausen lived, after the first year, of 1,000 born, 1 830-1842 . . 745 children. " 1860-1868 . . 670 In France lived, after the first year, of 1,000 born, 1840-1851 . . 834 children. " 1851-1860 . . 826 Neison shows in England an increased mortality, notwithstanding all sanitary improvements. It has been as follows : 1838-1844. I 1845-1854. For males, 2.27 per ct. pop. For males, 2.364 per ct. pop. " females, 2.104 per ct. pop. I " females, 2.209 P^r ct. pop. This shows an increase of mortality of 4. 141 per cent, in males, and 4.8 per cent, in the female por- tion of the population. W. R. Gray, in a paper published in the Statisti- cal Journal of 1842, says that the rate of mortality has increased in England since 1820 10 per cent, and probably 12.50 per cent. Mr. S. Shattuck, in a paper on the vital statistics of Boston, says : " The average value of life is greater now than during the last century, but not as great as it was twenty years ago. It was at its maximum from 1811-1820, and since that time it has somewhat decreased." He also says: *' It is a melancholy fact, and one which should arrest the attention of all, that 43 per cent., or nearly one- Rate of Mortality. 21 half, of all deaths which have taken place within the last nine years, are of persons under nine years of age ; and the proportional mortality at this age has been increasing." The average mortality of children under five years in 1 866-1 870 amounted in the city of New York to 50.6 per cent., and but 4.4 per cent, of all who died during the same years reached seventy years. Of 492,262 deaths in the United States in 1870, 7,986, or 1.6 per cent., were of old age, while 69,896 died of consumption alone. Fully a hun- dred thousand children die annually in this country beyond what is natural, and with them twice as many hearts are broken. But hearts do not count in this matter-of-fact world. The loss of labor during gestation, lactation and the sickness of the child, medical attendance and funeral expenses foot up at least to one hundred dollars in each case, and in the aggregate to ten millions per annum, to a class generally in such precarious circumstances as to be crushed by this additional burden ; and the fifty thousand adults, who die annually purely from degenerating causes, can we estimate them individually to be worth less than a thousand dol- lars? Or is the loss of the State in the citizen, or of the wealth of the country in the producer, and of the wife and the children in the husband and father, less than this paltry sum? This, then, is 22 Rate of Insanity. another loss of fifty millions per annum. But a hundred and fifty thousand avoidable deaths mean two millions of avoidable cases of sickness and their cost ; and, worse still, so much sickness means so much deterioration of the race, and multitudes of men, women and children decrepit in body and soul, fit inmates of all sorts of asylums and candi- dates for early graves — the last of which is not the worst for them. But one glance more at the most degenerate. Among the most destitute at Manchester, of 21,000 children 20,700 die before they reach five years. In Lille, in France, 94 per cent, of the same sort of children die before this age. In very deterio- rating trades, of 1,000 born, but 15 reach the age of fifty. Without entering upon details and causes beyond the proper limit of our inquiry, we have established the fact of a rising death rate, which proves a degeneracy Education must protect us against, and this Race Education or Hereditary Culture only, and not school pedantry, can ac- complish. RATE OF INSANITY. The daily increasing rate of insanity is another symptom of human deterioration. Maudsley says : " In the hard struggle for exist- ence, men of inherited weakness, or some other debility, break down in madness. Overcrowding Rate of Insanity. 23 deteriorates health, favors scrofula, phthisis, and faulty nutrition, all of which open the way to in- sanity ; and whatever deteriorates mental or bodily health may lead to insanity in the next generation." Galton says : " Social agencies are unsuspectedly working toward the degeneration of humanity, and it is a duty we owe humanity to study this power and to combat it to the advantage of the future inhabitants of the earth." Griesinger, a great authority in Germany on in- sanity, decidedly believes in its increasing rate. He says : " Misery and privation are its chief causes. Bad nourishment, hunger, cold, fatigue and over-exertion, which of necessity accompany misery, are important physical causes of insanity, and, hence, of race deterioration. Typhus, inter- mittent fever, cholera, pneumonia, acute rheuma- tism, tubercular, constitutional diseases, and anae- mic states — all scourges of the poor — induce insan- ity. The monotonous and hopeless condition of many factory hands, depriving them of all interest in a higher life, is favorable to dementia." Such are the opinions of the leading minds of Europe on the spreading causes of insanity. We shall now prove the terrible fact of an actual race deterioration by statistics, which, though suf- ficient to convince the earnest inquirer, do not begin to display all the facts of the case. 24 Rate of Insanity. Making every allowance, the following table of the number of lunatics and idiots in England and Wales and of their annual admissions, shows that the increase of want, worry, over-work, crowding, drunkenness, etc., have their effects on the mental condition of the people : Years, Insane and Idiots. Admis- sions. Years. Insane and Idiots. Admis- sions, 1859.. ...36,762 9.310 1868.. ... 5 1 ,000 11,213 i860.. ...38-058 9,512 1869. . ...53.177 11,194 1861.. • • • 39.647 9.329 1870. . ...54,713 11,620 1862.. ...41.129 9.078 187I.. ...56,755 12,573 1863.. ...43,118 8,914 1872.. . . . 58,640 12,176 1864. . .-. 44.795 9.473 1873.. . . .60,296 12,773 1865.. ...45.950 10,424 1874.. . . .62,027 13,229 1866.. ...47.648 10,051 1875.. • .•63.793 14.317 1867.. . . . 49,086 10,631 1876.. . . .64,916 14,386 The statements of Dr. Simon, the medical offi- cer of the British Government, Maudsley, and Dr. Robertson, lead all to the same conclusion. In Ireland, were in 1844 10,855 insane. 1863 16,256 " In France insanity has most fearfully increased during the last ten years, though there were already in 1866, 90,684 insane and idiots, including those in private institutions. The following table is taken from the Report of the Inspector-General of the Insane, and takes only notice of the poor insane in public asylums : Rate of Insanity. 25 January i, 1835, m the asy lums . . 10,529 insane 1840, « . 13.243 " 1845, 1850, « . 17,089 " . 20,061 " 1855. « . 24,869 " i860. " . 28,761 « u 1S69, " " . 38,545 " Belgium had in its asyl urns in 1852 1856 i860 4,054 insane. 4,278 4.832 1864 . . • • • . 5,441 " In the Netherlands there were in the asylums in January i, 1844 837 insane. 1850 1,187 " 1856 1,828 " 1862 2,317 " 1868 3,179 " Norwegia had in 1835 .... I insane in 334 population. 1845 .... "309 1855 .... " 239 In the Rhenish provinces of Prussia the ratio of the insane to the population was in 1828 ... I insane in 1,027 population. 1856 ... " 666 " In Nassau the ratio of the insane to the popula- tion was in 1840 .... I insane in 607 population, 1858 .... " 318 2 26 Rate of Insanity. In Wurtemberg insanity has increased since 1832 76.3 per cent., while the population has increased 13.5 per cent. Baden shows in 1848 1851 1854 1857 i860 1862 100 msane. 158 187 231 255 306 The official reports of Berlin show an increase of cases of mental aberration or melancholia in 1864 275 cases. 1865 337 " 1866 377 " Massachusetts had in 1870 in a population of 1,457,351, 3,194 insane. Dr. Jarvis shows in the Fifth Annual Health Report an annual increase of fresh cases. In 1867 . . I for every 1,546 population. 1868 . " 1,486 1869 . !• 1.533 1870 . «< 1,350 1871 . M 1.389 1872 . , . " 1,357 The intensity of this disease of degeneracy has equally increased, so that at Bicetre, among 100 insane were afflicted with general paralysis, the very worst form and the most incurable, in Rate of Insanity. 27 1828-1829 peases. 1832-1833 16 " 1836-1837 19 " 1840-1841 25 " 1844-1845 27 " 1848-1849 34 " A glance at the following figures will show the disproportionate increase of the insane in the Uni- ted States. In 54 asylums were in 1839 . . 1,329 insane, with 961 annual new cases. 1849 . . 7,029 " " 2,961 " " 1859 . . 13,696 " " 5,342 " 1869 . . 22,549 " " 8,769 " " The State of New York had in its various insti- tutions in* 1870 4.761 insane. 1871 5.073 " 1873 6,003 " 1874 6,279 " What a commentary these increasing ratios of insanity form to Galton, when he says : " Our race is overweighed and likely to be drudged into de- generacy by demands that exceed its powers. With the deterioration of the condition of the masses, their organizations and functions, there will be plenty of idiots, but very few great men ; and, hence, under the miserable conditions in which the masses of the people live, the general standard of mind is but little above the grade of trained idiocy." 28 Rate of Insanity. The eager pursuit of wealth, says an eminent writer, as well as the dread of poverty, have their ill effects. Men are excited, anxious, absorbed in the state of the market, petty gains, meanness and dishonesty, until their moral nature and character are sapped, and their nature deteriorated. Over- work, depression, exhaustion, want of culture, pov- erty, drunkenness, licentiousness, are all favorable to the development of insanity ; and the number of the insane is rising. The same author relates a number of cases of financial operators, whose specu- lative, selfish minds show their morbidity in the diseased minds of their children, who ^re either morally defunct or wholly insane. The increase of insanity has been for a century steady, large and universal in the ratio of the spread of our present civilization. Is this lesson not plain enough, when the uni- versally educated Scandinavians have 3.4 insane in 1,000 population; the cultivated Germans, 3 in 1,000; the less educated Romanic nations, i in 1,000; and the most barbarous Sclavonic races, 0.6 in 1,000; and, again, when the ratio of the insane to the population is larger in cities than in the country, and the professionally educated, who com- pose 5.04 per cent, of the population, yield 13.8 of all the insane? If, then, our civilization and Edu- cation are especially productive of human dctcrio- Crime. 29 ration and insanity, is it not reasonable to ask that Education should studiously avoid and oppose whatever degenerates mankind ? CRIME. Crime may have decreased numerically but it has deepened in quality, and has become a low, permanent type of humanity. The crime of former times was rude force cropping out under other in- fluences as stern virtue, and needed but the restraint of force. The crime of to-day is disease and insan- ity, and cries for help. Sporadic crime is individ- ual, habitual crime is social ; for society engenders it by deteriorating humanity, though it denies the paternity and evades the responsibility. An En- glish judge says, insanity and criminality are con- vertible terms. Plato and Aristotle held crime and insanity akin, and so do Pinel, Esquirol and Prichard in our own day. Morel says, we have hidden in us the germs of the fatal disposition of which we are the victims. But our position that the criminal class is evidence of a deep-seated social deterioration, calls for more than a mere incidental verification. We shall, there- fore, sustain it by the observations of Bruce Thomp- son, than whom none has brought greater expe- rience and thoroughness to the treatment of this question. " Intimate and daily experience," says 30 Crime. he, " have led me to the conviction, that in by far the greater proportion of offences, crime is heredi- tary, which tendency is in most cases associated with bodily defect, such as spinal deformities, stam- mering or other imperfect organizations of speech, club-foot, cleft palate, hare-lip, deafness, congenital blindness, paralysis, epilepsy and scrofula." *' The criminal class," says this great officer and observer, " has a stupid, sullen look, the complexion is bad, the heads and outlines are harsh, clumsy, and angular ; the women are positively ugly in form, feature and action. The frequency of tuber- cular diseases among habitual criminals is proof of a low type and a deteriorated system. Most of them die before the meridian of life is reached, and hardly any see old age. The post-mortem ex- aminations show a series of morbid appearances very remarkable ; almost every vital organ of the body being more or less diseased ; few dying of one disease, but generally worn out by a complete degeneration of all the vital organs. Everything indicates a deteriorated hereditary organization." The low state of intellect among criminals shows them degenerate. One-third of the juvenile crimi- nals are imbeciles. According to the reports of the English common prisons, one in every twenty- five of the males is weak-minded, insane, or epilep- tic. Of six thousand prisoners in Scotland, 12 per Crime. 3 1 cent, are mentally weak, imbeciles, suicides, epilep- tics, besides the fully insane. According to the official report of the Millbank Prison, of 943 con- victs, 218 were weak-minded, 34 insane, besides many epileptics. One in 27 was insane, and the great majority had some inherited physical infirm- ity or defect of intellect. Out of 6,273 prison population in Scotland, fully i per cent, were epi- leptic, and, of course, enfeebled in mind and irrita- ble in temper. Morel shows that crime and insan- ity lapse into each other congenitally. Bruce Thompson further shows by the number- less recommittals returned to prison, not three, four or five, but thirty, forty and fifty times, by the utter remorselessness, grossest habitual lying, and total want of all self-respect, that professional crimi- nals are hopeless imbeciles and hardly amenable to moral treatment. What else is this but a degraded organization ? The criminal classes are especially liable to brain diseases and insanity, and many of the great crimi- nals died in lunatic asylums ; and madness among criminals in prison is extremely frequent. In Scot- land, of 2,690 criminals, 57 are insane, or i in 47 of the criminal population, while of the whole popula- tion, I in 432 is the common proportion. In England, during 1860-1868, 1,244 criminals were detained as insane. In 1 857-1 867, of 664 32 Crime. homicides, io8 were declared by the courts of England as insane. Among the habitual female criminals, i in 30 is the proportion of the insane to the sane. Frederic Hill says : " Crime often proceeds from father to son in a long line of succession." Prof. Laycock says : " The line of hereditary transmission of mental and moral qualities is as inexorable in these moral imbeciles as in other men, and adds to the imbecile, vicious and degraded part of the population." Dr. William Guy, upon a thorough research of the judicial record of the Millbank Prison during a period of thirty years, shows that of 5,598 criminals convicted of rape, arson, horse and cattle stealing, burglary, homicidal attacks or violence, and fraudu- lent offences, 232 were insane, weak-minded, and epileptic ; 657 were scrofulous or lung and heart diseased; 1,434 were deformed or defective, and 3,399 were sound. The same great authority says : " We have at this moment at the Millbank Prison 200 convicts, who would be much more in their place at an in- sane asylum." The late Governor of the Chatham Convict Prison declared : " I have known as many as 50 per cent, and more of the inmates of an Irish convict prison mentally affected." Crime. 33 E. Gordon, the late Lord Advocate of Scotland-, testifies to the great weakness of intellect among those placed at the bar of justice. Dr. Wilson, in a paper read before the British Association, in 1869, reported that from the exami- nation of 460 heads of criminals, and from observa- tions he had made, he had no doubt that cranial deficiency, associated with a real physical deterio- ration, is the cause of crime, and that 40 per cent, of all convicts are invalids more or less, and that the percentage is largely increased in the class of professional thieves. Dr. Campbell found in 50 prisoners, after death, the weight of the brain 2 lbs. and H/^ oz., while the average weight of the brain in other men is over 3 lbs. The average height of 6,022 male pris- oners, who passed through the Worcester Prison, was found two inches less than the average height of Englishmen, and their weight was lighter in proportion. The physical aspects of convicts have become almost proverbial. Bullet heads, low brows, pro- jecting cars, weasel eyes, and other bodily indica- tions of deficiency, are but too general among them. In some of the most ferocious criminals there have repeatedly been discovered after death morbid conditions of the brain or other organs, as tumors, cancers, ulcers, or irritating secretions, 34 Crime. which fully accounted for mental or moral defi- ciencies and for murders committed. Dr. Wines cites many cases of congenitally weak minds, idiots and insane, which came under his notice among our own criminals. Miss Dix has in two years traced twenty-six persons convicted for crime in the Eastern Peni- tentiary of Pennsylvania, who were insane. Every month, she says, men are convicted and sentenced as if they were responsible, when, in fact, they were not. Among 233 convicts, whose personal relations have been carefully studied under the auspices of our eminent sanitarian and prison reformer, Dr. Harris, 54 were found belonging to families in which insanity, epilepsy and other disorders of the nervous system are reported. Eighty -three per cent, belonged to a criminal, pauper or inebri- ate stock, and were, therefore, hereditary or congen- itally affected ; and, hence, nearly 'j6 per cent, of their number proved habitual criminals. Dr. Har- ris states, also, that the general observation in the counties of our State goes to prove that crime, pauperism and insanity revert into each otiicr con- genitally, so that disease or insanity in the parent produces crime or pauperism in the offspring, or vice versa, crime or pauperism in the parent pro- duces disease or insanity in the offspring. Crhne. 35 The progress of culture and civilization has cer- tainly lessened the crime of unrestrained passion and rudeness ; but has the criminal class, until quite of late, been reached ? In England and Wales were committed in 1805 4,605 individuals. 1815 7,818 1825 14,437 1835 20,731 1845 24,033 According to Potter, crime has increased in En- gland and Wales since the beginning of this cen- tury to 1850, to five times; in Ireland, from 1805 to 1849, to twelve times; and in Scotland, since 181 5 to 1849, ^^ seven times. While the popula- tion has increased 79 per cent., crime has risen 482 per cent. In France were committed for common offenses in 1826-1830 .... 178,021 individuals. 1831-1835 .... 203,207 1841-1845 .... 195,542 " 1846-1850 .... 221,414 " Incendiarism has in 1 826-1 865 increased in France over 200 per cent. In London, the proportion of incendiarism to buildings was : 1845 I in 2,990, 1850 I in 2,673, 1855 I in 2,585, 36 Crime. 1861 I in 2,370, 1862 I in 2,180, 1863 I in 2,064, 1864 I in 1,980, 1865 I in 1,900. In Holland, according to Guringar, crime has in the last years increased 72 per cent., and the pris- oners 34 per cent. Norwegia had in 181 5, 480 criminals, and in 1845, 1,782 ! And what progress have we made in the United States in lessening the number of the great and habitual criminals who crowd our State prisons ? In 1850 the entire population was 19,553,668, and the inmates of our State prisons numbered 5*646. In i860 the population was 26,922,537, and the criminals in the State prisons numbered 19,086; and at the last census, in 1870, the population of the United States amounted to 33,589,377, and the number of criminals was 32,901. We see here at a glance, that crime has increased beyond all proportion to population. Neither will it answer to lay it to the foreign element, the crim- inal rate of which has remained the same, or even lessened, while the native criminals have increased during 1 860-1 870, from 10,143 to 24,173. We have proven that the criminal class is a de- viation from the normal type of humanity, and is, therefore, an evidence of actual race deterioration. Statistics have shown us that no decided decrease Crime. 37 of crime has attended our late general progress of civilization ; and, in fact, the recommittals, espe- cially of juvenile criminals, the frequency of female criminality, suicides, infanticides, prostitution and illegitimate births, show all a deep-seated human deterioration. Of course, illegitimate births mean a rich harvest for the grave, the jail, and prostitu- tion, the latter of which avenges itself on society by insidious venereal deterioration, which inflicts upon its unborn victims blindness, idiocy, phthisis, scrofula and a most degenerate system in general. But we must forbear entering here upon this form of human deterioration though not to mention it would be a gross oversight. The causes of human deterioration are vast and many, but the right sort of Education may conquer them all. When the hero of Wagram, Austerlitz and Jena stood at the gates of Berlin, Fichte addressed to the German nation, in the midst of the thunder and storm which burst forth from the brazen throats of a thousand cannons, the potent word. Education, and the relative position of the French and Ger- mans to-day proves the wisdom of the patriot and philosopher. Like an ancient, renowned legislator, he thought Education was the sole function of the Government ; for, where the people are rightly ed- ucated, \var, prisons, courts, asylums of all sorts, 38 Blmdncss and Deaf -Mutism. poor-houses, hospitals and other institutions of the same kind cease to have an existence. BLINDNESS AND DEAF-MUTISM. BHndness and deaf-mutism are common, fearful, expensive and preventable. Europe has 500,- 000 blind, Asia 2,000,000 and the United States 25,000. What a growing misery and public ex- pense. Blindness, congenital in one in ten cases, and then the offspring of a deteriorated parentage, results in the main from causes accompanying misery. Scarlet fever, measles, smallpox, typhoid and other fevers, all preventable diseases, raging among the poor, give rise to this terrible visitation and great public burden ; and so does scrofula. Ophthalmia is another disease of poverty leading often to blind- ness. The strain upon the eyes of tailors, dress makers, needle makers, watch makers, blacksmiths and other operatives causes much blindness ; but lace making is the most fearful trade as far as blinding poor operatives is concerned. Deaf-mutes, Europe counts 250,000, and the Uni- ted States 20,000. That congenital deaf-mutism is a deterioration of the system is obvious from the fact that whilst in Europe i in 1400 is a deaf-mute, there are poor regions there in which i in 44, and even i in 20 of the entire population is a deaf-mute ! Of 644 deaf-mutes in Massachusetts, 350 arc con- Unfitness for Military Service. 39 genital and traceable to a deteriorated stock, whilst 304 are post-natal, of whom 112 are the result of scarlet fever, and the rest are the victims of other fevers, diseases and accidents peculiar to the tene- ments and condition of the poor. The blind, deaf-mute, as well as the idiot, are but chargeable to removable causes and conditions of our half civilization. Inherent weakness is the cause of many a form of degeneracy. Under differ- ent conditions the local or general congenital weak- ness leads to blindness, deaf-mutism, idiocy, or other morbid formation, still -birth, deformity, general weakness, or death in early infancy. UNFITNESS FOR MILITARY SERVICE. Michel Levy, the highest sanitary authority in France, cites the following facts as evidence of a general race deterioration : From 18 16 to 1840, of 7,321,609 recruits, 1,416,527. or nearly one-fifth, have been rejected for being below the requisite stature or on account of infirmities. In compar- ing the exempted prior to 18 16 with those of 1840, the latter are twice as numerous, though the stand- ard has been lowered from i metre 57 centimetres, to I metre 56 centimetres. There were rejected in 1852 . . 3.34 per cent, for deficient growth. 15.55 " " infirmities. 1853 • • 4-75 " " deficient growth. 21.03 " " foi" infirmities. 40 Unfitness for Military Service. The steady deterioration of the people necessi- tated a continual lowering of the military standard, as the following table will show : It was, 1 701 1.624 metres, 1803 1.598 " 1818 1.576 " " i860 1.560 " and to-day of every 325,000 young men who sur- vive their twenty-fifth year, 108,333 are rejected on account of low stature or infirmities. According to the statement of Dr. Mayer, the average of nine years shows 176 out of 1,000 con- scripts under the standard measure, and 399 unfit on account of bodily ailments. Berlin could not fur- nish its quota in men fit for service by 156 in 1856. If, on an average, 352 in 1,000 men of the most favorable age are rejected by the recruiting officer, what must be the condition of the people at large? Among 8,794,674 examined recruits of European countries between 1837 and 1856, 1,576,815, or 17.9 per cent., were found below the standard measure, and 3,097,016 sickly, crippled, feeble and otherwise unfit for military service. What a condition ! About 53.1 per cent, of men, at their best age, sickly or stunted in their growth. The official report of the canton of Zurich shows, for the agricultural districts, 29 in 1,000 young men disabled ; for the industrial, 35. Factory Population. 41 FACTORY POPULATION. The deterioration of the factory population in England is seen from the fact that, on an average, the measure of 1,000 factory boys aged 18 years, was 55.28 inches, of non-factory boys, 55.56 inches — a difference of .28 inches in favor of non-factory boys. The same official report shows 2,000 factory boys, aged 9-17 years, weighing 3 pounds less each than as many non-factory boys. Upon examination 51 farmers' boys, old 10 y., 9 m., measured in height 51 inches. 51 mining boys, of the same age, measured 47.3 inches. An official examination of the health of 350 fac- tory, and as many non-factory boys, showad of Factory. Non-factory. Bad health 73 2i Middle health .... 134 88 Good health 143 241 These examinations have been varied without any material change in the result. The following official list of the diseases of the factory and agricultural population of the canton Zurich, in Switzerland, is suggestive. In each 1,000 population were found : Factory. Agriculturists. Eye diseases 13 7 Injuries from accidents . . 14 7 Rheumatic diseases ... 13 9 42 Cofisumption. Factory. Agriculturists Lung diseases 37 10 Abdominal diseases ... 9 3 Scrofula and infirmity . . 1 1 5 Ulcers 8 3 * The deteriorating influence of the trades is only so fearful because they are divorced from science and Education, which alone can find the means of rendering them innoxious, and dispose the men engaged in them to be more on their guard. Workers in white lead, arsenic and phosphorous compounds, who deteriorate most fearfully in most factories, suffer hardly any where the employers are highly intelligent and conscientiously disposed, and • the government keeps a strict watch over the hygienic management of factories. Nothing calls louder for the association of sci- ence and Education with the trades, than the pres- ent outrageous poisoning of humanity throughout more or less all the factories of the land. CONSUMPTION. As consumption shows more degeneracy and de- teriorates humanity more fearfully than any — and we might almost say than all other diseases put together — we will just refer to its deteriorating influence in the trades divorced from science and Education upon the men engaged in them. In Berlin, the observation was made, that the whole Consumption. 43 population being- taken, of 1,000 deaths of men over 20 years, 344 are caused by tubercular consump- tion, while among mechanics, 497 die from this fearfully deteriorating disease. This observation is confirmed by the experience of Dr. Hannover, at Copenhagen, who found that upon 60 deaths from consumption among the people at large come 96 among the mechanics and laborers. According to the observations of Benoiston de Chateauneuf, among 43,010 hospital cases 18 to 48.4 of every 1,000 died from consumption, ac- cording to the nature of the different trades and the deteriorating influences, as dampness, danger- ous fumes, dust, etc., accompanying them. Lombard found that, while among men who live in perfectly healthy surroundings, 50 to 89 in a thousand die from consumption ; men working in the close air of factories, as they are managed to- day, die in 138 cases in 1,000; those working in dust of any sort, die in 137 to 152; and those ex- posed to the evaporations of ethereal acids, var- nishes, etc., die in 369 cases in 1,000 from con- sumption. In the always reliable statistics of Geneva, we find among men living under the best possible conditions the death rate from consumption in 44 Consnviptiofi. 1,000 deaths 50 Among the tailors 601 Machinists 497 Book binders, calico printers, painters, gilders, stone masons, type founders, and millers 483 Jewelers, watchmakers and day la- borers 460 Silk workers 333 Fifty in a thousand we may, then, call the nat- ural proportion of death from consumption to the deaths from all other causes. How loudly, then, do these high ratios of death from consumption call for bringing to bear science and Education upon these race-deteriorating trades, in many of which men grow gray before they live half their years. The dry-grinders die in the majority of cases before they reach thirty-six years ; so do the manufacturers of watches and others exposed to fine, hard dust, like cutters of crystals, stone cut- ters, etc. It is impossible to pass unnoticed this great cause of human deterioration ; but to state in full the disease, deformity, death, and even hereditary corruption of body and mind entailed by each of two hundred trades deprived of the safeguards and thoughtful precaution of science, the school and Education, upon the producers of the wealth of the country, would fill many volumes. Scrofula. 45 SCROFULA. The tendency of the masses toward degeneracy Is obvious from the character and spread of scrofula — ■ significantly called by some the people's malady — a constitutional, hereditary and deteriorating disease common among the poor. Mr. Phillips, the greatest authority in this field of inquiry, says that in the cottages of the poor we find the child with a scrof- ulous constitution, often pallid, puffy, insensible, listless ; and, if it be not altogether deprived of force and energy, what remains is soon wasted by taxing it beyond its force. In an extraordinary experience extending to the examination of 133,721 children, 24.5 per cent, presented a number of scrofulous symptoms ; in 3.5 per cent, the disease was so marked as to be obvi- ous to the eye. Among 95,586 recruits, 800, or i in 1 19, were rejected on account of scrofulous marks. At the examination of 660 persons, between 10 and 18 years, at the house of correction, 95 showed symptoms of scrofula. Mr. Phillips sums up his wonderful experience as follows : 13^ per cent, of the children of the poor show apparent scars ; 3 per cent, show at a glance en- larged glands ; 24^ per cent, show these enlarged glands under close examination ; 8 per cent, of the 46 Scrofula. adult poor show the same scrofulous symptoms; 3 per cent, of the population are under treatment for scrofula. In some districts Mr. Phillips found only 11 per cent, of the children of the poor scrofulous, and in other districts 72 per cent, were thus affected. Barier found, upon examination of 166 strong children, 21 tuberculous, or i in 8 ; 1 14 moderate children, 27 tuberculous, or i in 4; 99 feeble chil- dren, 49 tuberculous, or i in 2. How closely want and misery in the parents and children are allied with scrofula, is obvious from the fact, that we find affected with this disease : 4 to 5 per cent, of all the sick in hospitals ; 40 to 50 per cent, of foundlings ; 50 to 60 per cent, of children received into orphan asylums. When we consider that insufficient or improper food, dark, damp and unventilated apartments, in- sufficient clothing, etc., engender scrofula, it be- comes plain that, with the increase of poverty, scrofula must increase; and, as this disease is of a tubercular nature and akin to consumption — into which it reverts hereditary — the impoverished masses must of necessity degenerate. Scrofula, says a noted American author, that once was a rarity among us, has of late become quite common. Changes of Mortality Rates. 47 CHANGES OF MORTALITY RATES. Many causes contributed to improve the chances of Hfe from the sixteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century, as the growth of science, the spread of intelligence, the general prosperity springing up with the small trades, which brought with it improved dwellings, food, clothing, etc., the disappearance of periodical famines, the cessation of former ravages from smallpox through Jenner's great discovery ; and, finally, another cause of the apparent great reduction in the old mortality rates, is to be found in the prudentially reduced modern birth rate, caused by later marriages, as the mortal- ity is always greatest among infants. But with the large industries, the former master has become again poor and dependent ; large cities sprang up with all the unwholesome elements of thick populations, crowded tenements with their vices, drunkenness, worst of all, alcoholism, illegiti- mate births, the trade diseases of modern factories, and all contributed to swell of late the list of mortality. The ravages of our largely increased factory towns make up for the former victims from the smallpox, and our periodical business stagna- tions are as calamitous to the working people as former famines were. There is none but will agree that there are ele- 48 General Deterioration. ments in our civilization tending toward the deterio- ration of mankind which must be combated ; our position, therefore, cannot but be tenable that our Education must strive to preserve the race, which it can only by being physiological, scientific and • industrial — making us healthy, intelligent and pros- perous. GENERAL DETERIORATION. A picture of France of but a few years ago may serve us as an illustration of our civilization, which strives for perfection in art and literature, for accu- mulation of wealth and everything else, save the one thing needful — the amelioration of mankind. France, with a population of 35,783,170, had Blind One-eyed .... Deaf-mutes . . . Insane Goiter and hunchbacks Deformed spinal column Loss of one or both arms " " " legs Club foot Total . 37,662, 75.063, 29,512, 44.970, 42,383» 44,619, 9.077, 11,301, 22,547, 317.134. This picture of misery is far from being com- plete. The charity murder of tens of thousands of foundlings, the massacre of factory hands and mi- ners, a fearful infant mortality, paupers, criminals, Pauperism. 49 prostitutes, infanticrdes and suicides, should all be added as evidence that our pretentious age under- stands but little of the art how to prevent the de- terioration of mankind. What a picture the whole of Europe presents of what we call in this age civilization, with its 300,- 000 deaf-mutes, 500,000 blind, as many insane and idiotic, and as large a criminal class ! ! PAUPERISM. Pauperism, like insanity, does not exist in the natural state of man. Under the sweet influences of the skies, he is in the woods as quick and nimble as the bird or deer he pursues. Only in the at- mosphere, thick with moral and physical poison of crowded cities, he degenerates into a pauper, robbed of all that elasticity and high potency by which man masters every resistance and subjects everything to his will. Pauperism being the parent as well as the offspring of human deterioration, forms such an entanglement of causes and effects as to render it difficult to hunt it down. Our poor- houses reveal at a glance the genesis of pauperism, for there we find the congenitally blind, deaf and mute, the insane, the idiotic, the epileptic, the de- formed, the inebriate as well as the pauper ; and they are not only inmates of the same building, 3 50 • Pauperism. but are members of the same family, united by all the ties of consanguinity. This idiot is that pau- per's nephew ; this deaf-mute is his own child ; that inebriate is his brother; and that mount in view covers the bones of an old inmate, who found his last resting place in the pauper's field forty-five years ago — his uncle ; what are we to conclude from all this but that the pauper is the child of a de- generate blood and family? We do not mean to deny that poverty, with its harassing care, misery, squalor, crowded tenements and poor fare, with everything adverse to human health and development, is the generating cause of a deterioration that, deepening still more, settles in that apathetic state of the pauper, which is the beginning of a line of deformities ending in com- plete extinction. If a pauper meant a man without money, we should not care about him. If it meant a man without pleasure, we would not care. If it meant a man of sorrow and much trouble, we might, per- haps, not care. But it means more than this, it means a man robbed of his very manhood ; and even more than this, he is corruption and the de- formity of everything that is manly ; he is a dis- seminating mass of crime, insanity and disease ; an infernal brood springing up from him and poi- soning all around him ; an avenging Nemesis get- Pauperism. 5 ^ ting even with society that mocked a brother in his deep fall and degradation. Pauperism is, as a rule, attended by ansemic states of the blood, which make continuous exer- tion impossible, and dispose the poor to scrofula, subject them to a most frightful rate of infant mortality as also to a very high figure of adult death rate ; and, during epidemics — as the black death, the cholera or typhus — the degenerate poor are the first and often the only sufferers, as the power of resistance is in these deteriorated men reduced to almost nothing. In 1862, among the 963,200 destitute or paupers of England and Wales, were 30,905 insane, which makes i in 31.8. If we consider that these insane are adults of from 20 to 45 years of age, which form but one-fifth of the whole population, we will find that one of six adults among the destitute and congenitally poor is insane. And in this frightful amount of mental disease 10,311 idiots belonging to the same destitute poor of England and Wales are not included. And this fearful rate of insanity was gradually rising from 1852 to 1869, until the ratio of the insane to the sane amounted, among the paupers of England and Wales, to i in 25, and in the metropolitan district to nearly i in 20. In the United States it is not much better. In 1854 the legislature of Massachusetts appointed a 52 Pauperism. commission on insanity. They reported : " We find the pauper class furnishes in the ratio of its number sixty-four times as many insane as the other classes." Dr. Wm. Guy says, frequent as insanity is among criminals, it is still more so among paupers. Epilepsy, that fearful malady, affecting and en- feebling the mind more than any other, is getting most common among the poor. Dr. Nattuck, phy- sician to the Bradford infirmary, has searched the register of patients for more than thirty years — from 1 825-1 859 — and found the proportion of this malady to other diseases as follows : 1825-1835 15 in 1,000, 1835-1845 18 in 1,000, 1845-1855 24 in 1,000, 1855-1859 34 in 1,000. Balbi observed the same increase of epilepsy among the poor of Vienna and Milan. These facts, together with the observation of the hereditary nature of pauperism — which congenitaily reverts into insanity, disease or crime — leave no doubt but that pauperism is one of the worst forms of race deterioration, and that the paralysis of the human will and its energies is but the result of a fearful dissolution in progress. But, as we have already mentioned, human deterioration is also to a large extent the result of pauperism. Pauperism. . 53 Dr. Prichard, the famous author of the " Physical History of Man," says : " The conflict in England in the seventeenth century drove many of the na- tives to the mountains of Shgo and Mayo. Here they have been almost ever since exposed to the worst effects of hunger and ignorance — the two great brutalizers of the human race — gradually producing in their case open, projecting mouths, with prominent teeth and exposed gums ; their advancing cheek bones and depressed noses bear barbarism in their very front. Five feet, two inches, on an average, pot-bellied, bow-legged, abortively featured, these spectres of a people that were once well-grown, able-bodied and comely, stalk abroad diminutive and deformed, while they are specimens of human beauty and vigor in other parts of the country where they have never been subjected to the same causes of physical degeneration. Such are the deteriorating effects of misery ! " Is the pauper condition of the world not a re- proach to the nations, and will it not soon involve their very existence ? To say, simply, pauperism forms in Germany, France and England respect- ively, 3, 4 and 5 per cent, of the population, or that in these countries 30,000, 40,000 and 50,000 of each million population are paupers, gives no conception of the existing evil. We appreciate more truly the situation when we consider that at 54 Pauperism. the slightest rise of breadstuffs or financial disturb- ance, this army of paupers swells to double and triple its usual proportion. So was in 1847 every tenth man in England and every eighth man in London a pauper. In 1852 every thirteenth man in Paris, every seventh man in Marseilles, and even double as many in Lille, in France, were paupers. In 1855, every twelfth man in Italy, every sixth in Belgium, and nearly twice as many in Flanders were paupers. In 1847, 183,447 individuals were assisted by the public authorities of Paris, and this number has gradually risen to 237,893 in 1866. But how many hearts agonized in secret, and would not appeal to a public board of charities ? The following statement of Jules Simon gives us a full insight into the extent of public misery. He takes 1,700 francs to be the lowest possible sum a working-man can subsist upon a year \vith a family of two children. He further states that actually of 500,000 work-people of Paris earn per annum 35,000 1,600 francs each. 60,000 1,400 " 44,000 1,150 " 160.000 - 450 " The remaining make even less. But, then, how do workmen fare with five, six and sevcMi children on such scanty incomes ? And the condition of this Pauperism. 55 half million may fairly be taken as the average state of the masses. But we are permitted to approach still nearer the problem of the actual condition of the people. In 1874 the tax roll in Prussia proved that 58.5 per cent, of the population earned individually less than $100 per annum, and 34.1 per cent, less than $150. Here, then, we have more than nine out of every ten in the proud Empire of Bismarck struggling with poverty ; and, in fact, less than i per cent, has an income of $1,500, while the great wealth of the country is held by less than one-tenth of i per cent, of the nation. The tax roll of England betrays the same sad condition of the people there. In 1865, of a popu- lation of 24,127,013, only 332,431 were taxed on incomes, while the rest of the nation struggled with poverty, their incomes falling below three hundred dollars per annum. In Belgium, in 1856, of 908,000 families, lived Upon alms 226,000 families. In utter misery .... 220,000 " In poverty 273,000 " In comfort 89,630 " Of 100 Belgians, 49 live in utter destitution ; 42 live very poorly ; 9 live in comfort. That corrup- tion and mortality are in proportion hardly needs being told ; 44 per cent, of the children are illegiti- 56 Pauperism. mate, and i in every 150 population is a prosti- tute. The fact is, we have volumes upon volumes writ- ten by the conservative Le Play, Ducpetiaux, De Gerando and the like authorities, full of figures like Napier's tables of logarithms, about the wages of every trade for the last hundred years ; the price of bread, meal, cheese, meat, beans, onions, soap, rent, articles of furniture, clothing, and what not, the weight in grains of carbonaceous and nitro- genous food indispensable for the support of a man, woman or child at the different seasons of the year. Governments are turning pale at the ominous results of these accounts, all tending to establish in a variety of ways how the people are wasting away. The Blue Books of the English government, in a lengthy and learned Report, officially advise the people of her British Majesty not to indulge in daily evacuations of the bowels, which are promo- tive of too vigorous a digestion. Two or three a week will do for people in straitened circum- stances Do not the very heavens blush at such misery and insults? Poor humanity that calls for such official dissertations, and such royal philanthropy. Calamitous as 40,000 to 50,000 paupers in the million are, the most desponding fact is the hope- Pauperism. 57 less struggle of the whole million, save fifty or a hundred thousand who are well off. With the pau- per — the degraded and ruined pauper — pity comes too late, he does not care for it, nor can he be bettered ; those who have not yet given up the struggle against the stream, and are still to be saved, should most excite our sympathy. What a mill that does such grinding, turning out to the million fifty thousand paupers of whom a couple of thousands go down in lunacy, and all end in total human brutalization, filling the world with bastards, prostitutes and sneaks, of whom England and Wales alone count 127,839. The following table proves the deteriorating power of pauperism. Caspar showed that there are left of 1,000 born : A mong the A mong the favored. poor. 10 years after birth . . . 943 598 25 " . 852 553 45 " . 624 396 55 " . 464 283 65 " . 318 172 85 " . 29 9 90 " • 15 4 Wherever, says a very able writer on medical statistics, pauperism with its want and misery pre- v^ails, there the mother is more likely to die in labor ; there still-births will be more frequent ; there the deaths during infancy will be more numerous ; there epidemics will rage with more violence ; there 58 Remedies. the recoveries from sickness will be fewer, and death will usually happen at an earlier period of life. All Education is thrown away on men in this condition, {ox you cannot engraft virtue on pJiysical misery. The advocates of the old n^ginie claim for slavery that pauperism did not exist under it. But are we not to bear the sight of a brother with a square meal and a decent bed and shelter to rest him from the fatigue of an honest day's work without we own him like a sheep, a horse or a cow? The rates of mortality of poor-houses are often higher than those of prisons, insane asylums and even than those of hospitals. Is this not proof enough that pauperism is one of the worst phases of race deterioration ? That the county houses, in which the poor are collected, hardly harbor a man, woman or child with a sound limb, organ or brain, establishes only our proposition, that pauperism is evidence of a deteriorating humanity. REMEDIES. This tide of human corruption, wrong and infamy has ceased to be a subject for the consideration of curious students ; the despairing millions are put- ting their hands to it ; the very names of their societies and organizations and public organs all over the world, fill volumes. To prevent a war more bloody and desolating tliaii the world has Remedies. 59 yet seen, what is proposed ? Communism, public charity or co-operation. Communism, destructive of Hberty and individ- uaHty, is complete despotism. Besides, by destroy- ing individual motives and responsibility, it de- creases productiveness and increases poverty, want and misery. Public charities were nowhere organized on so great a scale as in England, which raised a poor tax equal to the entire revenue of a kingdom, and they failed ; for they are but an ill-concealed com- munism, and share in the same improvidence. But even co-operative societies would bring but little help, as with the present remorseless competition, societies would wage the same ruinous war against one another as now individuals do. The world of the future is not to be a monster soup kitchen. The conception is poor, paltry and impossible. We want a more varied and higher productive power and moral energy. The world is becoming a school house, training the race for more efficient and more perfect work. Forty years ago the total value of the school property of the State of Massachusetts was half a million ; to-day it is seventeen and a half millions. The school prop- erty of the State of New York amounts to thirty millions. This shows the direction we are inarch- ing in. 6o Remedies. Pauperism is want of energy, power, health and strength. We must, therefore, introduce into our system of Education the element of physical work to train the rising generation to labor and exertion. Better we combine work with Education, than build poor-houses and penitentiaries, and introduce work at that late stage. When labor and intelligent reflection accompany each other in childhood and youth they will remain united through life, and the social problem will be solved. The productiveness of labor will increase then in more than one way ; the laborer will lessen his expensive and injurious indulgences, while he will increase his substantial comforts and nobler pleasures, which add to his power and efficiency. Nothing but Race Education, training all classes — capitalists as well as laborers — for accomplishing together the great work of saving, elevating and preserving the race, can deliver us from the violent revolution that threateningly overhangs the social sky. Our present school system breaks a boy from any inclination he may have had for physical labor ; it fills the country with seekers for clerkships and office hunters of all sorts ; and the laboring people feel that the children who are to take up their work arc not benefited by such schools. Through union with labor the school becomes the institution of Remedies. 6i the people, and renders Education common and universal, as the lovers of the race ever wished to see it, and solves every problem, as an active and intelligent people will ever be able to cope with the difficulties of their situation. Or does any one pretend that pauperism offers no problem for solu- tion this side of the Atlantic ? Let us, then, just glance at the Empire State, and notice the progress of pauperism, which in- cludes every other private as well as public vice and misfortune, and we will find its rate rising from year to year. County Poor-house Population, City Poor-house Population. Total. 1871 . . 18,933 39,286 58,219, 1873 . . 20,193 41.737 61,930, 1874 . . 26,094 43.719 69,813. But the army of the poor that had to be relieved by the board of charities was much larger than the one supplied inside the poor-house, and amounted in 1874 to 122,391, which, added to the first, gives 192,204 individuals provided for by the public chari- ties. But to form a correct idea of the deterioration, that is partly the cause and partly the effect of pauperism, let us look at the 18,933 paupers inside the poor-houses of the State of New York in 1871, and the causes which brought them there : 62 Education and Race Preservation. Drunkenness 4.846, Debauchery 616, Idleness 873, Vag-rancy ... 1,023, Lunacy 1,652, Idiocy 416, Blindness 204, Deaf-mutisni 70, Sickness 1,327, Lameness 730, Decrepitude 427, Old age 942, Indigency 1,735, Orphanage 249, Bastardy 311, Not ascertained 3,058. What a system of Education, life and philosophy the fruitage of which is such a pandemonium com- pounded of hundreds of poor-houses, each teem- ing with prostitutes, bastards, drunkards, insane, idiots, epileptics, orphans, lame, sick, blind, deaf- mutes ; and yet this queer medley of vice, misery and corruption is but a sharply drawn picture of the outside world. EDUCATION AND RACE PRESERVATION. We must organize schools which will make poor- houses, penitentiaries, insane asylums and the like institutions unnecessary. A school which cannot do this has no right to exist, and it will most as- suredly fail to bring about such a consummation, if it docs not strive for it directly, studiously and Education and Race Preservation. 