S^H f^f^mnfru^ m UC-NRLF llllllll!! $B 17 HE ■MmMMMPMPimMliM LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. "Received y^^ 6 V893 '^9 -^ OF THE * UKIVBRSITrlj 62 EDUCATION ABKOAD. opportunities of seeing the effect of foreign education upon many young Americans, and have observed that it is almost always a failure. I remain, yours very truly, Kew Haven^ June 2, 1873. My Dear Sir, — With the opinions expressed in your Report as to the advisableness of sending American boys abroad to be educated I am fully agreed. Of course, there are differences in individual characters and circumstances, and what is bad on the whole may be found good in exceptional cases ; but I am convinced that, as a rule, our children are much better off at home during the period of their training. The profitable time to be in Grermany or France is after the completion of an ordi- nary course here ; and the more profitable, the more thorough that course has been. Or if a youth can afford the time and mind to take a certain period out of his regular studies and go abroad, vacation-like, to learn the language and come back to his work, that may also be a good thing. I have a very strong feeling as regards the necessity of the two chief modern lan- guages, (especially the German,) to any one who claims to be liberally educated ; but I think that even this may be bought at too dear a price. Very respectfully yours, W. D. WHITNEY. Letters expressing concurrence in the same general views were also received from Rev. J. P. Thompson, D.D., now in Berlin, and familiar with German schools and universities; D, C. Oilman, President California University ; Hon. J. P. Wick enham. Superintendent of the schools of Pennsylvania ; J. G Bodwell, D.D., late Professor in the Hartford Theological Sem inary, and for some fifteen years a resident in Europe ; Hon. J W. Simonds, Superintendent of Public Instruction, ISTew Hamp shire ; J. H. Twombly, President of the University of Wiscon sin ; and Hon. H. D. McOarty, Superintendent of Public Instruc tion of Kansas. EDUCATION ABROAD. 53 Instead of my personal impressions and observations in Europe which I intended to present in further illustration of this subject, the opinions of some representative journals are given in the following pages. These are but specimens of many similar articles published, but enough to show that this subject is now up for discussion in all parts of the country, and that the mania for European education is mischievous. No paper falling under my notice has dissented from those views. This remarkable unanimity of sentiment on the part of so many emi- nent and experienced educators and editors from different States, different denominations and parties, is itself a confirma- tion of their truth. With the desire to foster a healthy public sentiment, I have cited many " witnesses." Their combined and concurrent testimony will have more weight than extended arguments from a single individual. Of late years a disposition has shown itself among us to send our children abroad to be educated. So far as this springs from that vulgar spirit which toadies whatever is foreign, which cheerfully pays double price for an article manufactured next door, but labeled " Paris," which flings money right and left in foreign travel, to make the natives stare, and only gets laughed a;t, we have nothing to say. There are a good many Jim Fisks in the world, male and female, big and little. They must strut and swell during their brief day, and then collapse after having begotten their kind. We have no words to waste on such. To the sensible, however, who only seek the best good of their chil- dren, we would like to say a few words. In the first place, good as the Prussian schools (it is to Prussia most are sent) may be in themselves — and even these are not what they used to be — they are not the best for American youth. The latter inherit difterent tendencies, breathe a different atmos- phere, have different aspirations, and must reach success by dif- ferent methods, and, in a word, take pretty much the whole of life differently. In every nation the schools are the growth of all the forces that operate within it, — history, tradition, social char- acter, civil institutions and religion, — and tend constantly to reproduce and perpetuate them in kind. If, now, we wished to Germanize our children, and establish them in Prussia as their permanent home, the schools of the latter, with their studies, methods, spirit, influence and general surroundings, would be just the thing for them; but just the wrong thing, if we wish them to be, and to remain, patriotic, practical, successful Ameri- can citizens. 4 54 EDUCATIOX ABROAD. Foreign schooling is unsafe, morally. School years are the most susceptible in the whole life. This gives them their chief value for all purposes of right education, making them the seed-time for the life-long harvest. But it is also a prime source of danger, making the youth quick to take ineffaceable impressions from error and sin, while so little protected by judgment, knowl- edge of himself and of the world, and moral stamina. The Chris- tian parent sends his child with an anxious heart to the boarding school or college even in this country, notwithstanding all the Christian influences that surround the latter, above the average of the general community. Must it not seem like inviting his ruin to send him so far away from home influence ; from the land of revivals ; from institutions of learning founded in prayer and ever begirt with it ; to a land where