63 intelligently. Or has Education no higher aim than geography and grammar, and does it take no interest in the weal or woe of man, and in the calamities and misfortunes of life which develop from habits contracted in early childhood ? Race Education must lay a new and deep foun- dation in the heart, head and hands of the people. It must discard shams and illusions, restrain our selfishness, and set us to work for one another. It must stop our crime-creating society in its work of scattering broadcast the seeds of death and dis- ease, of raising one crop after another of half a million of defectives and of undermining the health of all, as none can be all well in an atmosphere which breeds such a distemper. Necessity will force us at last to give heed to these lessons. The capital absorbed in the State of New York in insane, blind and deaf-mute asylums, in poor- houses, houses for orphans and hospitals, amounts to $50,000,000, and the yearly outlay on these in- stitutions is fully $10,000,000. Correctional insti- tutions, criminal courts and penitentiaries, police force, etc., are not included in this sum. And as we cannot long continue the present barbar- ous fashion of lumping together all sorts of defect- ives in these sinks of wretchedness and misery we call poor-houses, and will have soon to put the blind, the deaf-mutes, the insane the idiot, the re- 64 Education and Race Preservation. spectable but indigent old, and, finally, the chil- dren, into institutions their condition calls for, we shall have to double the sum presently expended upon them. To save the State from these bur- dens we must save humanity, and the prevention of human degeneracy must become the great aim of public Education. Education is the natural function of parental aid extended to the undeveloped young for its pres- ervation ; and while among animals it stops at the individual, among men it takes in the race, the pres- ervation of which is the only natural and sensible function of Education. Our educators study to reduce the statistical fig- ures of illiteracy, but look upon those of insanity, the blind, the deaf-mutes and the idiots as God- appointed social quantities. The high figures of these miseries are so constant, because our barbar- ity is ever the same, and we make no attempt at lessening them. Noble men have plead for the bettering of the condition of the insane, the idiot, the blind and the deaf-mute ; but what is wanted is an earnest effort for the prevention of these miseries, which are all the offspring of a constitution weakened by wretched living and other unhygienic conditions, under which mostly the poor degenerate. In pleading for the tens of thousands of insane, Degenerated Tribes. 65 idiotic, blind, deaf and dumb we plead for a hundred times as many outside the asylums ; for nature tol- erates no quick transitions, and we differ all but in degree from one another ; and for every one who is all insane, idiotic or criminal, hundreds are partially so, and that just in proportion to their coming under the control of the same wide-spread causes. To prevent human deterioration means to strengthen and purify the whole nation, and to defer its extinction a thousand years. And is such an aim unworthy of our schools ? DEGENERATED TRIBES. Degeneracy, surrounding us on all sides, appears to us as the normal condition of mankind, which is not apt to lead to the disintegration of the race and the nation. But a little reflection and obser- vation may convince us that the process of deterio- ration, though working by imperceptible degrees, brings about in the end fearful results. The earth is full of kindred tribes, of which some are mean in body and spirit, brutal, lazy and stupid, by reason of the barren territory they occupy, and which starves and dwarfs them, while tribes of the same descent, but more favorably placed, are well- formed, active and intelligent. Europeans, who, by their enterprise and valor, have made noticeable maritime conquests, have 66 Degeneracy in Tcncrncnt Ho7tses. through unfavorable surroundings fallen behind the very savages their ancestors have subdued. A most appalling illustration of the low type of humanity into which whole communities may de- generate from want of pure air, water, light and food, is afforded by the disgustingly deformed and idiotic cretins, found in great numbers at the base of great mountains and in deep valleys, with the air stagnant, in certain localities of Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Denmark, Norway, the Highlands of Scotland, Turkey, Russia, China, Su- matra, South America, etc. DEGENERACY IN TENEMENT HOUSES. But the crowded tenements of our large cities contain all the elements of the climatic influences which produce cretins, and we need not roam the world over to find illustrations of permanent types of a degraded sort of humanity. The pauper and criminal class show all the characteristics of a spe- cific low type of humanity, and not only threaten our future, but are a burden to the present gen- eration. How unsound must be our general condition and how unsafe our future, with half our dead dying from unnatural causes, with three millions of avoidable cases of sickness per annum, half a million of habitual drunkards, criminals and pau- The Evolution of Education. 6^ pers — not to mention an army of defectives of every description. The duty of Education to counteract this degen- eracy, and the system it must pursue to reach this important end, will form the contents of the follow- ing chapters. THE EVOLUTION OF EDUCATION. The catechism formed once the entire outfit of the school. Education meant then to believe. The reaction followed, and Education meant next to know. This, too, was found hollow, and Education was next taken for teaching us how and what to be, which again ended in moral formalism and in a re- fined sentimental self-seeking. We expound Edu- cation as the art of preserving the race by training us what to do. To believe, to know, to be, to do, and, finally, the synthesis of all the four form the com- plete evolution of Education springing up in the order of the human faculties, perception, reason, emotion and the will. The three distinct ages of childhood, boyhood or girlhood, and youth or maidenhood, indicate three phases of Education. In the first, our being is to be developed in the infant training school ; in the second, the opening mind is to be furnished with knowledge in the common school, and in the third we are to be set to work in the school of 68 TJie Ei'olittion of Education. industry preparatory to life we are about to enter. Our being, knowing and doing are to be determined at these three different ages. Our present Edu- cation plainly teaches by its practice, never mind what you are or what you do, if you only are know- ing; and, hence, cunning rather than character and useful activity is fostered by our schools. How long, oh ! how long does the watchman of the night cry, When shall the blind see, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the simple understand, the lame walk forth, the sick take up their bed, prison- ers go free, and the people's dead rise ? How long, how long? does the voice of reason and experience respond to the voice of the watch- man in the night, until the art of raising men will come to honor, and mothers will learn how to edu- cate children, and children will be trained for virtue and activity in the infant sanctuaries of the nation, and young men will be prepared in temples de- voted to art and manual skill for usefulness ; until the body and its physical powers will be inured to active work. Not until then will men be healthy and honest, will the blind see, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the simple understand, the prisoners go free, and the people's dead rise. PART II. HEREDITY AND RACE EDUCATION. History joins her testimony to that of statis- tics, and the decay of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Byzantine Empire and the Saracens gives evidence of the deteriorating ten- dency inherent in human society. Only an Education wisely directing its efforts toward counteracting this deterioration can delay the death of a nation. Despotisms, aristocracies, democracies ; in short, distinctive forms of government have distinctive vicious tendencies, so have the different pursuits — as agriculture, manufacturing, commerce, or the dif- ferent stages of civilization ; and each of these vary- ing conditions requires a distinctive system of Edu- cation for counteracting its peculiar degenerative tendencies. As the masses live under conditions tending almost universally toward their deterioration, Edu- cation must directly aim to counteract this dete- rioration through measures leading to hereditary im- provement. The principle of heredity or the trans- (69) 70 Heredity. missibility of structural peculiarities from parent to offspring has already been recognized by Hippoc- rates, and has been fully established by Darwin and other naturalists. The principle of heredity has been fully discussed in regard to genius by Galton ; in regard to psychological morbidity by Lucas, Despine and Mireau ; in regard to crime by Bruce Thompson ; in regard to insanity by Morel, Maudsley and others, and in a more general way by Herbert Spencer, Ribot and others. Nobody doubts but that the general nature of the parent is transmitted to the child. That less important peculiarities are transmissible is not so plain, nevertheless established. Many families have been known in which four, five and six generations had more or less than five fingers on each hand. Baldness, defective teeth, deafness, cataract, have been known to be congenital, and the gout, con- sumption and insanity are universally so ; other affections are more or less so, and nervousness in parents generally appears in the children. Singular habits are often formed through pecul- iar surroundings, and give rise to peculiar structural formations. Domestic birds that have no use for flying lose the power of the wing. Cave fishes, like moles, lose the organ of sight almost entirely. Domestic animals, which are not exposed to hostile attacks from other animals and do not raise their Heredity. yi external ear in the act of spying the feared danger, lose the power of doing so just as man has lost it ; and, hence, the importance of fostering mental habits, as attention, reflection, self- observation, will, etc., as these habits condition corresponding structural peculiarities in the brain, become trans- missible, and, after ages, permanent features of the race. That even newly acquired habits are transmis- sible has been established beyond contradiction. It is maintained, with much reason, that merely the predisposition to disease and malformation, insanity, dipsomania, crime, consumption, etc., is transmitted and only developed under conditions favoring the formation of these peculiarities. This explains why often the peculiarity which appeared in the parent does not appear in all the children, and often shows itself only after two, three and four generations, when surrounding conditions con- spire with the innate tendency they make actual. Let the educator bear in mind that human de- terioration can only be prevented by calling to his aid influences adverse to the development of un- desirable hereditary tendencies, and that the im- provement of mankind can only be secured by con- ditions favorable to the development of desirable hereditary tendencies. It is not often that the one or the other set of 72 Hcrtdity. qualities is so unalterably fixed in the mind of the child as to leave nothing to be done by Education. We are the work of two factors — of innate ten- dencies, which are the work of nature, and of sur- roundings and habits, which are the work of man and of Education. Heredity and human agency have each their limits, which it is well to bear in mind in order to avoid opposite, but equally dangerous mistakes. We cannot do all, but neither is our agency re- duced to nothing. Only by realizing the power of heredity as well as the power of external condi- tions, are we sure to press both into the service of mankind and thereby prevent human deteriora- tion. We hold with Dr. Carter that the habit of exer- cising the judgment increases the power of this intellectual operation by stimulating the growth of its nervous organ, and that, as a general rule, a man s brain grows to the kind of activity most habit- ual to it — whether sensational or intellectual — and a tendency to the character thus impressed upon it is transmitted in some measure to his offspring. Or, as Darwin and Herbert Spencer show, external influences may considerably change functions which in their turn modify the organ which becomes per- manent and fixed in the race through heredity. Our mental powers have attained their present Heredity. 73 perfection through the cumulative or hereditary effect of a thousand generations, and are as capa- ble of hereditary improvement in the future as they have been in the past. It is high time the hereditary tendency of mental characteristics be intelligently applied in the Edu- cation of the race. The presumption is that, as the organ is hereditary, the function must be so, too. Thinking improves the brain under certain condi- tions, and with the improved brain the thinking is transmitted. Dr. Gall has maintained as much sixty years ago, and Auguste Comte recognizes the fact. Thomas Buckle was still in doubt, but observation has established the hereditary nature of our moral and intellectual faculties. Both Senecaswere noted for their extraordinary memories. So were An- naeus, father and son ; and in modern times the Porson family. The hereditary nature of the imagi- nation is illustrated by the poetic eminence of the Greek poets Sophocles, his son and grandson ; Aristophanes, the famous comic poet, and his three sons ; Ariosto, of the " Orlando Furioso," his brother, Gabriel, and his nephew, Horace ; Tasso, the renowned author of " Jerusalem Delivered," and Bernardo Tasso, his father, the greatest poet of his time, though eclipsed by his great son ; music has descended through two centuries in the family of the Bachs. 4 74 Heredity. The family history of scientific men shows the intellect just as subject to the law of heredity as the imagination ; an observation holding true from Aristotle down to Darwin, and of which we will cite a few instances. Jacques Bernouilli, a dis- tinguished mathematician and scientist, had two sons, four grandsons and two great-grandsons equal- ly renowned in one or another branch of science. Cassini, a celebrated astronomer, had a son, grand- son, great-grandson and a great-great-grandson, all distinguished astronomers and naturalists. Euler, the celebrated mathematician, had a father and three sons, all great mathematicians. Gregory, the distinguished mathematician, counted fifteen mem- bers of scientific ability in his family. Sir William Herschel, the renowned astronomer, his son, John Herschel, his daughter and two grandsons, are among hundreds of illustrations of the principle of heredity.' The will-power, prominent in statesmen and sol- diers, follows the same law, as is manifest from the names of the Adams, Colberts, Foxes, Guises, Medicis, Pitts, Peels, Richelieus, Walpoles, Charle- magne, Collignys, Gustavus Adolphus, Maurice of Nassau, and many other equally distinguished fami- lies. It is not pleasant to dwell upon the shady side of human nature, or we could cite as many illustra- Heredity. 75 tions of the hereditary nature of drunkenness, theft, suicide, homicide and other crimes and vices. We shall illustrate this tendency by the sketch of one or two unfortunate families. Jean Chretien shows the following descendants by three sons : Two grandsons condemned for life to hard labor for robbery and murder; one grandson condemned to death ; one great-grandson transported for rob- bery ; one great-grandson died in prison guilty of many robberies ; one great-grandson died falling from a roof he was scaling in the attempt of rob- bery ; one great-grandson died guilty of many rob- beries ; two great-granddaughters died in prison, where they were sent for theft ; one great-great- grandson condemned to death for murder and robbery. Bruce Thompson tells of 904 convicts at Perth, 404 of whom were recommitted. In a house of detention were 109 convicts belonging to 50 fami- lies, and 8 members of one family. A most striking illustration of hereditary degen- eracy offers the Thirtieth Annual Report of the Prison Association of the State of New York. The Juke family, located in the State of New York, is descended from five sisters who were born 1 720-1 740, and counts among its members 140 criminals and offenders, 60 habitual thieves and 50 ^6 Race Education Defined. common prostitutes. Seven murders have been committed by this family, and one and forty years have been spent by it inside the prison. The reporter of this case asks: " Do our courts, our laws, our almshouses and our jails deal with the question presented?" To us it seems, when once the problem reaches the court, the almshouse or the jail, it is already too late, and matters but little how they deal with it. The far more impor- tant query is, does our system of Education deal with this question ? Shall we, by example, sur- roundings and judicious training, produce gener- ations of F6nelons, Franklins and Aragos, or let heredity uncontrolled breed families and gener- ations of the Chretien and Juke style, and bank- rupt humanity? RACE EDUCATION DEFINED. But Education to be hereditary must be some- thing different than a mere cramming process. True Education is the constitutional improvement of the whole man. Man, and not scholarship, is the aim of Education. The constitutional improve- ment of man is effected by the training of the body, the senses and the functions of the brain to the highest degree of power and active use. This training must take place in the formative period of earliest infancy, in order to improve the Race Education Defined. yy very organization, that it may work rightly and automatically through life. Education must be functional and affect the or- ganization of man, if it is to be hereditary. Education, when hereditary, is not lost with the individual, but is what it ought to be — Race Education. Education, when so constituted as to become hereditary in its effects, forms a truly National Education. An Education that affects the constitution of man through habitual training in the formative period of earliest infancy, forms man's character ; and if the training is of the right sort, it makes him a good man ; and a like training of the whole people forms a noble national character. The practical training of the eye, the ear, the hand, the intellect and the will in the formative period of earliest infancy makes an effective, indus- trious individual, and a like general training renders a nation industrious, inventive and prosperous. Our bookish Education keeps us from observing and using our senses with accuracy — a power of universal usefulness, and yet so rare. The present bringing up called by a misnomer Education, neglecting the child in the formative, and, therefore, most susceptible and assimilative period of its earliest infancy, fails to form its char- 78 Race Education Defined. acter or to develop its powers ; it fills the world with conceptions lacking execution, aspirations un- satisfied, promises unfulfilled, beautiful theories and poor practice, and, hence, the conflict between the ideal and the real, which constitutes the contradic- tion and the misery of the times. Education must put the child to work ; for by- work man is perfected. And what he does not achieve, he never comprehends ; and, hence, the barrenness of the word-learning of the schools. It profits but little the individual, and none at all the race or nation. Habit and heredity, judiciously controlled, ame- liorate man ; left to themselves they deteriorate him. We have to this day neglected to aim at the cumulative effect of Education through the prin- ciple of heredity, and have failed to secure as great an abundance of good and wise men, inventors, statesmen and sages as we might, while the vicious have even by the power of this principle spread themselves through generations until they threaten to curse the nation with a brood of criminals, pau- pers and imbeciles. There is something of the infinite in moral obli- gation ; and our duty toward the present, to be rightly performed, must take in the remotest fu- ture. The solidarity of mankind extends through Race Education Defined. 79 all time as through all space, or as far as man's existence spreads. Only when based upon the principle of heredity we shall educate man for the future of the race, will the individual be blessed in his present relations ; while an Education that ig- nores the future of the race sacrifices likewise the true interests of the individual and of the present, which are inseparably linked to the whole of hu- manity. Only when national infant schools will watch over, cultivate and direct the growth of the bodies and souls of the dear little ones of the nation ; and the future mothers of the race, instead of being unsexed in factories, will be trained in these na- tional schools for their truly noble work in the nursery, will our homes be co-workers with our schools ; and people and teachers will form one great educational association, joining heart, head and hand in the great national work of rearing up the rising generation. Only when the principle of heredity will be made the foundation of a system — which will be the Edu- cation of the race and the nation as well as of the individual — will men of enlarged capacities of head and heart consecrate themselves to the work of Education, which under their hands will no more be a thoughtless routine, but science, life and prac- tice. There was a heathen age, when it was the So Ract' a7id Scholastic Education. ambition of the great and the wise to guide and teach the young, who grew up to men worthy of their teachers, who were sages ; that time must and will come again, and then humanity will be blessed. Nothing but a thorough, consistent and well- directed Race Education will free the masses from the blight of pauperism, madness and crime, and remove from us the disorganizing selfishness and incapacity for good that sadden us on every side. Education at public expense, directed by the na- tion, must be national, securing the perpetuity of the commonwealth and the well-being of the masses, and that can only be achieved by hered- itary Race Education, which is improving the quality and increasing the energy of every God- given power of the body and soul of man. RACE AND SCHOLASTIC EDUCATION. Race Education is the only solution of the great social problem arising from hereditary defective- ness and the consequent increase of pauperism, misery, crime and insanity. While our routine Education is scholastic, exer- cising the memory at the expense of every other faculty and to the injury of the force of body and soul, Race Education, or Hereditary Culture, is hygiene applied to the physical, mental and moral nature of man. Race and Scholastic Education. 8i Race Education, by training the present genera- tion, determines the condition of the next one ; it watches over the first hours and days of man, when the foundations of his character are laid ; it watches with unwearying soHcitude over the waive in its charge, as a mother does over her babe. Race Education makes physical culture the basis of its future operations ; and, hence, gymnastics form an important part of its system. Race Education, by its own hygienic tendency, inures the people to an habitual observance of the sanitary laws of body and mind, and secures there- by the health and strength of the nation. Race Education, or Hereditary Culture, makes the practice of art and industry integral parts of its system ; first, because activity is health, and, secondly, because activity transforms the physical world into things of beauty and use, which, in their turn, become means of a more perfect life ; while the scholastic system has its eye fixed upon an ar- tificial literary standard, unconcerned about life, health and power, and is entirely theoretical and notional. Race Education, or Hereditarj^ Culture, as it dif- fers from scholastic Education in aim and method, so it differs from it in the objects of knowledge, or the subjects it gives prominence to in its course of instruction. It cultivates the study of hygiene, of 83 Race and Scholastic Eduiation CoDiparcd. nature, art, industry, economics and government, whatever concerns life and action, and looks to the future of man ; while scholastic Education concerns itself about words, opinions, archaeological lore, and looks to the past. Race Education, or Hereditary Culture, consid- ers function, organization, power, work and charac- ter, or a complete human existence, as the end, and knowledge as but one of the means for securing this end. RACE AND SCHOLASTIC EDUCATION COMPARED. Race Education, or Hereditary Culture, aiming at mental quality is averse to stuffing by lectures or text books. The mind must be exercised on the object of thought in the only natural and old Socratic way by dialogue, which alone develops the power of thought, and by showing the student how to find knowledge in and by himself, makes it part of himself and a possession forever. It was not books, but the discourse, says Thorn- ton, that developed the Grecian mind for the ap- preciation of Eschylus and orators of the metal of Demosthenes. Race Education, caring above all for man, chooses subjects and methods of instruction suited to the age and the development of the faculties of judg- ment, reason, sensibility, invention or imagination. Race and Scholastic Education Compared. 83 The scholastic system, caring more for scholar- ship than for man, adopts methods calculated for the promotion of learning, unconcerned about the effect upon man, as it cares more about a complete body of rules of Latin composition or Greek par- ticles, than about the body and soul of humanity. Race Education, aiming at a harmoniously de- veloped and happy humanity, recognizes the claims of the young to the happy days of childhood^ which it will not sacrifice for the sake of produc- ing intellectual prodigies. Race Education, or Hereditary Culture, direct- ing its efforts against human deterioration, guards against premature mental strains in infancy ; it takes measures against the mental equilibrium disturbing predominance of one faculty over an- other ; it aims at soundness and efficiency all over, which secure the present success and happiness of the individual as well as the health and strength of the race in the future ; while our scholastic Education, which has only in view the individual and its accomplishments, cultivates the memory and imagination at the cost of the highest reason- ing and moral faculties, and makes men selfish, proud and unjust ; and, hence, the strife, ambi- tion, disappointment, increase of insanity, suicide, premature d( ath and social decay, so glaring in our day. 84 Race and Scholastic Education Compared. Our chiefly literary Education stimulates mostly emotion and fancy, which are the life of the pas- sions, and it secures the application of the student by working upon his piide, and thus nurses the flame which consumes us ; for pride or morbid selfishness is half insanity, and passions uncon- trolled are insanity complete ; and pride and pas- sion, as they disorganize the human economy, so they disorganize the social ; and, hence, our charge against the doubly fatal tendency of our scholas- tic Education upon the individual as well as upon society. However loyal schoolmen may be in i\\eory to the principles of development in Education, do they recognize them in practice? Do they give due weight to the training of the physical forces, the senses, and, especially, to the moral faculties and the powers of observation, invention and prac- tical execution or industrial skill ? Do they supremely aim at forming sound minds in sound bodies, which help themselves by efficient hands, restrained from working injury to others by fortified morals and habits of honesty ? As all evils tend to race deterioration, and not infrequently spring from it, Education, the great social preserver, has to be moulded in every par- ticular, in aim, means, method, scope and surround- ings, in keeping with tl e one great aim of race Race and Scholasiic Education Compared. 85 amelioration or Hereditary Culture, to which every part of Education must tend as the radius points to the centre. Our scholastic tattooing, with all its ornaments and accomplishments, is shallow patchwork, while Race Education recognizes no improvement unless it enters the blood and marrow of body and soul, and becomes, by its organic nature, hereditary. Unless our partly ineffectual and partly selfish culture is given up to Race Education, Pariahs will spring up among us stunned in body, low in per- ception and defective in moral sensibility, who will drag the nation into the vortex of their own corruption ; for the virtue and intelligence of a select few are too narrow a basis for a great nation to stand upon, and the few are absorbed by the many. Upon the foundation we indicate here, physiolo- gists, psychologists, statesmen and educators must raise a system, in which every step taken shall advance the race as well as the individual in very deed and forever. The formation of desirable hereditary habits does not only call for infant schools, but also for long- continued training. To render the association of occupation and virtue more permanent, we must make it continuous to the age of sixteen or eight- een years ; this alone can deepen the better dispo- 86 Race and Scholastic Education Compared. sition, render it organic and hereditary, and thus improve the race as well as the individual. Theoretical knowledge has assumed vast propor- tions, and its power and efficiency are marvelous, where physical resistance is to be overcome by mechanical elements. More indefinite is the power of science in modifying organizations, which, grow- ing from within and averse to direct external inter- ference, yield only if put in surroundings, where they may — as if it were at will — seize upon the means which are to our purpose and assimilate them as desired. We know we have to adapt the medium a fauna or flora lives in to the qualities we wish them to develop ; and yet, when we deal with the cultivation of man, we fancy that we can talk him into virtue, wisdom and efficiency, without adapting the conditions and surroundings to the desired end ; as if, like savages given to sorcery, we believed in the enchanting power of magic words and formulas. We forget that our actions very much depend upon our affective and passional nat- ure, which almost wholly depends on the organic functions, in their turn determined by the nutritive condition of the entire state of the body and mind. Dejection, fear, grief, despair, uncertainty, anger, sorrow and the like affections, disturb the organic functions, which in their turn disturb the brain. And yet we consider the brain and its functions Race and Scholastic E ducat ioti Compared. 87 as if they were independent of all these affec- tions. But, if the outer world has to yield the elements for a healthy nutrition, the individual must, by an ever-active habit, contract such affections and men- tal tendencies as are most desirable for his own de- velopment and that of the race. Only when we behold in our Education the Edu- cation of the race are we likely to see in our con- tact with men and nature and in our inner and outer experience, grand educational influences, the end of which is our own development as well as the culture and development of the race. Men cannot be talked into living for the race ; they must be trained and be brought up for the race, and they will live for the race. Race Education, bringing up the individual for the race, develops the altruistic feelings, by which we feel the weal or woe of others as if it were our own, until conscience acts as an unerring and spon- taneous force, and the religion of doing good be- comes as hereditary among men as brute instinct among animals. Does our position that the individual belongs to the race want a proof? Is there a power or faculty in him that has not descended to him from the race, and ought he not to make a faithful return for the trust with which he has been honored? 88 Race and Scholastic Education Compared. Humanity has hitherto progressed from mere brutal strength to intellectual force, and must ad- vance to moral power. Violence has but shifted the scene from muscle to brain. The three powers in man seem to have divided the rule of the ages among themselves. The first age of the world belonged to the brutal force in man. The second age belonged to reason. The empire of both these powers is equally remorseless. The third age of the world belongs to love, which rules only to serve. God comes to us in humanity, and, above all, in helpless children, and calls upon us in their divine capabilities, which wait for our maturing them. Education must not be a trade, but a worship ; and the school must become a temple, in which the teacher officiating at the altar of humanity, makes a sacrifice of himself that the race may live a better and happier life. Science pushes us to these conclusions. For every function has for its end self-preservation ; and the function of Education must have for its purpose the preservation of the race, and, hence, the indi- vidual must be brought up not for ambition, wealth or power, but for the race. If we lived in isolation like animals, their brutal, individual Education might do for us as for them, but as we are by our families and states linked with the whole of hu- Race and Scholastic Education Compared. 89 manity, the condition of the race determines our own preservation. Not only the moral law with its sanctions of a sweet inner reward or remorse, but also the inex- orable law of physiology, with its long catalogue of most hideous diseases, enjoins upon us Race Education, or Hereditary Culture. The importance of physical Education has been insisted upon by all great writers on Education, so the training of the senses, the development of the mental faculties, the formation of character and the strengthening of the will, so have the means of doing this great work been tried and studied ; but, though the highest induction contains nothing but what lies in the scattered facts, it throws a flood of light upon them, and so will the principle of Race Education, or Hereditary Culture, give defi- niteness and union to the principles and practice of Education, which it will guide and direct by keep- ing in view the highest aim, by inculcating the subordination of the individual to the race, of which it is but a part and for which it must live and be educated. The necessity of basing Education upon the principle of race amelioration was first suggested to us by the overwhelming evidence of an actual deterioration of race, forced upon us by a patho- logical study of labor. The study of heredity con- 90 Sy sterns of Education. vinced us, in the next place, of the transmissibility of improved mental states, and, therefore, of the practicability of race amelioration through im- proved methods of Education. Our doctrine is supported on every page of Car- penter's remarkable work on Mental Physiology, which must suggest our doctrine that the heredi- tary defectiveness of the masses must be corrected by Education and Hereditary Culture ; that an Educa- tion that does not affect its subjects organically ana permanently — even as far as the race is concernedy and for future generations — is not deserving the name of Education. This is our principle of Education, and all the means and appliances of study and training of mind and body must tend toward it as the planets do to the sun. The great social problem of the condition of the masses, the latest development in biology, and the progress in the separate parts of Education, all point to the doctrine of Race Education, or Hereditary Culture, as the principle of gravitation of a strictly scientific system of Education upon which the whole science — in all its parts — is to be reconstructed. SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION. Others before us have laid stress upon Educa- tion ; have singled out the various parts of Educa- Systems of Education. 9I tion ; have, perhaps, seen in part the importance of our principle, as Spurzheim and others of the same school ; none, however, have recognized in it the principle that contains all others and much more beside, and that alone is comprehensive enough to rear upon a complete system of Edu- cation. Penn's first word to his colony was, " Educate," and Washington's last bequest in his farewell ad- dress to the people he so w'ell loved, was again, " Educate." Education, says R6nan, is with modern society a question of life and death. It contains, as La- boulaye says, the solution of the problem that troubles the age we live in. But what is com- monly called Education, makes of us, as Goethe expressed it, bags filled with words, figures and facts. What we want is men of vigor, action and character. " It is the early training that makes the master," sings Germany's great national poet. Strength, will, power, mental activity, work and a harmoniously developed humanity must be aimed at in Education — such are the utterances of our great thinkers. Our higher reason is but the accumulated capital of the progress of the ages, says science. Thank- fully we receive at the hands of the heroes of hu- man progress the requisite materia! for our struct- 92 Systejjis of Education. ure of Race Education, and trace step by step our principle in their labors. Already the Lacedemonians gave supreme atten- tion to the physical condition of the parents. The Old Testament almost on every one of its pages, lays stress upon the early training of the young. The genealogical history of individuals and fam- ilies proves the truth of the heredity of mental traits. Physiology teaches that systematic think- ing enlarges the brain, and craniology establishes this principle by the exact measurements of the skulls of races and ages belonging to different stages of civilization. We acknowledge our in- debtedness for these and other labors. Happiness, truth, goodness, activity, reasonable- ness, virtue, God-likeness, etc., are unquestionably important elements, but they lack direction, defi- niteness, compass and scientific basis ; they con- tain no principle that secures what they aim at, and each and every one of them considers only the individual, who, if he is to live for humanity, must be educated for it. There is not a principle suggested by our system but has the support of the earliest thinkers of the race. The divine Plato largely discourses how manners are implanted in early infancy, and virtue gathers Systems of Education. 93 strength from habit. He insisted upon bringing together children from three to six years of age for the purpose of being trained at their self-originated games. He already considered compulsory Educa- tion the safeguard of the State. Careful training in gymnastics, music and science he insists upon as the means for the attainment of strength and beauty of mind and body, so highly prized among the Greeks. Aristotle, who furnished the world with its intel- lectual food for over two thousand years, like his great master, urges State Education to begin in early childhood, the very playthings of which should have a bearing upon the life and work of the man, whose ethical culture must be secured by early habits of right feeling and correct ac- tion, under teachers of political knowledge, whose aim must be not to form merely useful, but per- fect men, by the means of art, science and dis- cipline, the tools of Education. Plutarch, in his inimitable essay on Education, tells us of Lycurgus showing the Lacedemonians in a public meeting the effect of early training on two dogs of the same dam, the one running to the platter, and the other starting after the hare ; the one made voracious, and the other an excellent hunter. Early exercise, says the same author, gives 94 Systems of Education. strength ; good habits lead to virtue, and wisdom leads to happiness and a good old age. Training of body and soul from earliest infancy, the solid things of science, the living example of parents and teachers, and upon the like topics, Plutarch gave us in these essays his thoughts with a freshness, which makes them delightful reading to-day. Montaigne said : " Bookish learning is a poor stock to go upon." Again, he said : " Our under- standings are no more formed by learning by rote what other men said than we learn riding, han- dling an axe or playing a tune, by discourses with- out practice." Lord Bacon said : " Our speeches take after our learning, our thoughts after our inclinations, and our deeds after our habits, which are fixed by the force of early custom." Milton indignantly descants against the waste of time in our schools with a miserable little Latin and Greek, and pleads for a virtuous and noble Education, consisting in studies, exercises, diet and music, likest to those ancient and famous schools of Pythagoras, Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle and oth- ers, and of whom were bred such a number of re- nowned philosophers, orators, historians, poets and statesmen. John Locke held that a sound mind in a sound Systems of Education. 95 body — as already Juvenal aptly expressed it — is the chiefest happiness, and, hence, the chiefest care of Education. Education makes the man, and the commonest and weakest impressions in childhood have most important and permanent consequences for us. Morals and good habits come first, the knowledge of things next, and languages last. The treatment should be mild, natural and suited to the temperament, inclination and character of the child, which the educator has to study carefully. Leibnitz, who, by the universality of his genius, has thrown out many ideas ahead of his age, ad- vanced the teaching of the arts and trades in public schools as a matter of highest utility to the State. Montesquieu said. Education has for its founda- tion the same principles as the State — fear under despotism, pride under a monarchy, and virtue un- der a republic. And since virtue is formed by early habit, a republic must train children to simplicity and self-restraint. Attachment to the laws of the country demands a preference of the public good to narrow self-interest. Everybody participates in a free country in the government of the State, and must love to preserve it. Nothing but virtue and intelligence can save a republic from ending in despotism, corruption and anarchy. As the great Cominius, the John the Baptist of universal Education, was the apostle of the study 96 Sj's/c//is of Education. of method, to the spread of which all over Europe his agitated life has been devoted, so was Rousseau a hundred years later the apostle of the study of the child and its nature. According to him, the full activity of our senses and faculties and the skill of acquiring knowledge are the ends of Edu- cation and are to be attained by actual observa- tion, but not by mere words thrust upon children, to whom they have no meaning and whom they can but stupefy. Like Locke, Rousseau insists upon the propriety of every child learning a trade, which not only bestows independence, but culti- vates reflection far more than books do at that age. Basedow, who first reduced to practice whatever was tangible in Rousseau's " Emile," insisted equal- ly upon his pupils to engage at least two hours daily in the mechanical exercise of some useful trade. None lived in deeper sympathy with the race, shared its miseries, loved it more truly, or worked more earnestly for elevating and saving it through life-long labor in the schoolroom, than Pestalozzi, and none has effectually more reformed our system of Education than he. He has clearly worked out the principles of developmental Education, object teaching and the whole modern system of primary Education ; and he, above all, is the prophet of the school house and the schoolmaster of Europe. Man's love of liberty, says Kant, is so strong that Systems of Education. 97 if he is not early subjected to discipline, he inclines, especially under a free government, to lawlessness, which is barbarity. To habituate the child to sub- mission to reason is the first aim of Education, which must lead the race to its highest destiny, the development of its faculties. The great phi- losopher of Konigsberg insisted that the child is not to be educated for the world as it is, that it may get along in it, but that it must be brought up for humanity and a better future ; and that a bringing us up for the good of the world cannot injure us in our own life. Education is discipline or correction, culture or instruction, and exercise of the faculties of prudence and wisdom, and at last the formation of the moral disposition or of character. The child must learn to use its freedom and its powers, act upon principles and develop its character by order and steadiness. Work is the chief element in human life ; the school should, therefore, train children to work, and as this re- quires strength and energy, physical exercise must form the prelude to Education, and is a chief part of it. So far the founder of the critical school of philosophy of Germany. Mackintosh wisely says. Education is a proper disposal of all the circumstances which influence character, and of the means of producing those habitual dispositions which insure well-doing. 5 98 Systc7ns of Education. According to Froebel, indolence, love of pleas- ure, want of sense and energy, lead to vice and crime. He insists, therefore, upon work, as activity- takes delight in its own creation, and develops intelligence and energy of will. Rousseau, Pesta- lozzi, and others before them, have seen that work develops virtue. None but Froebel has realized all the applications this principle is capable of de- veloping in man. The Kindergarten is the door by which we re-enter the garden of Eden. As work was the first means in educating the race, when the soil was cursed with sterility that man might be blessed through work, so in the Education of the individual, work is the first means of blessing him ; and the restless activity of the child is the foundation of the indefatigable enterprise of the man. Industry, which is the characteristic feature of the age, must be made the school of humanity. Life, energy and power, like wisdom, are not to be plucked from trees ; they come only as responses to an earnest will, as the prayer which ends in work as its amen. And in earliest infancy this training must begin. Spelling, grammar and arithmetic may be learned at ten or twenty years, or later. The man, the character, says Juvenal, is made at seven ; what he is then, he will always be-— in spite of a thousand teach- ers you may give him after that period has passed. Systcws of Education. 99 Maudsley says, the true aim and character of Education are unhappily not yet understood. Man should understand himself and nature, of which he is a part ; and with which himself, his thoughts and actions should be in harmony; that through knowl- edge of and obedience to the laws of nature he may represent the highest physical, mental and moral evolution. Our present Education must be revolutionized ; for to-day, riches, position, power and the applause of men are the chief aims, and not culture, development and character; and, hence, anxieties, disappointments and jealousies break down the soul in madness, which noth- ing can cure more radically than a sound Educa tion. John Draper maintains. Education should repre- sent the existing state of knowledge and not the pretended wisdom of past ages. He treats with deserved contempt the pretended training obtained through the study of Latin and Greek. The Ameri- can political system is founded on the principle of public intellectual culture, and the organization of the intellect is to be the great work of this conti- nent. The only method of ameliorating the con- dition of men is by acting on their intelligence. Our aspirations have been hitherto physical ; they must and are now becoming spiritual and intellec- tual. Our personal ambitions must retire, that we i(X> Race and Individual Education. may share in the development and accomplishment of a far higher result. There is not a principle of Education but we may glean it from some ancient or modern writer ; but Race Education, or Hereditary Culture, is a formula that embraces all the hitherto separated tendencies, each of which is but part of Education. It embraces the physical, mental, moral and indus- trial elements ; it suggests the method, means and end, and sets before us humanity as the highest aim ; it is above all practical, and looks to the solid welfare of the individual, nation and race, and indicates the necessity of a National Education, as none but the nation can educate the individual for the race and nation. RACE AND INDIVIDUAL EDUCATION. Man, standing on the border of the brute world, cares only for himself. He mounts the first step of civilization and lives for his family; the second, and he lives for the State. He is to-day called upon to mount the third and live for the race. Or, is it asking too much, after ages of spiritual culture and political Education, that man should feci his unity with, and his place in the race, from which separated he has no more life nor purpose than the eye, hand or foot has apart from the body? Race and Individual Education. loi Is it not unscientific and leading to mischief, if the school treat man as a complete and unitary- being that has its end outside of the race ? Should we not live, and, therefore, be brought up for the race ? Or, are we to be brought up for ourselves, and be told afterward that we must live for the race ? Does not this doing one thing and saying another, sow in us the seeds of hypocrisy and contradiction ? Does not our every act bless or curse the race, ameliorate or deteriorate it ? Why, then, should the preservation and ameliora- tion of the race, which enters our every act, not be made especially the aim of Education ? If a decent regard for the rights of conscience keeps out of schools disputable points, what is there to hinder us from introducing into them the purest ethics of science ? The training of man for his place in a world of law, order and justice, that the race may be pre- served and live, grow and develop in harmony with the conditions of being and universal progress and development, is the work of Race Education, or Hereditary Culture. Everything serves a purpose outside its own ex- istence ; it is the law of nature in which everything is means as well as ends. Man, a conscious being, feels the void of a life that serves no higher purpose and ends with its own being. Race Education I02 Race and Individual Education. points out to us humanity or the whole as the end of the individual, who is but part of the whole, and is only possible in and through it. The individual who, in passion or ignorance, silences this inner voice of nature, which pushes man to be means as well as end in a world of mu- tuality, will soon perish in his isolation. Every great reformer of Education was a great lover of the race. So was every extraordinary teacher. The worst method in the hands of a teacher full of love to his race, is preferable to the best method in the hands of a teacher whose soul is dead. The highest scientific induction places the spirit of saving, elevating and preserving the race, which has led all the great reformers of Education into the discovery of improved methods, and has strength- ened and upheld their hands in the performance of their arduous work, as a constructive principle, at the very head and front of Education, and builds upon it a system in keeping with the great end to be attained. Of course, routine pays no attention to the aim or principle of the teacher, whom it considers a tool working well with the method, books and charts furnished by the man of genius who has a soul for him. We deny tba proposition. Man is not made of Race and Individual Education. 103 wood or leather, and cannot be manufactured ma- chine-like. A man must have a higher life in his soul, or he cannot kindle it in others. In ev- ery department even this is the mischief, that forms and methods so useful supersede the life and spirit which generated them ; and, natural enough, lose their efficiency with the spirit that departed. The highest generalization alone can teach us the proper means and methods, and put into them life and efficiency. Civilization will not long tolerate the barbarism of our present poor and mad-houses or killing jails. The care of our defectives is becoming very expen- sive ; the lessening of public burdens, therefore, by lessening public miseries, is the rightful domain of public Education, the sphere of which is the pub- lic weal and not fashionable accomplishments, lead- ing to fashionable vices and corruption, and end- ing in human degeneracy — the very thing public. Education is to prevent. If we are to succeed in stopping race dete- rioration or lessening defectiveness, we must aim directly at it and work hard for it ; sailing at large on the wide ocean of Education will not do it. Theorists may dream ; still the indications are the world is not to be improved by being turned into 104 Race and Individual Education. a vast monster kitchen, but by being made into a grand school house, where the present generation will train the next one, that every man may live in harmony with the laws of his own individual being, of society and of the entire universe ; that all dis- cord may disappear ; vice, misery and crime may only live in name as sad memories of the past, and men may no more imbrue their hands in each oth- er's blood, nor may be driven annually by the half a million to madness or unnatural self-destruction. The common consciousness of the nation and the world at large is, that its future salvation is Educa- tion. Of course, we ascribe such potency, no more than Herbert Spencer does, to mere ciphering, or spelling, or geography, or algebra. Make the individual the end of Education, and his partial culture will be taken for his full develop- ment ; make individual development the means and the race the end — as nothing else is — heredity be- comes then our great ally and human degeneracy our great adversary, of which the one can only be secured by early infant training and discipline throughout the whole of Education, and the other can only be combated through industrial train- ing, the only sure preventive of pauperism, the main source of misery which opens the flood gates of human degeneracy. Race Education Further Expou7ided. 105 RACE EDUCATION FURTHER EXPOUNDED. Physical, intellectual, moral, scientific and indus- trial Education have each attracted more or less attention. We deal with Education as a social science and with the chief end of Education. Men of mere routine care not about ends, but the sight of the end of the journey keeps us on the right track. The end once clearly perceived, and the means and method for obtaining it are clear. The putting of the problem right is half the sola- • tion ; and, hence, our solicitude for ascertaining the great end of Education and for finding the formula, which embraces the whole of Education. Race Education implies that Education has its tangible foundation in the physical nature of, and its moral purpose in devotion to, the race. And we must lay stress upon the moral element, which is crowded out of Education by the multiplicity of modern studies. Virtue, says Locke, is to be aimed at in Educa- tion, and not forward pertness or any little arts of shifting. The teacher should know that Latin and language are the least part of Education, and that virtue and a well-tempered soul are to be preferred to any sort of learning. Lord Kames says : " Our teachers direct their instruction to the head with very little attention 5* lo6 Race Educaticm FurtJier Expounded. to the heart. And yet, surely, a man is intended to be more an active than a contemplative being ; and right action is infinitely more important than rare scholarship." Bacon and Milton, like all great leaders of the race, speak in the same strain. But this right disposition can only be formed in the mind while it is in its very making, by our stamping devotion to mankind upon every exercise of the school, be it gymnastics, music or industry, and that we can only effect by engaging in every exercise for the purpose of enlarging the capacities, efficiency and happiness of the race. The whole of Education must be a consecration of the individual to the race, in which it is to be merged, and life from the cradle to the grave has to be a sacrifice of the present to the future, and of the individual to the race. Still, this sacrifice is only one in appearance, as we can do nothing for the race, which does not further our own individual growth and true happiness. Race Education, or Hereditary Culture, renders the adaptation of the Education of every individual to his own peculiar organization only the more im- perative, as no permanent improvement is possible which is not based on physiological conformation ; and, hence, the development of the race and the individual is best secured when the one is treated as the end, and the other as the means. Race Education Further Expounded. 107 The gala or state morality, or moral mask and prudery, of a lesson or two a week in a moral text book, would not be worth pleading for. The whole of Education and every act of it must be perme- ated by a spiritual element, which is at the same time the last and most sober word of science, with- out cant or weakness, and in which science and religion are wedded to each other — and that word is Race Education. In the multiplicity of means and methods for doing this, that and something else in the mechani- cal routine of our crowded school houses, the phys- ical basis, and the moral purpose of all true Edu- cation can only be kept in view by the magic word of Rate Education. A teacher cannot develop hereditary culture or build up a desirable national character, if he has not risen even to the bare conception of Race Edu- cation. He, who aims may hit ; he, who does not even aim is sure to miss. Only national infant schools moulding the char- acter and organization of a people by habit and training, and nothing else can build up a desirable hereditary national character. Every peculiarity of the skin, muscles, bones and nerves is hereditary, and so is that of the brain, especially when the whole of the nation is trained and educated in the same direction, and the surroundings are made subservi- io8 Race Educatum Further Expounded. ent to the same common end. It is almost beyond the power of the individual to dispose the forces of nature and of society in a manner as will develop his character in the right direction. This requires the almost infinite means and power only at the disposal of a nation, which, to say the least, largely shares in our individual responsibility, which it con- trols mightily in its right or wrong development. And, hence, the duty of our public Education to use all the powers at the command of the state for the elevation of the character and efficiency of all. Race Education, or Progressive Hereditary Cult- ure, has a double function to perform — the correc- tion of physical, mental and moral morbid tenden- cies and the developing and strengthening of the normal activities of man in the most susceptible and pliable period of infancy and youth. Enlightened thinkers insist that a criminal should not be treated as a blank, but as a collection of hereditary tendencies ; and, certainly, the school and the teacher should not be behind the prison and its keepers in scientific method and treatment. Let the school correct some of our hereditary ten- dencies and cultivate others, and there will soon be no call for prisons and the like institutions. Better the teacher study the hereditary tendencies of the child than that the same study be forced upon us in the end for the purpose of correcting pauperism, insanity and crime. Race Education Further Expomided, 109 The constitutional deterioration of the masses induced by want, misery and neglect, begins its destructive work in the mind with the highest functions, the moral sensibilities, or the conscience, spreading to the will, the seat of the character or energy, until it reaches at last the power of thought ; and, hence, the increase of crime, pauperism and insanity. The physical powers may seem unabated, but the decay is apparent in the higher functions and the moral sensibilities are defective, rendering men hardly accountable. With the progress of deteri- oration the function of the will is attacked, and the man is no more to be blamed for his lethargy, than the idiot for his obtuseness. The corruption of our time and its general con- fusion, as our lack of organizing capacity, are all symptoms of deterioration not likely to be met by Latin grammar. We over-estimate in our scheme of Education the ideas of other men which, coming to us without thought or observation, are but half understood words, adding nothing to our real strength. Knowl- edge, like wealth, looks tempting; but only when obtained by long and hard labor do they develop the power of employing them wisely. Our thirst for knowledge is as morbid as our greed for gain. Wealth and knowledge are both but means of which humanity is the end ; knowledge, however, 1 10 Race Education Further Expounded. instead of developing humanity by being assimilated into character or incorporated into institutions, is left by us unapplied. We hurry from idea to idea, like images in a phantasmagoria ; one gives way to the other ; all solves itself into relativity ; and, hence, the apathy and anarchy of the age in which truth and goodness have ceased to serve as stand- ards of life and action. Ideas are so far ahead of the actual condition of mankind that the application of the one to the other is almost out of question ; the one advancing at high speed, the other lagging lazily behind at a great distance, until hardly anything but violent revolution can bridge over the chasm between the actual and the ideal ; a contrast too painful long to be borne and which must have its adjustment. Race Education strives for a strong, healthy and normal hum.anity; scholastic Education sends its literary firework up into the clouds, unconcerned about the benighted masses of mankind below. Religious men feel the defect of the position of men, who cultivate science and literature uncon- cerned about man. We have applied science to almost everything and have made it pay, save to humanity itself, which has become almost worthless. It was otherwise with the Greeks. True, they knew but little of machinery, but their men were God- like. The realism of science may become as dan- Race Education and Division of Labor. 1 1 1 geroLis to humanity, and even more so, than the dogmatism of past ages, which it replaces by the worship of wealth it develops. Spain, doting upon the gold mines of the New World, neglected the richer treasures of her own soil and got poor. We get rich by trade and com- merce, and neglect the cultivation of humanity, more rich in treasures than even the bosom of mother earth under our feet. Poor and paltry, indeed, are our richest possessions compared with the material wealth of the future, and this is but as the dust of the balance to the power and the re- sources of the mind, which creates it all. Science in its most perfect form leads to the highest evolution of humanity, and is more truly religious than anything else, because it is most humane. We believe with the great positivist, that the re-organization of Education must precede the re- organization of society ; as all legislation is but a dead letter as long as public opinion is unimproved. RACE EDUCATION AND DIVISION OF LABOR. Race Education leads to a proper division of labor, the chief part of a proper organization of society. For National Iiifant schools, a chief feature in Race Education, train young women for their fu- 112 Woman's Work. ture work and duties as mothers and educators of the race. The children are kept first in the infant, next in the elementary, and, at last, in industrial schools ; and grown men alone are to work in facto- ries. Here, then, is a most simple and natural divi- sion of labor initiated, resting upon the difference of sex and age, decidedly restricting the present mur- derous competition of labor. All the vast interests and the very existence of humanity call impera- tively for this step in the re-organization of society, a step supported by public opinion and meeting with but little resistance, everybody feeling the need and naturalness of this measure. We shall not lose by this division of labor, for we produce values in proportion to our efficiency ; and, if we are better educated, the production of material values will be enhanced, besides that the more perfect and normal man is the chiefest wealth of the state. woman's work. Woman holds her commission from God ; her natural sphere is the nursery and the Infant Train- ing school, where she continues her work of gesta- tion, which is not completed until she has formed the character of her offspring. The factory is not woman's place, as Gladstone says : " He who will free woman from labor in the Woman's Work. 113 factory will be a benefactor of the family ;" still, as we cannot afford to lose the labor of half the race, woman must work for the race by working upon the race, fashioning and developing its character; and that she only can do when Kindergartens cover the land in which she is prepared for her work. Why were the Rorrians during the better ages of the republic the model citizens of the world ? Be- cause they had model mothers for their educators. Fill the land with Kindergartens, training women for their future duties as mothers ; and, as we shall have then more than Roman mothers, we shall also have citizens who are more than Romans. Woman in the barbarous state of society is the slave ; in the semi-barbarous she is the toy and the tyrant, and in the perfect state of society she is the educator. When women will be educators of the race they will be its saviors ; to-day, show, pride and vanity make them its destroyers, leading on men by their extravagance to corruption in private as well as public business, until confidence in men and insti- tutions is to-day fairly gone, and the downfall of the nation almost inevitable. To let a woman speak about her own sex, we will quote the well-known and competent Emilie Davies, who said before the National Association for the Improvement of Social Science : " Is it 114 Woman's Work. not true that to amuse themselves and other peo- ple is the great object in the life of women ; and is it possible that their sedulous devotion to this one object can fail to react upon the men with whom they associate ? Who gives the tone to what we may call lax and luxurious homes ? Who teaches the boys that hard work is foolish self-tor- ture, that an easy life is more to be desired than the fine gold of intellectual attainment ? Not their fathers. What is the ideal presented to young girls ? Is it anything higher than to be amiable, inoffen- sive, always ready to give pleasure and to be pleased ? Could anything be more stupefying than such a conception of the purposes of exist- ence ? As long as women live only for trifles, men will only live for making money." Only when women will be brought up to be the educators of the race will men live for great pur- poses, and every family will be a centre from which saving influences will go forth to bless the race. Women have infinitely more tact for developing character than men, though they may have less fit- ness for teaching Aristotle's metaphysics, which, however, are best not taught at all. Pessimists may stamp every thought of an up- ward tendency as an idle dream, but we cannot be- lieve men, women, the government and our whole civilization hopelessly corrupt. The School and the Home. 115 Race Education, or Hereditary Culture, aiming at the prevention of race deterioration, insists upon fitting woman for her domestic duties, upon the proper performance of which many lives depend. She has under her supervision the home, the food, the clothing, the exercise, the rest, sleep and the entire habits of the family. She nurses them in sickness, and by her economy or lavishness brings comfort competency, and general improvement, or poverty, with all its want, misery and deteri- oration. For the children, the home and the school are the place, and not the factory. For men and their powers the factory and the workshops of art, science and industry furnish op- portunities, according to their aptitudes. Reactionists may force upon the world revolu- tion ; thinkers work for normal development ; and the soul must be dead that does not feel that there is a divinity in reason that shapes the progress of the race. THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME. Race Education interests itself in the homes of the people, without the co-operation of which its own success is utterly impossible. The school can at best do but half its work with children housed like swine. Il6 The School and tJie Home. The cry of the educators of the land must, there- fore, be : " Homes for the people and schools for the children." Race Education, in which training predominates, exercises more the will, the central faculty of the mind ; and by moulding the heart and character of man leads through correct feeling to sound think- ing. Race Education antagonizes in the pliant state of the young organism all vicious hereditary ten- dencies, physical or otherwise, and corrects the pas- sions which unbalance the mind. Race Education improves the race by fostering individual skill and aptitudes, which increase the effectiveness of the race as well as of the individual. Race Education does not consider man as a sep- arate being, divorced from the past, present and future of the race. Man exists only in, through and for the race, and can only be understood and prepared for his destiny in harmony with the race. Race Education, aiming at the improvement of the race, seeks to elevate the masses ; while scho- lastic Education, aiming at literary excellency, the prerogative of but few, sacrifices to this small mi- nority the many. Education, fitting man for all his functions in society, must take council with social science. The teachers of Greece and Rome were social and moral The Development of Education. 117 philosophers, hence their great influence upon their disciples and upon the lives of the men of their times. The characteristic morbid tendencies of the minds and morals of individuals and communi- ties, the vices and miseries peculiar to the age, their spread, cure and prevention deeply interest the educator. THE DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION. The Education of modern Europe began with the catechism, or belief, progressed to the study of the languages of Greece and Rome, and is thought to have reached its goal in our day in aiming at knowledge, which, we maintain, must give way to Race Education. Belief, language, knowledge and humanity form the complete cycle or evolution of Education. We begin with instinctive hope and assurance, the prophecy of future realization ; and, hence, belief, or the catechism. As language is the first step and mark of growing intelligence in the child, so it is with the race. Language, the instru- ment of thought, must be brought to some degree of perfection before men can think with precision and advance to scientific knowledge. Language, having the full impress of reason, is the best means for developing the mind ; and, being the store- house of the intellectual acquisitions of the race, 1 1 8 Tlie Dcvelopme7it of Education. acquaints us with the labors of those who preceded us before we advance to original research. But even knowledge is not the last word, for ideas must become things, leading to the improvement of man and the elevation of the race. We are far from undervaluing knowledge ; still nothing less than the preservation and improve- ment of the race can be the aim of Education. We object to the display made of a showy sort of learning in our higher institutions, while the people are refused in their elementary schools the solid instruction of science that would assist them in the use of the tools they are to handle in their future practical pursuits in life. Our histories, with their royal pedigrees, political intrigues and battles, must give way to the study of the rise and development of cities and states ; and physics, chemistry, physiology, botany and the other sciences must be taught in the com- mon school chiefly in their applications to life and industry. Our common schools better teach a little less geography and a little more of Youmans' Physi- ology and Hygiene, a little less grammar and a little more of Youmans' Household Science. The sub- ject matter of our Education is not life, but litera- ture, the heroes of which we worship, while we neglect the only true hero of the world — toiling humanity. Our Civilization and Deterioration. 119 Race Education, or Hereditary Culture, implies progress, a power by which we are striving for an excellency not yet attained, and which assists us more in our endeavor to work up to the high des- tiny of man than any other idea or principle. Race Education, improving the masses, lifts all to a higher plane of common sense, where all see at a glance what the interminable discussions of former ages could not make clear even to the wise surrounded by general darkness. OUR CIVILIZATION AND DETERIORATION. The whole of our civilization is a series of life- deteriorating processes. The producing classes de- generate in mines and factories ; adulterations and artificial wants do their work on the consumer ; luxury deteriorates the one, and want and misery degenerate the other. The records of the nobles of Venice, of the old aristocracy of France and En- gland, prove the almost general disappearance of families living in great affluence after a few cen- turies ; while our factory and poor laborers in great cities, left to themselves, die out in three to four generations. There is not a relation in life but tends toward race deterioration ; and, like past nations and civ- ilizations, we dig our own grave if we fail to oppose to this degenerating tendency an Education, which I20 Our Civilization and Deterioration, is a persistent system of race amelioration, inspired by the spirit of altruism, the saving genius of the race, and the only possible correction of an age selfish to the core. Race Education cultivates in the teacher, who brings up the child for the race, devotion to hu- manity, which from him spreads and imbues all. The system in vogue appeals to the scholar's pride — a passion that stirred up the first rebellion in heaven ; a passion fierce and anti-social underlying one-half of all mischief and oppression in the world. Are men never to be brought up to work for one another ? Is the kingdom of heaven never to be- come a fact and a truth ? Are justice, peace and good -will among men but a dream and not a prophecy as well ? Individual Education means selfishness, which, winding its way from the school room to the cabi- net, creeps down thence to the lowest shop, and involves the nation in ruin. Not without mighty reasons, and the testimony of the universal facts of history as well as the judg- ment of the best of mankind, has Rousseau de- nounced civilization as the mother of the chiefest of our woes, which denunciation falls still justly upon the culture of to-day, that often is but an- other name for refined selfishness, considering itself the highest end instead of serving and improving Education and Individualism. 121 the race. Within reasonable limits this terrible in- dictment of all past civilization is more than a mere morbid fancy of the over-sensitive • Jean Jacques, The clear-sighted Lessing, than whom none loved truth more ardently, moaned over the displacement of the practical wisdom of Socrates by the dreams of Plato and the syllogisms of Aristotle — for both these men w^ere but toying, the one with philos- ophy and the other with science — while none of them cared for humanity, at least not in the great style of the master, who discarded the high-sound- ing philosophy of the schools and set about teach- ing men how to live. Other sages spoke words of love, equally drowned by the jargon of the schools, which ever preferred what pedants call scholarly accomplishments to humanity, which they left to perish. Words cost less than deeds, and learning is cheaper than goodness ; and, hence, scholarship is more popular than humanity. This evil, therefore, is not of yesterday, nor is its denunciation new ; but, as the lesson is not heeded, men must not complain if it is dinned in their ear over and again. EDUCATION AND INDIVIDUALISM. Neither the promotion of the individual nor the establishment of any truth or principle, but solely 6 122 Education and Individualism. the preservation and improvement of the race are the aim of the new Education. Or do we aim too high, when we are asking for the masses of the people a sound body and a well- balanced mind, the first requisite of Race Educa- tion ? Nothing but the bringing up of every child for the race can bring those better times, the belief of which is implanted in every human breast. Race Education, with heredity, its foundation principle, impresses parents and all with the sense of the responsibility arising from the knowledge that by any imprudence, which deteriorates the race, we may give the world maniacs, criminals^ paupers and idiots, filling individuals and com- munities with sadness and decay, and even lead to a degeneracy which may seal the doom of our country. Individual happiness as the aim of Education, and, therefore, of life, is mean on the very face of it ; and yet the aim of individual perfection leads invariably to the same selfish end and defeats its own better purpose. Considering the culture of the select few of our own class as the sole aim of humanity, we reduce mankind to beasts of burden in order to subserve our own selfish purposes, call it culture or what you may, and thus we find th.it neither the divin« Education and Individualism. 123 musings of Plato nor the science of Aristotle dis- covered to the one or the other the inhumanity of slavery, which they deemed the necessary condi- tion of their own culture. Race Education, setting up the claims of the race above those of the individual, makes universal be- nevolence, the sum total of all morality, the founda- tion of our Education and of our conduct in life. In our endeavor to be unsectarian we become inhuman to piracy. But humanity will not always be cheated out of the great principles springing from the eternal relations of the individual to the whole of humanity and the Cosmos, advanced by every founder of religion and adhered to by a sound philosophy. Every man who sacrifices the in- terests of humanity to his own narrow advantage, or who is proud, oppressive and inhuman, has not risen to the high plane of humanity, and is a brute. Ed- ucation must be organized on the highest principles of humanity, or society will break up into frag- ments. A half a million of men have fallen as if it was yesterday, before the violated majesty of the higher law, and if it cannot be done otherwise, mil- lions more will fall — but the higher law of the sub- ordination of the individual to society will be vin- dicated. Men sneer at patriotism, honesty and honor, and confess money their deity. Wealth takes off the ugly looks of vice, and poverty de- 124 Race Education and Hygicfie. prives virtue of its charm. Ostentation makes riches a necessity at any price, and all at war with one another chase for gold. A nation may live for ages under traditional slavery, but a state, in which all deliberately violate the known laws of nature, cannot long continue to exist ; and that this is our condition is the open secret of the nation to be read on every countenance. And are we to be told by pedants that this condition of affairs matters nothing to the school ? — perish the state, literary culture is the thing ! Since, then, nothing but subordination to the higher law, or the subordination of the individual to humanity, and general regard to the good of mankind can preserve a state or government, Edu- cators must rear their whole structure upon this foundation, and, hence, the necessity of Race Edu- cation, or Hereditary Culture, which subordinates in every particular the individual to the race. Under the system of Race Education self-culture is not a debt we owe merely to ourselves, and which we may slight — if we so please — it becomes rather a duty we owe to others, and which to neg- lect is a crime against the race. RACE EDUCATION AND HYGIENE. Race Education does not trust to the power of mere words ; it looks to material conditions, from Race Education and Hygiene. 125 which ever ideas and principles spring, as effects do from their causes ; for folly or wisdom, and vice or virtue, are but the inner aspect of the outer condition of man ; and air, bread, clothing and shel- ter are full of moral significance. Do we expect to pluck figs from thistles? Why, then, should we look for sound principles in an un- sound body ? We treat the mind and take no ac- count of the body — the common vice of the quack, who treats the symptoms and leaves the deeper seat of the disease untouched. Race Education studies its subjects in their homes and in connection with their hereditary family relations. Plants, to be understood, must be seen in the soil in which they grow ; and children can only be understood in the home in which they are rooted with their vices and their virtues. The scholastic system injures body and soul by the cramming process ; the aesthetic system culti- vates unduly the imagination and the passions ; the moral system, relying upon precepts, neglects the material conditions of what it aims at ; the practical system makes time-serving men, and even the harmonious development of the faculties of the individual is defective in principle, as man must be brought up chiefly in harmony with the race and the future of humanity 126 Race Education and Hygiene. Race Education lays its foundation in the body, watching the physiological formation, in which are the beginnings of the higher development. Emotion, will and perception originate in sensa- tions, and these depend upon the state of nutri- tion ; and we might just as well try to transplant the flora of the tropics to the rigid zone as try to inculcate noble conceptions into children, whose nerves, suffering from want of proper nutrition, give rise to vicious sensations. The school often debilitates children by mental overstrain, physical inactivity, too long hours of study, want of pure air and ozone, seats and post- ures interfering with the natural functions of one or the other of the organs, overheated rooms, de- pression arising from fear or dislike of the teacher or the school restraint, envy of the more gifted and preferred students, self-distrust, want of cheerful- ness or lack of harmonizing physical and moral surroundings. With so many drawbacks to health, strength, working capacity and good-will, what wonder that the funncling system of the schools interfering in so many ways with indi\'iduality and energy, fur- nished so small a quota of the great men of the world. Sir Isaac Newton ranked very low in school until the age of twelve. Sheridan was pronounced an Race Education and Hygiene. 127 incorrigible dunce. Goldsmith was dull in his youth, and Shakespeare, Gibbon, Davy and Dryden have given at school not the slightest evidence of their future success. The character given to the great Swedish chemist, Berzelius, in his school certificate, is " Indifferent in behavior and of doubtful hope." Walter Scott passed for " the thickest skull in the school." Milton and Swift were justly celebrated for stupidity in childhood. That our schools look more to geography, gram- mar and spelling than to life, health and strength of the rising generation may be seen from the last report of the Commissioner of Education, in which Dr. Thomas F. Hunter, of Buffalo, is quoted to have said in his inaugural address before the Medi- cal Society of the State of New York : " In the primary department little children have hardly room to breathe and stretch out their little arms. The United States hospitals allow from 800 to 1,200 cubic feet of air to the individual. The Brit- ish India jails give the prisoners 648 cubic feet of air. Some of our schools give our (growing?) chil- dren 56 cubic feet ! No wonder that scarlet fever, diphtheria, typhoid /ever and blood poisoning of every sort are more or less prevalent. A large pro- portion of these dread disorders are generated and propagated in our public schools. But acute dis- eases are not the only results of this criminal 128 Race Education and Hygiene. crowding. Tuberculosis, scrofulous and brain affec- tions, developed at various periods, are generated in our schools. Better for society and better for themselves would it be that these infants were not educated at all than at such risk." And such schools may be found in every large city of the land ! The average number of cubic feet to the scholar in the schools of Philadelphia is 143. The propor- tion of carbonic acid to the air is 5CX) per cent, larger in these crowded rooms than in the normal atmosphere, and cannot but vitiate the blood. Every individual, says Dr. Bell, requires 2,000 feet of fresh air every hour, and if only 300 feet are allowed to the scholar, the air must be changed every twenty minutes, and with less provisions con- tamination is sure to follow ; the sensibilities are blunted, the intellect is obtused ; stupidity, idiocy and physical deformity are promoted. The de- pressed condition of the children in our schools predisposes them to epidemics, from which they suf- fer also more intensely than others. An examination of the public schools of Brook- lyn, in 1874, showed 50, 49, 30, 29 and even as lit- tle as 24 cubic feet of air to tlie scholar. Such is the condition of the schools in Brooklyn. It is, as we have seen, not much bettor in Philadelphia, and very much the same all over the country. Race Education and Hygiene. 129 Dr. Howard shov/s that our present system of Education, treating alike all scholars, is injurious to many, weakens body and mind, and is one of the causes of the increase of insanity. Is it not time, then, that our schools be put under the sanitary supervision of competent physi- cians, as advocated by the Social Science Asso- ciation ? Theoiy and practice have both established the hygienic effect of gymnastics, never more indispen- sable in childhood or mature age than under our present division of labor, which affords hardly to anybody the harmonious exercise of all the parts and organs of his body. Still our schools are crimi- nally indifferent about this reform, alike necessary to the health and development of the human system. The one-sided mental culture of our seminaries leads to mental degeneracy. The criminal pride and foolish vanity of the world, the excess of imagi- nation and passion, and other disturbing elements cultivated by our literary schools, prepare the way for insanity, to which students thus deteriorated fall an easy prey in after-life. But it is not necessary to enter upon a hygienic analysis of our present scholastic system. Dr. Ray, a most eminent observer, sketches in a few lines the future mothers of our physically enfeebled race, as sickl)! young women, daughters of healthy moth- 6* 130 Race Education and Hygiene. ers who went to school hale and hearty, and re- turned with an enfeebled constitution, the face pale and the spine not infrequently curved, to give ex- istence to children as weak as themselves. The examination of a noted physician proved the fact that there was not one girl out of forty who have spent two years at a boarding-school that was not more or less crooked. Horace Mann said : " Degeneracy must not only be considered as one of the greatest calamities that can befall a people, but it must be entered on the catalogue of its greatest sins." Again, the same eminent educator says: " As the inevitable conse- quence of unhealthful habits, debility or sickness ensues, old age is anticipated, feeble parents are succeeded by feebler children, the lineage dwindles and tapers from less to less, the cradle and swad- dling clothes are frequently converted into the coffin and shroud, occasional contributions are sent off to deformity, to idiocy and insanity, until sooner or later, after incredible sufferings and abused and outraged nature finding all her commands broken, her admonitions unheeded, her punishments con- temned, applies to the offending family her sov- ereign remedy of extinction." The same veteran says: "On the broad and firm foundation of health alone can the loftiest and most enduring structure of the intellect be reared." Race Educatio7i and Hygiene. 131 Nervous diseases are daily becoming more fre- quent, and our mad houses, though of the size of towns and daily increasing in number, are over- flowing with their unhappy tenants. We, therefore, insist upon Race Education, or Hereditary Culture, which clearly implies a human- ity, sound in body, vigorous in mind, skilful in. per- forming, inventive in conception and well-balanced all over. Our definition of Education excludes both ex- tremes, the past ineffectual formalism as well as the anti-ideal or unethical realism, which would fain press Education into the service of a selfish industrialism. Health is the first condition of success and hap- piness, and, hence, hygiene and gymnastics are the first steps in Education. Gymnastics direct the organic activity of the body from the great nerv- ous centres to the muscular system, and lessen thereby an excess of sensibility, which, among other baneful influences, counts also that of a premature and morbid sexual development, end- ing in that terrible vice which destroys the youths of the land by the tens of thousands. Our one- sided Education, failing to combine physical with mental exercise, is greatly responsible for this race- deteriorating pest. Too many lessons lead to evening studies, an 132 Race Education and Hygiene. excited brain, an unsound sleep, dreams and self- pollution. Muscular exercise and fatigue induce a sound sleep and a clear head for morning study. Germany is following in the traces of ancient Greece, and gymnastics form a part of its common schools, of which it is fast reaping the benefit. Prof. Tyndall, like others, strongly condemns our one-sided culture. " Few persons," he says, *' are aware how great a promoter of study labor is. Those whose occupations are of the intellectual kind, frequently become brain-weary, and this sort of weariness is very exhausting. The brain needs rest, gets it most effectually in muscular toil, and returns to study with a keen appetite." Tyndall recommends alternation of farm and shop work with study, and concludes, " This habit of work should be formed early in life, if we would have it a source of pleasure. Work is the greatest educator and blessing that we have or are likely to have." And this initiation in the mechanical arts, horticulture or agriculture, while affording re- laxation from mental exercise, would prepare us for the active duties of life, and add greatly to our material wealth. PART III. KINDERGARTEN AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. For hundreds of years universities absorbed all the care of governments ; to-day the vaster impor- tance of common schools is conceded. But we venture to say, the foundation must be laid deeper and lower still — in infant schools, where the senses are developed, moral and industrious habits are formed, the taste is improved, and the finer feel- ings, which give fibre to the will, are cultivated. But while the highest interests of humanity de- mand the formation of national infant schools, the immediate material interests of the industrial classes call for them as an opportunity for early art training, the development of the faculty of form, combination and invention, as they can only compete with machinery in art and ornamental industry. The daily increasing temptations of all classes convince all of the urgency of moral training, the want of which has not a little to do with our almost universal loss of trust and confidence, and the con- sequent crisis we are passing through. ff33) 1 34 Kindergartens and Infant Edueation. Through the inactivity of our intellectual facul- ties in early infancy we become more apt to imi- tate and form habits good or bad, and, hence, the importance of training-schools at that age. Our sensations and their gradations, even those of touch, smell and taste, and especially those of sight — which suggest form and magnitude and lead to the perception of order and beauty — and ^those of hearing — which imply a succession of time and harmony — are all elements of thought and lead to the formation and development of the mind. This cultivation of the mind begins, then, with the ex- ercise of the senses, and especially of the eye, best cultivated by Kindergarten training adapted for the purpose and by the art of drawing continued in after years. From the very birth of man, sensations deepen into perceptions, perceptions by repetition form memory, memory develops into imagination ; the ab- sent object is imagined and calls forth desire, which grows into passion ; impressions force a compari- son and give rise to judgment, which again devel- ops into reason ; and, hence, the importance of coming in contact with living nature and her grand living realities, the source of all healthy sensation and perception, the fountain-head of all higher mental life, and the necessity of feeding the minds of children through their senses and not to blur Kindergartens and Infant Education. 135 their minds through words — the imperfect shad- ows of things. It is from the freshness of the sen- sations and perceptions, derived from the constant intercourse with Hving nature, that the self-made man obtains his vigor and success in life. When character and individuality and the culti- vation of virtues, like order, steadiness, neatness, industry, wisdom and love, and, in general, a better and happier humanity will be aimed at in Educa- tion, Kindergarten, in which the development of these traits is the only business of the teacher and his young pupils, will be assigned the first place in the rearing of the race. As long, however, as the cramming down of the fragments of half-digested knowledge is taken for the proper work of the school, the race will be uneducated and suffer se- verely and variously, in spite of our boasted insti- tutions of learning, and in proportion to the undeveloped nature of its positive elements of physical, mental and moral strength. The words of Lord Brougham are always worth considering, and he dwells upon it as a weighty matter in connection with national infant schools, that a child can and does learn more before the age of six years than it does or can learn after that age during his whole life, however long it may prove to be. Children, he says, with curiosity, frankness and candor, become soon unwilling to 136 Kmdergartens and Infant Education. learn, turn stubborn and sullen, and even full of base fear and falsehood, from want of early Educa- tion and infantile tuition. If colleges and universities turn out men full of fine speeches and sermons, only Kindergarten schools can turn out men and women of fine moral dispositions and such sterling mental parts as will make them citizens of solid worth. Kindergarten sounds very poetic, though its ori- gin is deeply realistic. Froebel's heart sunk within him at the misery of the masses, whose children are pining away within the dingy walls of dark and damp tenement apartments. He longed to see men free and happy, which they cannot be without activity; but to be active they must be healthy, and, hence, he insisted that the pale little prisoners of the poor should be congregated in schools con- nected with gardens, that heaven's free air may have access to them and give them strength to act and to live. Next to bodily vigor, mental activity is requisite to a perfect life. The dwellings of the poor offer but little variety of impressions and yield but little food to the perceptive powers, the imagi- nation, the will, the ;Esthetic faculty; and the social virtues have no chance at all in the isolation of the dwellings of the poor, where the dear little ones are not infrequently locked up as brutes in cages, while the parents are out to work. Kindergartens and Infant Education. 1 37 That in England 408,461 infants of the ages be- tween three and six years attend infant schools, or, according to the report of the Commission of the Duke of Newcastle, 12.17 per cent, of the popula- tion under 5 years, and in France 418,768 infants of the same ages are in public halls, proves suffi- ciently the practicability of infant schools, and that they could be made beneficial to the highest de- gree to the race by the training and direction given to the physical and mental activities of the young before they take the wrong direction, into which they are often pushed by vicious hereditary ten- dencies. The progress of the Kindergarten schools in the last few years is a guarantee of their ultimate suc- cess. There were but twelve in the United States in 1 87 1. The following table, taken from the Com- missioner's late report, shows their growth in the last few years : 1873. 1874. 1875. 1876. Kindergarten, ... 42 55 95 130 Teachers, .... 73 125 216 364 Pupils, 1,252 1,636 2,809 4.090 St. Louis has made a lively beginning of incor- porating the Kindergarten system in the primary department of public instruction. Boston has en- tered upon the same experiment. The Kindergarten demands the highest capacity 1 38 Kindergartens ajid Infant Education. in the teacher, shows clearly the object of Educa- tion, and how to reach it ; the teacher studying and developing the pupil, as books do not step in between the two and defeat the true object of Education. Once the presence of the father assisted the mother in the government of the children ; to-day the factory or the business house calls him away from his home ; and the mother, burdened wdth additional cares and labors in and out of the house, can impossibly attend with an even temper to the difficult task of properly training her children. The generality of mothers have to do their own work, their cooking, washing, sweeping, mending, nursing and taking care of babies ; and shall they be made also to train and educate our little children ? Is it a wonder that women are weakened, break down in body and mind and transmit their feebleness to their children ? We insist upon it that the father's absence and the increased responsibilities and cares and labors of women to-day, together with the irritability of our excited nerves, make it a necessity — both for mothers and children — that the latter are managed by infant schools, which would thereby much im- prove the health of overburdened mothers, and, in consequence, improve the race. As the house is dead and empty without the Kindergartens and Infant Education. 1 39 presence of the blessed little ones, so is the nation without its public nurseries, in which alone our children can be properly trained. Oh ! what bliss is in store for the race, when juvenile processions of sweet children will on fes- tive occasions brighten the careworn brow of the workers of the nation. The lamb-like innocence, beaming from the angelic little faces, will do more toward purifying the moral atmosphere of the land than all opposition parties. Far from being an innovation, we find that Boston had already in 1823 an infant school of 130 children. The growing difficulty of attaining success in the complexity of our modern relations, the ad- vantage a cultivated intellect bestows, and the continuous exercise of this faculty, render it super- fluous to dwell upon the necessity of mental train- ing at school. In proportion as men will be expected to do something well in life, the development of their faculties and energies, and, hence, their early train- ing will become more important. The infant school, therefore, must be something different from a mere play or singing school ; and, least of all, must the children be crammed. Infant schools cannot but become worse than useless when children are taught in them in the manner of: 140 Kindergartens anel Infant Eelu cation. G, is for Goshen, a rich and good land, H, is for Horeb, where Moses stand. I, is for Italy, where Rome stands so fair. J, is for Joppa, and Peter lodged there. K, is for Kadesh, where Miriam died, L, is for Lebanon, can't be denied. Froebel's games must not be allowed to become monotonous, but the individuality of the teacher and the pupil must endow them with a daily fresh- ness, which renders them a delightful exercise to the minds and bodies of the children. The teach- ers of infant training-schools do a most noble work and must have warm hearts and active minds. Race Education, aiming at permanent qualities and fixed tendencies in the race, cares more for infant training than collegiate teaching. The latter may give us masters or commanders, who have neither the will nor the disposition to practice the laws they lay down for the regulation of others ; it may make diplomats disposed to take advantage of the ignorance of the multitudes ; but infant train- ing makes men who are a law to themselves, and who succeed not by the folly and faults of other men, but by their own skill and industry. It is a sort of malign providence in the state to educate the citizen just sufficiently to make him responsible for the law which he may be able to read, without developing in him the power to con- form to it. Kindergartens and Infant Education. 141 The culture of the disposition in the young, which is mostly effected by Hving example, is a grand school for the adult generation. But, alas ! just here is the rub. It costs little or nothing to lec- ture. To give the example, we have to become learners and workers ourselves, and, hence, the preference of barren teaching to fruitful training. If a person well trained in childhood strays from the path of rectitude, he is easily redeemed from his error through the early instilled sentiment, which, as it were, waits but for an opportunity to be aroused from its dormant state into full power, swaying again the life and action of the soul and purging it from vice and crime. Race Education lays most stress upon the culti- vation and development of a sound body, for where health and vigor are wanting, nothing great or good can be achieved, neither intellectually nor other- wise, and nations as individuals lose their hold upon success and pre-eminence with the loss of physical energy. Still, though our main care in dealing with infancy is the attainment of bodily health and strength, we may and must lay the foundation to intellectual greatness already in the nursery. It has been observed by Beale that fixing the atten- tion steadily upon one object, or the complete concentration of mind, makes the Newton or Leib- 142 Kindergartens and Infant Education. nitz. And this faculty may be cultivated in the nurser}' by riveting the attention of a child to whatever he is doing, until he comprelicnds as much of it as his age permits before he passes to anything else. Children are so apt to fly from one thing to another with too much rapidity to thor- oughly acquire a knowledge of one thing before they begin to examine another. By a wise control over the appetites and propen- sities of our children the foundation is laid to that self-command in them, without which no real hap- piness in life is possible. Let children observe and learn facts, storing their minds with material for a later age when the higher faculties will begin to combine and compare ideas. We take only notice of what a child learns by set lessons, forgetting how much he learns by ob- servation of innumerable facts and the acquisition of language. Premature decrepitude and death are often the fruit of forcing the mind and neglecting to strength- en the body. Proper digestion, perspiration, exercise and res- piration are requisite to the proper action of the brain. Lessen the quality of the blood by impure air, or the quantity by insufficiency of food, and the brain lacks its proper stimulus. Race Education aiming at permanent effect Kindergartois and l7ifant Education. 143 through organic improvement seeks to ascertain in the nursery the temperament, constitution, idio- syncrasies of the various organs and their functions, morbid affections, hereditary tendencies and habits of those trusted to its charge. It being ascertained that the child we are to manage is of a biHous, san- guine, nervous or lymphatic temperament, of a weak or powerful constitution, scrofulous or phthit- ical, with a hereditary tendency to insanity, habits, surroundings and a mode of living are to be chosen opposing the development of the evil tendencies feared. It is in the nursery that the habit must be estab- lished of conforming to the hygienic laws of our being, a habit that determines the whole of life, and is positively of itself sufficient to insure our success and happiness in life ; and punctuality as regards food, sleep, temperature, evacuations, cloth- ing, etc., affords a constant opportunity for the establishment of this habit of conforming to the hygienic laws of our being; and this opportunity begins with our existence, and will do more for us than all later precepts and exactions. The brain of the young, soon over-worked, dis- turbs the functions of nutrition and produces indi- gestion so common among us, as we over-task our children at school and ourselves in whatever enter- prise we mciy be engaged ia 144 Kindergartens and Infant Education. It is the excess that injures. A proper amount of physical and mental activity promotes the nerv- ous activity requisite for the healthy functions of the human system. Temperance and exercise of body and mind must be insisted upon, without which health of body and mind are impossible and life becomes a tor- ment. Though all faculties are to be trained, still they are to be subordinate to the intellectual powers, which must, above all, be called into active exer- cise, especially as we are naturally prone to yield to our animal propensities. As the formation of regular habits, self-control and order are of the highest importance, a good nurse will lay the foundation to all these habits, and secure at the same time the health of the child by invariable order in the periods of feeding and in all other matters. Much can be done for the future happiness of the child by a cheerful nurse, who avoids harsh tones. A discordant voice and ill-tcmpcred mother are sure to beget moroseness in the child, and lay the foundation for future misery. Gloom and de- pression, says Taylor, during childhood debilitate body and mind. A sorrowful child, full of unkind- ness and misfortune, develops among the lowest class a ferocity, which startles from the commission Kindergartens and Infant Education. 