revivals are almost unknown ; where the Sabbath is a holiday ; where infidelity abounds ; where vice goes in the garb of virtue ; and where no high-toned public sentiment guards him around like the angel camp of Jehovah. Of course, if the child stays long in Germany, he will bring back with him a pretty good knowledge of the German language, — and such a knowledge is not to be despised, — but it will have been gained at the expense of a still more valuable knowledge of the English language and literature, the richest in the world, and the most important to him in almost every conceivable direction. As to the private boarding-schools, which are supposed to be specially adapted to foreign youth, Mr. Northrop says that they are generally much inferior to the public schools, and that many of them are superficial and pretentious, mere swindling concerns. Such testimonies should be conclusive with all who seek only the best good of their children. — Watchman and Reflector^ Boston. At the dedication of the new Jefferson. School, in Washington, Hon. B. G. Northrop strongly condemned the prevalent fashion of sending American boys to Europe to be educated. This warn- ing was indorsed by Prof. Tyndall. We also indorse it. Such a practice is anti- American and dangerous, tending to subvert our free institutions, both by conveying the impression that our edu- cational advantages are inferior, and by giving to foreigners the training of our youth and the direction of their minds for action when they shall reach mature manhood. The mistake might be fatal were it general and wide-spread enough. Our educational system, like our political, is peculiar, and dif- ferent from that of European countries. The spirit of our schools and colleges is allied to the spirit of our popular form of govern- ment. Its tendency is toward individual and political freedom, and the sovereignty of the will of the people. Our schools have a republican bias. So in the countries of Europe, under a monar- chical form of government, education is made to conform to the prevailing political ideas. Science is undoubtedly the same, but EDUCATION ABROAD. 55 the discipline and the moral atmosphere of European schools are essentially despotic. There is a recognition of class distinction^, an homage paid to aristocracy, and a reverence shown for mon- archy, which cannot fail to make their impression on the plastic mind of the young. In short, the general tendency is toward aristocratic and monarchical institutions, as the general tendency of education in America is toward republican institutions. These things are inevitable. A man's physical condition is no more influenced by the air he breathes than his moral condition is affected by his social and political surroundings. One's physical constitution may be so strong as to resist, to a great extent, the evil effects of a bad atmosphere ; and so one's moral constitution may be able to ward off the influence of aristocratic and monar- chical surroundings. But the chances are strongly in favor of his suffering from the effects of both.. If young and docile, the gen- eral disposition is to yield and conform to surrounding associa- tions and circumstances ; and as the earlier impressions are the more lasting, one seldom recovers from the bias given in childhood and youth." The molding and foundation of character is one of the most delicate and important of duties, which the present gen- eration always has to perform toward the rising generation. In so far as it fails in the discharge of this duty, either through thoughtlessness, carelessness, mercenariness, or neglect, is it re- sponsible for the future of society and of the nation. The indi- vidual may inherit good or bad propensities, but his character, as a general rule, is likely to be very much what education and surrounding circumstances make it. It is our business, therefore, to look to these things — to the educational influences and the moral, social and even political, as well as religious surroundings, of our youth. If we would have them American, we should edu- cate them as Americans ; not in a narrow and bigoted sense, but in all the liberal principles and free and independent ways of the intelligent, self-governing American citizen. Can we do this if we send them into a foreign land to be educated by strangers, whose ways are not our ways, and whose institutions are not like our institutions ? If there are any advantages to be enjoyed in foreign schools not possessed by our own, then we would add to ours these advantages, if it is possible. But if not possible, then give the American youth a thorough education at home before sending him abroad. Let him go only to finish his education, after having exhausted our educational resources ; for surely there can be no advantages so great as to overbalance those of a home education, and none that may not be enjoyed after the home education is completed. When the mind has been well drilled in American ways and grounded in American principles, and when the mental muscle is well developed and the understanding fairly opened, we have little to fear I'rom bringing our young men and women in contact with foreign institutions. They cannot fail to perceive the contrast, and the favorable light in which it places the land 56 EDUCATION ABEOAD. of the free and the government founded and bequeathed us by- Washington and his compatriots. We may then reasonably expect their experience and observation in foreign lands to make them all the more American in feeling and aspiration. — Utica Herald. It is a real service which * * * ^^ g q^ Northrop, of Connecticut, has rendered to us all, in his recent effort of striking, high and clear, a note of objection to the Ameii- can mania of educating our boys and girls abroad. It is not doubted that Europe can offer some intellectual advantages which America does not possess. Nor is it denied that a residence in Europe, both for sight-seeing and for study, is itself, if properly managed as to time and duratio;i, of the highest educational value, and indeed indispensable to a complete culture. But it is most strenuously to be urged that there is unwisdom and danger in tak- ing an American child for education out of his own country, and keeping him out of it through all the most sensitive years of his life. The best preparation for an active life in America is to have had in America the most of one's preparation for active life. Ex- pertness in several languages is a fine thing, no doubt ; but it does not need, and it does not deserve, to be acquired at the sacrifice of an American boyhood, and of all the home-made earnestness, of all the indigenous fun, and of the innumerable and unspeakable in- spirations and aspirations born of an American school-life. Whoso sends his boy abroad for a period of training to cover his boyhood, is liable to receive him back again by-and-by, neither an American boy nor an American man, but that most elegant hybrid — an ■elegant polyglot foreign gentleman of American birth, who has been several times all round the circle of the sciences and the vices, who has lost the best gifts of America and gained the worst of Europe, and who at last settles down to home life, which is to him both a mystery and a bore. — The Christian Union^ New York. In comparing European and American education, we find the two systems essentially different, both in organization and methods. The German Empire, for example, is largely despotic in character. The schools are so thoroughly managed in the inter- ests of government, that they necessarily conform to the imperial pattern. The individuality of the citizen is almost entirely lost in the State. The course of study, the text-books, the sentiments of devotion to the existing state of things in the government, the exclusion of all really progressive ideas, all unite to make one a mere tool in the hand of the government. In the university the instruction is conveyed almost wholly by lectures. The use of text-books and examinations is almost entirely neglected. The lectures. EDUCATION ABROAD. 57 given in a language foreign to American youth, are at best but im- perfectly understood. A student in a German university writes thus to the Yale Gour- ant: "The instruction in the university consists entirely of lec- tures. The student selects his own course. Except the recom- mendation of certain books for reading or reference, recitation or instruction through books has no existence : likewise there are no examinations. A large number of students move about from one university to another, according as they wish to hear this or that lecturer. They spend about three years in this way. As the German student's mode of work is very different from that of the American, so is the general mode of life. The students are formed into societies or ' corps.' These form an important factor in the student's life. Their avowed purpose is social enjoyment. What is meant by ' social enjoyment ' in all these clubs is guzzling beer, smoking, howling and gaming all night. Wednesday and Satur- day nights are rendered hideous by these revelings. Duelling is common among German students. W^ith the exception of Fresh- men, almost no 'corps' student is seen without his gashes and scars, produced by fencing with the rapier." This picture of German student life needs no comment. Our American schools have before them a different ideal from this. We live on a different soil, iSreathe a different air, have different civil and religious institutions. Whatever is good in the Old World we are ready to adopt. Whatever is suited to the genius of our institutions we can assimilate. Whatever is necessary to our peculiar conditions and growth, we can incorporate. Ameri- can genius need not hide its head. Already her authors and scholars have a world-wide •fame. Already her systems, both of common schools and of free government, are the wonder and ad- miration of the world. As wealth and prosperity comes in, let not wisdom and patriotism depart. We can educate American youth at home, as no university in Europe can do it. The fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the equality of all men before the law, and many other distinctive American ideas, which our youth need to learn, and which ought to become a part of their manhood, can only be learned in America, and as the character is forming in youth. American education aims not only at the development of the individual, but at the means by which each rising generation is put in possession of the attainments of previous generations, and becomes capable of improving and transmitting this inheiitance. It secures the regular progress of society. It fashions childhood and moulds the character of youth, by instilling into their minds the thoughts and purposes that the commonwealth is designed to establish and perpetuate. The United States as a nation has a marked and distinct char- acter. Its institutions, literature, arts, aims and hopes are all its own. It is working out its own destiny. Now to preserve the life and character of this nation, to maintain