145 of no crime. An unhappy childhood is often the cause of a wrong life, for it perverts the judgment and natural feelings of man ; depression impairs the functions and lowers the tone of body and mind. Bearing in mind all the time that the physical growth and development is at this tender age im- portant beyond every other consideration, we still say, more can be done for the future mental devel- opment of the child in the first two years, than at any future period, for the child's powers of obser- vation can be steadied and its curiosity strength- ened, while we can weaken the one by discouraging the other, in order not to be annoyed by the child questioning us and exposing our ignorance besides trying our patience. As light, air and exercise are the first requisites of the young citizen, we will remark that the fading of the carpet must not be allowed to interfere with free access of the rays of the sun, neither must the possibility of soiling clean garments stand n\ the way of free and easy out-door play, and as a prop- erly warm and active skin is the foremost preserver of good health, we will add here our protest against children's bare arms and legs. It is a shame, our factories interfere even with infant schools. But can we not by stringent Vic- tory laws, like Switzerland, keep little children out of factories? Or are our western prairies not as 7 146 Education a Social Science. fertile as the ice-fields of Helvetia, and can the American republic not as well provide for the fu- ture citizen, as the mountainous land of Tell does for its children ? EDUCATION A SOCIAL SCIENCE. Providence, that gives the bird its beautiful plum- age and teaches it to sing, that joins suppleness to strength in the tiger, gives antlers to the stag and fleetness to the hare, will it not provide for the suffering masses a way of escape from their miser- ies? The physician studies but one side of human life — the physical — and that in its abnormal state. The lawyer considers man in his legal and hardly in his moral or physical relations. The divine is almost wholly absorbed by the world to come, and the suffering masses themselves, and their hun- gry leaders, are too much in the thickest of the fight to direct with judgment the details of the battle. May we not look reasonably to the teacher for the deliverance of humanity from its present troubles ? Great educators are not mere cipherers. They are lovers of the race, and sorrow with its sufferings. Luther, Franke, Dc la Salle, Rousseau, Basedow, Zinzcndorf, Pcstalozzi, De Fcllcnbcrg, Obcrlin, Wichern, in short, all who have revolutionized old barren systems, or applied well-known principLs Education a Social Science. 147 on a grand scale, were deeply exercised about the social miseries of the people they yearned to relieve from the burdens that were pressing upon them. Vehrli, in Switzerland, was so strongly convinced of the necessity of the teacher's sympathy with the people, that at his normal school at Constance the future teachers had to work as hard and live as poorly as the commonest of the people, with whom they were to be united in heart and feeling ; and the success of this system had become so manifest, that it has been copied in numerous normal schools all over Europe, and especially in those which had the good of the people at heart as the great and good Vehrli. The teacher is no theorist, but a practical worker. He has the best opportunities for observing human nature and for acting upon it when it is most sus- ceptible and least prejudiced. He has but one desire — the good of the race — and the world trusts and confides in him to-day more than ever. Who, then, of all men is more suited for the priesthood of social reform than the teacher and educator? The proper division of the sciences and the assigning to each of them its proper work is the very foundation and beginning of their successful cultivation. Medicine was for long ages but a part of theology and was practiced by the miracle work- ing and healing divine, and astronomy was left to 148 Education a Social Science. the fortune-telling astrologer; while the chemistry of society, or social philosophy, like the chemistry of nature, was left to the goldmakers, and shared the same fate of never rising in such hands to the dignity of a science. Remove social science from political economy — vulgarly speaking, the art of making money — to Education or the art of improving man, and social philosophy will experience the same change as the science of the heavens did when removed from its ancient quackery to the serene science of astron- omy, or chemistry from the goldmakers to the schools and laboratories of the Bcrzelius and Rose. As long as social philosophy was made the ad- junct of political economy, man was made sub- servient to wealth, just as wealth will be made subservient to man when political economy will be made an adjunct to social philosophy. Like law, medicine or theology, social philosophy must be put in keeping of some working profession ; and there is none, as we have seen, more proper for the cultivation of this noblest of all departments than that of the educator, who has in his hands the formation of humanity almost from the very cradle, and whose work is the improvement of man. Of course, the educ.itor w ill make man and iiis improve- ment the centre and circumference of social philoso- phy. But is thtrc any serious objcc.i ju to this? Education a Social Sci.iice. 149 Only in the union of social science and Educa- tion lies the success of both and the future of humanity. Like the mills of the gods the educator grinds slowly, but surely, and equals all in the end. He does not convulse society with revolutionary meas- ures ; but neither are counter revolutions possible where he has prepared the ground for the onward movement of a progress in keeping with the condi- tions of time and place. Race Education puts a new emphasis upon Lord Brougham's celebrated " the schoolmaster is abroad," and endows it with the force of an almost new inspiration. The suffering masses, humanity, need not despair, the schoolmaster is abroad. He is intelligent ; is in daily contact with the children of the poor ; his labors and aspirations are for the poor ; their welfare is his success ; his worldly prospects are modest ; the prosperity of the poor is all he works for, and this is the highest re- ward of his most ardent labors. To the teacher the poor must look as to their most trusty friend, who will yet conquer for them the sphynx, answer her queries, and solve the problem that presses hard upon a suffering world to-day. To fill this, his mission, the teacher must study the whole of man. He must understand the gene- sis of physical debility, morbidity and of excessive 150 Education a Social Science. rates of mortality ; he must understand the genesis of pauperism, of drunkenness, of insanity, of vice and of crime ; for Education is the dietetics by which all these abnormal developments are to be prevented, and the race and the individual are to be preserved and improved. But if Education is a social science, it certainly cannot teach, as it does to-day teach, everj'thing save the principles of this science, which is the most useful of all to man. Horace Mann has successfully u^ged upon com- mon schools the study of human physiology. But is the physiology of society or political economy less essential for our social existence than common physiology is for the animal economy? Ignorance cannot interfere with the motion of the stars, but it does with the movements of indus- try. Passions and narrow interests blind us as to the facts and principles of social science, and make an impartial stud}- of the same a double necessity. How natural it is for a laboring man to believe that labor is the only factor in production ; that wages can be raised or lowered at option ; that what is gained by capital is taken from wages, and that to curtail capital is to improve wages, and the like sophisms, which form the stock in the conflict between labor and capital and which sound eco- nomical teachings must help to clear away. Education a Social Science. 151 England,with its extreme centralization of wealth, real and personal, would not enjoy to-day the peace and prosperity it does, had not its Broughams, its Robert Peels, its Chalmers, its Chambers, Charles Knights and Chadwicks worked as assiduously for the spread of sound economical doctrines as for the improvement of the condition of the masses. Education, or race preservation, cannot overlook the laws of production, exchange, currency, distri- bution and consumption, which can no more be violated with impunity than any other laws of nature. The aim of Education, says Mr. Blyth, before the National Association of Social Improvement, is not to make reading and calculating machines, or manufacturers of Greek and Latin verses, but steady, intelligent and thrifty men, practicing regu- lar industry, beneficially to society, and, therefore, profitable to themselves ; men who possess self-re- straint to abstain from wasting or misusing the product of their industry; forethought to store a portion of that product against sickness or old age; honesty and trustworthiness, the prevalence of which qualities in society enables confidence to be felt that their savings will be enjoyed, and a sense of parental duty inducing them to seek to implant in their children a disposition similar to their own. There are plenty of opportunities in school life 152 Industrial Education. to follow up the lessons of industry, self-restraint, forethought, equity and the like duties with their practical application. The mischief caused by the economical ignorance of the merchant class can only be imagined when we consider the universal calamity of our financial crises, which are as periodic and destructive as the pest formerly was. If men of science do not teach at school correct principles of social science to the advancement of social order, peace and general prosperity, disor- ganizers will spread doctrines subversive to society and civilization. Whoever will succeed to arouse the nation to a proper realization of the danger that threatens our future, from the neglect of the duty of teaching the people sound principles of social science in our common schools, will prove himself a public bene- factor. INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. The preservation and improvement of the race requires a certain degree of general well-being, which depends to-day chiefly upon the productive- ness of the industrial arts, which, therefore, must form the chief concern of the school. Our whole course of instruction looks to general culture. The adding of practical science and industrial training, Industrial Educatioft. 153 far from materializing the schools and rendering men machines, would only join practice to theory, and executing to planning, which humanizes us by the inter-penetration of thought and action. Science and industry are both gainers when they are united. Once the soldier held the scholar in contempt ; to- day the school and the scholar avoid the contact with the workshop and the mechanic ; and yet, if Lord Bacon is right, the workshop is the vestibule to real knowledge, and its methods are safer than those of Plato or Descartes. The school should omit nothing in theory or practice to make men more productive, saving, forethoughted, just and moral. Science, in its prac- tical application, the history and description of raw materials and the fashioning them into articles of industry, the management of tools, domestic and political economy and social science, form all-im- portant parts of the workingman's course at the industrial school. The industrial colleges of the United States should graduate annually a thouand mechanics and artisans, models of skill, efficiency and reliability. How much more such graduates would be worth to the country than the graduates sent out by our Latin and Greek schools, the relics of the middle ages. We are no more satisfied with verbal alterations. The abstract formulas and rules of science are of 7* 154 Industrial Education. no more practical use than the fine points of the schoolmen of the middle ages. Our infant schools must build us up by their training ; our common schools must use us to experimental ways by their constructive method of instruction, and our indus- trial schools must give us opportunities for apply- ing that spirit to the practical arts of life. A sensible people will as well submit to compul- sory industrial training as to spelling and grammar, especially as many trace their miseries to the want of such training. One-half of the people are out of work, because the other does not know how to work, and has nothing to give in exchange for the labor of the other. Or is this idea of compulsory industry a dream? If it is, it was sober enough a dream for the eminent jurist Lieber to have dreamt it forty years ago. Against the spirit of the age Education is im- potent. Joining with it, Lieber remarks, it yields a permanency of results attested by the stability of the Chinese Empire, in which the Education of the schools and the spirit of the country are of a piece. Wild speculation and industrial activity are the double tendency of this age ; the school may reinforce the first and lead to extravagance and ruin, or it may sustain the latter and promote uni- versal well-being. In antiquity, lessening human wants was lessening Industrial Education. 155 the double barbarity of slavery, which supplied labor, and of war, which furnished the markets of the world with slaves. In modern times, the in- crease of human wants is the foundation of a civil- ization in which labor is supplied by brains, direct- ing machinery. Only when labor will be coupled with intelligence and taste, and will be efficient, and the capacity for consumption will be universally in- creased by the enhanced productive power of the masses, will over-production cease to be a periodic, calamity, distressing alike to labor and capital, and, hence, the necessity of associating art instruction and industrial training with the common Education of the people. Or must the children of the industrial classes be pauperized before they can get into industrial schools? Is it just or wise to make industry the exclusive feature of pauper schools ? Is not this degrading labor and sliding back into the foul spirit of slavery and indolence, and the contempt of poor humanity? Is it not undermining the foundation of national wealth and public morality and manhood ? There are two sorts of culture, a traditional, oc- cupying itself with the opinions of the past, and a common, acquainting itself with men and things as they are. The first is as barren as endless, and in- accessible to the masses, for whose wants public 156 Industrial Education. Education ought to be suited. The second is suited for the people, whose Education must be such as will make them healthy and well balanced men, gain- ing a comfortable living by their skill and industry; and with health of body and mind, and industry, comfort and manly culture will not long be miss- ing. To be plain, our schools are not to furnish us with young ladies and gentlemen shining in society, but to fit men and women for useful work in a world of toil and labor. Our encyclopaedic Education makes of everybody a superficial judge of everything; thorough uni- versal elementary art and technical training make men skilful performers of useful things. We want workers and not everlasting talkers. We are all critics, but where are the artists? Once schools were only attended by the clergy ; and, hence, they were engrossed by Latin. Later, they were frequented by the wealthier classes and became commercial in character. To-day, when the working people crowd them, they must be- come essentially industrial. Drawing, geometry, science applied, technical instruction and indus- trial training must develop taste, skill and inclina- tion for a variety of mechanical pursuits. As long as five millions of youths are annually un- fitted upon our school benches for the plough, the shop and the factor}^ neither this, that or any Industrial Education. 157 other administration will relieve us of the misery of our times. Who can count the direct and indirect victims of a half a million of dens of iniquity in the land? Who can measure the depth of their misery and degradation? What an army of paupers, drunk- ards, criminals, insane and idiots ! What sorrowful batallions of the blind, deaf and dumb, who come into the world loaded with other men's sins. And the vicious, the proud, the avaricious, slaves and oppressors greatly swell this sad list. When men have once been saturated with sin and shame, benevolent societies may pitying follow them to the grave. The common schools must bring up the people for work ; and a gentleman who thinks his children above such an Education, must have the dancing master come to the house. Education alone can safely guide us through life. But Education must start us on the very way we are to travel through life. It must make us, when children, feel, think, live and act as we are to do through life. To pass our young years upon school benches entirely, prepares us for passing our lives in the school and not in the world. There are hours enough in the day for exercising a child in all the parts of life. William Pcnn, the founder of the conmionwealth 158 hid II St rial Education. that bears his name, framed the following provision, which was adopted by the Provincial Council in 1683: "That all children within this province of the age of twelve years shall be taught some use- ful trade or skill, to the end that none may be idle, but the poor may work to live and the rich — if they become poor — may not want." Our Education, says the State Superintendent of Pennsylvania, seems faulty in this, that too many young people are seeking a livelihood without working with their hands. Of 240 convicts, re- ceived at the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, only twelve had a regular trade, and of the crimi- nals of 17 prisons in the United States in 1868, 79 per cent, were without a trade. Mr. Edward Winslow, of Boston, insists upon joining mechanical and industrial training to our common school exercises. So does Prof. J. VV. Burns, of Philadelphia. Commissioner Eaton de- cidedly uses all his resources to direct the minds of the teachers of the United States to the want of a more practical Education ; and aptly quotes, in introducing the subject of Education and Labor, the words of Humboldt : " The time is not far distant when science and manipulative skill must be wedded together, that national wealth and the increasing prosperity of nations must be based on an enlight- ened employment of natural products and forces." Industrial Education. 159 Man's whole make of body and soul, his wants, and the whole structure of society, call for the per- fecting of our industrial occupations, especially to- day, when the competition among unskilled labor- ers is so great, and the power of steam takes the place of muscle. But under our system of division of labor, when a man, making a twentieth part of a thing, can earn however scanty a living and do- ing it all the time, does it expeditiously and to the satisfaction of the employer, technical schools be- come a necessity, in which apprentices are taught every part of a process, and the theory as well as the practice, in order to become superior workmen. Neighborhoods and countries blessed with such industrial institutions have distanced in the great markets of the world all the competition of the imperfect products of other countries, which by this sad experience have been awakened to their com- mercial danger. Muhlhousen, Creuzot and Besangon, Avith their celebrated industrial schools ; Belgium, with fifty such institutions and fifteen thousand apprentices, who have attended these schools with great satisfac- tion to themselves and the manufacturers ; France, with its twelve thousand of industrial scholars ; and Germany, with its 52,127 apprentices in fourteen hundred and fifty industrial schools, are sufficient proof of the practicability of such institutions. i6o Industrial Education. Scott Russel shows the actual cost of the techni- cal Education of a workman is no more than $125, and the surplus earning of educated over uneduca- ted labor of one single year amounts to as much. England is almost carrying on a crusade against the ignorance arising from want of like institutions for the technical training of her people. It recog- nizes the utter failure of a general Education, that is not followed up by a special Education and train- ing in some particular industry. A practical Education for useful life is hereditary ; for, as it is all work and training, it enters the very make of body and soul, while superficial scholarship profits very little at present and nothing at all in the future. Modern governments are expensive ; and if they do not assist the pursuit of industry, especially when the scientific information and the technical skill nec- essary for the complete mastery cannot be secured without the assistance of public institutions, they will soon find empty the pockets of the people they so often rifle. Why should the government not as well provide for the highest mastery of the occupations of the work-people as for the learned professions ? Solon freed children from all obligations toward their old parents, who neglected to teach them a trade. The Progress of Industrial Education. 16 1 Massachusetts made this duty obHgatory upon parents by statute laws as early as 1642, and Con- necticut in 1650. Almost forty years ago, Lieber said in his " Ethics of Politics," that all his investigations lead him to the conclusion that modern crime is very much due to the want of fixed occupations. Among 358 convicts in one prison he found but 52, or one in seven, who had a trade. In Belgium, in districts in which industrial schools are in operation, vagrancy, the hotbed of crime, has entirely disappeared, and at Creuzot, in which industrial instruction has been in vogue since 1841 though a city of twenty-five thousand inhabitants, crime, and even misdemeanors, have almost disap- peared, and three policemen form the entire force sufficient to give the people the feeling of perfect security. Education, without industrial training, starves the masses, breeds mutiny and ends in national suicide. Race Education most stringently insists upon in- dustrial training as the most effective preventive of pauperism, vice, crime, insanity, and, in fact, of every wrong from which society suffers to-day. THE PROGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. The progress in the industrial arts in England, France and Germany is not by any means the re- l62 The Progress of hidustrial Education. suit of mere manufacturing routine, which has but slowly advanced the arts, until the government has, by the creation of schools ofdesign,of art, and practi- cal science, spread the taste and the principles requi- site for the advancement of a higher industry. If we are to advance in the industrial arts for the sake of our commerce, our hungry masses, the puri- fication of taste and the delights of a higher civiliza- tion, v/e must likewise found industrial schools. Our late national exhibition entitles us to say that with the same art and industrial training, France, England and Germany possess already for many years, we would soon be more than their equal in the manufacturing arts. As far back as 1835 the House of Commons has appointed a parliamentary committee for ascertain- ing the state of art in England and other countries, the best means for extending a knowledge of and a taste for art among the manufacturing classes, and the state of the higher branches of art and the best mode for advancing them. The want of instruction in design and the absence of public and open galleries containing approved specimens of art was pronounced by this committee the chief cause of the difference between the artistic feeling of the English manufacturing districts and that of similar districts of France and other coun- tries. A normal school of design was, therefore, The Progress of Industrial Education. 163 determined upon, and the Government School of Design opened at Somerset House, in 1837. Every student had to devote himself to the advancem-ent of the interests of manufactures and ornamental trades. The course of study embraced — 1. Elementary instruction, as outline drawing of ornaments and of the human figure, shadowing, drawing from plaster, modeling and coloring. 2. Instruction in design for special branches ; the study of fabrics and of such processes of industry as admit only of the application of design under cer- tain conditions; the history of taste in manufactur- ing ; the distinction of styles of ornamentation, and such knowledge as was calculated to improve the tastes of the pupils and acquaint them with art. In 1841 the first common local schools of art were opened at Spitalfields, Sheffield, Manchester, Bir- mingham, Coventry, Nottingham, Norwich, Stoke, Hanley, Leeds, Huddersfield, Newcastle, Glasgow and Paisley, with 2,241 pupils. Technical art instruction was given ; museums were established ; artistic anatomy, practical con- struction, vv'ood engraving, painting on porcelain, decorative art in all kinds of woven fabrics, paper staining, furniture and jewelry, all were treated with the greatest attention. In 1863 these schools of art have, through the continued care of Parliament, and the central insti- 164 The Progress of Industrial Education. tution, the Chamber of Commerce, and the general interest of the pubHc, risen to 90 with 16,480 pupils under instruction, and 79,305 children of poor, and other schools were taught through their influence ; and to-day 117 schools of art give instruction to 20,310 pupils, with 309 night classes, having 11,747 pupils and 148,256 scholars in poor-schools all over the country under instruction in design. That these establishments have materially raised the character of the designs in all descriptions of English manufactures nobody doubts. The opening of the trade schools at Bristol, Wor- cester and other places, in which building, mechan- ical and engineering trades and chemical manu- facturing have made great progress since 1852, has been successfully followed up, until in 1870, 799 have been in full operation with 34,283 pupils. And it is universally admitted that these science schools had a lasting effect upon the scientific Education of the working people throughout the country. In 1 861, 82 classes submitted to public examina- tion, such as entitles to government support ; in .1870, 2,204 science classes were examined not only in mathematics, mechanics, drawing, physics and chemistry, but in practical work, testing the power of using the ax, saw, plane, chisel, file, forge, smith- work, turning, pattern making, moulding, etc., the The Progress of Industrial Education. 165 rule being that unless fully one-half of the science students are practical workmen the school has no claim upon the government for support. What an excellent example for our imitation. A school that does not aid the world in its work has no claim upon its assistance. The following table will best illustrate the im- portance attached by England to these practical institutions. Industrial instruction was given in in 9 schools, with 500 pupils. " 38 " 1,300 " " 70 " 2,543 " " 75 " 3.111 " "91 " 4,666 " " 120 " 5,479 " 153 " 212 " " 310 " 514 Enough has been said about the industrial, art and science schools of England, which have made it great in the industrial arts, to show how much can be accomplished in a few years by a govern- ment, which has at heart the commerce of the nation and the welfare of the masses. In France, national schools of art and common industrial schools have been fostered with the same care as in England and with the same results. The schools of arts and trades at Chalons, Angers and at Aix sent out every year 300 young men perfect i860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1 866 1867 1868 1869 6,835 10,230 15,010 21,000 1 66 The Progress of Industrial Education. in theory and practice in a number of trades. Paris, Lyons, Muhlhausen, Rouen, Nimes, Dieppe, Ro- chclle and other places, have excellent practical schools of industry. In 1862, 79 cities had indus- trial schools, attended by 32,cx)0 pupils. France has two great national agricultural col- leges, seventy farm schools, practical schools for draining, etc. ; three mining schools, the central schools of arts and manufacturing at Paris, also the famous Conservatory of Arts and Industry, three national schools of arts and manufacturing in the provinces ; in Savoy, a famous school for watch- making, the renowned Polytechnic School at Paris. In 1867, there were in France 250 special smaller technical schools, 21 schools of design, 12 of arts and trades, 5 of hydrography, 4 of the technical sciences, 4 of design for textile arts, lace, wall- paper, furniture, etc. Germany, which ranks high in the industrial pursuits, swarms with thorough practical technical schools, of which Austria has 45, Bavaria 36, Sax- ony "j^, Baden 50, among which are some for watch- making, weaving and straw plaiting. Switzerland has, besides its great polytechnic institutes, 29 in- dustrial schools. Belgium has 15 technical schools and 68 national workshops. Enough has been said to show the necessity of organizing industrial schools for our success in the The Progress of Industrial Education. 167 practical arts, commerce and the self-support of the masses, who must live by their labor. We have done more ; we have shown by the example of the foremost nations in art and industry that these institutions are not only possible and thor- oughly practical, but do actually exist in great numbers and fulfill all that is expected of them. Every lover of America cannot but look with pleasure at the following table, which shows the growth of schools of science in the United States : 1870. 1871. 1872. 1873. 1874. 1875. 1876. Schools, . , 17 41 70 70 72 74 75 Teachers, . 144 303 724 740 609 758 793 Students, . • 1,413 3,303 5,395 8,950 7,-=44 7,157 7,614 These schools of science are an almost infinite improvement upon the old Greek and Latin schools, which in the vast majority of cases do more injury than good ; and as these schools of science grow older, they will become more practical and teach more science applied than pure science, with which a graduate leaving the college cannot profit the world sufficiently to get in return for his services a modest meal. We have hardly any schools of industry ; and drawing, as useful, and even more so than writing, to every artisan, is but slowly making headway in our common schools, the only ones the masses are able to attend. It is often expressed that technical pursuits hard- i68 Tlie Progress of Industrial Education. \y merit the attention of men seeking a comfortable living. If this was really so, and an efficient artisan could not make a decent living, communism, in- cendiarism and every disorganizing scheme against a society, which refuses men a living for the labor it requires of them, would find almost an apology in such an unjustifiable condition. The fact is, we live in a crisis, in which a fat bank account or even plenty of real estate is no more security against want than labor is. An average importa- tion of $500,000,000 to $600,000,000 worth of manufactured goods is evidence that we want more skilled men. The association of industry with the school and science, will raise it to the character of art and infinitely vary it. No matter how much machinery produces, as long as men work and ex- change their products, they are benefited. But that they may all have work, industry must take the character of art, which admits of an almost infinite variety and demand ; for, of course, with a gigantic producing machinery, men cannot find employment in a few rude manufactures. An Arabic enameled glass lamp set up in the Louvre, became the support of hundreds of artisans model- ing after it. An industry raised to the character of art not only gives bread to the masses, but in purifying the ta.ste of the people it improves their morals, for the beau- TJie Progress of Industrial Education. 169 tiful and the good are but different expressions of the same thing. Congress has manifested great wisdom in initi- ating the practical and scientific tendency of our higher institutions by its munificent grants for the establishment of agricultural colleges. That it put foremost agriculture and mechanics next, is emi- nently proper, as the promotion of agriculture is every way more to be desired in this country than the cultivation of manufacturing industry. The National Bureau of Education, under the able superintendence of John Eaton, contributes its full share to rendering the educators of the land more practical. It does all in its power to show the need of the organization of infant schools. It acquaints us with the progress of technical Educa- tion abroad. It makes plain by statistical investi- gations the bearings of Education upon the various relations of the nation as well as of the individual. It brings face to face the theories and practice of the great educators of the land, which are thus cor- rected or supported one by the other. The in- fluence of the National Bureau of Education is immense, and forms an epoch in the educational activity of the United States. It lifts the educa- tor to a plane where he discerns all that is advanced the world over by the leaders of thought in his line, and where he beholds Education in connec- tion with all the great interests of humanity. I/O Ind7(strial Education hi the I' ni ted States. The prospected delineation of our centennial his- tory of Education by the National Bureau is simply stupendous. INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES. In the beginning- of the century, before the full tide of emigration had set in, when land was new and cheap, work hard and plenty and help rare, the farmers* sons had to do the work ; and when they had grown into manhood and felt the want of an Education, the colleges and seminaries were glad to give it to them in exchange for their labor. Thus the condition of the country prepared for manual labor schools, and here, as everywhere else, has theory perfected what practice has roughly initiated. Between iS2oand 1830 public opinion had taken a decided stand on the utility and feasibility of manual labor schools, which were introduced ever}'-- where at the end of this period. The democratic men who cleared the woods, broke the ground and made this country and gov- ernment, did a good deal of hard working and hard thinking ; and they thought their children most likely to do the same '\{ they handled at college as many tools as books. They wanted their sons to work for their Education, and work while they were at it, as they deemed thought only valuable when work rendered it effective. They did not want Industrial Education in t'le United States. 1 7 1 polish got at the expense of health and vigor, which labor alone can give and preserve. Neither did they want the poor, who could not pay, but could work for their Education, to be excluded from the schools. But, above all, were they unwilling that their sons should lose at school their taste for work- ing, while they acquired a taste for thinking. And, then, they believed nothing was gained when inde- pendence was lost ; and so, again, they wanted their sons doubly to work for their Education, that they might feel independent while they worked for it, and feel independent after they got it ; as they could live by the plow or the anvil — if they could not by their profession — and be true to their con- victions. The eminently industrial people of Pennsylvania took the lead in this matter. The Manual Labor Academy near Philadelphia, opened in 1829. "The hours of recreation are employed in useful bodily labor, such as will exercise their skill, make them dexterous, establish their health and strength, en- able each to defray his own expenses, and fit him for the vicissitudes of life," the record reads. In 1830 every invalid student, who resorted to the Manual Labor Academy and spent there about a year, was restored to health. ** When thought shall need no brain," the report continues, " and nearly four hundred organs of motion shall cease 172 Industrial Education in tJie United States, to constitute the principal portion of the human body, then may the student dispense with muscu- lar exertion." The House of Representatives of the State of Pennsylvania, by a resolution passed in December, 1832, directed a committee on education to inquire into the expediency of establishing at the expense of the state a manual labor academy for the in- struction of teachers for public schools. The com- mittee made out a report as the result of a very careful investigation, of which we will briefly state the following points : 1. That the expense of Education, when con- nected with manual labor judiciously directed, may be reduced at least one-half. 2. That the exercise of about three hours' labor daily, contributes to the health and cheerfulness of the pupil, by strengthening and improving his physical powers and by engaging his mind in useful pursuits. 3. That so far from manual labor being an im- pediment in the progress of the pupil in intellectual studies, it has been found, that in proportion as one pupil has excelled the other in tlic amount of labor performed, the same pupil has excelled the other in equal ratio in his intellectual studies. 4. That manual labor institutions tend to break down the distinction between rich and poor, which Industrial Education in the United States. 173 exists in society, inasmuch as they give an almost equal opportunity of Education to the poor by labor as is afforded to the rich by the possession of wealth ; and 5. That pupils trained that way are much better fitted for active life, and better qualified to act as useful citizens than when educated in any other mode ; that they are better as regards physical en- ergy and better intellectually and morally. This report was accompanied v.ith an act to be passed by the Legislature establishing a State Man- ual Labor Academy. New York City had a Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions, the prin- ciples of which were expressed by Mr. Wild, the secretary, in the report of 1833, in so solid a man- ner, as to command our attention even to-day. Our muscular system and bony structure, he says, does not look as if we were made merely for read- ing and writing. The influences which body and mind exert upon each other are innumerable, incessant and all-con- trolling ; the body continually modifying the state of the mind, and the mind ever varjang the condi- tion of the body. Not the body alone, not the mind alone, but both united by mutual laws make man. The mutual laws form the only rational basis for a system of Education. A system based upon 174 Industrial Education in the (hiitcd States. anything else is wrong. The body is the house, the instrument, the reflector and the servant of the mind ; and if it is rendered dark, dull and crip- pled, what is it worth, and of what use is it to the mind ? And what is then the state of the mind ? The body and the mind must be educated to- gether. We must preserve the body in the condi- tion which will most favorably affect the mind. As the best condition of the mind always attends the best condition of the body, must not a system of Education, which expends all its energies upon the mind alone and surrenders the body to chance, be fundamentally defective? Is not a system false, which aims solely at development of mind and yet overlooks those very principles which are indispen- sable to produce that development, and transgresses those very laws -which constitute the only ground- work of rational Education? The mental part of Education has been vastly improved. But what has meanwhile been done for the body ? What provision has been made for the daily wants of its muscles and nerves? What aids have been furnished to the organs of digestion, secretion and circulation ? What means have been provided for preserving the body in its best condi- tion, or for giving healthful energy to its func- tions, best securing to the mind that permanent vigor which results from such a condition of bodily Industrial Education in the United States. 1 75 organs? We have neglected the Education of the body, and with the sound body the sound mind has become rare. This is no new discovery. Mil- ton has, two centuries ago, urged the connection of physical and mental Education. Locke has done the same. Jahn, Ackerman, Salzmann and Franke have done the same in Germany, and Tissot, Rousseau and Lond in France. As far back as the end of the last centurj^. Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, recommended at length the connecting of agricultural and mechanical labor with literary institutions, saying, " The student should work with his own hands in the intervals of study." President Lindsley, of the Nashville University; Professor Mitchel, of the Medical College of Ohio ; Professor Harris, of the Medical Institute of Phila- delphia ; President Fisk, of the Wesleyan Univer- sity, and Professor Hitchcock, of Amherst College, have all earnestly advocated the union of manual labor with intellectual culture. Mr. Wild closes his very able report with the apprehension that the want of the element of phys- ical work in our system of Education will make of us just as degenerate and sinking a race as the higher classes in France were before the great revolution, or as the noble families of Spain are to-day. But reports and speeches were the small- I "jG Industrial Education in the United States. est part of the work. Manual labor schools sprung up North and South, and East and West. The Society for the Promotion of Education of the Episcopal Methodist Church organized a num- ber of manual labor schools. The Baptists were not less active in the cause of establishing like institutions. The Governor of Pennsylvania recommended in his message the adoption of the system of manual labor in seminaries for teachers. The Governor of Georgia recommended the introduction of manual labor schools. The Legislature of North Carolina has passed a bill incorporating the manual labor schools of the State. In the United States Senate, in 1836, the reso- lution was offered proposing the Committee on Public Lands to be instructed to inquire into the expediency of making a grant of land to our col- leges in each State for the Education of the poor on the manual labor school system. We may, by way of illustration, mention but few of the many manual labor schools which resulted from this discussion of principles and legislation. Connecticut had manual labor schools at Suffield, at Worcester and Haddenfield. Georgia had man- ual labor schools in Camden county, at Lawrencc- ville and Covington. These institutions were in successful operation, and paid the students at the Industrial Education in the United States, i yy end of each term, $14 to $30 for the work done in three hours per day. In Kentucky, Cumberland College, at Princeton, was conducted as a manual labor school. Another labor school was at Lexington. In the State of Indiana manual labor was intro- duced at Wabash College ; and at the Teachers' Seminary at Madison the students paid entirely by their labor for all necessary expenses, without being put back in their studies. Dr. Blyth, President of South Hanover College, in the same State, and organized on the same prin- ciple, says : " Such schools give birth to enterprise, create or perpetuate habits of industry and econ- omy, generate and keep alive a feeling of self-sup- port and independence, preserve health and create genius." Massachusetts introduced a manual labor school at Lexington and at Andover Seminary. In Missouri, Marion College required every stu- dent to work in the shop or field three hours daily, which enabled the student to pay a considerable part of his expenses. In New Hampshire, at the manual labor school, straw-plaiting was carried on as a trade. In New Jersey, we find manual labor introduced at the Stockbridge Academy, in Madison county. In the State of New York, we find the manual 178 Industrial Education in the Ignited States. labor schools practically introduced by the noblest of her sons, Gerrit Smith, at Peterboro. In North Carolina, the Donaldson Manual Labor School gave poor young men an opportunity of getting the best Education by paying for it in labor. Ohio seems to unite the industry of the East with the snap or go-aheadativeness of the West. It had a manual labor school at Granville, prepared teach- ers on the same plan at Marietta, and had another manual labor school at Dayton. At Lane Semi- nary, on Walnut Hills, near Cincinnati, the com- mittee state that the combining of three hours daily labor in some useful and interesting employ- ment with study, protects the health and constitu- tion of our young men ; greatly augments their physical energy ; furnishes to a considerable extent or entirely the means of self-education ; increases their power of intellectual acquisition ; facilitates their actual progress in study ; removes their temp- tation to idleness ; confirms their habits of indus- try ; gives them a practical acquaintance with the common employments of life ; inspires them with independence of character and the originality of investigation, which belongs peculiarly to self-made men. Printing was followed. The students got sufficiently skilled in three weeks' practice to earn $2.54 per week, working daily three hours. They Industrial Education in the United States. 1 79 followed also cabinet making with the same good results. The Western Reserve College, at Hudson, had shops and tools provided for ihose who wished to engage in labor. Some have gained, says the col- lege report, only health of body and vigor and elasticity of mind, enough to pay, one would think, for two or three hours daily labor, while others did much toward defraying their expenses. Oberlin was never backward in the spirit of genuine re- form, and required the students to do daily three hours of manual labor, with marked results as to the health of the students, which was made an object. The Keystone State has already occupied our attention. The manual labor school near Pitts- burg had 440 acres of land and a three -story building sixty feet long. Chester county was the seat of a very active association for the adoption of an improved system of Education, recommend- ing the establishment of a model school combining agricultural and mechanical labor with literary and scientific instruction. At Bristol College, in the same state, manual labor in school was found highly useful as well as economical, and the Episcopal Recorder, at Phila- delphia, says, with reference to this institution : ** We hope to send forth trained and strong men, 1 80 Industrial Education in the United States. no diluted manhood, who associate vulgarity and meanness with all manual labor, or young men blighted with college diseases. Sedentary invalids of every description demand that systematic and regular labor be incorporated in the very framework of our new institutions. Manual labor and mental culture ought to go together, for, as Plato says, *' A good Education imparts to the mind and to the body all the power, all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable." In South Carolina the report of the Manual La- bor School at Pendleton says that the manual labor system in South Carolina has been fairly tried, and that it is decidedly the most advantageous mode of Education which has ever been introduced into this or any other country. Alabama, Michigan, Tennessee and other states have interested themselves equally in this cause, but enough has been said to show what our fathers have thought and what they have done for manual labor schools. About the time of the agitation of manual labor schools, 1 820-1 830, the population of the United States, all told, was not 10,000,000. Labor was then mostly native and respected. The American laborer w^ted a higher Education he could not pay for nor find free of charge. The pupil, who came from the plough or the shop, felt more the bene- Industrial Education in the United States. i8i fit of manual labor, which, indeed, all appreciated in all its blessed bearings, as the young republic was still full of democratic inspirations. With the change of these conditions manual labor schools lost in popularity ; but physical labor is so funda- mental a condition of human existence, that these institutions will never be superseded without detri- ment to society, though their methods may have to be varied to meet new wants and purposes. Our cities have in the last thirty years grown to the size of the largest cities of the Old World ; land has become rare, and the foreign population — especially under the present system of manufactur- ing — is flocking more and more into these hives of human beings. In these days of steam and ma- chinery, these masses must be aided and sustained to maintain themselves by an industry, skill and knowledge have elevated to the character of art, or we all end in chaos brought on by idleness, mis- ery, vice, crime and a turbulent and despairing mob. Enough has been said to show that our fathers have thought the union of labor and study at school eminently wise and practical as well. We' do not ask to make of every school a workshop, but we insist, the most important years of man in which his character and habits are formed for life and the many millions which arc spent on Education in 1 82 Industrial Education in tJic United States. this country, must have something greater, better and wiser to point to than a little grammar, spell- ing, arithmetic and geography. Industrial Educa- tion is not a new crotchet. It had many years ago a most tangible existence in this country ; it is to- day organized on a great scale in Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and is making rapid progress in England. It has been urged upon the teachers and legislators of the land by most practical men for the last twenty-five years ; and the modern apostle of Education, Pestalozzi, held it suffi- ciently important for the school to help the pu- pil to sustain himself in the world, that he com- bined manual labor with school instruction. We plead for practical scientific instruction, with full application to the industrial arts and life. We plead for drawing that shall give the scholar full exercise of the eye, hand and imagination, and develop his taste and skill ; for more geometry, the science of form and color, and the history of indus- try and technology. We plead for technical gym- nastics in every school, which, besides promoting physical development, shall give the scholar the use of the common implements of the trades. We plead for special industrial schools of a nature to assist in the progress of the trades peculiar to cer- tain localities and districts. We plead for the or- ganization of industrial institutions of all grades Industrial Education in the United States. 183 into one great system, with a national industrial university, at its head, that shall inspire our hands with great and useful works. We plead, in fine, for the cultivation of the industrial spirit in every normal college, which is to send out into the world teachers for the people, whose success as well as the success of the country depend on the cultiva- tion of industrial habits. In our pleading for industry we plead for agricul- ture — the noblest of all industries, and the most useful as well as the most elevating of them all — and the one in which more than in any other we have great nature as an especial ally on our grand and unequalled prairies and in the variety of our climes, which produce whatever will bless man. How long still will teachers set before them with indifference of mind the vacant task of making chil- dren read and write, and, perchance, know a little geography, arithmetic and grammar? It is time we spread the practical facts and prin- ciples of science, which would make of every laborer, mechanic and manufacturer a thinker and an invent- or ; a man, who by his skill would largely contrib- ute to the pleasures and adornments of life, and add to his own happiness as well as to that of mankind. The capabilities of art and science for making of earth a heaven will not be known until pervading the masses, every child in the land will be tremu- 1 84 Industrial Education in the United States. lous with sensibility, and love of order and beauty. With the energy of thought peculiar to practical science and the sensibility attending art, every home will be the blessed abode of peace and plenty, of love, order and beauty, in which sadness and sor- row will be unknown, as all will be industrious and live in natural simplicity, hardly ever visited by sickness, want and misery. Such is the future the union of science, art and industry is to usher in. But who has the heart to dwell upon the picture of the misery of the laborer of to-day, who, unaided by art and science, plods along in the old beaten path with but a poor re- turn for his toil, and lives in squalid quarters made darker and more miserable still by the sight of cheerless, sick and dying children and a poor moth- er borne down by labor and care ? Industrial Education for the people is no theory. It is with them a question of life and death. It is a question of civilization. It is a national question, and touches the existence of the state. And the rich are as well interested in it as the poor, as the time is near when only capital turned over by la- borers, skilled through the knowledge of art and science, will yield a return to its owner. PART IV. THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION. The history of the world is the Education of mankind, and every step in the onward march of civilization is full of lessons and suggestions to the educator who aims at the preservation and im- provement of the race. Schoolmen take the wit and wisdom of books for civilization. They do not know what effort it has cost humanity to develop the industrial arts, which have made life possible and even pleasure- able in a world that harasses man at every step. Industry, or human activity applied to the arts of life, has changed us, and is changing us every day; and if Education is to become a civilizing power, it must improve and advance industry to a science and instrument for the mental and moral improvement of the people who are ever engaged in it. Industry is the mother of the inductive method of reasoning from enlarged experience, and of the utilitarian philosophy, and both these, her daughters, are fast changing the life and mind of mankind. (J8S) 1 86 The Progress of Civilization. It is a maxim recognized and acted upon by practical statesmen, that general progress is not influenced by abstruse principles or reasonings, which never penetrate the masses. Only as far as science mingles with the trades and occupations of the people does it become the property of the world and civilizes the age. The decorations of a building are not the build- ing, nor are they as important as the foundation laid solidly deep down in the ground. It is so with literature and the common arts of life, which sustain life. Civilization existed before prophets, poets, philosophers and statesmen appeared. Long and laborious was the way industry had to travel before the present stage was reached. Not only civilization as a whole includes many changes, but, as Tylor conclusively shows, there is not a tool, a garment or any other object of art, but it is the survivor of a thousand changes ; and as every pebble is an epitome of all past geological changes, and mirrors the cosmos to him who under- stands its language, even so it is with every object of human ingenuity, as each is a volume of the world's history, stretching back from this our Age of Steel to that of Iron, back to the Age of Bronze, and the Flint Age, when man was the companion of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros. Yes, the whole world of human objects is a library, The Progress of Civilization. 187 and nothing in it is so trivial, be it a spade, a knife or a hatchet, but it has to tell wonders of the thou- sand sires that preceded it, and whose history is closely interwoven with the history of the race. Pedants see civilization exclusively in schools and books which exist but since yesterday, while the mechanic arts date back a hundred thousand years, and their remains are found to-day buried under thick strata, the work of myriads of years and in company with a fauna that shows the very skies and climate as well as the earth have changed, and are no more what they have been when the hands of men have formed these debris of another age and world. Such is the cycle of ages that was required to bring the mechanic arts to their present maturity. Well says Gibbon, " The poet or philosopher illus- trates his age and country by the efforts of a single mind, but these superior powers of reason or fancy are rare ; many may be qualified to spread the benefits of government, trade, manufactures, art and science, but even this requires the union of many, which may come to naught ; but the simple practice of the mechanic trades strikes an everlast- ing root into the most unfavorable soil ; under all changes and restrictions these inestimable gifts have been diffused ; they have been successively propagated ; they can never be lost. We may, 1 88 The Progress of Civilization. therefore, acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion, that every age of the world has increased and still in- creases the real wealth, the happiness, the knowl- edge, and, perhaps, the virtue of the human race." Thus with the practice of the mechanic trades the progress of the race has begun and continued through unnumbered ages, and through them alone what has been acquired in the long struggle will be maintained and descend to new races and civili- zations, when all else will be lost and become unin- telligible. Thousands of years the race roamed about before it stole the thunder from the clouds — learned how to kindle fire and how to keep it up. The Egyp- tians, the Phcenicians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Chinese have all preserved the tradition of the invention of this art by their ancestors, and to this day we meet with tribes who miss it. To pluck fruit from trees was the first method of sustaining life. A long time passed before man made the first tool or instrument, the first step in his civilization — the arrow and the bow — which made the chase possible. Only as men multiplied, and the chase fell short of sustaining life, would men consent to tend flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. When man succeeded in domesticating animals and throwing the burden and slavery of his work The Progress of Civilization. 189 upon the horse, the ox and the ass, a great stride was made in the civilization of the race. In China and India but until a very recent date men were used instead of animals for transporting goods over roads ; and an embassy from Holland to Peking required the service of a thousand men to carry the baggage. In the taking of Mexico by Ferdi- nand Cortez, fifty thousand Indians were employed in doing what five hundred horses might have accomplished. It was no small matter when man discovered the chestnut and the like preservable fruits ; and the cereals, as rice, wheat, maize, were still later discov- eries, and became each the foundation of a peculiar civilization — rice in Asia, wheat in Europe and maize in Peru and Mexico. Hunting, fishing, pastoral life, mining, working of metals and tool making had all to precede the plow, without which the proper cultivation of the cereals was impossible. It certainly is hardly deserving the name of agriculture when plowing was done with horns, the rib bones of cows were used for cutting the grain, and threshing was done by driving wagons, or rather sleighs, through the grain, or the wheat was gained and at the same time prepared for eating by burning the straw. We find still, tribes not only preparing the ground for receiving the seed in such a rough way, but 190 The Progress of Civilization. wholly ignorant of seeding. The plow is a great stride in the civilization of the race ; for, by increas- ing food and making man sectire against hunger, it gave him leisure to provide for his higher and nobler wants. Bread, the first necessity of life, most aptly illus- trates the slow and laborious progress of the arts of civilization. After the discovery of the cereals, seeding, and cultivation by the plow, the cereals were for long ages roasted and thus eaten. Next came the improvement of pounding them, and not until long after, were they ground on hand mills, and made into flat and brittle cakes, whence the Scripture expression of breaking bread. Bread, properly speaking, was a much later invention, and wholesome light bread raised by ferment, belongs to a still later period. Let none think that these first steps toward pro- viding for the race belong to the fabulous ages. Wheat bread was in England but a very few hun- dred years ago a luxury indulged in by the higher classes ; fruit and vegetables are there but of a very late date ; and even the consumption of fresh meat was restricted to the fewest. Next to food is clothing. Here humanity had to learn curing or tanning of skins, spinning and weaving of wool. The preparation of flax cannot have been learned but slowly and is due to woman's The Progress of Civilization. 191 fine observation and painstaking ; and language has preserved the history of this art in the etymol- ogy of wife, which means Hterally a weaver. How- inefficient was man before he understood the work- ing of metals and the use of tools. It was the plow that by a proper cultivation of the soil turned nations from cannibalism. The first houses were caverns, not as*perfect as the dwellings constructed by beavers. Ages passed before the cave was improved by a hole at the top for the smoke to escape. The first implements of war were clubs, spears, darts and arrows, and the latter were headed with brass as early as the siege of Troy. The battering ram was first used by Pericles. The first cannons were made of iron bars held together in the shape of a concave cylinder by rings of copper, and the first cannon balls were stone. The first vessels were beams joined together; next trunks of trees were cut hollow, and at last planks were joined in the shape of a boat. The ship with a prow and a stern with a movable helm and sails came after thousands of years. Burning wood was anciently the only method for lighting the house ; torches came next ; and even at the time of Homer lamps and candles were un- known among the Greeks, so were spoons and forks. Neither had their houses chimneys. Locks and 192 The Progress of Civilization. keys were unknown, and bundles were secured with ropes intricately combined ; and, hence, the famous Gordian knot. Shoes and stockings are a late im- provement ; so are shirts, which came into use in the last days of Rome ; and in modern Europe shirts were not common before the eighth century. Hardly any commerce was possible before the discovery of the wheel, the wagon and the ship, which were rendered more effective by steam and the compass. A new epoch dawned upon mankind with the discovery of letters, which, again, took thousands of years, and is not by any means perfect as yet. The Egyptians used hieroglyphics. It was a di- vine inspiration that first permanently fastened on any material the idea of gentleness by the picture of the lamb ; strength by the picture of the bull, or magnanimity by that of the lion. The Chinese use to this day sixty thousand arbitrary signs rep- resenting as many words, the greatest scholar can hardly master in a long life, a method that much retarded their progress and made them stiff and conservative. Our alphabet is the evolution of hieroglyphics and shows the outlines in its letters of the things from which they are derived. The repre- sentation of the simple elements of sound by visi- ble signs or letters was a wonderful process and one that had to pass through many stages ; and writing The Progress of Civilization, 193 was most probably but little known in Greece at the time of Homer. Charlemagne could not sign his name, neither could many of the bishops at his time. Books were still rare at the time of William the Conqueror. The Countess of Anjou gave for a collection of homilies two hundred sheep, a quarter of wheat, another of rye and a third of millet, besides a number of marten skins. To encourage the art of reading in England, capital punishment for murder was remitted if the criminal could read, which was expressed in law by the phrase of " benefit of clergy." An English edi- tion of six hundred copies of the Bible, when first printed, was not wholly sold in three years. The Emperor Rudolphus, in 1281, ordered all public acts to be published in German instead of Latin, as formerly. In France all public edicts were still published in Latin in 1539, and in Scotland and other European countries the practice continued to the last century to the damage of the language of the land and the common people, who were thereby kept ignorant of the public law and cut off from all contact with the higher classes, who were jabbering hog Latin among themselves. We find tribes who cannot count beyond five. Our decimal system has early been learned from our digitals. The Peruvians used knots of various colors to designate numbers. Our ciphers were 9 194 J^^^^^ Progress of Civilization. invented in Hindoostanee and were brought to France in the tenth century by the Arabs, who are also the inventors of algebra or the science of solv- ing mathematical problems by representing num- bers by the common letters of the alphabet. Money was certainly a vast improvement upon barter. Cattle were the first general medium of exchange, as they could be driven from place to place, and as men bought their wives, a virgin was, for instance, held worth a dozen heads of cat- tle. The Lydians were the first who coined gold and silver money after the Trojan war, at which barter was still the common method of exchange. Money is one of the mightiest instruments in the rise of civilization, as it encouraged industry by facilitating commerce through a universal standard of value and a portable and preservable instrument of exchange, which could be used as an equivalent for the greatest as well as for the smallest values. It set man free; he could at any time liquidate his property and go where he pleased and thus escape tyranny, but it made man also greedy for so desirable an article, rendered him more selfish and also powerful for ill as well as for good. The useful arts lead to the fine arts ; and sculp- ture, painting, architecture, and, at last, gardening, rose into prominence one after another already in antiquity. The Progress of Civilization. 195 We have already remarked that civilization fol- lowed everywhere the introduction of the cereals. The Egyptians and the Chaldeans were the first cultivators of the cereals and the first civilized na- tions. The civilization of Europe dates equally from the introduction of the cereals, iron and the plow. How much has common industry done for hu- manity by the cultivation or introduction of the cereals, the plow, iron, steel, the loom, steam and machinery, each of which marks a new epoch of civilization. Little has the school achieved hitherto in com- parison with this, neither will it in the future, ex- cept it makes its object the improvement of indus- try and effects thereby civilization. Without iron, man is impotent, for he is then without tools. A hatchet, a knife, or even a nail, will buy almost anything among tribes who have not the use of iron, as they feel their power infi- nitely increased by it. Copper, brass and the pre- cious metals have all been earlier discovered and used on account of their brightness and state of purity in which they are often found on the very surface of the earth, and as they are softer and easier worked. It is all otherwise with iron. At the time of Homer iron was still thought precious enough to rank with gold and silver as the price 196 The Progress of Civilization. of the conqueror. Every step in the improvement of the working of iron and the manufacture of steel is an improvement in civilization affecting human- ity far more than the smoothest rhymes or the most acute system of metaphysics. Herodotus mentions Glaucus of Chios as the first who smelted iron. It was not before the Mid- dle Ages that iron entirely took the place of brass. Think for a moment we lost the use of iron ; without a plow or a tool we should soon sink into utter barbarity ; and but few could maintain them- selves even in that condition, but would perish. Erasmus describes England at the time of Henry VHI. as a land of filth, every room full of " grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats and everything that is nauseous." Madrid had not a privy as late as 1760, and the royal man- date to build such raised a storm of opposition. Iron brought the age of industry, which cast men into a new mould, and made of the English a people loving cleanliness. In 1563 knives were first made in England. Pocket watches were brought from Germany 1577. In 1580 coaches were introduced. A saw mill was erected near London 1633. Coffee houses were opened 1652. Steam flouring mills began as hand mills, horse mills, water mills, and, finally, became what they arc to-day. Striking clocks were not The Progress of Civilization. 197 known until the end of the thirteenth century, and, hence, the custom of watchmen calHng the hours of the night. Paper was first made in the four- teenth century. The eggs of the silk-worms were first introduced in Europe under the reign of Jus- tinian from Hindoostanee. With the' progress of industry, food, clothing and all other means of comfort and luxury so in- creased, that the poorest man to-day has a greater quantity of them than fell to the share of kings or nobles but a few hundred years ago. Queen Catharine could not command a salad for dinner until the king brought a gardener from the Netherlands. About the same time the artichoke, the apricot and the damask rose made their first appearance in England. Turkeys, carps and hops were first known there in the year 1524. The cur- rant shrub was brought from the islands of Zante 1533. In the year 1540 cherry trees were brought from Flanders to Kent. At the time of Henry VIII. there were but few chimneys even in the capital towns of England, and the smoke issued at a hole in the ceiling, the door and windows ; utensils, forks, spoons, etc., were of wood. The people slept on straw with a log of wood for a pillow. Henry II., of France, at the marriage of the dutchess of Savoy, used the first silk stockings that 198 TJic Progress of Civilisation. were made in France. Elizabeth, the great queen of England, had her reception room strewn with rushes or straw — as in our days half decent stables are ; she received in the third year of her reign a present of a pair of black silk stockings. The first stone bridge over the Thames was built in 12 13, and over the Seine in the beginning of the six- teenth century. The first silk factory was built in Lyons in 1536. Glass windows were still rare in private houses in the twelfth century. King Ed- ward III. invited three clockmakers from Holland. Gunpowder, firearms and artillery, with the new art of war, called forth standing armies, while the rest of the people remained at home and devoted themselves to the trades, which gained thereby such importance that they ruled the state and pretty much ended the old r6gime, which was one of con- stant war, and, therefore, barbarous. The Saracens have spread a taste for chemical manipulation and the observation of nature and mechanical improvements. Roger Bacon has trod into this path, and prepared the way for the great Bacon of Verulam. Men have never paid attention enough to the importance of the industrial arts. Glass was intro- duced into Britain 671 ; still it was not applied there for windows until the thirteenth century, was but in the sixteenth century manufactured there The Progress of Civilization. 199 and did not enter into general use until the middle of the seventeenth century. Country houses in Scotland were not glazed until 1661. The manu- facture of silk was more than a thousand years traveling from the shores of the Bosphorus to England. Henry the Great, king of France, and his distin- guished minister, the able Sully, have laid the foundation to France's eminence in the manufac- turing arts. Under the great Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV., the since famous manufactory of Sevres china was established, the manufacture of glass brought from Venice, wall paper invented in France, the manufacture of fine cloth introduced from England; until, in 1685, the revocation of the edict of Nantes had driven away the Huguenots, the best artisans of France, with whom a great part of the manufacture and civilization of France have wandered to England, Germany, the United States and other countries. In the Middle Ages all arts were debased through the spirit of feudalism, and all labor was considered slavish. Hence the slow progress in manufactures and civilization. All articles of furniture were rare, the same room was used for cooking and eating, and the ox often lived under the same roof with the farmer. Lords, even at the time of Elizabeth, would, like other movable furniture, take with them 2CX) The Progress of Civilization, the windows of their castle on leaving for London and the court. Forks were unknown until James I. Barley bread was the usual food of the poorer classes in 1626. In some portions of England, as late as 1725, even a rich family used but a peck of wheat in a year, and that about Christmas. Dry bran bread, mixed with rye meal, was commonly used by servants and laborers. Corn was mostly ground at home by the hand mill, even at the time of Elizabeth. Holland provided London with vege- tables, and at the time of Henry VHL not a cab- bage, carrot, turnip or other edible root grew in all England. Natural enough, in proportion to the want of industry, barbarism and crime abounded, and 70,000 thieves were hanged under this prince in England. Spectacles were introduced in the thirteenth century ; needles were brought from France to England in 1543, and first made there in 1626. Umbrellas made their appearance in England in 1768, and their first use excited the jeers of the vulgar. The land was one waste and the mines poorly explored. Take the quantity of iron smelted in the Middle Ages. It amounted to fifteen pounds at most, per hand. Using coke instead of charcoal in making iron, a furnace produces in our time thirty tons a day, or four hundred pounds of a superior quality The Progress of Civilization. 201 per hand. A man accomplishes, therefore, thirty times as much as before. When grinding flour was done by hand mills it took one grinder for twenty-five consumers. In our improved flouring mills one man turns out flour enough for 3,600, so that one man does the work of one hundred and forty-four formerly employed. Fourteen large mills, employing two hundred and seventy-eight hands, do to-day the miUing of a city of a million population. In Rome and Athens the hand mills kept going 40,000 hands for an equal population. In the manufacture of cotton one man does to- day what seven hundred could do before recent improvements were made. John Kay, of Bolton, introduced the fly shuttle in 1750, so that one hand can attend from ten to twenty shuttles. Mr. Har- greaves, of Blackburn, first introduced the spinning jenny in 1770. Mr. Arkwright built his machinery for carding and roving in 177 1, and Mr. Crompton's mule was introduced in 1780; and about the begin- ning of the century Mr. Watts' steam engine came into use, the power loom began its work, and from that day the modern factory system dates. About the middle of this century 250,000 power looms were in operation. The muslin exported from England in 1833 meas- ured ten times the circumference of the globe. In 202 T)ie Progress of Civilization. 1840 it was equal to thirty-five times the same length, or one milliard and three hundred and eighty-three millions of metres, and the whole ex- port of cotton manufactures amounted to one hun- hundred and sixty-three millions of dollars. The cheapness has increased with the supply, so that it was in 1853 five times as cheap as twenty-five years back, and twelve times as cheap as fifty years back. In 1740 England produced I7,0(X) tons of iron, in 1840, 1,500,000 tons, and in 1856, 3,000,000 tons. But in transporting power we have gained per- haps most. One man with an efficient locomotive can carry 500 tons of freight. It would take 50,000 men to do the same carrying in the same time. All this was accomplished by the hard struggle and ingenuity of industry, hardly aided by the school. Let the reader notice that we traced the progress of the arts before an earnest attempt of introducing universal Education was made. Solely by the nat- ural force of circumstances, by a continually spread- ing division of labor, and the devotion of the whole attention of the laborer to but a small field of labor, skill and invention have made rapid progress, com- forts have been increased, taste has been improved, and leisure has been gained, which has called forth the literature of the day, of which the arts and trades are the cause and not the effect. TJie Progress of Civilization. 203 Slavery in all degrees gave way in England in 135 1 to the arbitrary power and stipulations of legislation, which settled the price of labor. And the trades were so backward that four-fifths of the people were agriculturists, and yet, as we have seen, the land was a waste. The discomfort of the people may be seen from the fact that from the year 1075 to 1575 the popu- lation of England and Wales has but doubled. From 1600 to 1700, the increase was about 30 per cent. ; from 1700 to 1750, the increase was 25 per cent., and in 1800 to 1850, the population of the United Kingdom doubled, besides furnishing a constant stream of emigration for this and other parts of the world. Commerce had anxiously explored the sea to find a new way to the East Indies ; and the mari- time discoveries which were constantly making, kept the world agitated and enterprising. The first attempt of manufacturing in the United States was made in 1608, only one year after the first effective English settlement at Jamestown, in Virginia. So early has the spirit of industry devel- oped in this country. In 1776 the first attempts of raising cotton in the South were made, and the cotton of 1790, 1791 and 1792 together, made one moderate cargo. At the end of half a century the cotton crop amounted 204 ^/'^ Progress of Civilization. to two millions of bales ; and to-day it reaches the figure of four and five millions. In 1812 the iirst glass works were erected in Pittsburg. The first iron works were built in the United States in Pennsylvania, in Newcastle county, in 1726. In 1805 the population of the United States was 6,180,000; its manufactures amounted to $30,000,000, and its agricultural pro- ductions to $85,000,000. In 1870 the population of the United States amounted to 38,558,371, and there were counted 252,148 factories, with 40,191 steam engines and 51,018 water wheels, with a total of 2,346,142 horse power, and 2,053,996 hands, yielding a net product of $1,743,898,200, or, in- cluding the raw material, $4,232,325,442. These sums are too large to realize their amounts. We will, therefore, take some of the great indus- tries separately : Iron industries $346,952,694 Cotton goods 177,903,687 Woolen goods 178,064,453 Boots and shoes 181,644,090 Clothier goods 147,650,378 Leather 137,480,097 Furniture 57.926,547 Mining products 152,598.994 The agricultural productions of every sort amounted in 1870 to $2,447,538,658. The United States had in 1873, 70,178 miles of The Progress of Civilization. 205 railroad, at a cost of $3,436,638,749 for carr>'ing on its internal trade. The foreign trade of the world amounts to $10,- (X>o,ooo,ooo per annum, and is carried on in 200,- 000 vessels plowing the ocean with a cargo of 20,000,000 tons. Of 2,500,000 tons of sugar — the yearly consump- tion of the world — the United States consume 500,000 tons. How slow, uncertain and laborious was the prog- ress of industry, feeling, as it were, her way in the dark for thousands of years, and how glorious and rapid was her march since she has caught sight of the rising sun of science ! Let science, then, fully join her, and the effect on her as well as on her children will be immense, and a new era will rise for humanity. But industrial progress does not merely mean so many bales of cotton and so many tons of iron or coal ; it means the progress in the condition of the slave, serf or villain, and the free laborer ; it means the moral progress of the chieftain or successful bandit to the privilege of birth ; and, at last, to personal capacity and useful enterprise. With the increase of production the laborer gained in personal and political influence as well as in a material view. As slaves, laborers were crowded together without leference to health or decency ; as free mechanics 2o6 The Progress of Cii i'hafum. and small masters they occupied .^mall properties ; they became possessed of all the virtues and ad- vantages attaching to property and well-regulated homes. But, alas ! the great industries under the regime of steam and machinery have centralized capital and population ; and, again, laborers are crowded in tenements without regard to health and decency, ending in the formation of a permanent low, short- lived, stinted type of degraded humanity. We cannot separate from our present form of industry the sanitary and moral relations of the people ; they are all eminently questions of civilization, and find their solution in Education. Associate industry at all points with Education, and mind will control mattpr, and reason will bring order into the present social chaos. The Education of the industrial masses into thinking men once achieved, further steps will best suggest themselves to the men most concerned, and who are the best judges of their condition, wants and means of relief. But this Education must embrace the industrial, economical, domestic and social relations, and in- crease their efficiency as producers, their intelli- gence, their moral power, their health and their social consideration. Our all-absorbing great in- dustries can find their only justification in the The Progress of Civilization. 207 union with art and science and in the spread of taste, sensibility, fine feeHng, knowledge, wisdom and well-being among the masses engaged in them. Industries which had no other end than the pro- duction of a million of trifles to satisfy the vanity of their consumers, and left their producers unim- proved and miserable, would be a most degrading materialism, which could only end in universal brutalization and in the downfall of the nation. Every field and every factory throughout the land and the wide world is a laboratory, and ever}^ laborer producing profitable results is an experimentalist. Where the hand and the brain work in unison and shape nature's elements into angels minister- ing to the well-being of man, most is effected for human civilization. Schools, hardly organized for half a century, have as yet done little for industry, which has progressed by its own unaided exertions, until its advance has aroused practical men to found polytechnic insti- tutes and industrial schools, which promise to lead industry to still higher development. The unaided success of the industries is plainly to be read in the greatness of the Italian republics, the Hansas, Flanders and in France prior to the persecution of the Huguenots; or in England in our own day, where Education has been organized but of very late. 2o8 The Progress of Civilization. We do not deny the importance of the school ; but to advance civilization, it must prepare the people for their work — nice essays are for the phi- losopher. The nature of the civilization of an epoch is determined by the character of the peo- ple, which, again, depends on the work they are engaged in and on the manner in which they per- form it. The tens and hundreds of thousands of fabricates they manufacture are their volumes ; and, hence, the more intelligence and science is brought to bear upon them by an industrial and technical Education, the more the people will think and improve, and the higher a civilization will be attained. Industry has advanced to a science, and its theory must be taught as well as its practice, if it is to progress with the rapidity peculiar to all the movements of the age we live in. All the ap- pliances of human ingenuity are to be set in mo- tion to increase the quality as well as the quantity of our manufactures, to make the workmen con- sumers as well as producers, and to restore har- mony between labor and capital. With every new step industry increased the hap- piness of mankind, and made us wiser and better in proportion as the common wants were satisfied and the higher ones awakened and cared for. How vast are the numbers engaged in the in- dustries of the world and how great is the capital The Progress of Civilization, 209 — the whole earnings of the past — engaged in them. Can Education do anything worthier and more fruitful of precious results than by improj/ing the industries, improve the great majority of man- kind engaged in them, and by doubling the wages of labor and the profits of capital, and satisfying all, fill all with peace and concord, wiping out the sorrow and woe attending the present state of want, madness and crime ? In very deed science owes all to industry, and it is time it serve in its turn industry, that it may the surer serve humanity and the moral progress of the race. The beautiful arts of architecture, sculpture and painting, clocks, spectacles, telescopes, air pumps, chemical manipulations and printing, were all de- veloped before universal Education was intro- duced, and are all the results of the progress of the industrial arts, which furnished the tools and often the entire mechanism and the very observa- tions which led to the principles some claim for the school. When we consider the innumerable host of tech- nical arts and trades furnishing the necessities, com- forts and pleasures of life, providing science with her tools and developing the taste, mind and mor- als of the great mass of mankind engaged in them, the infinite observations, facts and combinations of 2IO TJie Progress of Civilization. ideas stored up in them as displayed in the great industrial exhibitions of the world, and especially in the magnificent one we have just witnessed in our own country, what an infinite world of mental activity they present to us. And right here, speaking of the indebtedness of the world to past labors, we will express our obli- gations to scores of laborers who have preceded us in our field of inquiry, and especially would we mention the noble author of the " Sketches of Man," upon whose resources we have freely drawn. Little can man in his few days see with his own eyes ; past labors are the genuine source of inspi- ration, and their honest recognition is the most be- fitting invocation. In almost every trade qualities and relations hid- den from the superficial observer, are made the basis of operations and applications. How mighty small is the sum of our little school learning com- pared with the thought and experience i treasured up in a thousand skilful trades, each of which man- ufactures often a hundred different articles. The most complicated technical arts require as much mental force as any of the branches of school learning, which were only injured by metaphysical subtlety. Bishop Heretius remarked that all the learning The Progress of Civilization. 211 down to the beginning of the eighteenth century could be put into six to ten moderate folios, to which we may add ten or even twenty volumes for our late scientific acquisitions. What a library, on the other hand, would it form, if every observa- tion and every manipulation in every trade and art was written down ! And, yet, these practical ob- servations are unquestionably founded in truth, and useful much more than most of the learned trash of the schools. Industry, more than science, has worked in the past under the guidance of practical observation — the main instrument of genius and the source of all invention — until Bacon has got his philosophy from the shop, which has done the world more good than the philosophy which Socrates has brought down from heaven. The knowledge of the schools or abstract philoso- phy has done infinite mischief, by fostering relig- ious prejudices and false political theories sustain- ing despotisms, false moral systems and standards ; in short, it has caused much physical, moral, political and religious mischief, while technical in- ventions have saved and preserved mankind from much physical harm and have assisted in the moral and intellectual culture of the race. The technical pursuits, by cultivating physical 212 The Progress of Civilisation. and mental activity, developed the body and mind of the people, and thus materially increased their health, efficiency and well-being. Industrial progress is continuous in its develop- ment ; theoretical knowledge and literary culture are often inactive and dead for ages. The labor of the world may be historically di- vided into the following epochs : The time of the first rude labors ; the trades, with division of labor ; industry, combined with science and art, or ornamental industry ; and, at last, the highest technic, or union of strength and beauty. In the first days of the race, the same man was hunter, fisher, smith, carpenter, cabinet maker, tailor, etc. This sharpened his wits ; but, of course, he brought it to perfection in nothing. However, as every- body was his own customer, he was easily suited. As mankind increased and formed towns, each man was able to dispose of his surplus, he devoted himself, therefore, to one trade, produced a great quantity of articles of better quality, and got in ex- change for his fabric a greater number of articles of higher quality than he could have made himself. This division of labor led to almost scientific exactness and perfection in the trades. Competi- tion among the producers led to ornamental in- dustry. At last, use, beauty and strength, with the great- The Progress of Civilization. 213 est possible productivity and cheapness in articles of manufacture, were aimed at ; and what formerly- seemed to be the work of individual skill, is now performed by a mechanism which replaces the dex- terity and intelligence of the laborer. In Greece as well as in Rome the trades were despised as fit only for slaves. In the world of to-day they are the very beginning of freedom, universal liberty and civilization. It is the tradesmen who formed in the Middle Ages fortified towns and founded modern liberty, maintaining their rights against a fierce nobility and often against kings. The Florentine republics, the Hansa League and Flanders have achieved wealth and liberty, not by their arms, but by their industry ; and to-day, the greatest of all modern states, as Germany, France, England and the United States, are founded upon industry, as the ancient states developed their strength in war. How productive of great and noble qualities is industry by the independence it procures and the opportunities it gives us for developing our talents. Wealth develops power and dignity and health and well-being among the masses. The industrial laborer is the soldier of the nine- teenth century, making daily more conquests foi civilization and humanity. 214 The Progress of Civilization. Industn- creates commerce and new sources of maintenance, lessens idleness and vice, and im- proves morals by employing men. It was the want of industry that made the people of Rome and Greece accessible to the tricks of the demagogue and rendered them turbulent. To the rise of the industrial classes and the con- sequent development of wealth, Europe owes its liberty and civilization, as the third estate, grown powerful, forced royalty and nobles as well as the clergy to respect the rights of the people. Industry, through commerce following in its wake, gives rise to intercourse among men and nations, to interchange of ideas, mutual liberality, and peace and good-will among men. Commerce, which rests upon industry, is one of the main sources of modern civilization. Industry consti- tutes our superiority over the ancients. Slavery and contempt of labor form the centre of the civilization of the ancients and of the mili- tary life in which their activity found the only outlet. Among the Boeotians, men who defiled themselves by commerce, were for ten years excluded from all state offices ; and Augustus condemned a senator to death because he took part in manufacture. The slave system engendered ferocity. Slaves had to imbrue their hands in each other's blood as gladiators, and to engage in deadly combat with The Progress of Civilization. 215 bfutes almost as ferocious as their masters. They were often mutilated with atrocious cruelty ; they were tortured on the slightest suspicion and cruci- fied for trifling offenses. If a master was murdered, all the slaves were put to torture; and if the per- petrator was not discovered, they were all put to death. Tacitus relates a case in which not less than four hundred were thus slaughtered. Ladies of fashion amused themselves by the repeated in- fliction of painful flesh wounds on their lady maids with their own hand and dagger, and by ordering others to be crucified. Old and infirm slaves were exposed on an island of the Tiber, where they were left to die from starvation. As a man's children could not be considered less his own than his slaves, and his wife is but part of his household, he had also over them the power of life and death ; and as a man is not likely to be more tender with strangers than with his own wife and children, savage barbarism characterized all the relations of man with his fellows. Such was an- tiquity and such the models classical Education would force upon modern civilization. Industry, or application to the arts and trades, led to the development of the spirit of observation and to facts ; it led away from dreams, sophistry and dogmatism to genuine enlightenment and rea- sonableness ; it led to the discovery of the inductive 2i6 T]ie Progress of Civilization. philosophy, or, rather, dcchired working the only true philosophy and the shop the best school, and thus laid the foundation to genuine progress and improvement. It led to the development of the principle of util- ity, which is the safest test of truth and goodness. It led to peace and good-will among all men, as they all work for each other and exchange with each other the products of their labor. Industry cultivates enterprise and caution, two qualities Hume calls the most important for suc- cess in life. Industry, says Buckle, makes us conscious of our power. It is averse to superstition, as we daily feel that all depends on our own resources and how we manage them. It is the mother of wealth, and, hence, of civilization, and seeking for markets it leads to maritime discoveries. Industry gives men with competency and independence dignity and respectability, and thus cultivates a higher regard for humanity. Industry, assuming the character of art, develops the taste for the beautiful, and, hence, the cultiva- tion of industry and art leads to virtue and good manners, as the good and the beautiful are akin. Industry strengthens the physical and mental capacities of man by constant exercise ; increases The Progress of Civilization. 217 his self-restraining power, the basis of moral excel- lency, and thus renders man better and nobler. Industry, says Leckey, by providing the world with refining comforts, undermined the asceticism of the Church, its monastic spirit and ecclesiastic power ; it secularized Europe and made it tolerant. Industry led from dreamy philosophy and meta- physical speculation and dogmatic theology to the cultivation of science and the formation of a prac- tical code of natural ethics for the regulation of man in his intercourse with his fellow, nature or with himself. All the gold in the world flowing into a state cannot save it if indlistry leaves it ; witness Spain. The main idea of Adam Smith's " Wealth of Nations " is industry, which all his measures tend to promote as the pillar of a nation's greatness. Labor, according to him, is the basis of value. Adam Smith employed his whole genius to show that industry must be freed from all its former shackles. A new lesson we must learn — inasmuch as indus- try makes a nation great and prosperous — the school as well as the state must chiefly direct its efforts toward the promotion of manufactures and indus- try. For, as skill and excellency are only attained by habitual exercise, we must be trained to indus- try from early childhood. 2l8 The Progress of Civilization. Liberty, industry and peace are indissolubly linked together. Nothing but the enlightened self-interest of industry and commerce will event- ually abolish war among nations. But industry and commerce, which cement for- eign nations, should they not draw closer to each other the different classes and conditions in the same nation by showing them the identity of their interests ? Industry, says Leckey, while it disposes nations for peace, makes them strong in war. Under the industrial regime production gives rise to new wants, and wants to new exertions, and exertions to wealth, which again gives rise to refined tastes, finer perceptions of beauty and intel- lectual aspirations. Industry produces capital, which gives opportu- nity for higher pursuits. Slavery, war and despotism, all recede before industry. A law-abiding spirit, sobriety, integrity and a steady character arc all in the wake of industry. The old ascetic spirit destroys with human nature human energy. Industiy strengthens human ener- gies and unites all by an enlightened self-interest. Human industry has connected oceans separated by continents; has drained lakes in low lands and created others in high places ; has pierced moun- '' The Progress of Civilization. 219 tain chains ; has planted gardens in the wilderness ; has built cities upon the waves of the ocean ; has laid low ancient forests ; has changed climates ; has turned rivers from their natural course and has altered the face of the whole earth by changing its vegetable covering. St. Helena, when discovered in 1505, produced about sixty vegetable species, including but three or four known to grow else- where, also. At the present time its flora numbers seven hundred and fifty species. The flora of trop- ical America has been found by Humboldt and Bonpland to have been greatly introduced after the discovery of the New World. At the time of Aristotle the peach, that ripens to-day in England and Germany, could but imperfectly be raised under the Grecian sky ; and many of the fruits that in the days of Pliny thrived but poorly in sunny Italy, do well to-day in northern Europe. The mulberry tree was introduced in southern France in 1500, and to-day it does well in much more northerly climes of Europe. Who dares to deny but that tropical plants may ultimately grow in the temperate zone, by industry transplanting them gradually into countries more and more removed from their tropical home ? The changes effected by human industry in the animal kingdom are not less extensive than those in the vegetable world, and these changes multiply 220 The Progress of Civilization. each other by their mutual bearings, until the final results assume a universal aspect. Not to speak of the changes effected by the introduction of birds which live on insects — the agency of which is important in fertilizing plants — the ox, the horse, the sheep, the swine, so useful to man, have all been transplanted to the New World by human industry, as hardly any of the quadrupeds of the Old World were found in Amer- ica. And in our own day the Cashmere or Thibet goat was brought but in 1850 to South Carolina and the camel to Texas and New Mexico, where they promise to do well. The monumental buildings of the world are its true public libraries, seen and read by all, spreading in one or another style lessons of severe and chaste beauty or of spiritual grandeur, and imparting the spirit and civilization of one age to another ; and this, too, is the work of industry. With the increase of pleasure and refinement arising from the beauty and delicacy of an in- dustry daily more assuming the character of art, human sensibility and kindliness of heart spread among men, and brought with them a higher state of civilization. As laborers, mechanics and manu- facturers obtained wealth, they gained importance and achieved freedom, consideration and influence; the courts and the law had to do them justice, and The Progress of Civilization. 221 thus changed all together; governments had to consult them and became representative and con- stitutional ; and now, at last, schools have to suit their course to the practical needs of the la- borer. We best learn the nature of Education by study- ing it in the great style of Providence or universal history, which is the Education of the race. The Education of the individual must be in kind the same as the Education of the race, and must end in it. If educators find nothing in the history and development of the race that concerns them, the worse for their system ; as for us the Education of the individual must begin the very work the Edu- cation of the race will complete. Draw closer the connection between the school and industry, science and the trades, and spread sound economical knowledge, and a humane dispo- sition among employers and employees, and you reduce the mortality of the laborers of the land by at least 50,000, and the number of cases of sick- ness by 750,000 per annum. There is hardly a department of science but its fundamental facts have been furnished by the ob- servation of the practical men of industry. But how many of these observations are lost through the want of scientific knowledge in the practical workers of the world, and who can set a limit to 222 The Progress of Civilization. future progress and improvement when practical workers will be scientific observers ? As long as labor is a drudgery, leaving the mind and the heart vacant, men will rather scheme than work. Join to labor science and art, and the ven- erated high priests of human industry, ministering in their laboratories to the comforts and necessities of mankind, will find their work a delight and a pleasure, they would no more exchange with the leisure of the elegant trifler than the toiling chem- ist or physicist would. Labor is the physical aspect of moral power, and a nation cannot be free, powerful and truly great without being eminent for its industry. Rome and Greece possessed no industries, neither were they great, for their masses were slaves. Industry, through constant exercise, bestows the freedom of the power of using our faculties for our own good as well as for the good of the race, and this freedom constitutes true liberty. As long as war is tolerated, the spirit of rapacity, inhumanity and domination will pervade every sphere of private and public life, and men and nations will be barbarians. As long as men are fools and knaves enough to butcher one another, it is simply ridiculous to talk of civilization, which only can begin where war ends. War deteriorates a nation physically as well as morally. After every The Progress of Civilization. 223 great war — in Sweden and Germany after the thirty- years' war, in Prussia after the sev^en years' war and in France after the great Napoleonic war — the number of diseased, crippled and weak men had increased to an extent that interfered with the recruiting office. For, as the able-bodied men have been taken from their homes, and have fallen in the field, the weak and the sickly formed families and humanity necessarily was physically deteri- orated. So, for instance, do we find in France exempt from the service — aside from causes of sickness, low stature or of being crippled — for constitutional weakness, in 18 16-1820 . . . 51.05 in 1,000 recruits. 1831-1835 . . . 79.04 1 865-1 868 . . . 96.90 " •* In Prussia were exempt for all causes of sickness, for being crippled, constitutionally weak and of low stature, in 1 83 1 345 in 1,000 recruits. 1854 382 1858-1862 ..... 423 In Saxony, were exempt from the service for all causes in 1832-1836 33 in 100. 1850-1854 50 " 224 The Progress of Civilization. The steadily diminishing number of long-lived persons is another incontestable proof of a deteri- orating humanity. There were in Sweden over 90 years of age in IVomen, Men. 1751 . . 