and advance its insti- tutions, is the province of our system of education. Aristotle 58 EDUCATION ABKOAD. says : " The most effective way of preserving a State is to bring up the citizens in the spirit of the government, to fashion or, as it were, to cast them into the mould of the constitution." — The Western^ St. Louis. We regard it as unquestionable that the best education for an American is to be obtained at home and in American institutions. No parent who has good judgment will, as a matter of choice, send a mere child to a foreign land to be educated, unless it be for foreign residence or some foreign service. And even in such a case it would be far better that the foundation should be laid at home. There are no better schools in the world for the training and teaching of children from the beginning than are to be found in our own land. For specific acquisitions, and in some particular departments, foreign schools may afford superior advantages ; but for a complete education of the physical, mental and moral powers, and under proper religious influence, we are satisfied from observa- tion both at home and abroad, that there is no country in which an American child can be so well educated as in our own. Neither cramming nor polishing constitutes education. A child must be taught to think and to investigate, and this is done nowhere more successfully than in many of our own schools. The same may be said with regard to the higher education of our youth. American colleges are now so thoroughly equipped with the requisite facilities for study, with professors and lecturers, men eminent in their several departments, and our institutions for professional training are of such a Jiigh order, that there is no occasion for a young man to go abroad for study. Nine out of ten can study to far greater advantage at home. We have no hesitation in saying that American institutions, taking the same number of youth, would turn out a larger proportion of men well informed and well prepared for the active duties of life than any foreign institution with which we are acquainted. The training whi(;h a young man receives in an American university, while on some points it may not be so thorough, or the knowledge . he acquires so profound, is on the whole more general and far more practical than in English or Continental universities. In very rare instances, if at all, would we advise any young man to forego the advantages of a home education for the hope of what he might acquire abroad. For one desiring to enjoy the advantages of European study, a far better plan would be to complete a regular course in some one of our well furnished colleges, and then perfect his training and extend his acquisitions by study under some of the eminent pro- fessors of the old world. This would be to gain the advantages of both, and to place the matter upon the right foundation ; a good home education. There is much to be gained by foreign study as well as by foreign travel ; but the loss would be greater EDUCATION ABROAD. 59 than the gain for any one who intends to spend his active life in his native land, to seek his preparation for it by early education abroad. By such a course he would, in nine cases out of ten, be unfitted for his future course rather than qualified for it. Home education for American youth should be the rule to which the exceptions must be very rare. — New York Observer. We have seen, within a few mouths, much to our gratification, various articles in the nature of a protest against the sending of American youth to Europe to be educated. We have specially in mind an article, which we heartily endorse, from the Hon. B. G. Northrop. For advanced scholars pursuing the study of some sciences as their specialties, and for those who wish to perfect themselves in the speaking of the modern tongues, the schools of Europe furnish facilities which do not exist on this continent. But for such disciplinary education as our colleges can give, such professional training as our universities can impart, and for accomplishments which the average man of learning is, in our country, supposed to have acquired, there is no necessity nor any other sufficient reason for going abroad. There is not a particle of evidence that any foreign institutions of learning are, on the whole, superior to our own, except in a few branches of scientific research. Therefore, nothing is gained on the whole, intellectually, by the sending of our lads and young men to Euro- pean schools. A little is gained, mayhap, in the line of aesthetics and the cultivation of the taste ; but the power of art is so often abused and made an instrument of corruption that the gain is more than offset by it. Then, youth sent abroad suffer. They suffer, if not from real home-sickness, from loss of family influence, and home feeling, and domestic attachments, and the nameless charms of American sociality. They suffer from the loss of patri- otism. It is more than many older men can do to resist the des- potic tendencies in the thought and speech of the continent of Europe. There the people sneer at our country^ our government^ our free institutions, and the very principles of liberty. And so our young men learn to belabor their own country, and to speak disparagingly of its prospects. They suffer from the loss of man- liness. Society there exists in stratifications. Things are stereo- typed. Matters go by some unexplained inevitableness. The individual is lost sight of. One must watch to see what will turn up. Foresight, plan, self-reliance, energy, manly