10.4 in 1,000. 6.6 in 1,000. 1763 . . 7 " 4 " (1766) 1780 . • 4-4 i( 3-4 " 1790 . . 5-3 << 2.7 " (1775) 1800 . . 2.7 « 1-3 " We dare not enter upon a recital of the social, moral and economical disorders which follow wars, neither is it necessary, as we all keenly feel them just now. Our armies are slaughter houses. The killed in the field are the least. The barracks and the camp do the work of destruction. Though the soldiers are picked men, the mortality among them is dou- ble that of the entire population. Balfour shows the mortality in England in a 1,000 population at the age of 20-25. 25-30. 30-35. 35-40. :; Civilians ... 8.4 9.2 10.2 11.6 \ Soldiers . . . 17.0 18.3 18.4 19.3 The mortality of colonial troops in warm climates is a real slaughter, and amounts among the English troops in The Progress of Civilization. 225 The Bermudas . . . . to 52.1 in 1,000. St. Helena "33 Jamaica "128 " The Small Antilles . . " 82.5 Ceylon "75 " In the Russian army the regular mortality is 38 in i,ocxD, almost four-fold what it is among the common people at the same ages. In Algeria, during the war, the French lost loo,- 000 men, of whom 3,400 died from wounds, while more than nineteen out of every twenty were the victims of camp diseases. During the first seven months of the Crimean war 38.5 per cent, of the English troops died from camp diseases. In the great Russian campaign Bonaparte lost two-thirds of his magnificent army, before he reached Moscow, in camp diseases. The great Russian army of 209,800 men that opposed him counted, after five months, 40,290 men. In our own great war we had from June i, 1861, to June I, 1863, 53.2 deaths per annum for every 1,000 men in the field, of whom 8.6 died from wounds and 44.6 from camp diseases. We know the slaughter in the battle field was great, and yet the slaughter in the camp was more than five times as large as that by ball and powder. The slaughter from suicide is not less remarkable 226 The Progress of Civilizaiion. in the army, and compares with the number of suicides among civihans in Saxony as 177 to 100. _ France " 253 " Prussia " 293 " Sweden " 423 " Austria " 643 " And Christian governments foster military organi- zations and parade with them on occasions of great religious solemnity. Russia is carrying on a war of aggression against Turkey with a prospect of another war fifty years hence for the enslavement of the whole of Europe. Has the press a word against it ? Is our plea, then, for the sacredness of human life out of season ? According to an article in the Lancet of April 10, 1841, the mortal- ity in the English work-houses was 207 in 1,000! But we need not go so far back. It amounted in 47 work-houses in London, 1851-55 .... 227.2 in 1,000. Berlin, 1852 142.8 " Massachusetts, 1861-67 . 133.7 " The wantonness of these mortalities among the state poor appears in its true light when we con- sider that even in hospitals, which only take in the sick, the mortality averages in the smaller 150 in 1,000 and in the larger 100 in 1,000, and that on an average there is but one death for fifteen cases The Progress of Civilization. 227 of sickness, so that a sick man entering a hospital has a better chance of life than a poor man enter- ing the almshouse. Among prisoners averaging 30- 40 years, 30-50 in a thousand die per annum, while in the outside world the mortality among men of the same ages is but 10-20 in 1,000. If the mortality in our public institutions, right under the eye and control of the government, sur- passes the general mortality — which already in- cludes all sorts of vicious and criminal classes — must we not conclude that sacredness of human life has not as yet the supreme influence it ought to have even with the guardians of public order and safety ? Or is this fearful mortality in our public institu- tions due to the deep-seated deterioration in the classes gathered in them ? We do not deny it partly is, and this establishes our position of the prevalence of deteriorating tendencies in society, which, again, have very much for their basis a gen- eral disregard for human life, which allows causes unfavorable to human life to accumulate and gather strength until they settle in a permanent deterio- rated type of humanity. No, the sacredness of human life does not as yet find the recognition it calls for. We occasionally suspend hostilities to give a chance to the natural increase of population and to the industrial savings 228 The Progress of Civilisation. of a few years of peace to fill the gap made in the ranks and in the pocket by Krupp's eighty-ton guns, the improved implements of destruction of an advanced Christian civilization. War organized and carried on openly by govern- ments established mainly for the protection of the lives of the citizens, is the most flagrant outrage upon God, man and nature ; and, as long as it is tol- erated, justice among men will be but a mockery. For, if governments indulge in direct murder for the sake of self-aggrandizement, why should not individuals commit indirect murder for the same purpose } And they do, as the slaughter of fac- tories, railroads and tenement houses proves. Dr. Parne finds scrofula prevalent in the indus- trial district of the department of Aude. Bossard ascribes the physical debility of the inhabitants of the Ardennes to their industries. In Haute Rhin, Muller tells us that the agriculturists are fine men, while the operatives are pale and sickly. Poter finds in the department of the Rhone the people, exclusively devoted to manufacturing, physically degenerated and furnishing the greatest number of exempts from the service. Dr. EngL'l showed for Saxony in 1852, 1853 and 1854 unfit for the service. In cities 56 in 100. In the country 51 " The Progress of Civilization. 229 Repeated recruiting gave the following results as to unfitness for the service : Farmers 46 in 100 recruits. Cabinet-makers ... 51 " " Operatives 57 " " Artists 63 " " Merchants 70 " " Scholars 80 " " Domestics 83 " " A higher civilization must protect us against the insiduous attacks upon life growing out of the con- ditions of a lower state of civilization as well as against the open violence of the savage state. It must deal with causes, and not with isolated fla- grant acts, which like weeds spring up from the old stock. The higher civilization is greatly hygienic and improves the race in its highest aspects by improv- ing its physical basis and its very genesis. Our industries create a new sort of barbarism in the very midst of our much boasted civilization by their stolid indifference to the physical and moral condition of the millions engaged in them. Several years ago the average age at death in the weaveries of Leicester was eighteen years ! For everyone agriculturist, who dies from lung diseases, 2.63 die from the same diseases in the manufac- turing town of Manchester. Of women engaged in lace making 617 die from the same terrible mal- 230 The Progress of Civilization. ady to every 301 men otherwise occupied in the same district. At the age of thirty-five to forty- five the mortality of the London tailors is 57 per cent, and the mortality of the London printers 117 per cent, higher than that of the agriculturists. At the age of forty-five to fifty-five London tai- lors have twice and London printers more than twice the mortality of the agriculturists. The enumeration of the various pests making havoc among the workmen in many industries, and against which a higher civilization must protect the masses, would fill not one, but many volumes. Of 1,078 children who worked in English spin- neries 22 reached the fortieth year and but 9 the fiftieth. Of 824 young hands in six spinneries 183 enjoyed good health, 240 were in delicate health, 256 were sick, 43 were puny, 100 had tumefactions of joints, 37 had curvatures of the spine. Trades "with excessive labor cause inflammations, curva- tures, ruptures and hemorrhages. According to Dr. Friedlander one-fourth of the "workingmen of England and one-eighth of Ger- many are ruptured. France, England and Ger- many keep an exact inventory of the work-peo- ple reared with the treasure of the nation. The time is coming when we shall have to raise our laborers, and then we shall at least take as good care of them as we do of otlicr cb.attcl ; but until The Progress of Civilization. 231 then the friend of humanity can study only abroad the effects of modern industry upon the lives and health and morals of the work-people. Considering the army of martyrs among the hands engaged in the manufacture of fine cloth- ing, Ruskin says of the wearers of these articles : " They have literally entered into a partnership of death and dressed themselves in his spoils. Yes, if the veil could be lifted not only from your thoughts, but from your human sight, you would see — the angels do see — on those gay white dresses of yours, strange, dark spots of crimson patterns, that you know not of — spots of the inextinguishable red that all the sea cannot wash away ; yea, and that among the pleasant flowers that crown your fair heads and glow on your wreathed hair, you would see that one weed was always twisted which none thought of — the grass that grozvs on the grave." In our chase for gold we have become reckless as to human life, and' so various are the ways in which men in our day are got out of the world that fully half the people die by a brother's hand. This murderous spirit so perfectly possesses this age, that men snap the cord of life before their sands are run. The increase of suicide has been fearful in the last hundred years. There were committed in 232 TJic Progress of Civilization. Paris, 1 794- 1 804, . . . 107 annual suicides. " 1804-1823, • . 334 " 1830-1835, .. . . 382 Beriin, 1758-1775. • . . 45 " 1784-1797. . . . 62 I 797-1 808, . . . 126 1813-1822, . . . 546 The average annual suicides in France were 1826-1830 1,739 1831-1835 2,263 1836-1840 2,574 1841-1845 2,951 1846-1850 3,466 1851-1855 3.639 While during 1 826-1 856 the population has risen from 31,858,937 to 36,039,364, or in the ratio of \oo to 113, suicides have risen in the ratio of 100 to 209, so that while the population has but little increased, suicides have more than doubled. In Denmark the annual number of suicides were 1835-1839 261 1840-1844 300 1845-1849 330 1850-1854 389 1855-1856 414 The proportion of suicides has thus risen from 219 to 392 in every million of population. In Prussia suicides have increased in 1823-1858 from 510 to 2,180. The Progress of Civilization. 233 In general, suicides have increased, taking most European countries, 3 to 5 per cent., while the aver- age increase of population has been 1.64 per cent. The proportion of suicides in Denmark . . . is 388 in 1,000,000 pop Saxony .... " 215 « « Scandinavia . . " 126 <( ' that is put upon them. Poor mothers ! all day at work and nursing all night with empty breasts, children starving all day, this is kill- ing game for mother and child. What a city home ! father and mother gone ; an empty room ; no fire in the stove ; a baby in the crib ; a girl of six doing the work of a mother. Or little dirty, ragged children fighting in the filthy lane about a dirty thing, hard to say what it is and which is beneath the notice of dogs, they are locked out, and vagabondage is forced upon them. If the children live to eight or ten years, their days of fac- tory slavery begin. The working people in the large cities of France are worse housed than prison- ers. No jailer would keep prisoners with so little air, light or food. Their dwellings are simply mur- derous. No room for anything, for attending to anything or even for turning around. No separa- tion of sexes or decency possible. Men, women and children sleep all in the same bed. The room is often in the cellar or under the garret, exposed to wind or rain ; everything rots, and the inhabitants are constant victims of rheumatism and skin dis- eases. There is no accommodation for anything; everything has to be bought in smallest quantities and in the most expensive way. The chimneys are often poor and the smoke blinding. In most con- tagious diseases, so common in such quarters, isola- 16 362 The People and their Homes. tion is impossible. Coming from his labor to such a dark, damp, uncomfortable hole, the poor man is repelled and almost driven to the public house, which completes his ruin. Villermd showed under these conditions in the industrial cities of France the average life of the factory people to be just nineteen years, while that of people in a normal condition is forty-three ! The mortality among the children of the factory he showed to be a veritable extermination. The misery of the parents forces children of six to seven years into the factory. Of course, children so young are made to work by compulsory means. The parents soon lose all influence with these young factory hands, among whom a fearful de- moralization prevails, and who at the age of twelve years smoke, drink, visit saloons and have their girls. So Villerm6 found it thirty years ago and so Jules Simon finds the condition of the factory people in the populous centres of Industry to-day. The physical and moral ruin of the people in the great manufacturing towns of France is beyond description. The family, with ail its saving influences, has given way to universal vagabondage, misery and depravity, which can hardly end otherwise for France than in the desolation of its large cities lighted up by maddened petroUcuses. Let this TJie People and their Hojnes. 363 lesson written over the lurid sky be read and noticed all over the world. Far from having o\erdrawn the picture of the working classes in the large cities of France, we dared not half tell the truth, which is too shocking for a straightforward recital. Men, women, boys and girls being everywhere thrown together in the factory and upon the litter like brutes, decency and cleanliness of body become impossible, and this looseness ends in the complete destruction of all principle and character and in the ruin of society. 1 he working girls in their want and desolation abandon themselves and become mothers before they reach maturity of age, at sixteen to fourteen and earlier. Men fear the responsibility of a family ; seeing as they do the misery of their fellows in the bonds of wedlock, they will not marry. Poor women are forsaken when their greatest need has come, the poor children are farmed out, and from eighty to ninety-five of a hundred die in less than a year. The men shift from woman to woman and the women from man to man, and abomina- tions, best left unmentioned, fill the land and destroy the nation. The same corruption we find everywhere in pro- portion as the people are crowded into tenement houses of a low order. Little Bavaria has an an- 364 The People a?id their Homes. nual crop of 35,083 illegitimate births ; Wurtemberg, 12,216; Prussia, 47,961, and Saxony, 12,057. A digression may not be out of place here in reference to Sweden, which seems to contradict every principle of social philosophy ; for, while its population is almost entirely agricultural, well schooled and religiously trained, crime abounds to a degree found nowhere else. Laing found one in one hundred and thirty-four of the population in the country and one in forty-six in the towns con- victed of crime, while in Ireland the proportion was in the same year one in seven hundred and twenty- three. Stockholm had annually (1851-55) 1,788 legitimate births and 1,477 illegitimate ones! The fact is, though the country inclines us to virtue and the manufacturing town with its attendants to vice, none exerts such a power as may not be overcome by other influences. The nobility of Sweden, though but one in three hundred of the entire pop- ulation, possesses more than one-eighth of the land, taxation presses hard upon the poor and their in- dustries, who beside earn scanty wages and can hardly work six months in the year on account of the severity of the climate; half the people, there- fore, live worse than Knglish paupers. Add to this that nine-tenths of the population are peasants, treated by all classes with the uttermost contempt and whose degradation is completed by a most de- The People and their Hojnes. 365 basing penal code, and we certainly cannot wonder that a people whose sensibilities are blunted by daily misery, and despised by all lost its self-regard, is not improved in its morals by the schoolmaster, the Church or the country. Sweden, thus, of all the countries, confirms our rule that the school is powerless where the people are kept in a pauper- ized condition that blunts their better feelings ; and that the bringing together in our large cities the very rich and the very poor — robbing the latter of all self-regard, the safest defense against vice, im- morality and crime — destroys them. As to the condition of the working people and their dwellings in England, let Joseph Kay's pages answer. Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters crowd together in a state of filthy indecency, and are much worse off than the horses in an ordinary stable. Sometimes a man is found sleeping with one woman, sometimes with two, and sometimes with young girls ; sometimes brothers and sisters of the ages of eighteen, nineteen and twenty are found in one bed together Men and women, three and four found sleeping togecher, are not ashamed, but answer remonstrances by laughter or sneer In 1844, 20 per cent, of the working classes of Liverpool, 11^ per cent, of those of Manchester and 8 per cent, of those of Salford lived in cellars. 366 TJic People and their Homes. And so it is all over England, and the farming hands in the rural cottages don't fare any better. The population is denser to-day and time has brought no relief. Look beneath all the display of objects of literature, science and art, and what is there but a pauperized and suffering people. To maintain show we have degraded the masses, until we have created an evil so vast that we now de- spair of ever finding the remedy. A committee appointed by the statistical society to investigate the condition of dwellings and the people, say : " Your committee has given a picture in detail of human wretchedness, filth and brutal degradation, the chief features of which are a dis- grace to a civilized country and which is but the type of the miserable condition of the masses of the community, whether located in small, ill-ven- tilated rooms of manufacturing towns or in many of the cottages of the agricultural peasantry. In these wretched dwellings all ages and all sexes, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, grown- up brothers and sisters, stranger adult males and females and swarms of children — the sick, the dy- ing and the dead, are herded together with a prox- imity and mutual pressure which brutes would re- sist ; where it is physically impossible to preserve the ordinary decency of life ; where all sense of propriety and self-respect must be lost, to be re- The People and their Homes. 367 placed only by a recklessness of demeanor which necessarily results from vitiated minds." Officials, clergymen and surgeons from all over England, give a description of the condition of the people in their crowded dwellings too shocking for recital. The promiscuous mingling of the sexes in the bedrooms has been increasing and producing year after year worse consequences, until it has be- come so common among the poor as to destroy all modesty and virtue among women, and threatens to annihilate the foundations on which are based all the national and domestic virtues, and to make want of chastity before marriage and want of deli- cacy and purity after marriage common character- istics of the mothers and wives of our working people. We shall conclude these statements of Joseph Kay, which we could follow up by others of equal authority, with the significant statistical figures of 60,000 illegitimate births per annum in good Old England. We are at a loss where to begin and where to end, or how to press into a few brief lines all the miseries of the poor arising from crowded d\\ell- ings as sketched by John E. Morgan. The poor are huddled together in a manner that health and strength for their daily work is fairly impossible. Their dwellings are forcing-beds of disease, where 368 The People and their Homes. the plague originates. Here lies the very canker at the root of our social system. The day's work of oar laborers, so wearing on the nervous system as well as on the muscles, is in their insalubrious dwellings followed by loss of appetite and loss of sleep. What harvests of preventable deaths ! Fifteen or sixteen deaths in a thousand is the normal death- rate. In sixty of the worst streets of Salford the rate of mortality for a number of years ranged from 36 to 91 in 1,000, the average of the whole being 51 ! And Salford is no exception. Vaux- hall district in Liverpool showed in 1864 a death- rate of 49 in 1,000, and St. Paul's Exchange 48 — and that is not the worst. How narrow is the life-span of our poor, and how full of physical ailments and misery is that little ! Bad air and too little of it, kills the people. Thou- sands around us are annually dying, starving for want of a breathable air. In Salford 25,000 people suffer intensely from air-poisoning ; in Manchester 80,000 ; in Liverpool and Glasgow are an equal number of sufferers from pestilential quarters, and London has fully a half a million of inhabitants, who suffer enfeebled health from the bad state of their crowded, stifling dwell- ings. Without naming the towns, upon a thorough knowledge of which the statement is based, of the The People and their Homes. 369 12,000,000 of the town population of England and Scotland, fully 2,000,000 suffer from want of proper dwellings. Dr. Hunter positively states that the dwellings are more crowded by 10 per cent, to-day than they were 25 years ago, as the population has increased 5^ per cent., and the dwellings have at the same time decreased 4I per cent., as many buildings have been appropriated for other purposes. Typhus, measles, scarlet fever, smallpox and other diseases come and go ; there are signs of a widespread physical deterioration ; chronic ailments are the rule ; dyspepsia, bronchitis, scrofula and consump- tion are common, and the thread of life is deplor- ably fine spun, and many seem to cower around the open mouth of the grave. From these crowded poor one million of paupers gains its recruits ; prisons and reformatories look to them for their largest supply ; and it is among them that diseases originate that revenge them- selves on society at large. So far Dr. Morgan, a public officer in 1869, than whom none is better informed upon the condition of the laboring masses and their dwellings. THE TENEMENT HOUSES OF NEW YORK CITY. We beg the reader to notice that we closely fol- low the Official Reports of the Board of Health, 16* 37© The People and their Homes. published for the last ten and more years, by which every one of our statements may be verified. The majority of tenement houses in this city are old structures built for other purposes, partitioned off within so as to give each family a living room 10 by 12 feet and a bedroom 6 by 4 feet, while no regard is paid to ventilation or domestic conveni- ences ; twenty, thirty, forty to one hundred and fifty such apartments are constructed, and into each a family of from three to five persons is crowded. The danger from crowding in these tenement houses is a hundred-fold increased by their being packed together in blocks. Rear tenement houses aggravate the evil beyond measure. They are built upon the rear of the yard, close to the rear tene- ment of the opposite lot, leaving a small cold and damp space between the front and rear houses, not inappropriately called the zvell hole. Not only are fresh air and sunlight thus effectually excluded from the living and sleeping apartments of most of the inmates, but the buildings become damp and cold, and in time saturated with the poisonous and filthy excretions of the inmates. The result of this effective overcrowding in badly constructed dwellings is shown by the fact that this half of the population of New York yields 75 per cent, of the total sickness and mortality. Tene- ment houses of a capacity for ten families were The People and their Homes. 371 found by the Board of Health, in which, beside other diseases, typhus prevailed, and in six months twenty persons were stricken down by this terrible malady. In other buildings a mortality of 55 in 1,000, or I in 18, died ! which is 40 more deaths to every 1,000 population than there is absolute neces- sity for. Tenements, with two houses on the same lot, suffer also from the super-added nuisance of privies located in the middle space. The air in these areas is always impure from the noxious gases arising from the privies, and even without these necessary nuisances the air is too confined for the proper supply of human beings. Tenements have been examined by the Board in which the apartments consisted of one living room of \\ by 8 feet and a dark bedroom of 7 by 8 feet, with no means for ventilation and full of filth, furnishing constant work for the undertaker, the ambulance and the hospitals. The privy vaults and everything else, of course, was in a most loathsome and killing condition. A description of the kind of homes work-people at times find in tenement houses may interest. The roof leaky as a sieve, affecting the comfort of the inmates down to the second floor; the walls, ceil- ings and woodwork of the whole house shaky with age and bad Msage and rotten with filth ; the fire- 3/2 The People and their Homes. places destroyed and dangerous ; the partition walls thin, ill-fitting planks, covered with foul and ragged paper. The alleyway dark, extremely filthy and dangerous in every respect. The basement walls crumbling ; the ceiling below the level of the street ; no light, except through the door, and occu- pied by four beds ; the steps decayed and danger- ous. While the wood and other materials of such structures undergo the process of dry rot, the wretched tenants waste and die from a disease ex- pressively termed the " tenement house rot." The debasing effects of such houses have never been overdrawn. Mr. N. P. Willis gave the fol- lowing vivid description of the tenement class of people immediately after the riot of 1863: "The high brick blocks and closely packed houses in this neighborhood seemed to be literally hives of sick- ness and vice. Curiosity to look on at the fire raging so near them brought every inhabitant to the porch or window, or assembled them in ragged and dirty groups on the sidewalks in front. Prob- ably not a creature who could move was left in- doors at that hour. And it is wonderful to see and difficult to believe that so much misery and disease and wretchedness could be huddled to- gether and hidden by high walls unvisited and un- thought of so near our own abodes. The lewd, but pale and sickly young women, scarce decent in The People and their Homes. 373 their ragged attire, were impudent and scattered everywhere in the crowd. But what numbers of these poor classes are deformed ; what numbers are made hideous by self-neglect and infirmity, and what numbers are paralytics, drunkards, imbe- cile or idiotic, forlorn in their poverty-stricken abandonment for the world ! Alas ! human faces look so hideous with hope and vanity all gone ! And female form and features are made so fright- ful by sin, squalor and debasement." The degree of overcrowding in the tenements of New York City exceeds that of any of the large cities of the civilized world. The density of population was to each acre in 1870: NEW YORK, LONDON. nth Ward . . . . . 328 Strand 307 13th " 311 St, Luke's 259 14th " 275 East London .... 266 17th " 289 Holborn 229 The highest allowable population is 80 to 100 persons to the acre. The effect of this excessive crowding in badly constructed dwellings upon the death rate is that double as many of these tene- ment inmates die as of the people living in the country. Sickness and death are, however, but a fraction of the sum total of damage which over- crowding and defective house accommodations do 374 The People and tJieir Homes. to the poor. The gross immorality, the huddling up of all sexes and ages, leads them on to a total self-abandonment and every species of vice and crime. Gotham Court may be taken as a representative of tenement houses, their character, accommoda- tions and influence on the population. Two bar- rack-buildings furnish tenements to 146 families or 584 individuals. At times it has been packed with nearly double that number. The roof is a general playground for children and a place of deposit for ashes, garbage and to a large extent used as a privy by the tenants. The plaster and woodwork of the hallways is out of repair and extremely filthy ; the stairs are dangerous ; the cellars are dark, horribly foul and filled with mud, rubbish and human excre- ments. They are not used for storage of wood or coal, as neither property nor life are safe in these cellars on account of rowdyism rampant around this court. The privies arc horrible breeding tanks of disease ; the horrible odors rising from this im- mense receptacle of filth spread between the two piles of buildings — each five stories high — which are separated only by a distance of nine feet wide. The poison thus concentrated is very directly ap- plied to each and every apartment in the buildings. Added to the filth of the privies is the filth of the yard, into which much rubbish and garbage is The People and their Homes. 375 thrown. For a long time this court has been the nightly resort of a crowd of loafers, bummers and roughs, who kept the tenants in a complete state of terrorism. On Sunday especially this is the play- ground of these rascals — boys and half-grown men — who fight among themselves and pick quarrels with the tenants. Women of the street are dragged in, under the back-stairs and into the cellars by these miserable youngsters, and vice, drunkenness and terror reign rampant. The police will not fol- low them into these dark cellars and recesses. The agent and housekeeper dare not interfere ; and the police, I fear, are content to leave the court pretty much to itself. Ventilation is impossible, and even if it was not, the air is already poisoned before it would enter the rooms. This was the condition of Gotham in 1870. In 1865 the Health Officer found the mortality in these buildings 30 per cent. of the children born, 7 per cent, of the entire popu- lation, which is three and four times as great a mortality than there is an absolute necessity for. Of 504 inmates 146 were more or less sick, some with smallpox, some with typhus, some with scarla- tina, dysentery, chronic diarrhoea, etc. All zymotic, epidemic and contagious diseases make especial havoc in our tenement houses, as they are usually overcrowded, badly ventilated, damp and filthy ; the relapsing fever, however, is peculiarly 37^ The People and their Homes. a disease resulting from overcrowding and destitu- tion, while typhus is a disease which finds its cause in overcrowding alone. Miserable living and sleep- ing in damp, filthy cellars and unventilated apart- ments produce this epidemy, by which thousands of the inhabitants of the tenement houses have been attacked in 1870. This epidemy has been for the last few years raging all over the civilized (?) world among the destitute laborers, who are living in unwholesome and crow^ded apartments. The cholera of 1866 left the inhabitants of the clean and well-to-do sections of the city of New York unvisited, even while this terrible pest has slain hundreds of victims in the overcrowded, badly ventilated, damp and filthy tenement houses. In 1867 the mortality of children of one year of age amounted from week to week one-fourth to one- half of the entire death rate. In some of the crowded tenement neighborhoods 80 per cent, of the mortality occurred among the infant popula- tion. The unhealthfulness of the dwellings is most telling upon the delicate constitution of infants; and, hence, the slaughter among them. In many cases it was observed, though death was imminent, removal to the country and its pure atmosphere terminated the disease as if by magic. The filth and foul air of tenement houses furnish the ferment foi contagious and miasmatic diseases, and fresh The People and their Homes. 377 air, pure water and plenty of sunlight are the best preventatives of zymotic as well as of other diseases. In the report of 1874, we read that large num- bers of cellars in the lower wards of the city were occupied as dwellings and lodging-places, which were totally unfit for such occupancy ; many of them nests of crime, and all in a condition to become on the slightest appearance of pestilence the centres of disease. In most cellars the walls and ceilings were found damp ; the floors resting on damp earth were rotting away or were resting upon stagnant water, which would be forced up be- low the boards at the slightest pressure of the foot upon the floor. Many of the lodging-cellars were found to be long rooms divided into small apart- ments by pieces of curtain, while in others the beds were arranged alongside of each other without such partition and occupied indiscriminately by lodgers of both sexes. In the second sanitary inspection district 315 persons were found living in damp, un- ventilated cellars. They suffered from alcoholism, and rheumatism in all its stages. In the Fourth Ward 176 cellars were found in a deplorably filthy state, and radical measures were recommended for closing them and redeeming the wretched occupants of those cellars from early graves, lives of drunkenness and prostitution. In numerous instances damp, dark, filthy cellars were 378 The People and their Homes. rented from $25 to $75 per month. " The system of tenement dwellings is so radically wrong that to suggest improvements would end in a suggestion that the present houses be all torn down. Clean- liness in them is impossible without light and air, and this cannot be had with front and rear build- ings. Volumes of air vitiated by the disagreeable smells of cookery of the lower stories are always sent up through the halls and narrow courtyards, also the exhalations of decaying vegetable matter and the like. The walls and ceilings of the halls become soon covered with a coating of animal mat- ter deposited upon them, and the floors become soaked with moisture, filth and dirt, which is never removed." We might have presented more sensational pic- tures — we have preferred to describe the homes of the working people in the very words of our noble sanitary inspectors, and the misery of their occu- pants can be easily inferred upon the principle of Mr. Godwin : " As the homes, so the people." Our sanitary inspectors are doing their best to improve the condition of the tenement houses. But as the population increases and the business houses encroach and narrow the field of the tene- ment houses, and the proportion of the inhabitants to the area is already three times as large as health permits it, all their measures cannot bring The People and their Homes. 379 permanent relief. Besides, their powers are too restricted to do all the good they would like to do. Is it in Boston, the Athens of American intelli- gence, any better ? The State Board of Health of Massachusetts tells us that the homes of the labor- ing classes in Boston are overcrowded and unwhole- some, abodes of misery, affecting injuriously the health, the morals and the political purity of the community ; they are disgracefully unfit for human habitations, and nothing can be added to a true notion of their badness, as their character for squal- idness and unwholesomeness is known to all. The State Board is tired of telling over the story of the miserable abodes of the people, and we shall follow the description of the Rev. Edward E. Hale in his " How the People Live in Boston, and How They Die There." The mortality of the infants in Bethlehem, which has made every Christian mother curse the name of Herod, is more than equalled in the terrible suf- ferings of the children in Boston. Seventy-five deaths among the children of the poor happening just from cholera infantum alone in twenty-four hours ! And almost all under one year of age, and coming out of all proportion from the tenements of the poor. Not a child on the dead-list from Beacon, Chestnut or Pinkney Streets, nor deaths in Union Park, Worcester or Springfield Streets, or from Chester 380 The People and their Homes. Square ; in skort, not one death from the v^ery nice streets. The largest part come from two neighbor- hoods — the quarters of the dingy homes of the poor. But let us glance inside these hells, called by a misnomer homes. Well, here we are in the room of Mrs. K , who lost a boy — it was her only child. The air was damp, chilly and dark, because the sun never kissed it. The floor of the entry was wet from the overrunning of the water-faucet, which supplied the house, and all the region was damp, as the cellar is apt to be, which is much below the tide-level. Just seven people lived in four rooms, which put together would have made one of twenty feet square. One of the deaths happened in the house oppo- site, in which thirty-one persons lived (?) in fourteen so-called rooms. What had been the yard of this house had been taken up by another tenement building. Another one of the deaths occurred in a four- story tenement, in which forty families are packed, and which looks very much like a menagerie cage. 13 E street is another such feeder of the cemetery. Two tenement houses adjoining each other, with thirteen families in the one and ten in the other. The water pipes are put up in the most shameful manner. ,Thcy must of necessity freeze up at the very first frost. There are but two fau- TJie People and their Homes. 381 cets for twenty-three families to draw from, and no way to get to them without wading through dirty water. Two of the most filthy privies, entirely open for these twenty-three families, are so much out of repair as to be dangerous to enter. The apart- ments are miserable places, out of repair, the plas- tering of the walls and ceilings give little chance to whitewash, as it is broken off to a large extent. One of the poor innocents was sent to its rest from one of the tenements in Phoenix Place. There is a melancholy uniformity in this class of build- ings. They are lightly built of wood, all on the same plan. Think of it, sixty adults and sixty-five children packed away in sixty rooms, each of which was about twelve feet square. The summer atmo- sphere of these places is odious, but the winter at- mosphere is worse. The lots are so small that all privy arrangements and deposits of offal are hor- ribly near the open windows. It was wretched to hear the woman talk, as if the child died of course, and she never ought to have expected that it would live. The poor feel they are doomed and become reckless. It would be a sad and endless repetition to say more in detail about this matter, as the dwellings assigned for homes to the laboring poor in Boston all are pretty much of the same description. In 1865, a thousand children died in less than a 382 The People and their Homes. hundred days from an epidemy that raged among the dear Httle ones. The Bostonians, who hve in comfortable circumstances and neat homes, are sur- prised to hear it. It did not touch them — it raged among the poor. But the worst of all is that it is not only New York City, Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Louisville, New Orleans, in short, the very large cities; it is fully as bad in the smaller manufactur- ing towns everywhere. Take, for instance, the tene- ment house called " Buffum's Block," in Linn, Mass. It is eighty feet long, thirty feet wide, containing a basement, two stories and an attic. In the base- ment, below the level of the street, three families live, and the house contains not less than forty-six persons. The privies are foul and beyond approach by a decent person. Additional complaint was caused by the privies of the neighboring tenements which, being on higher ground and faulty in con- struction, were overflowing into this yard. Here is a sample, and we take the first — there is not much choice — from Salem, in the same State, at No. 18 Congress Street. At the time of the inspec- tion by the health officer, this house stood in the midst of a pond of stagnant water. In the same watery lot was an overflowing privy-vault, and a piggery added its contribution to the general filth. Sixteen persons occupied the house, which was in The People and iJtcir Homes. 383 a condition to poison the atmosphere of the whole neighborhood. All the tenements of the laboring classes in this district, says the State Report, should be condemned as nuisances. Here, as an illustration — and we take again the first at hand — from Springfield, T Block. The house, when inspected, was greatly out of re- pair — its windows broken, its stairs dangerous, its roof leaking. The vaults of the privy were brick receptacles, entirely above ground, and as one of them was broken, the abundant contents had set- tled away, a filthy mass of excrement overflowing. Most of the tenants declined to use these privies, and resorted to expedients which can only be hinted at. This is not impracticable fault-finding. Quick transit opens a highway that leads out of these and a thousand other abominations equally destructive to the people, who are to-day unreasonably herded in miserable tenement houses. Quick transit gives the working people the means to live out in the country in their own cottages, where God Almighty's untampered sweet influences will keep them sound in body and soul, sound in principle and in action, and in all the relations of the individual to himself, his family and the state. A home in the country with a garden patch at- tached to it, owned by every working-man, is the 384 TJie People and their Homes. only possible solution of a thousand problems which press for an answer. Once every mechanic looked forward to the time when he would be master and have his own shop. To-day, once a factory employee, means always one ; he is a hopeless vagrant ; he cannot invest and does not economize, and ever remains without a home, hope or property. In unemployed spells, a general crisis, or a change or cessation of his trade through the invention of new machinery, in sickness or old age, he becomes homeless, breadless and penniless. Must not such uncertainty be unbearable to in- telligent laborers, spread discontent among them and dispose them to anything that threatens the overthrow of the present order of society? This terrible uncertainty must give way to something more reasonable, just and better. Our workmen are perishing body and soul in our city slaughter-pens, called tenement houses. The population living in private houses in New York Cit}^ number a half a million, and their mortal- ity was in 1872, 11,097, or about 22 in 1,000; the other half a million of tenement population had in the same year 21,550 deaths ! or more than 10,000 above their proper share. And as there are fourteen cases of sickness to every one case of death, the work- men of this city had 140,000 more cases of sickness The People and their Homes. 385 in their families than they would have had in more wholesome dwellings. What loss of human life, what sufferings, what expense and what loss of labor are implied in these preventable deaths and diseases, the latter of which, again, by enfeebling the bodies and minds of the people multiply pauperism, drunkenness, premature orphanage and widowhood, prostitution, crime, retributive violence and consequent prison life and suffering. Most unfortunate for the people they are the children of God, for were they horses they would not be left to perish for want of a little more stable room. This social murder could be stopped by the double measure of quick transit and strict sanitary regulations in reference to tenement buildings. " Houses that produce death cease to be property. If a man sells unwholesome meat, the law inter- feres ; if he sells the use of a room with fever in it, the public do not complain. Officers of health point out such places, but the public still refuse to destroy them, and great numbers are slain annually by this indirect and legal method, while the strict- est measures are taken to prevent a few annually being killed by arsenic. The time must come, and the sooner the better, when it shall be enacted, that no land shall contain more people per acre than can live healthily thereon. The same thing must 17 386 The People and their Homes. be said regarding houses, though this is more dif- ficult to attain." At Muhlhausen, in Elsace, a workmen-town was built, giving laborers facilities for acquiring prop- erty, and what a change it worked I what a revolu- tion 1 a blessed revolution that destroyed vice and misery, and led from the improvement of material conditions to a moral regeneration. At Lille, in France, houses have been built for the workmen with gardens attached to them, and are sold to the laborers on easy terms. At Rouen the same system is attended with the same blessed results. To illustrate this system, we may add a word more about Muhlhausen, the first great success of a Workmen-town. One hundred houses were built in 1853, an additional 428 were built in 1859, and 560 in 1863. Of these, 700 belonged to the workmen in 1866. They paid $4.60 per month, and in 14 years each house held at $600 was paid up, interest and capital, having paid but little more than a high rent. Each home has a garden of 30 by ^6 feet attached to it. The gov- ernment has voted $2,000,000, a loan to building societies under the following conditions: i. The properties must be sold to the workmen at cost price. 2. No purchaser to be allowed to sell his property before ten years, so as to prevent specu- The People and their Homes. 387 lation. 3. The building company not to charge the workmen more than 4 per cent, for capital until it is paid up. 4. A public building, uniting a read- ing-room, restaurant, bathing and washhouse and a bazar, where all articles of common consumption are sold to the workmen at wholesale prices, must be built in the centre of the town. The Industrial Building Society at Muhlhausen has complied with these conditions, and received from the government in addition to their original capital of $25,000 a loan of $80,000. In this com- paratively small manufacturing place 700 toiling families were changed from hand-to-mouth living renters into provident and independent citizens and property holders, each living in his own com- fortable home undisturbed by the often unwelcome company of drunkards and other incongruous and even infamous characters thrust upon decent men in tenement houses, living in cheerful quarters, and as if it were under his own fig-tree. No more driven from cheerless and filthy rooms to the de- bauchery of the public house. What moments he can save he bestows upon his garden, and the boys and the mother are happy to second him with the hoe as he goes ahead of them with the spade, now and then stopping and blending his solid reflections and well-meant counsel to his family with his labor of love. They make arbors for shade and plan im- 388 The People arid tlicir Homes. provements, beautifying the homestead. When old, he need not blush to live from the earnings of his sons, for he has done his duty to them and all the family. And father and mother, after a life of toil, but which was not without its blessings, die on the homestead with the children, leaving them not only property, but a good name and a model life. Not only property is thus made, but character is built up and kept like a jewel. What a difference between such w^orkmen and those who are driving about like vagabonds and semi-savages. Jean Dolfus, who started this noble work at Muhlhausen, deserves well of the human race for this illustrious example given to manufac- turers and workmen. At Guebwiller, also in Elsace, a hundred cottages with gardens attached to them, were built in 1866. Bcaucourt had in 1864, 97 cottages. Colmar built in 1864, 50 houses. At Sedan, the workmen own their houses and gardens, and are as respected for their character as they are useful by their labor. What touching stories could be told about many a workingman who, under the old system, became dissolute and was daily ncaring a drunkard's grave, but who has been redeemed at the first opportunity of acquiring a piece of property, a home for his family and old age. At the Ashton colony of workmen, in I'^ngland, The People and their Homes. 389 none have yet applied for charity ; in 35 years hardly a breach of law has occurred, and illegiti- mate births are becoming scarce. The people look healthy, and even those who work in an atmos- phere of 80° Fahrenheit are strong and vigorous, having but one-half day of sickness in a whole year. The intercourse between employers and employed is marked by regard and confidence. Get railroad advantages, give us opportunities for cheap country homes, and societies will spring up which will enable the poorest laborer to live in his own house. England has over 2,000 such building societies with 800,000 members and $80,000,000 loaned on buildings. London alone has over 700 societies with over $20,000,000 advanced on property to its members. Scotland has over 88 building societies with over $65,000,000 advanced to its members. These building societies afford manufacturers the best opportunity for providing their workmen with homes, and have been used for that purpose by the noble Arkroyd, Crossley, and others. Bel- gium, Germany and other countries have been benefited by the opportunities building societies offer to the poor for owning homes, and there is no reas: n why building societies should not prove a success in New York and other cities in the Union as well as in Philadelphia. 390 The People and their Homes. We consider that this step must be taken of all others first, if the great and momentous questions of civilization, which crowd around labor, are to find a peaceable solution. The massing of the people in a few centres is productive of a thousand mischievous consequences, which threaten capital as well as labor and every other element of civilizaticm — yea, the body and soul of man with utter destruction. Avoiding gen- eral argument and steering toward convincing facts, we refrain from entering upon the moral, political, social and economical tendencies of the present movement of population toward the great cities, and will strengthen our position of the importance of the workingmen acquiring homes, with an au- thority like that of Le Play, a most thoughtful and competent writer, who has devoted a lifetime to the study of the condition of the industrial classes, and who sees the only means of preserving society and the prevention of the dissolution and the re- lapse of society into barbarism through a variety of corrupting influences, undermining the family first and society next, in restoring the ancient cus- tom — the family owning their hcorth. Only by this means good habits and wholesome customs are preserved and revered, parental authority honored, woman's influence a blessing, economy fostered to acquire thf^ home, character developed, reliability The People and their Homes. 391 and trustworthiness gained and roving and indiffer- ence overcome. In regard to the workmen reaching their homes in the country and their places of work in the city, we agree with Dr. S. Smith's sanitary report of 1 87 1, from which the following page is taken : " The workmen must depend upon the railroad, which has not and probably will not give him cheap fares without compulsory legislation, and such legis- lation we believe should be at once obtained. As a slight return for the privilege which railroad com- panies enjoy within this city, especially in the mo- nopoly of large areas of valuable land, they should be compelled to provide cheap transit for the poor and laboring classes. Such legislation in England long since compelled all new railroads entering London to provide penny trains at suitable hours. These cheap trains proved a marked success. The Legislature of Massachusetts recently passed a law compelling the railroads to provide cheap trains morning and evening, and charging one cent a mile for yearly tickets, and this law has been there in force since 1862. The same kind of legislation should be obtained in this State in regard to all railroads entering New York Gity," Homes for workmen out of the city is nothing but what is just and proper; it is in the interest of all parties, the capitalist as well as the laborer, and 392 TJie People and their Homes. the family as well as the state. It is approved by philosophers and statesmen, and has been put into practice with success by manufacturers on a suf- ficiently large scale to judge its success. Sir Robert Peel, whom nobody will accuse of im- practicable radicalism, says: "Our large cities offer the workman only opportunities for continuous la- bor and gross and degrading pleasures. Give them small properties in the vicinity of the manufactur- ing districts, this will wean them from drunkenness and improve their moral character." He further says : "// must be confessed that the condition of our workmen is not what it ought to be, and that the mere production of wealth is not the highest aim of government, which ought to care for the happiness and IV ell-being of the peopled Sir J. Coleridge, a member of the Gladstone min- istry, said : " Our laborers live hardly, work very long, and have at the end of life nothing to hope for." Neither religion. Education, nor temperance, nor courts of justice can elevate a people living hud- dled up like pigs, says the good and learned Dr. Blakie. The same great authority continues: Ty- phus, consumption, scrofula, etc., are wasting away the laboring people in the densely populated tene- ment houses, and the victims of typhus alone among workmen in the prime of life, number The People and their Homes. 393 annually doubly the fallen on the battle-field of Waterloo. Love of home, says this same philan- thropic divine, is associated with regard for father and mother and their precepts. Filthy tenements are no home, and, hence, no lesson to the heart ; all the purer feelings even of a mother and sister are deadened by them. The cleanest can be but untidy, dirty, wretched, discontented and disorderly in such hovels, and the preference for the public house to such quarters become a necessity. The vice and filth in the crowded dwellings of the poor counteract all the lessons of religion and humanity. A miserable hovel destroys all home feeling and family ties, and plants atrocity, barbarity and crime in their place. The only remedy are small, neat homes out of the city the laboring man can even become proprietor of; he is stimulated by this method to saving, and, being provident and accu- mulating property, becomes a useful citizen every way. There are 8,000 to 10,000 such workingmen who have got their own homes about Birmingham, Happy homes are the chief cause of the prosperity of a country. Such are the thoughts and the expe- rience of the learned Blakie. Purity, affection, thrift and industry are lessons of a clean, neat and attractive home. " Lille in France," says the thoughtful Fix, " with a most dense population, is also the most miserable, most 17* 394 T^^^^ People and their Hoj/ies. * drunken, obscene place, with nothing but dirt, mis- ery and vice." The same author says : " Love of labor, of order and economy will always be found in a home that attaches the w'orkman to his family ; there he sacri- fices low desire and studies thrift for the sake of the children and a home that is attractive." Self-respect, regard for himself and his place in society, is one of the mainsprings of keeping aloof from every degrading vice, be it drunkenness or any other moral defilement. But can any one reared in the horrid filth of the tenements of crowded cities be conscious of human dignity? Or is it not rather a mockery to speak to such men of the high dignity of their being? Provident thrift or care for the future has no room in a man who is suffer- ing from a thousand present ills. The poor every- where suffer partly from want of intelligence, so- briety, thrift and self-respect, and their surround- ings foster these very defects. And yet, regard for ourselves is intimately connected with regard for our fellows, for human nature, and, therefore, for the rights of other men. Regard for human nature leads to trusting in it and believing in its ujjward tendencies, which lead to hope, exertion, improve- ment and elevation. Vagrancy is one of the chief causes of crime, and miserable hovels lead to it by destroying all home attachment. Let all who study The People and their Homes. 395 the sources of crime notice this connection between the homes of the people and vagrancy and crime. Clean homes certainly should be made possible to the honest laborer, a privilege not even denied to crime (Hill). When the prisons are in better order than the homes of laborers, crime is encour- aged. So killing are the crowded dwellings of the poor that the English Commissioners officially report that the laboring population of large cities would soon be gone, if the influx from the country would not make up for the slaughter. Dundee, with its once proverbially splendid Scotch population, alas ! what a spectacle it offers to-day ! What haggard looks the spinners of Lyons or those of Spitalfields in London present ! And yet, the moral debasement of which the physical degra- dation is the cause as well as the index, is the worst feature of the whole. These squalid homes, says Buret, drive children from 4 to 8 years into horribly dirty streets, where they already young contract vagrant habits. Rev. Canon Gjrdleston, of the English Episcopal Church, said in a meeting of his brothers in the ministry : The laborers live in hovels without ventilation or the surroundings necessary for ordi- nary decency. Not one of those present would con- sent to stable their horses in these hovels; hovels 39^ The People and their Homes. which bred a race of men who, from want of do- mestic comfort, spent their lives in the pothouse, and who had nothing to look forward to but to be buried in a pauper's grave ; hovels which bred a race of women whose maidenly blushes were blutched in consequence of the scenes they were obliged to witness through want of proper sleep- ing accommodations. The clergy might keep aloof from the labor question because it might be sup- posed that social questions were not within their province. He was bound to acknowledge that the clergy could not consider themselves free from blame, and that a great weight of responsibility lay at their doors. They ought from the pulpit deliver themselves more frequently from this re- sponsibility. He solemnly declared that the man he should fear most to meet at the last great day was the poor laborer, who, perhaps, if he himself had exercised his ministry more faithfully and more fearlessly in denouncing social abuses, might have been spared a life of misery and penury and a pau- per's grave. A voice as clear, powerful and bold, that once thrilled the people of Boston from the pulpit in Music Hall, said : " Look at the houses the poor live in, without comfort or convenience, without sun, air or water ; damp, cold, filthy and crowded to excess. In one section of the city there are The People and their Homes. 397 thirty-seven persons on an average in each house. Consider the rents paid by this class of our broth- ers. It is they who pay the highest rate for their dwelHngs, paying often 30 per cent, on valuation. If your bills of mortality were made out so as to show deaths in each ward of the city, I think all would be astonished at the results. Of one hun- dred children of poor working people in Boston only thirty-eight live five years, only eleven be- come fifty ! The mortality among the poor is greater in Boston than in any city in Europe, and the death rate among their, children is increasing." So far Theodore Parker. Another friend of the race, the great and gifted Channing, speaking of the influence of the poor man's dwelling on his domestic affection, says : " The delicate sentiments find much to chill them in the abodes of indigence. A family crowded into a single and often narrow apartment, which must answer at once the ends of parlor, kitchen, bed- room, nursery and hospital, must, without great energy and self-respect, want neatness, order and comfort. Its members are perpetually exposed to annoying petty impertinence. The decencies of life can be with difficulty observed. Woman a drudge and in dirt loses her attractions. The young grow up without the modest reserve and delicacy of feeling in which purity finds so much of 398 The People and their Homes. its defense. Coarseness of manner and language, too sure a consequence of a mode of life which allows no seclusion, becomes the habit almost of childhood, and hardens the mind for vicious inter- course in future years. The want of a neat, or- derly home is among the chief evils of the poor. Crowded in filth, they cease to respect one another. The social affections wither amid perpetual noise, confusion and clashing interests. The poor often fare worse than the uncivilized savage in his ruder hut, which he can leave for the bright light and pure air of heaven. The poor man in the city must choose between his close room and the nar- row street. He has a home without the comfort of a home." There is hardly a faculty or virtue in man but it is fostered by a home that is deserving of the name. Franklin's motto, " Do everything in its proper time, in its proper place, use everything in its proper use," or orderliness, industry, thrift, taste or a sense of beauty, delicacy of feeling, kindli- ness, self-regard, culture, purity, serenity, joy and happiness, contentment, meditation upon our past conduct and forethought as to the future, family discipline and regard to the duties and relations between parents and children or wife and husband — nothing of all this is possible in an unclean den, in which all persons and functions are mixed uj) in The People and their Homes. 399 one general confusion and disorder, and everything is out of time, place and joint. Orderly homes among the working people are the best means for the spreading of a higher civili- zation through the moral elevation of the masses, and the preservation of the family in all its elevat- ing influences. Facilities for the acquisition of these homes cannot fail to reconcile labor to capi- tal and to attach the workmen to our present state of society. There is no other means by which pau- perism as well as crime can be destroyed, and the individual, the state and the race can be saved but by the home and the family, the school and nursery of the civilization of the race. Aside from moral considerations and economical reasons, sanitary facts of the gravest sort demand the formation of workmen settlements in the country. We shall shift our studies to Prussia, that we may have the double advantage of observing the effects of crowding under other skies and through other eyes, which cannot but correct or confirm our observations made in France, England and the United States. The efficient statistics of Prussia show that while in Westphalia the proportion of occupants to each house was, in 1855-1858, 6.91 to i, and in the Rhenish Province, 6.04 to i ; the proportion in the 40O The People a?id tJieir Homes. district of Gumbinnen was at the end of 1855, 8.97 to I, and at the end of 1858, 9.19 to i, and here it was that typhus became epidemic and raged like a pest. Dr. L. Muller writes: "I was soon convinced that the time, locaHty and origin of the disease, as also its gradual spread, was the effect of human or animal perspiration accumulating in close places, and that it thence spread to other places and be- came epidemic." Dr. C. Canzow, the medical inspector of the Gum- binnen district, in his account of the origin of the typhus epidemy in the overcrowded dwellings of the laboring people, says : " It is not saying too much that spotted fever has become endemic among the permanently suffering workmen of this district." Dr. Pappenheimer, the celebrated sanitarian and medical adviser, says in his publication on Sani- tary Police : " The study of typhus in lodging- houses, in certain town quarters, hospitals, work- houses, ships and prisons leads always to the same result. Every epidemic typhus, which is not the effect of hunger and want, is the result of over- crowded and filthy localities. Filth and overcrowd- ing produce typhus, very often becoming epidemic, and affecting impoverished nations or such as are in a suffering condition in consequence of a commercial crisis, war or the faihire of crops. We physicians The People and their Homes. 401 cannot cure such national sufferings. We have no medicine against hunger, nor can we prevent the overcrowding of houses, the home and origin of typhus." Such is the medical experience in refer- ence to crowded dwellings in Prussia. The greater part of 60,000 illegitimate births, and of probably 20,000 annual infanticides in Eng- land, are traced, in the Transactions of Social Sci- ence, to the disgusting conditions in which the masses are forced to live. The London Times says : " If we wish to prevent infanticide, we must guard a woman against the cruel conditions in which the crime is usually perpetrated. Is everything really done by us which ought to be done ? Most assur- edly it is not done. As long as the poor have to live in a manner, which makes the separation of the sexes impossible and renders impracticable the observance of common decency, these crimes will be perpetrated Let us make a real, earnest exertion to improve the dwellings of the poor, and with the dwellings the morals of the inhabitants will mend." Dr. Farr says : " The children of that idolatrous nation that passed its children through the fire, an offering to Moloch, were hardly more in danger of losing their lives than those born in our large cities." Of a hundred children born, live to the age of five years, in Norwegia . . 83 Sweden . . . 80 England . . . 74 Belgium . . • 73 France . . . 71 402 The People aiid tJieir Homes, Prussia 68 Holland 67 Austria 64 Russia 62 Italy 61 But the very low mortality rates of the well situ- ated lower the average mortality of the whole, and hide the real state of the case, which is ugly, in- deed, as the mortality among the laborers crowded into the tenements of large cities rises to the fear- ful proportion of 50, 60, 70 and even more in 100! Villerm6 showed that the mortality was in French arrondissements : With 7 per cent poor dwellings . . i person in 72 « 22 " " . . I " 65 " 38 " " . . I " 45 In England, sanitary investigations show a mor- tality in dwellings of 202 square yards to each person . . . . I in 49 lOI " " . . . . I " 41 32 " " . . . . I " 36 Of all the deaths from cholera in London, in 1849, belonged to the Higher classes 26 in 1,000 Middle " 157 " 1,000 Laboring " 817 " 1,000 This, of course, is entirely out of proportion to the number of the various classes. In Brussels, die The People and their Homes. 403 In the quarter, with the best dwellings , . i in 53 persons. " " " poorest " . . I " 29 " In Zurich, in Switzerland, the average life in the best quarters is 40 years, in the poorest it is 28.3- Dr. Lankester shows the mortality in one of the best localities of London to be 11 in 1,000, in an- other one, among the laborers, it is 25 in i,ooo- The same sanitarian shows the loss of England from insalubrious dwellings to be 100,000 lives per annum ; and as, where so many die, many more arc sick, a simple calculation will show that 100,000 preventable deaths imply a national annual loss of $50,000,000! And fully as much, and more, do the United States suffer, as our mortality rates are much higher, and human labor is worth more here than in England. We doubt not the interest on our whole war debt could be paid with what we lose by the annual slaughter of our working population. In proportion to the density of population, rent, and with it pauperism, increase, the morality of the people is lowered and their death rate of mor- tality rises. Let the reader reflect upon the con- tents of the following table : Occupants Proportion of .,, .. . , Mortality Town. to each re„t to in- niegjtimate ,;, ,,^ house. come. oirt/is. population. London Berlin . . Paris . . Petersburg' Vienna . . ^ tV~'» *o ' 4 pr- ct. 24 32 \-}i to I 16 " 25 35 % to I 20 " 28 52 26 " 41 55 %-yi to I 5' " 47 404 Tlie People and tJieir Homes. Minute statistical investigations show that in the same country where no other influences modify the result, crime is in proportion to the density of population and the suddenness of its increase, and, hence, so much of crime at the present movement of population from the country to the cities. Drunkenness, prostitution, scrofula, phthisis, zymotic diseases, insanity, suicide, and, at last, death, perhaps the only possible medicine against all this and other unmentionable corruption, are aH in proportion to the density of population, the breeder of all that is unwholesome for the body as well as for the soul, and for the state as well as for the individual. The rapid increase of dense city populations, says Beale, and the unchecked advance of huge masses of human misery and destitution — mental, moral and corporeal — exhibited in every country of Christian Europe must end in barbarism and despotism, if the right sort of Education does not come to the rescue. We have already referred to the barrenness of statistics in which extremes of all sorts thrown together produce insipid averages, which hide the true condition of things. Let our sanitary authori- ties give us the mortality of different sections by themselves, and not throw the pestilential and the salubrious together and produce the false impres- The People and their Homes. 405 sion that things are just tolerable, when, in fact, this medium condition exists only on the paper where the best and the worst are thrown together, while in reality only extremes are met with. We talk of a rate of mortality of 36 in 1,000, when the fact is that in the best houses the mortality is 15 to 20 in 1,000, and in the worst it is 40 to 50 in 1,000. Mr. Michael, the Mayor of Swansea, in England, read before the Association of Social Science a paper in which he divides his town, according to the density of its districts, into three divisions : A With a mortality of 1 1 in 1,000 population. B " " 20 " C " " 36 " Or, taking the percentage of the houses in which deaths occurred, and taking groups of five houses and the deaths occurring in them during a series of five years, he found of the buildings in district A, 21-29 pr. ct. had deaths, or I death in 5 houses in 5 years. B, up to 50 " " " 2 " " C, 90-117 " " " I " " Out of 127 population, 29 died in 5 years in the poorest district, which gives 58 in 1,000, while the mortality of the whole district is 24 in 1,000, and that of the best portion by itself is 11.6 in 1,000. Dr. Grunhow, an authority well known in the sanitary world, in an elaborate paper before the 4o6 The People and their Homes. Association of Social Science, shows, while the mor- tality of Glendale, a healthy rural district of Eng- land, for a number of years was 15.09 per l,ooo, that of Liverpool was 36.35 per 1,000! And while the average annual deaths in Glendale from pul- monary diseases were 216 to 100,000 population, the average annual mortality from the same cause to the same number of population was, in Liver- pool, 1,000. The death rate of children from nervous diseases is at Glendale 40 in 100,000 population. In Man- chester it is 393 ! Infantile deaths from diarrhoeal diseases at Glen- dale were for a number of years 57 in 100,000 population, at Manchester 1,945 in 100,000! Deaths from all causes of male children under 5 years, were at Glendale, 1 848-1 854, 3,499 in 100,000, in Manchester there were during the same time, 13,539- It is not the location or country that makes so striking a difference, for, as we have already had opportunity to observe, the best buildings in the cities have as low a mortality as the best rural dis- tricts have. Unwholesome employment, crowding, intemperance, want, misery and profligacy, all unite to make cities a pest. The low stature and narrow chests of the artisans in cities are proverbial. Dr. Farr shows that the mortality of towns is in The People and their Homes. 407 direct numeral proportion to the density of popu- lation. But not only does the mortality of a district in- crease with the density of its population, but the fecundity of a population falls with the rise in its number. In nine of twenty towns in England, which num- bered over 40,000 population, the deaths outnum- bered the births, and the increase of the population in all was due to the movement of the population from the country. In Stockholm, Petersburg, Mos- cow, Venice, Rouen, and many other cities, the population would soon dwindle down to nothing without this emigration from the country. In no city is the proportion of births to deaths as large as in the surrounding country. In the country districts of Scotland the annual surplus of births over deaths amounts to 1.55 per cent, of the population. In the city districts it amounts to 1.33 per cent, and in Glasgow, Edin- burgh, Dundee, Aberdeen and others, the excess of births over deaths is reduced to 1.13 per cent. It was calculated in 1857 that of the inhabitants of England and Wales 8,250,000 persons living on 2,150,000 acres, constituting the city population, the annual death rate was 25 per 1,000. The re- maining 9,750,000 persons living on 350,000,000 acres, constituting the country population, show an 4o8 riic Pioplf and tJicir Homes. annual death rate of 17 per 1,000, a difference of 8 deaths for every 1,000 persons, or 8,000 for every million of population. Of course, as our mortality has not as yet been reduced to that which it is in England, the annual slaughter of our working popu- lation is much larger. We are very nice about many little things, and cultivate social murder as one of the fine arts. We strain at a gnat and swal- low a camel. Low rates of life lessen the working ability of the masses eight to ten years. The population born in large cities under the influence of noxious physical agencies is inferior in physical organization, tending to become short- lived, reckless, intemperate and little susceptible of moral improvement. Dr. Baly showed that the mortality from cholera in England and Wales was, in 1854, in 134 districts with 91 5 population to the square mile, 65 to 10,000 404 " " 235 " " " " 7 85 " " 122 " " " " o Dr. Stockton-Hough has carefully collected the most reliable statistics bearing upon the healthful- ness of city and country, and finds the old adage verified that the city is but another name for the grave. London has yearly 10,000 more deaths than births. Humanity, if living entirely in such large cities, would be obliterated in less than 200 years. The People and their Homes. 409 Crowding, want, misery, luxury, effeminacy, vice, corruption and crime in high and low places de- stroy mankind in large cities. The mortality among children from I to 5 years in one hundred born is, in New York city, 50 per cent., in the country 38 per cent. The average life in the state of Rhode Island is 31.45 per cent; in Providence, the largest town in the state, it was but 27.9 during 15 years ending 1870. In the country districts of England 202 out of 1,000 deaths occur over 70 years of age, in Liver- pool but 90. In the country the average age is 38 years, in Liverpool it is 27 years. In the agricul- tural districts of England 20.7 in every 100 per- sons attain 45 years ; in the four great cities of the kingdom only 17.5 reach that age. The average life in the eastern district of London is 25 to 30 years ; in the agricultural regions it is 40 to 50 years. General Walker gives the average life in the United States for 1870 as 39.25 years ; in New York city and Philadelphia it is only 25 years. 18 4IO Tl:e People ami their Homes. c s o u c 3 •a c bo o 'So 5 ^1 R Tl- Tl-oo O \0 (^ tT ^\0 O 5i r» oq 00 lo q ro r^vq q \q v t}- ri vn rv. d ^' oo' -^ d\vo . 1 s CO 0^ •* u-ico O 0\ N O r~ 1 V. lA tv. Tt- r^vd CO vA lA tv, cf> ^ !^ „ „ „ „ 11 ^^ -* t^ VO 00 ro O r^0O m ";j mo "-I i^oo owq \o "^ (J n ro fOfT ci N rJ pi CO -■? 0"+ 00"-"^cot^0iJ7i G « (s « m' N ci ri ci ri ^1 6 M CO tJ-vo c^o6 ■+ ^- »- *+ -*-*'+'i-'+-+-+cOTl-co «„«««««««« ~- N-' lA -rfco' r-^ lAco' — ' CO rC Infant Mortality. s a RvoO 000NO^c^^^^v. ^ ur% q\ ii->\q 't *1 '^. "I" "1" k 00 co" -^ ri CO io\o vd (5\ i^NN rJNNCscoNri »0\"-» VOVOMMCOON §vo M_ oo_^ \o_ -f C^oo r^ 0_ !^ vrivd Co"' d\ r^ C?v C>00" vo" i;J'COcO CONCJrJcOMCO 1% si a c3 CO M l^ 0\ Tf OnOO CO iJ-1 -rh f^ ro M " CO'O 00 —. ^. '^ rO--»0 ON-*OfN.O CO ►-< qvoq q\ q "% mvq ch q tOCOrori COCOCO^N'^ Countries, France . , Netherlands Belgium . Sweden Denmark . Schleswig . . Holstein . Saxony . . Hanover . Prussia . . & VO r» o :n V. (rt fS P H 01 C O S > % The People and their Homes. 411 The average life in the cities of France is 35 years, in the country it is 55 years ! According to the Registrar-General of England the mortality in districts with I or less persons to i acre, is 16S to 10,000 population. 100 to 250 " " " " 262 " " In large cities the mortality to each 10,000 is, for London, with 50,000 persons to the square mile, 251. Leeds " 87,256 " " " 272. Manch'ter" 100,000 " " " 337. Liverpool " 138,000 " " " 348. For more than half a century the rush of popu- lation has been more than what is wholesome from the country into the cities, as the following table will show at a glance as far as the United States are concerned : City population. Country population. 1790 . . . . 3.4 per cent. 94.6 per cent. 1840 . . . . 8.5 " 91.5 " 1870 . . . . 20.9 " 79.1 " This same movement of population modern in- dustry brought about in England, where the pro- portion was, in City population. Country population. 1690 26 per cent. 74 per cent. 1 861 56 " 44 " _ To realize still more the movement of population from the coimtry into the cities, let us consider the 412 The People and their Homes. growth of cities in the United States within this centur}% which is for 1790. 1820. 1850. 1870. Boston . . . 18,038 43,298 136,881 250,526 New York . . 33.131 123,706 515.547 942,292 Philadelphia . 42,520 112,772 340,045 674,022 Baltimore . . 13.503 62,738 169,054 267,354 New Orleans . 6.693 27,176 116,375 191,418 Cincinnati . . 9,642 115.436 216,239 St. Louis . . .... 4,528 77,860 310,864 Chicago . . .... 29,963 4.853 (1840) 298,977 This movement of the population toward the cities is not by any means pecuHar to America ; it is our modern system of manufacturing, and the people flocking to the cities to make their fortunes. The increase of the population in England between the census of 1850 and i860 was for cities 17 per cent, and for the country 3.9 per cent. For the study of race deterioration and its pre- vention, this movement of population from the country to the city is the more important, as the city combines all the various causes of deterioration, and must the more tell upon the population. There the air is vitiated b\' a lessened percent- age of ozone and an increase of ammonia, carbonic acid and other impurities and the temperature is altered ; it is there we find insalubrious buildings and occupations, epidemics, syphilis, luxury, effem- The People and their Homes 413 inacy and all sorts of extravagance, pauperism, drunkenness, insanity and crime. The city mortality is high enough compared with the mortality in the country, and yet the worst is only realized when we consider that the rate of mortality is excessive among infants, the cities, however, receive a great influx of adult population from the country which bore the risk. So, for in- stance, are of the 942,292 population of the city of New York of the census of 1870, 419,091 born somewhere else, and there the greater risk of their early mortality was born. The same is the case with 111,174 out of 250,000 population of Boston. In London, of the population under 20 years of age, 26 per cent., and of those over 20 years, 53 per cent, were born outside of London. And the same is true of all growing cities, and gives them a much better sanitary aspect than they are entitled to. For many of their healthy citizens have been reared in the country, and, receiving all the time additions of adult citizens, their proportion of infant popula- tion is smaller than it is in the country, and their rate of mortality should, therefore, be much smaller, while, in fact, it is much larger than in the country. London boasts very much upon its low rate of mortality, but 600,000 of its enterprising adult citi- zens are the picked men of all England, and it requires just an annual influx of 1 8,000 men and a 414 ^Z'^' i^>-'ople and iluir Homes. national nursery of 2,000,000 rural population, that sends the supply and bears the heavy mortaHty incidental to the bringing up of such a number of adults, and then London and the like growing cities boast upon tJicir healthy population and their small mortality rates. Infants being delicate, the unhealthfulness of city life shows itself first, but not by any means exclusively, upon them. Though marriages are more frequent in the city, births are less numer- ous than in the country ; and though adults are more numerous in the city, the proportion of men over forty-five years is there smaller than in the country. Just as fallacious is the comparison of mortality rates of different cities and states, without taking into account the proportion of immigration received by both and their proportion of infant population. So, for instance, have Massachusetts, Maine and Connecticut but 10,000 infants under 5 years in every 100,000, while some of the states, like Mis- souri, Nebraska and West Virginia, have over 15,000 infants under 5 years of age in every 100,000, and, consequently, though in the latter states the rate of mortaHty may be greater, their sanitary condition may be vastly better. Typhus fever, the disease of the prime of life, has, as we have already repeatedly had occasion to see, its origin in such impurity of air as is produced by TJie People and their Homes. 415 overcrowding, and is a constant cause of death, misery and pauperism. If death does not result, a low state of health becomes the rule. Bad air takes away appetite, depresses the spirits, lessens the vital power, predisposes to disease, and a re- lief is sought in alcoholism. The children lose all sense of decency, propriety and order, and go to recruit the dangerous classes. It would be cheaper to send children thus situated to a first-class board- ing school and put them in a way to become fair, healthy and wise, than to educate them downward into thieves, prostitutes and convicts, and keep up an expensive police force, courts and jails, and lose beside $25,000,000 property per annum. A man must not be allowed to crowd his family into less than necessary breathing space ; but he is poor. Do we on that account permit him to poi- son or knock on the head those depending upon him ? Neither should he be allowed to kill them with bad air. Instruct the people in the science of health, which has well been said, is the science of taking plenty of good air, improve what houses we have, build better ones, and protect the rising generation by positive enactments. W^e protect property — that is right. But life is left unprotected — that is wrong. Herein the age is erring. Everything is allowable within legal foims that leads to wealth, however much human 4i6 The People a?id tJieir Homes. life may suffer by it. Englishmen send out armed piratical crafts to force their poisonous wares or opium cargoes upon unwilling nations ; and Eng- land itself, a Christian nation, goes to war to force 1 hundred thousand chests of opium per annum upon hundreds of millions of men in Asia, spread- ing thereby misery, death and madness, and bring- ing ruin of body and soul upon countless people. But then, this makes commerce. This must cease, or we shall all perish, for a lie cannot stand, prop it up as much as we may. Life must be sacred or property will soon cease to be sacred. The law of life and itssacredness must underlie every other law and institution. Hygiene must become a religion extending its influence in every direc- tion. And the homes of the people must, above all, be brought under the influence of the law of life and hygiene. Already three hundred years ago, under Queen Elizabeth, the following law was passed : " No owner or occupier of any cottage shall suffer more than one family to cohabit therein under fine of ten shillings." The London Times and other influential papers, agree that the legislature has a right for the pro- tection of innocent victims to fix a suitable mini- nuini of breathing space, and to give greater power to inspecting officers. The People and their Homes. 417 Sir George Strickland says : " Wherever you have an overcrowded population you will observe im- paired health and morals, and, in consequence, lack of energy and self-respect. Sanitary improvement is the first step toward the elevation of their habits and tastes." Mr. Rawlinson says : " In my large experience I have found overcrowding everywhere attended by misery, disease and crime. The people can no more help it than they can roll back the sun in his course. Healthy people may go into abominable overcrowded tenements, but nothing but disease and misery can come out of them. The formation of suburban villages for the working people, with cheap and rapid communication with the cities, would be one of the greatest blessings conferred upon the laboring population of the country." Dr. Markham says : " It is the duty of the em- ployer, and he should be bound by law to attend to it, that work-people — while engaged at work by him — should have proper accommodations, so that they may not have their health injured by overcrowding. People do not know that over- crowding undermines their health, and the first epidemic, be it typhus, smallpox or cholera, de- stroys them by thousands." The community has a right to legislate how much of a lot must be left free by the owner for 18* 41 8 The People and their Homes. giving scope to the atmosphere and free access of light. We cannot legislate work, but by a consistent sanitary legislation we can protect the people in their health ; and when they will have this, they will find every other desirable thing. We own we have but one idea — in Education, in science, in industry, in government, in civilization and in religion — we know no higher and no more sacred principle than even this regard for human life, which includes everything else that is of solid worth. There is an ancient people whose religion and legislation are chiefly founded on hygiene, and what spectacle does this nation present ? It has fur- nished the world with a code of morals and the spirit to live up in a measure to the standard placed before them. This ancient people — hardly necessary to name — is preserved to this day in spite of the ravages of time and the persecutions of men, and though its dietary code dates back thirty-five hun- dred years, when nature's laws were but little un- derstood, its effects on the Jewish people are better told by the comprehensive figures of statistics than by long discussions. The most exact statistics of Prussia show the following death rates at the various ages of a popu- lation of 100,000 : The People and their Homes. 419 Christians. Jews. Still births 143 89 o-i year 697 453 1-5 years 477 3^6 5-14 " 202 151 14-25 " 155 123 25-45 " 334 231 45-:7o " 614 392 70 and over 339 330 Average mortality in 100,000, 2,961 2,161 The pest in 1346 hardly touched the Jews, as the old historian Tschudi vouches. They enjoyed the same immunity in 1505, according to Fracastor. They u^ere spared from the intermittent fever which raged at Rome in 1 691, as Rammazini states. The epidemic dysentery at Nimeque, according to Degner, spared them. The Christian sufferers from the pest were, therefore, declared the victims of wells poisoned by the Jews, who, in fact, owed their immunity to their conformity to the laws of hygiene. Human life is not altogether a physical process, it is the basis of all our social and moral relations ; whatever touches it assumes a peculiar importance. Whatever shortens the life of man degenerates his race, and by lowering his energy and powers lessens the number of great men, and strikes there- by a blow against the Bacons, Newtons and Wash- ingtons ; it makes us a scrofulous and cretin-like race, unfit to govern ourselves or the state, and ren- ders us slaves to passions within and tyrants without. 420 TJie People and their Homes. Shorten the life of man, and knowledge and ex- perience are not put to half their use ; inventions go prematurely to the grave ; and the proportion of the young, and, therefore, of the unproductive, of the criminal, of the inexperienced and the foolish, of the turbulent, of births and funerals, of widow- hood and orphanage, of vagabondism, of pauper- ism and of vice and crime, is increased. Shorten the life of man, and with the shortened generations thought, action, government, institu- tions and systems become feverish, the constant, silent action of time — which alone leads to healthy maturity — is broken ; everything is hurried through as if hardly worth doing and comes into the world with the thought of leaving it in its mind, with paleness on its cheek, wrinkles on its brow and a coffin on its back, for when man is short-lived his work can be but fleeting. Shorten the life of man, and principle, character, moderation, good habits and wisdom — all the work of many years — lose their power and influence, for young people incline to change for better or worse, just as age is conservative and preserves the state. Shorten the life of man, and with the fulness of years disappears the sweetest charity, the broadest toleration, the most imperturbable justice, the most consummate skill in the management of great affairs, The People and their Ho77ies. 421 and the steady building and developing spirit which produces in science, life and government positive and permanent results, as Socrates, Newton and Humboldt did. Shorten the life of man, and you deprive the workshop of the strong laborer, commerce of the honest and trusted merchant, and the govern- ment of the wise patriot. Industry will, there- fore, languish, commerce dwindle and the nation decay. Shorten the life of man, and you strike infancy and ripe age ; the one destroys love in the family and the other veneration in the community, and both destroy man's motive for exertion ; for, while man naturally works for his children and his own old age, an excessive mortality destroys both. Shorten the life of man, and the strong though silent influences even upon rough men by sweet and holy childhood disappear ; the invigorating presence of men in their best estate vanishes with their health, and the earnestness of life gives way to levity when venerable age is taken from us. Every age as every sex has its own peculiar quali- ties and virtues, and men and institutions arc only perfected by the silent mutual Education of all the integral parts of a complete humanity. But the disastrous bearintjs of an excessive mor* 422 The People and tJuir Ho)nes. tality or a puny humanity shriveled in body and mind, in thought, motive and action, are beyond numbering ; and we will only add that the wanton slaughter of our young children as well as of our prematurely dying parents, cannot but breed in us such an indifference and carelessness about life as will crop out in a thousand ways as social murder, and stamp us a fratricidal race. Love, goodness, beauty and truth are the highest functions of man, and require him to be in the healthiest condition ; an excessive mortality is of necessity accompanied by feebleness, cunning, treachery, lying and low- mindedness. A long-lived race is a healthy, free- dom-loving and defending race ; a short-lived race is a cowardly race, one that neither loves freedom nor dares defend it — it is a race of tyrants and slaves. It is a race without truth, bravery or mag- nanimity. A race hardly worth the short existence allotted to it. It is bankrupt in body and soul, and held in derision by God, man and nature ; and the best it can do is to perish and wipe out the black- est spot of creation — a race that has cast away the noblest heritage, a God-like humanity. Do we lose sight of the great subject of our essay. Education? Surely not. But we mean to impress the all-important fact, that the miserable abodes of the people, breeding disease, vice, drunk- enness and crime, render all true Education im- TJie People and their Homes. 423 possible. Schools supported by dog-kennels may manufacture ciphering rascals, but to educate men and women they must have the co-operation of well-regulated homes. We dwell upon physical C3mforts for the masses as the lowest round which must be passed before the highest can be reached. Destutt De Tracy, the well-known scholar and statesman, says, " Neither a legion of school teachers nor the professors of logic of all Europe can assist as much the civilization of a people, as an additional degree of well-being, which gives them leisure,'' the very thing without which the school is a name without a meaning. We do not under-value the treasures of the mind. With Prof. Jos. Henry, Renan and Prof John W. Draper, we assign to perfect knowledge the highest place in the State. But we distinguish philosoph- ical, practical and verbal knowledge or vague opin- ion ; the first, like the hidden forces of nature, is a life power, and all-penetrating ; the second, substan- tial like matter, is the very foundation of society ; and the third, like shadows vast and running before the things which cast them, spreads darkness and works confusion ; and, hence, as philosophy is attainable but by few of rare talents and leisure, we are, in the interest of truth, peace, order and prosperity, in favor of practical knowledge and industrial train- ing for the masses. PART VII. THESCOURGES OF HUMANITY. In a treatise on Race Education, of which the prevention of human deterioration by forestaUing bad habits or hereditary evil tendencies through correct early training and teaching, forms a not un- important part, drunkenness, often hereditary and more frequently the child than the parent of pov- erty, but often the parent of insanity, of suicide and of crime, claims our attention. Morell, who has made human deterioration a specialty, mentions in his pathological studies the case of F , who was the son of an excellent workman early given to hard drinking. He in- herited the tendency to strong drink, and had seven children. The first two died in infancy of convulsions, a nervous affection. The third at- tained some skill in handicraft, but fell away into a state of idiocy at twenty-two years of age. The fourth attained a certain amount of intelligence, and relapsed into profound melancholy with a ten- dency to suicide, which terminated in harmless im- becility. The fifth is of a peculiarly irritable tem- (424) The Scourges of Humanity. 425 per, and has broken all relations with the family. The sixth was a daughter, with the strongest hysteric tendencies, and has been repeatedly and seriously troubled in her reason. Here is another pathological study of a gentle- man of distinction and an inveterate inebriate. Four of his children perished in infancy, as the chil- dren of such men usually do ; the fifth, a son, in spite of every precaution taken by Education, was at nineteen the heir of his father's vice in an insane asylum ; as a child he was extremely cruel, as many children of inebriate parents are — the terror of their playmates and of innocent little animals. Morell cites many cases of children of inebriates cursed in later years with the hereditary' bent of excessive alcoholism, leaving one insane asylum for the other, and ending in marasmus, general paralysis, in a perfect brutal condition, and the utter extinction of reason and conscience. The same great author and physician gives the following analysis of a family under his treatment. In the first generation : immorality, depravity, ex- cessive alcoholism and moral torpor. In the sec- ond generation : hereditary drunkenness, mania and general paralysis. In the third generation : sobriety, hypochondria, monomania of being persecuted. In the fourth generation : little intellect and homicidal tendencies ; at the age of sixteen, fits of mania, 426 The Scourges of Humanity. stupidity, transition to idiocy and extinction of the race. Morell further says : " I constantly find the chil- dren of drunkards in the asylums for the insane, in prisons and houses of correction. The deviation from the normal type of humanity shows itself in these victims by the arrest of the development of their constitutional system as well as by a vicious intellectual disposition and cruel instincts." Dr. Elam justly remarks, the children of the poor, where this evil tendency remains uncorrected by a good physical and moral Education, the surround- ings are vicious, and want and misery irritate a weakened constitution, the consequences of drunk- enness in the parent are aggravated, and, hence, the frightful amount of insanity among the poor. The intellectual and moral nature of man is his very essence, and its total degradation betokens a morbidity or deviation from the normal type, which cannot be but hereditary. A system of Education that aims at the preser- vation of the human race, cannot lose sight of drunkenness and its prevention, the means of which are many and decided, and form the natural ele- ments of a practical Education, as we shall have further opportunity to show. The characteristic mental features found by Morell in the children of inebriates and which demand attention, are The Scourges of Humanity. dt2j an irresistible wandering from place to place, a want of purpose, indecision, lawlessness, moral ob- tuseness and a taste for ardent spirits. What a heritage ! the very genius of pauperism and the high road to crime to which vagabondage unfail- ingly leads. The desire for stealing and the taste for the lowest and most vicious associations, as also a spirit refractory to all regulations, accompany the morbid appetite for strong drink in the victim of hereditary dipsomania. Maudsley says, drunkenness in the parent is a cause of idiocy, suicide or insanity in the offspring, as also insanity in the parent may occasion dipso- mania in the offspring, which conclusively proves the deep-seated deterioration of the nervous system arising from drunkenness, the close attendant of pauperism. Delirium tremens is not the worst nor is it the end of drunkenness, which weighs down humanity with a leaden curse, convulsing it through genera- tions, until, at last, the spirit in man succumbs to the demon, and every trace of divine intelligence and power has been crushed out in the long and painful struggle. Alcoholism is attended by great weakness, cramps, convulsions, partial paralysis, horrid pains, sleepless nights, restlessness, delirium, haggardness, a com- plete abolition of the intellectual and moral pow- 428 The Scourges of Huvianity. ers, a perfect obliteration of the will and excited de- sires, which make the drunkard a brute, lost in in- difference to all, and moving like an automaton, without motiv^e or end, but drink, with the heart, lung and liver suffering, and ending in marasmus, dropsy, diarrhoea or delirium tremens. Among 1,000 paralytic insane, studied by Morell, 200 were reduced to that condition by hard drinking, and of 200 inebriates, who found their way into the insane asylum, 35 were obviously hereditary cases. Four brothers inherited the passion for drink, in which they all indulged to excess. The oldest drowned himself, the second hung himself, the third cut his throat, and the fourth threw himself out of an upper window. And there is, in fact, no end to the sad stories of whole generations of drunkards. The drinking habit of the parent is in most cases an irresistible impulse or disease in the child, uncontrolled by any motive whatsoever. Men are treated by the law as criminals, when they are in fact maniacs. When the duty on spirits was removed in Nor- way in 1825, between that time and 1835 insanity increased 50 per cent., but the increase in idiocy was 150 per cent. ! Out of 300 idiots, examined by Dr. Howe in the State of Massachusetts, 145 were the children of intemperate parents. The Scourges of Humanity. 429 Sweden consumes 25,000,000 gallons of spirits though it has but 3,000,000 population— of whom but half are of an age to drink — and the conse- quence is that insanity, suicide and crime are fear- fully common among them, notwithstanding every one of them has what passes commonly for an Education. In two hospitals at Copenhagen, of 1,000 male patients among mechanics, 34, and among day laborers, 80, suffered from delirium tremens ; among the first class 61, and among the latter 104 cases of deaths were the result of liquor. Of 100 deaths among saloon keepers and bar tenders, 13.4 per cent, are caused by liquor. Neison, the great English statistician, established from extended observations made on 6,111 drunk- ards, that at the ages of 21-30 the mortality among them is five times, and at 30-50 four times as high as among temperate people; and while of 6,111 common people, 100 should have died at all ages 'he drunkards lost 357. The expectation of life is at With drunk- IViiA common ards. people. 20 years of age . . . 15.5 44-2 30 " " . . 13.8 36.4 40 " " . . II. 'S 28.7 50 " " . . 10.8 21.2 60 " " . . 8.9 14.2 430 TJie Scourges of Humanity. While at 20 years of age a common man has an expectation of living 44 years, a drunkard has but an expectation of 15 years, which cuts his life short 35 years ! Drunkenness is the bridging over from pauper- ism to insanity, and the three together represent the complete destruction of humanity. The statistics of England are noted for their re- liability. The following table will, therefore, show the exact increase of insanity among the English poor. The population of England and Wales was in 1 861, 20,061,725. Number of poor. Insane poor. Per cent 1859 . . 867,543 30.318 3-50 i860 . . 854,896 31,543 3-71 I86I . . 891,868 32,920 369 1862 . . 946, 1 66 34-271 3.62 1863 . . 1,142,624 36.158 317 1864 . . 1,011,753 37.576 3-7 1865 . . 974,772 38.487 4.0 1866 . . 924,813 39.827 4-3 1867 . . 963,200 41.276 4-3 1868 . . 1,040,103 43.158 43 1869 . . 1,046,569 45.153 4.3 Whosoever can read this table intelligently and his heart does not ache for his brother, need not mis- take his own quality any more. Let him set down himself for all future a heartless villain. 45,153 in- sane among 1,046,569 paupers, or 44 in every 1,000, in 1869; while England and Wales had 21,158 in- The Scourges of Huuianity. 43 1 sane paupers, or 23 in every 1,000, in 1852, which gives an increase of 91 per cent, of these unfortu- nates in seventeen years ! Think for a moment, the city of New York had 50,000 maniacs and the United States 2,000,000 ; well, the proportion of the insane among the very poor — we may call them paupers, they are men and our brothers still — is just the same. Is this not a degenerating human- ity? And ought Education not to meet it with different weapons than grammar, spelling and geog- raphy ? A State Report of 1855, of Massachusetts, shows that the picture is as dark here as it is in England, and that insanity afflicts the poor sixty-six times as much as the independent classes. What we have said sufficiently establishes that drunkenness most fearfully deteriorates the race, and should be met by Education, which must look to the preservation of the race. But the subject is too important to be dismissed without further remark. George Combe maintains overwork and under- feeding to be among the chief causes which induce the craving for stimulus. The school, therefore, by spreading technical knowledge must relieve the laborer of his poorly-paying drudgery, which means much work for little pay, that leads him to the gin shop. 432 The Scourges of Humanity. Prof. Fawcett traces drunkenness greatly to ex- cessive toil and ignorance. The toiling masses are reared in such ignorance, squalor and misery, that life to them is dreary and nature without beauty, and moral beauty exists for them no more than the beauty of the physical world, for society and the laws of government oppress them, and wife and children sadden them in proportion to their love for them. Rev. Alexander Macloid strenuously insists, that drunkenness is not a voluntary evil. The polluted atmosphere in which the poor live, the poor dwell- ings, the bad food, the want of temperate refresh- ments and of a sensible Education, which is a check on low desires, are all causes of drunkenness. The most unwholesome and exhausting trades, as the mining and iron industries, count the hardest drinkers. To the causes of drunkenness already stated, we may add over-excitcmcnt as well as depression, chagrin of all sorts, anger, etc., need we say, hunger, cold, hopelessness, self-abandonment and shiftless- ness? In many trades an irritating animal, vegetable and mineral dust produces a continual dryness and irritation in the respiratory organs and throat, and, hence, a desire for drink. Want of employment and a mind not finding The Scourges of Humanity. 433 sufficient mental excitement in its occupation, lead also many to drunkenness. The cultivation of higher tastes and pleasures, delight in flowers, music, song, paintings and gar- dening, science, literature, and whatever raises the condition and dignity of workingmen, will remove them above the low and degrading vice of drunken- ness. An Education that will raise the work-people from mere routine drudges to the rank of thinking mechanics, will lift them above all temptation of drunkenness, for as skilled artisans they will cease to be poor, to want food for the body or food for the mind ; as men of thought they will, as a rule, be neither over-excited nor depressed, as thinking cultivates equanimity ; they will not be debarred from the higher and purer delights of the mind, and if they enter the company of the low it will not be to fall into their vices, but to raise them who are low ; careful men and trained in the scien- tific principles of their trades, they will soon rid their work of every element that may tempt them to drink. The Westminster Review says : " While men are permitted to breathe pestilential air all their life, how can we expect the love of strong drink to perish? Shorten work, or the drooping frame will infallibly have recourse to stimulants. Give the workingmen libraries, amusements, lectures and 19 434 T^^^f^ Scourges of Hiemanity. leisure for attendance ; good and cheap newspa- pers have already done much to elevate the work- people, and will do much more ; park excursions, woods and fields, sky and open air, all elevate and improve man's better nature." Taine, the philosopher and historian, says : *' The depression of the workingman and his whole condition drive him to the cup and drunk- enness." The workingman, whose wages must be supple- mented by those of his wife working out of the house, is driven, by the cheerless, unprovided dog- hole of a home he enters coming from his day's labor, to the more inviting public house. The squalor of the poor separates them like a gulf from better society ; it is crushing and degrad- ing and destroys all self-regard, with which all else is lost. The unceasing toil of men, women and children renders all culture and virtue impossible among the poor. A practical school that uses more collections of objects of nature, art and industry than text books, will form a taste for zoological gardens, picture gal- leries and industrial museums. Let us clean out our own hearts and join the company of the poor. He who had their welfare at heart did not disdain to minithsome pest. This universal plague was followed b)' more partial ones at the The Scourges of Hiimanity. 439 end of the eighteenth century in all parts of Nor- wegia, where it was brought by Russian soldiers ; in Sweden, where Norwegian soldiers introduced it ; in East Gothland, where soldiers coming from Pomerania brought it in 1762 ; in Norrtige, brought by soldiers in 1790 ; in Courland, introduced in 1757 by the soldiers of the Seven Years' War ; in Lith- uania, brought in 1800 by the Russian soldiers. In 1760, it raged on the banks of Lake Huron, and made great ravages on the shores of St. Paul's Bay among the Ottawa Indians. In 1785, 5,800 were afflicted with this poison in the then sparsely popu- lated Canada. It ravaged in 1791, and for many years in Illyria, and as late as 1841 in certain locali- ties in France. In Sv/eden and Norway it often commits ravages ; it is remarkably frequent and extended in England, in large towns or where the military are located, who make more havoc at home by the spread of this most loathsome and deteriorating disease, than they ever do among the enemy with cannon or bayonet. Such is the his- tory of the introduction of the virus of syphilis into the blood of the living generation, and which enforces upon us its tribute paid by scrofula, which appears in a variety of skin and other diseases, in the different forms of defectiveness, and, above all, as phthisis, in which form it makes the greatest rav- ages ; it certainly is of all the deteriorating agents 440 ^1^^ Scourges of Hunianify. the most fearful, and demands the attention of every friend of humanity. The virus of syphilis in the blood does not only, as Dr. Sanger says, entail upon children a mental and physical unfitness for action in the active pur- suits of life, but feeds low desires, stimulates the appetite for strong drink, produces a cynical state of mind and an obliquity in the mental and moral nature of man, which renders him mendacious, hypo- critical, cunning and selfish, poisoning Church and state, and answering for much that is reprehensible in both. The insidious nature of this fearful poison calls for exact information based upon statistics which cannot be questioned. From 1804 to 1842, 129,809 venereal patients have been treated in the hospitals of Paris, the number increasing with every year, so that while it was 2,212 in 1804, it was 5,059 in 1842, and to this day this number must have more than quadrupled. What a deterioration of the nervous system, epi- lepsy, insanity and suicides such an amount of syphilis must produce ! The Report of Guy's Hospital in London states 43 per cent, of all external diseases treated there are venereal. Mr. Caspar Foster states 174 cases of 285 in surgery, in 1867, were venereal cases. The Royal Free Hospital in London has daily 117 new con- The Scourges of Humanity. 441 sultations in venereal cases, or 3 in every 8 cases of a surgical nature. At the hospitals of King's and University Colleges, St. Mary's, Westminster, London, Middlesex and Metropolitan Hospitals, one-third of the surgical cases are venereal. In the hospitals for the sailors, 50 cases are daily brought in. In the Eye Hospital for Children one- fifth of the cases are syphilitic. Dr. William Remond states that in the Children's Hospital 93 boys and 105 girls, or i in every 5 children, were affected with syphilis. In hospitals for skin diseases one-eighth to four-fifths of the cases are syphilitic eruptions. From 1844 to 185 1 the British army, numbering 44,611 men, had annually 8,032, and the navy dur- ing the same years annually of 28,800 men, 2,880 venereal cases. From 1859 ^^ i860, of 1,000 sol- diers in London, 422 were treated in the hospitals for venereal affections. Recruits examined for the service in 1853 showed 250 in 1,000 the symptoms of syphilis. In i860, the British army numbered 306 cases of syphilis in every 1,000 men, and each man averaged 8.69 days yearly loss in the hospital. At Vienna were treated in the hospital in Men. Women. Girls. Children. Total. i860 . . . 3.550 62 1,440 I 5,463 1861 . . 3,375 73 1.753 5 5.206 1862 . . . 4,000 'j'j 2,019 5 6.901 1863 . . . 5.808 90 2.224 6 8,128 19* 442 The Scourges of Huiiiaiiity, Under private treatment there must have been three or four times as many. Among 42,000 artisans in Berlin in 1856 and 31,000 sick at the hospital, were 1,800 cases of venereal, or 4.3 per cent, of the artizan population, and 6 per cent, of the hospital cases. Syphilitic cases under hospital treatment have doubled in little Bavaria, as everywhere else. In the hospitals there were in 1859, 974 cases ; 1861, 1,321 cases; 1865, 1,834 cases. At the end of the last century the inhabitants of several districts in Denmark were obliged to submit to an official medical examination on ac- count of the frequency of syphilis among the people. Syphilitic children die mostly in their first in- fancy; still, in the hospital of Bordeaux, 1 856-1 861, yy children among 2,719, or about 3 per cent., show plainly symptoms of syphilis, and 66 of this num- ber died before their sixth year. The following facts, gathered from the work of Dr. Sanger, show the increase of venereal poison in New York City. Blackwell's Island Hospital treated in 1854 1,541 venereal cases. 1855 1.549 1856 1,639 1857 2,090 " The Scourges of Humanity. 443 The following table contains the venereal cases in the various public institutions of the metropolis in the year 1857 : Penitentiary Hospita , Blackwell's Island . . 2,090 Almshouse, Blackwell's Island 52 Work-house " " 56 Penitentiary " " 430 Bellevue Hospital 768 Nursery Hospital, Randall's Island .... 734 New York State Emigrants' Hospital, Ward's Island 559 New York Hospital, Broadway 405 New York Dispensary, Centre Street . . . 1,580 Northern " Waverley Place . . 327 Eastern " Ludlow Street , . . 630 Demilt " Second Avenue . . 803 Northwestern " Eighth " . . 344 Medical Colleges 207 King's County Hospital, Flatbush, L. I. . . 311 Brooklyn City Hospital, Brooklyn, L. I. . . 186 Seaman's Retreat, Staten Island 365 Total 9,847 Cases in these Institutions unrecorded . . , 4,923 Total 14.770 Add to these hospi al cases the number of per- sons treated all over the city, privately, which must be at least three and four times as many, and we may form a somewhat correct idea of the deterio- ration of the race from syphilis. This estimate may appear high, but as we have for every 5 per cent, adult males one prostitute spreading the virus of syphilis, the result can surprise no one. 444 The Scourges of Humanity. What a fearful amount of deterioration of the physical and moral nature of man must this poison effect ! More than half of the seamen are its vic- tims, lOO to 200 in ev^ery i,ooo soldiers suffer from it, 25 to 30 per cent, of all the sick in military hos- pitals are affected with it, 5 per cent, of the patients in all hospitals are sick with it, 4 per cent, of the poor and 2 per cent, of the entire population of large cities are tainted with it, i to 2 per cent, of innocent infants perish from it, and many more transmit it to coming generations as a fatal potency cropping out in deteriorating diseases without number. It is the milliners, seamstresses, tailoresses, dress- makers and the like low-payed occupations, which force women into the path of vice. But one in five hundred cases was found by Dr. Sanger, in which a woman in the better remunerated trades followed this low life. " Working from early dawn till late at night, with trembling fingers, aching head and very often with an empty stomach, the poor seamstress ruins her health to obtain a spare and insufficient living." Among 1,224 of these miserable creatures the earnings of their honest trades yielded Ihcm per week in 127 cases $4 00 230 " 3 00 The Scourges of Hwiianity. 445 336 cases $2 00 534 " I 00 Whatever fosters prostitution by interfering with woman's making an honest livelihood, or encourages concubinage by rendering the maintenance of a family by the masses of the people impossible, or undermines the family by false teachings, is the in- direct means of spreading syphilis, the fell-destroyer of the race, who, unchecked, would exterminate it in the course of not many generations. Let the school see to it, that woman on leaving it may be trained for maintaining herself honestly, and that man may be enabled to support a family with his labor, rendered effective by a practical and scientific Education. We must banish, says a great sanitary authority, misery, educate men correctly, fill them with higher interests, make sanitary care a religion, put life under the authority of correct morals and a com- prehensive hygienic legislation, restrain selfishness, and fill all with a spirit of love and mercy by a re- generated civil and penal code. Nothing so much as purity of morals and cleanliness oppose the genesis and spread of syphilis, but want and misery are hardly compatible with cleanliness and purity. Let woman be trusted with the holy office of training and educating the race in the national nurseries of the land, and she will cease to lead the 44^ TJie ScoKrgiS of Hiimainiy. fashion and induce extravagance ; a m m will then be able to support a family on a modest income, and prostitution will consequently become excep- tional. Woman in her elevation will disdain to subserve to the pleasure of man or to live for her own vanity sake ; her labors for the race will spread a noble spirit, and want will bring her no more to that lowest depth of infamy which disgraces to-day man more than her and most of all our Education, which makes us all what we are. The school is re- sponsible for the prostitution it does not prevent, and the pest it does not arrest it spreads. Our schools teach us many fine things, but leave such matters to jails and houses of correction, which in their turn deem it labor lost to attend to a field overgrown with weeds. Shall we, then, correct this race-deteriorating evil by Race Education, which strengthens our hands and gives them cunning and inspires our heart to work for the race and its preservation, or shall we make a yearly contribution of 70,000 to 100,000 illegitimate births and half as many in- fantile deaths, and the day of judgment may reveal how many infanticides registered " still births " ? According to exact statistics 700,000 illegitimate children are annually born in Christian Europe, or one illegitimate child to every 13.5 legitimate. In The Scourges of Humanity. 447 some of the large cities every second or third man is a bastard. In France the number of illegitimate children vere in 1844 73.950 1849 75.395 1857 76,189 Marbeau, in the Stance of the Academy of Moral Sciences, gave the following interesting social fig- ures, expressive of the moral condition of France : 76,189 illegitimate children. 35,000 abortions. 34,000 abandoned children. 30,000 still births. 168 infanticides. The Medical Chiriirgical Review calculates that at the very least, a million and a half of persons are yearly infected in Great Britain with this most terri- ble poison. How enormous, then, must be the num- ber of children born with secondary syphilis ! how immense the mortality among them ! and how vast the amount of disease and misery transmitted to coming generations ! It is this that fills our hospitals, insane asylums, asylums for the blind, the deaf and dumb, our poor-houses, jails and many an early grave. And here, then, again the question urges itself upon our mind, can Education engage in a more important work than arresting this as well as other 448 Tlie Scourges of Humanity. pests which deteriorate the race and dwarf the pro- portions of man? Standing armies, these ulcers of modern states, the graves of liberty, consuming the earnings of the nations and heaping up monstrous public debts, causing rates of taxation that bear heavily on all enterprise, these evils require volumes to be shown up in all their bearings, but cannot be left unmen- tioned where the scourges of humanity are num- bered. They are sources of death and destruction in times of profoundest peace as well as in times of war, as we have shown by their rates of mortality and suicide and the propagation of the most loath- some and deteriorating disease among the nations. They are a public sanction of murder and robbery, and are a standing challenge to God and humanity. Our prisons arc another public scourge and a hotbed of human deterioration ; and what else but our schools can wc blame for the state the criminal is in, or for the worse laws and officials, who in the name of justice perpetrate the greatest injustice, malice and revenge, and render men's lives cheaper by their dealings than the criminal ever did in his lawlessness, creating nests breeding vice and crime of the deepest dye, which like a torrent sweep de- structively over the land they were to protect, by reforming or making innocuous dangerous men. The trades and pursuits of artisans which are The Sconrges of Humanity. 449 sources of pleasure, delight and comfort to all are under our present system of Education scourges to the men, women and children who actively engage in them. A description of the deterioration of the masses, arising from the numerous trade diseases, would swell our volume beyond proportion; we can but hint at the skeleton, but dare not enter the charnel house. An observing employer remarked: "The men drop off from work unperceived and disregarded. I am quite at a loss to know what becomes of them. When they leave off working, they go, and are seen no more. Some, perhaps, become applicants for charities ; but so few have I known of the ages of sixty or seventy, that leaving work, they seem to leave the world as well, a solitary one appearing at intervals to claim some trifling pension or seek admission to the almshouse." This is as melancholy as correct a representation of the end of the artisan, still let our end be like his, rather, than to be among those who can read such a summing up of a hard workingman's days with- out a deep pity stirring in their heart for poor hu- manity. Man after man dies of decay in the prime of life and no warning is taken by the survivors. Men are generally unwilling to admit the fact of the excessive mortality of their trade. They will hardly 450 TJie Scourges of HiiDianity. admit that they labor under a disorder until con- sumption is established, and its effects apparent to every observer. To the physician's inquiry all the workers in dusty trades will say, " We are all pretty healthy," and it is only by examining each work- man that the physician finds the deception. Here is the description of an eminent physician of the operatives of a cotton factory: "The children were almost, universally ill-looking, small, sickly, etc. The men were almost as pallid and thin as the children. Among the women there was not a fresh or fine-looking individual. What a degene- rate race, human beings stunted, enfeebled and de- praved, men and women that were never to become aged, and children that w^ere never to become healthy adults. It was a mournful spectacle." The cotton dust or fibre tells on the lungs ; the operative may continue at his work, but ails occa- sionally without being exactly ill ; he has an occa- sional attack of sickness of his respiratory organs ; he is weak and easily a prey to disease ; may live on, neither well nor ill ; is woni out at an early period, and sinks an old man at the age of 45 to 50. In a cotton establishment of 1,685 spinners only 22 passed the age of 50, and 8 the age of 55 ! The same authority inspecting a flax mill, de- clares, that of a personnel of 1,079, 22 reached 40 years, and but 9 lived to the age of 50 years. The Scourges of Humanity. 451 Fourteen men, taken indiscriminately from the flax mill, showed on examination great impairment of the respiratory organs. Drawn up in line, what a sight ! pale, spare, emaciated, head declined, pulse feeble, subjects of disease advanced to a fatal issue, ripe for the hospital, working till they die from consumption ! Hatters, rather pale, complain of pains in the chest, are subject to asthma, and there are scarcely any old men among them. Millers are generally pale and sickly, and often asthmatic at an early age. Jewellers suffer in their chest, stomach, liver and head. An old jeweller is hardly to be found. In an establishment of 37 men, one had passed the age of 50. Brass founders suffer in their respiration, cough, have often pains in the stomach and are subject to morning vomiting. Few of them live to be old men. Masons have the bronchital membrane often in a state of inflammation from the stone dust, die frequently of consumption, and hardly ever live to old age. We might take up trade after trade and would find each, as carried on to-day, the destruction of the artisan engaged in it. But as the subject is almost endless, we must take a larger sweep. Arsenic, as arsenite of copperas or emerald green. 452 The Scourges of Humanity. is employed in the manufacture of paper hangings, tinted paper, artificial flowers ; but it enters also into the manufacture of other pigments — in print- ing calico, in the manufacture of glass, rat poison- ing paste, not to speak of arsenic ores. Ten thou- sand hands in this country are engaged in these trades, and Dr. Guy, in his able report, states that out of 25 persons he examined in the artifi- cial flower trade, 1 1 were considerably affected by this virulent poison, 22 were affected with a peculiar rash, sickness in the morning, weakness, feverish- ness, dimness of the eyes, drowsiness, trembling and convulsions. Dr. Guy gives a striking picture of the development of the miserable sickness until death steps in, and the post-mortem examination reveals fearful lesions in the mucous membrane of the stomach and in the liver. This is a sad end which is often quickly reached, but the worst is the steady deteriorating effect this virulent poi- son has on ten thousands engaged in these trades — but we must hurry on to still blacker trades. Phosphorus, eating out the jawbones, makes of men engaged in manufactures using it such pitiful looking subjects, that we best turn from the sight. More than forty thousand artisans are exposed in the United States to the deteriorating effects of lead, a metal most inimical to the system, caus- ing the dropt hand, and other serious symptoms, The Scourges of Humanity. 453 among which is the painter's colic, often stubborn and convulsing the patient with the most excru- ciating pains ever suffered by man. Smelteis, whitelead manufacturers, potters, painters, type founders, plumbers and many engaged in other trades, are deteriorated by constant contact with this metallic poison, which especially affects the nerves and the brain it paralyzes, and, like alcohol, is sure to tell on future generations. Quicksilver is used in many trades, and is most fearful in its effects upon the system, and but fevi coming in daily contact with it escape chronic poi- soning. The mucous membrane, especially of the gums, gets livid ; the breath, as salivation advances, becomes more fetid, the pulse and respiration are retarded, and digestion becomes irregular. As the mucous membrane is destroyed and the teeth fall out, the patient is disfigured. Mercurial tremor comes on, the joints pain, trembling increases, arms, legs, the tongue, and, finally, the facial mus- cles, refuse service, and the man is but a grimace and a mockery of himself, a pitiful sight, helpless misery — he cannot chew his own food. Paralysis takes from the man the use of one limb after an- other. The teeth have gone long ago, hair and nails follow them ; the man is all wounds, old ones opening, all bleeding profusely, and the poor in- valid perishes under hectic developments a picture 454 The Scourges of Humanity. of the most horrid misery. And the worst feature about all this is, that it is but the delineation of the sufferings and unspeakable misery befalling men and women in the prime of life in the dis- eases of many other trades. According to the latest observations of Hirsch, the average amount of phthisis was among the sick of 21 trades without dust li.i per cent. with vegetable dust . . . 13-3 " animal dust . . . . 20.8 " mixed dust . . . . 22.6 " mineral dust . • 25 '' metal dust . . . . 28 Dr. Holland reports 12 needle-grinders began to work at their trade between their 14th and 27th years, and died between their 27th and 42d years — the 12 men together had an average life of 30 years and 8 months. Of 102 scissor-grinders 60 died under 40 years. The fork-grinders die before their 35th year, the razor-grinders between 40 and 50. Among 100 sick file-cutters 62.2 per cent, are phthisical, 17.4 suffer from chronic bronchitis and 17.6 from pneumonia. Of 1,000 glass-makers. Dr. Hanover found 349 at the hospital. Such is the state of health among them. In Coster's factory, in Amsterdam, among the diamond setters, 23 per cent, suffered from bleeding from the nose. 36 " " " asthma. TJie Scourges of HiDuanity. 455 57 per cent, suffered from heart troubles and giddiness. 73.5 " of the men were pale and haggard. Lead intoxication is common among the men ; among 90 men subjected to medical examination, 30 showed symptoms of poisoning. These dia- mond workers are almost all sickly men, ailing with pulmonary complaints — 9 of them were advanced consumptives. Among the diamond grinders in the same factory, 8 per cent, suffered from heart complaints. 33.75 " " " headache. 40 " " " asthma. 52 " were thin and pale. 67 " suffered from bleeding from the nose. The average life of the diamond-polishers was, in the same factory, 33.5 years, and of the diamond- setters 26.5 years ! The Report of Registration of the State of Mas- sachusetts shows that the average lives of the fol- lowing trades and professions have been in the last thirty years as stated : Farmers . Millers . . Sawyers Physicians . Hatters Clock & Watch-makers Carpenters and Joiners Blacksmiths .... Sail-makers . . . . Wood-turners . . . 65.19 Comb-makers 57.43 Masons . . . 56.67 Butchers . . 55.08 Tanners . . 54.55 Cabinet-makers 54.43 Gunsmiths Carriage-makers Harness-makers 52.84 Brick-makers 52.5; Wool-sorters . 53-31 53-31 51.38 50.48 50.29 50.05 48.65 48.57 48.38 48.36 47-99 47-55 456 The Scojirges of Humanity. Leather-dressers Laborers .... Musical Instrument ma^ kers . ... Tailors .... Architects .... Bakers . . . . , Dress-makers (women Seamen .... Stone-cutters . . . Coppersmiths . . Silver and Goldsmiths Dyers Mechanics . . . Painters .... Weavers .... Artists Shoe-makers . . . Brush-makers . . Furnace Men . . Founders .... Shoe-cutters . . . Pianoforte-makers . Glass-cutters . . . Civil Engineers . . 47.41 Chair-makers . . . 47.39 Engineers .... Musicians . . • . 47.32 Tinsmiths .... 47.19 Expressmen . . . 47.15 Nail-makers . . . 46.76 Machinists . . . 46.49 Jewelers .... 46.33 Servants (women) . 46.30 Teamsters . . . 46.07 Book-binders . , . 45.46 Upholsterers ... 45.35 Barbers .... 45.13 Pail and Tub-makers 45.05 Cutlers .... 44.65 Operatives . . . 44.56 Printers .... 44.45 Cigar-makers . . 43.40 Engineers and Firemen 43.05 Drivers 42.73 Milliners .... 42.62 Glass-blowers . . 42.50 Plumbers .... 42.39 Carvers .... 42.34 Operatives (women) 41.59 41.57 41.19 40.96 40.94 40.80 40.80 40.29 40.19 40.13 39-94 3978 39-77 39-50 39-23 38.92 38.57 38.31 38.21 38.16 37.30 37.81 35-43 33-84 27.98 How important these figures ! What losses to the nation and to their own families these short lives of the workmen of the land indicate ! While farmers average 65 years, workmen die in some trades at 35, in others at 38, 45, and hardly in ajiy do they live to 55 years. It is time the public real- ize the ravages made among the most productive classes by the great scourge of preventable trade diseases, and stop the social slaughter that com- The Scourges of Humanity. 457 promises the strength of the nation and its moral soundness for the sake of a few silverhngs in hand. Lombard has more than forty years ago directed attention to these statistics, which ought not to be taken as fixed quantities, but should lead us to the removal of their causes. They are not the re- sults of unalterable conditions. The injurious ele- ments of the trades can in most cases be elimi- nated, and in others rendered innoxious by shorter hours, a more hygienic life of the workmen, and the choice of a trade suited in every case to the peculiar organic condition and degree of health and strength of the individual. But only a close union between the school and the factory enables the workman to realize the inappreciable but constant action of these injurious elements, and gives him the power to eliminate them from the trades. A more substantial and hygienic living, which increases the power of resistance, is expensive, and is only within reach of a laborer well-schooled and scien- tifically trained in his trade, whose work is highly productive ; and, as for shorter hours, they, too, are only practicable with men, whose labor is highly productive and whose minds are stored with valu- able practical knowledge, which will occupy them during the cessation of active employment ; else their short hours prove detrimental to them in more than one way. 458 The Scourges of Humanity. The geat trouble is, the Education of to-day is not suited for the working masses. When the school gave only a clerical Education, only the clergy availed themselves of it ; to-day, when it gives mostly a commercial and polished. Education, merchants and people of leisure alone care for it. Give us an Education profitable for the masses of the people, and they will be sure to avail them- selves of it. Bring the school to bear upon the factory, and we shall increase the productive years of the great mass of the people at least 20 per cent. What gain to the nation and to themselves ! A longer life means more health, more strength, more energy, more thought, more virtue, more manhood, more labor, more wealth, more comfort, more culture, and more everything desirable in the family as well as in the state. A longer life means less sickness, less loss of time, less expense, less poverty, less orphans, less vagabondage, less crime, less police and jails, and less taxation and public burdens, and, hence, more general prosperity. The employment of children in factories is one of the great scourges of modern times ; we can only mention this plague without unburdening our mind. Four out of five children who are from early infancy up working in factories, die before they reach the age of twenty. The Scourges of Humanity. 459 The majority of children of factory people were found, by actual count, at schools attended by this class to be orphans, and by the show of the mor- tuary register of fifty-two deceased, forty-one only had attained the age of twenty-five. These short lives mean volumes of misery to the laborer as well as to his family ; they mean much sickness, loss of earnings, expense, impoverishment, pauperism and crime, and deserted orphans and sorrowing widowhood ; they mean national loss and bankruptcy ; yea, they mean injustice in a nation who is indifferent to such misery, and end in universal selfishness and dishonesty, and the consequent ruin of the country. But the facts we have adduced speak for them- selves, and the reader can make his own comments. To do justice to the subject of race deterioration as resulting from the innumerable diseases which haunt the laborer to-day, space fails us. That this deterioration is inevitable, we emphatically deny. Unite the factory and the school, labor and science, the worker and the thinker, and the laws of the intellectual order of the universe will impress them- selves upon labor and its relations, and every dis- sonance will disappear between the worker and his work and between labor and capital ; every force will become a willing tool of man, and all matter will become pregnant with use and beauty, and 460 The Scourges of Humanity. man will be healthier, stronger and wiser, every one standing back to back to his brother, and rendering one another every help their situation may require. OUR RESOURCES AND OUR GREED. The revolution which gave birth to the nation, having lasted full seven years, thoroughly aroused the people's energies, employed since in exploring resources which have grown with the population, the progress in science, machinery, quick transport and inter-communication by steam and electricity, and this feverish activity has been still more inten- sified by the opportunities for amassing colossal fortunes during the late war, until, at last, every other motive or principle has been smothered by the one of acquiring wealth ; and, natural enough, greed for gain ended in universal disloyalty and distrust, and a final stand-still of trade. This pause brings us to our senses. The activities of the nation are too fully aroused to be repressed ; they must be directed into a chan- nel as noble and generous as the former was ignoble and selfish. The nation must be made alive to the peril to which universal selfishness exposes its past greatness. Or are we alarmists ? and is the silent potency of the three R's sufficient to save the world with- The Scourges of Humanity. 461 out the concurrence of other social agencies ? We hardly think so. Popular Education has been fos- tered everywhere the last hundred years, still the statistics of the steady increase of illegitimate births and abandoned children the world over, would fill a moderate volume. Offenses in France have increased from 110,593 in 1846, to 171,351 in 1853. The liberal professions, composing 2.2 per cent, of the entire population, form 4 per cent, of the criminals of France. Whilst the farmers, who form 53 percent, of the entire population, commit but 30 per cent, of the crimes, showing at once the decided influence of work, home and a competency, and the doubtful bearing of Education on crime. In England offenses rose from 75,859, or 4 in 1,000, in 1857, to 105,310, or 5 in 1,000, in 1865. Murders and attempts at murder in France num- bered in 1830-1834 931, and increased gradually to 1,850 in 1855-1859. Enough has been said on the score of this uni- versally-spread fiction or swindle of what is in the clap-trap of the day styled Education. Our present Education, by getting up a false pride discouraging manual labor and putting cunning in the place of physical and creative effort, aids the progress of crime. We talk about pauperism in Europe, and shqt our eyes to the extent of the evil in our own midst. 462 The Scourges of Hionanity. Massachusetts, willing to probe the evil, gives us reliable statistics. It has with a population of 1,651,912, 4,342 inmates in its poorhouses, and supports partially 65,988 outside poor. It counted in 1876, 148,933 tramps! and making full allow- ances for duplications, it has, at least, 5,000 of this dangerous element. Massachusetts has six or seven large State institutions, beside 342 town and city poorhouses, and thousands of private families in which, at public expense, individuals are maintained ; and the poor cause to the State and private charities an annual outlay of $4,500,- 000. The convicts number 4,340. Whilst the poor in England, 1,037,360, are i in 23 of the general population, and the convicts, 28,756, i in 790, our poor are i in 22 of population, and our criminals I in 380. There were commitments in the State of Massa- chusetts in 1871-2 160 1872-3 174 1873-4 246 In 1865 there were in the common prisons of the State 10,000 individuals, and 481 convicts in the State prison. In 1875, 20,000 were detained in the common prisons, and 852 were in the State prison. Hardly a State or country, says the State Report before us, in the civilized world, where The Scourges of Humanity. 463 atrocious and flagrant crimes are so common as in educated Massachusetts. Of 415 convicts sen- tenced to the Charlestown State prison in 1874 and 1875, 53 per cent, are born in Massachusetts, and 25 per cent, of all the convicts of 1873 came from its reformatories. Only 1 1 per cent, of the convicts of 1876 were illiterate, which, therefore, was not the cause of their criminality. One of every 364 natives of Massachusetts is a pauper, and i in every 546 a convict ; whilst i in every 348 foreign born is a pauper, and i in every 252 is a criminal. But here again we must direct the attention of the reader to the absurdity of all our statistics of pau- perism. We are informed one of so many natives or foreigners is a pauper ; in other words, is an in- sane, an idiot, a deserted woman, an orphan, of infirm mind, sick, a cripple, an old man, or a widow — a most meaningless assertion indeed. According to a more just and simple classifica- tion — we shall soon make clearer — we should say I in 100 of the population of Massachusetts is a defective ; i in 20 is partially depending and poor, I in 10 is struggling against poverty, and i in 5 is managing closely. This is rather gloomy, but is a fact worth while knowing. Massachusetts has : Blind 2,512 Deaf 7,241 464 The Scourges of Humanity. Dumb 129 Deaf-mutes 654 Idiots 1,340 Insane 3>637 Total 16,513 In 359 cases out of 420 cases of idiots, one or both parents departed from the normal condition of health. Epileptics, paralytics, cripples, feeble-minded and the like classes, will swell this sum to 25,000; and what must be the nature of the tree that bears the like fruits in such abundance? The following table shows the steady increase of pauperism in the State of Massachusetts. Vagrants were relieved in 1873 45.653 times. 1674 98,236 1875 137.308 1876 148,936 A glance at the population of the poorhouses of the State of New York will clearly prove our position, that widespread pauperism is evidence of physical deterioration, which has to be met by means both universal and efficient. New York contained in its poorhouses in 1876 2,030 homeless children. 29 deaf-mutes. 278 " women. 4.047 insane. 2,081 old and destitute. 580 idiots. 795 permanently diseased. 268 epileptics. 463 temporarily diseased. 322 paralytics. The Scourges of Humanity. 465 240 crippled. 394 feeble-minded. 17 deformed. 1^1 vagrant and idle. 303 blind. Total 12,614. The Report on Pauperism, by Charles S. Hoyt, Esq., throws further Hght on this subject, by show- ing that 4,273 of this number had each pauper rela- tives — some as far back as three generations. The number of pauper relatives of the paupers exam- ined into amounted to 14,901 ; 4,968 of these rela- tives were known as insane, 844 were idiots and 8,863 inebriates. What a widespread deterioration this condition indicates, and how vast must be the means that shall victoriously counteract it. We often witness with indifference the develop- ment of a morbid formation, relying upon the remedial power of the means at our command, which, in truth, are almost invariably impotent. We try to study the problem of pauperism ; but systematization is the first requisite to get at the nature of things, and we lump together under pau- perism, a name that means social leprosy, a pest and every other thing that is loathsome — the poor insane, the idiot boy, the orphan, the widow, the sick and the man of a hundred years. These classes are all free from personal guilt, and our dealing in such a bungling manner makes the solution of the social problem impossible, and is as 466 The Scourges of Humanity. much an insult to our own good sense as to hu- manity. The plain state of the case is, the wrecks in the poorhouses of Massachusetts, New York or any other State or country, are the flower and friiit ; the outside helpless poor — call them tramps, va- grants or what you please — are the branch, and the struggling millions, who have not yet given up all hope, are the veritable tree sending forth those branches bearing the bitter fruit. We must stop paying attention to the branches and attend to the roots of the tree. The hundred thousand outside the poorhouse must themselves be radically diseased, to yield the ten thousand physically and mentally ruined inmates of our poorhouses, and the millions — let us not be unjust — they mean as nearly right as they know. We are republicans; let us be just toward the masses, the people, the hope of the nation and of the future ; perhaps the whole Education we give them is the wrong one, and we dare say this is fully half of the trouble. An increased mortality rate may be the result of a food supply suddenly cut short by a failure of crops or a financial crisis. An increase in the rate of insanity is evidence of a deep degeneracy, the ■work of a long series of deteriorating causes. It is for this reason that insanity especially must oc- cupy the attention of the social student. The Scourges of Humanity. 467 Dr. Charles A. Lee said before the Social Science Association : " Statistics abundantly show that both in this country and in Great Britain there is a pro- gressively increasing ratio of lunatics to the whole population, and the estimate of 45 per cent, in- crease here, as in England, in the last ten years is very probable. We know that there is an enor- mous and constantly increasing accumulation of chronic lunacy in every State in the Union, and that in the States which have erected the most and largest asylums, as New York, the number of in- sane in the poorhouses has not diminished, and is constantly increasing. Especially is insanity in- creasing in the United States among the middle and lower classes." Of course, the increase of the 45 per cent, of in- sanity in so short a period is partly due to the preservation of the lives of the insane under their improved treatment ; still there is left a positively increased ratio of insanity sufficient to stagger the thoughtful student of social phenomena. But whoever will read the reports of the Boards of Charities of the various States in the Union, and take into consideration the increasing numbers of the inmates of the poorhouses and the nature and composition of the latter, will of necessity come to the conclusion of Dr. Lee. What wonder that the insane are in the most hu- 468 The Scourges tf Humanity. mane States penned up in cages like wild beasts, only kept less clean. Are they not, according to our most stupid and inhuman nomenclature, pau- pers ? And yet Dr. Edward Jarvis, like his prede- cessor, the great Pinel, says : " Most of these unfor- tunates need no double doors, no bolts, no locks, but confidence and the encouragement of their own self- respect, the most important means of restoration." The constantly diminishing yearly increase of population is another evidence either of physical deterioration or moral depravity. So, for instance, was the annual increase of population in Prussia : 1817-1828 1.71 per cent. 1828-1840 1.27 1846-1855 0.86 The annual increase of population in England ■was, in 1821-1831 . 1.46 per cent. 1841-1851 . 1.35 per cent. 1831-1841 . 1.46 " 1851-1861 . 1. 19 " In France the increase of population was, in 1821-1831 . 0.67 per cent. 1841-1851 . 0.44 per cent. 1831-1841 . 0.50 " 1851-1861 . 0.18 And when we study our own country, the steady decline of the natural increase indicates a lament- able deterioration. The annual increase was, in 1790-1800 . 2.89 pel cent. 1820-1830 . 2.64 per cent. 1800-1810 . 2.83 " 1830-1840 . 2.52 1810-1820 . 2.74 " 1840-1850 . 2.39 " The Scourges of Humanity. 469 According to Dr. Allen's statement before the Social Science Association, 10 per cent, of the mar- riages of Americans are childless ; and whilst i birth upon 30 of population is the natural ratio, the ratio of births of Massachasetts' mothers is i in 60. We cannot deteriorate without losing vitality and strength as a nation, and losing the chance of giving birth to thinkers and organizers and leaders in national greatness and goodness. But the great misery of the masses is the plain- est and most irrefutable proof of their deteriorating condition. The following official items furnished by E. Crap- sey, Esq., are well worth considering. There were in 1870 in Bellevue Hospital and Charity Hospital 17,190 patients. Hospital for Contagious Diseases . . 6,165 " Bureau of Relief prescribed for outdoor poor 16,850 " The almshouse poor 4.315 " Relieved by private agencies .... 50,000 " Dependent upon public charities . . 61,971 " Inmates of prisons and reformatories . 71,849 " Total 228,340 " Reducing this number on account of duplications to 150,000 persons, what an army of dependents and what a problem for solution ! There is not a block of tenement houses where 470 The Scourges of Humanity. mothers may not be found putting the morsel of bread they covet into the hungry mouths of cry- ing children ; where strong men do not starve that the old people may be supported. Widows are chummed together, who are living illustrations of a sisterly spirit ; they have for years worked and starved together ; the strongest bank in the city may break, but their honor and honesty, so often tried, make them trusted for their rent during the winter months, when, also, their most modest furni- ture travels to the pawnbroker, to come back in the summer season and greet the presence of these, God's own dear children, who starve the year through with a never-faltering spirit. Does any one think that such stories, rising into the hearing of the Almighty Father, do not avenge the poor by confounding all in one great destruction, in order to assert, in the inexorable ways of Providence, the solidarity of the race, coldly denied by us in the cruel treatment of a brother? The steady and stubborn growth of pauperism proves all present attempts at preventing it rather efforts at mitigating it, an enterprise laudable, but thankless, like carrying water from the sea in a sieve, as the millions brought up and living as they are, grind out paupers by the hundred thousand, and swallow up all private and public means, ren- dering all our efforts nugatory. The Scourges of Humanity. 471 We do not indulge in vagaries, and do not stand alone in what we blame or in what we advance. We insist upon work as well as study, and condemn the one-sided mental Education of the day, which ruins both the body as well as the mind, leading to want and misery. The effects of our almost exclusive attention to study may be partly illustrated by the following facts. Blindness is a great source of loss of oppor- tunity of self-support. The number of the blind in the United States is 25,000 and over. Con- genital blindness is but as i in 10 compared to the whole class. Whatever weakens the eyes exposes them to succumb to the effects of disease or exter- nal injury, and the short-sightedness or weakened condition of the eyes, due to over application to study, has been fully established, and ranges from 5 per cent, in village schools, to not less than 68 per cent, in our highest institutions. Of 731 collegiate scholars 296, or 40 per cent., suf- fered frequently headache. Of 3,564 scholars of pubhc schools, 974, or 27.3 per cent., suffered more or less headache. In the highest class of a college not less than 80 per cent, were found sufferers from headache. Bleeding from the nose was found in 20 per cent. Spinal diseases were met with in 20 per cent., and of these 84-90 per cent, were females. One hundred and forty-six physicians of Massa- 472 The Scourges of Humanity. chusetts have declared that our system of Educa- tion promotes consumption, and the writer in the Massachusetts Report adds to this testimony, " If this be not worthy of serious thought by our people I know of no question that can be." " The state," says the School Commissioner of Ohio, " needs, for its material prosperity, a race of strong and healthy men and women. Widespread violations of hygienic laws as fostered by a vicious system of Education cannot be overlooked by the state." " Education lays the foundation o^ a large part of the causes of mental disorders," says Dr. Jarvis. " Insanity is die price of an imperfect civilization and an incomplete Education," says Rev. J. S. Good- man, School Superintendent in the State of Michigan. " Our young men have a great indisposition to physical labor. We belifgve in that kind of com- pulsory Education that will fit a man for work and self-support. Of 220 convicts, in 1875, in Massa- chusetts, 177 were without a trade. A workman who labors and pays his way, though he is unable to read and write, is a better member of society than men educated who will not, or know not, how to earn their bread. We want more of the gospel of work." These words of Mr. Wright, the chief of the Bureau of Labor of Massachusetts, deserve consideration. The Scourges of Humanity. 473 Richard Vaux, in an able article on crime in the State Report of Pennsylvania, says : " A far larger number of convicts have attended school than who never went to schools. Does, perhaps, the associ- ation of youths in school create an influence which leads to depreciate labor? This certainly would have to be considered." Nothing but the joining of industrial work with study secures the proper equilibrium between mental and physical action, and endows the future citizen with the power of providing honestly and honorably for himself and for those who have a claim upon his support. We insist, therefore, upon a more material Education, but we lay equal stress upon a more spiritual one than the present, and one founded upon the physical, moral, and in- dustrial relations and nature of man. The neglect of the physical and moral Education in our schools, and the perversion of the passions this double neglect leads to, are a great cause of race deterioration. Fashion, appearances and sham in Education, leaving the heart and the higher reason empty, take the place of the more practical culture of the will, good sense, and human kindness. The state, expending millions out of the public treasury, has a right to insist upon an Education that instills in the individual, educated by the con- tributions of all, kindliness toward all. . The state 474 ^'^^^ Scourges of Humanity. and the government are no more interested in the scholarly accomplishments of the citizen than in his religious faith ; in the eye of the law actions alone have an existence, and are culpableor meritorious, and hence for action the public school must train us, that we may live a life useful for the state and for ourself. When a German university celebrity, like Pro- fessor Ekhart, and a Professor Stuart, of Cambridge University, England, treat labor schools as a prime necessity of our present civilization, and such schools do prove a success, in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Italy and Switzerland, none is justified in saying, that however well such institutions may look on paper they are not reducible to practice. Reading questions from text-books, and seeing to it that the answers be exactly as printed, may be less troublesome in execution, still the world has got tired of words, and Education too must adval^,/ from words to work. If men make leadership in the highest depart- ment of human life their business, let them be trained for it in institutions of the severest mental discipline. But we do not want schools dabbling just enough in Latin and Greek to spoil a boy born for the plow or the shop, without fittiwg him for anything else. The Scourges of Hmnanity. 475 Is the demand for a moral basis of Education, and the preservation of the race an insanity? Is the enlarging of the individual consciousness to a universal consciousness that identifies itself with all mankind, past and present, not the essential nature of human culture, and if we are to love Him whom we have never seen, are we mad for making the demand on Education to train man up for the love of a brother whom he has seen ? The realism of the Greeks must unite in our Education with the moral inspiration of the East ; still, the latter must form the basis of the entire fabric of Education ; for to confess our weakness, we give preference to the poor, the central figure in the civilization of Judea; for the element of beauty in the Greek world may exercise our admi- ration ; the poor call forth our benevolence. Education among the ancients was the business of slaves ; in the middle ages it was left to the .nurch ; in our day it is a trade. But the Educa- tion of the race must become a religion, and the state and the citizen must give it their best thoughts and warmest support. We especially insist upon orderly homes, which are for men and women what schools are for chil- dren. For we hold that the Education the family provides for all through life is of a higher order than that of the school, which is but partially 4/6 The Scourges of Humanity. provided during a comparatively brief period of life. Howe, labor, property, health, the fajnily and Edji- catioii are secured to the masses, with the opportunity of acquiring suburban dwellings, and with these ele- ments of civilization the peace of society and the sta- bility of the govcrnme?it are guaranteed. The effects of crowding in large towns, says Charles Bray, are ill health, misery, drunkenness and degradation. Ups and downs natural to com- merce, make the operative wreckless. Waste and lowest licentiousness, or starvation are the alter- native.^ The disadvantages of the factory system may be avoided by uniting it with the culture of a garden patch, which a man can tend when he can- not sell his time to better advantage in the labor market. Our industrial system, says Sir A. Alison, brings to-day to the masses weakness and debasement, national grandeur and private degradation. Where- over, as in the Jura, or the Val d'Arno, manufactur- ing employment is coupled with separate dwellings and rural residence, and the laborer can safely base his calculations upon something that is certain, there is industry and frugality, and beautiful little properties gratify the traveller in those delightful regions. On the other hand, there is not to be found among civilization a more dissolute or reck,- The Scourges of Humanity. 477. less race than the silk weavers of Lyons or Spital- fields, the cotton manufacturers of Rouen or Man- chester, or the muslin operatives of Glasgow or Paisley. The national commerce bought at the price of the strength, health and moral soundness of the masses becomes the nation's curse. The man who could discover a mode of combining manufacturing skill with isolated labor and country residence, would do a greater service to humanity than the whole race of ph ilosophers. Dr. Elijah Harris stated most forcibly, before the committee on crime, appointed by the Legislature of New York, that crime in the different city wards was always in proportion to crowding. Sing Sing, the House of Refuge and the like State institutions trace their criminal inmates and juvenile offenders to the worst tenement houses. Nothing but health- ful domiciles secured by a stringent sanitary legis- lation, can prevent wasting disease, pauperism and crime. Overcrowding, in dark and filthy tene- ments, wipes out all moral distinctions. Mine and thine lose their meaning, thieving becomes natural aiicl crime habitual, and hence the increasing de- moralization of the densely packed populations of growing cities. END OF VOLUME I. UCLA-Young Research Library LC191 .R81 L 009 590 711 9 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 001 281 361 4