self-advancement, are not dreamed of as parts of the personal development. And so many a young man returns from abroad with all the " vim " taken out of him. They suffer from a loss of conscientious morality. In Europe, the distinction is small between manners and morals. Good manners are supposed to include good morals, and the morals are not much looked after. A very thin partition divides vice from virtue. The social atmosphere is commonly an infection* 60 EDUCATION ABROAD. and impure one, and all become more or less tainted in it. And they suffer from the loss of confidence in the reality and simplicity of the Christian religion. The scepticism, the ritualism, the ra- tionalism, of foreign countries unsettle and dethrone their thou- sands every year. Cathedral, choir, pageantry, pomp, and other extravagances, and the reaction from these things, combine to lead multitudes astray. Our belief is, that the longer our students and other young men can be kept away from Europe, the better it will be for them, both as scholars and as men. — ITie Pacific^ San Fran- cisco. In the great and luxurious capitals of Europe, art, culture, taste and aesthetics generally have been long cultivated, and there has been great necessity for study and proficiency therein. For show, display and amusement are great forces employed in the government of monarchical countries. Hence the statesmen of Europe constantly employ them as effective means to repress thought and to paralyze efforts for liberty. But education in these things is universal in foreign countries. It is inculcated in public schools and in private academies. It is taught in Church institutions and in colleges; it is impressed upon the minds of youth by the oration, the lecture, the press and the pageant. Such instruction is the atmosphere of Europe, and few can resist the influence which the prevailing and universal ideas and tastes have upon them. Now the ideas and teachings of American institutions of all kinds are radically opposed to all this. Intelligence, thought, simplicity and self-reliance are the fundamental ideas and princi- ples of our system. American youth are here brought under the influence of that atmosphere, and it leads to very different results. It is estimated from reliable data that 7iot less than fifty thousand Americans are residing in Europe^ i. e., that number are on the average all the while remainijig there. The periods of sojourn vary from a few months to as many years, and it is evi- dent that they are exerting an influence and an educating power on those old communities. Those Americans who live and are educated abroad, feel and exhibit the leaven of evil which is mixed with their ideas. They come back very much changed, and bring European ideas with them, and spread the principles among their friends and associ- ates. On the other hand, those who come from Europe already leavened by nature and culture do not get rid of that evil, but remain the fond admirers and supporters of the old country. But we think that with adults Americanism is harder to wear off than Europeanism is. Still we doubt whether those who remain abroad long enough to be taken and charmed with European ideas, and who endeavor in their home life and in their public and religious life to put them in practice, are the best and most useful citizens. They commonly show in some way that they are not in EDUCATION ABROAD. 61 full sympathy with us, and the people treat them with suspicion and coldness. The danger to our free and republican institutions from this source, therefore, we do not think to be imminent nor of large proportions. But there is another class of our American youth for whom we have long felt some apprehension. Besides the tourist, the pleas- ure-seeker, the invalid and the economist, there is a large and increasing class of youth of both sexes who go abroad to be edu- cated. They are of the most tender age, ranging from eight or nine years to eighteen or nineteen. They go as members of the family, their parents remaining with them, or they are placed in seminaries and boarding-schools especially provided for that class of students. The text-books, the methods, the routine and exer- cises are all European. Monarchical and aristocratic, absolute, or despotic ecclesiastical ideas and principles are steadily and only inculcated. We do not find many youth of European families in our col- leges and seminaries, coming here for purposes of education. The idea of doing so would seem preposterous to foreign parents. They are persuaded that their schools are the best in the world, their religious ways the standard, and they would fear the effect of the inculcation of republican ideas. Political circles would mark such persons as unsafe for promotion and office, no matter how highly educated, and hence the ambitious shun such a record. Now it may be that our political economists will have to take up this matter, for the safety of our institutions. Our schools of all grades are as good as any in the world, and for the purpose of raising up a generation to preserve and improve our institutions, they are the best in the world. Professor Porter, of Queen's Col- lege, Belfast, very recently paid a very high compliment to our public school system, and to the "people's colleges," which are the result of the practical application of our system. And he gave that preference and deserved praise after close personal observation and study. — Tke Episcopalian^ Philadelphia. It is growing to be an important question, whether our coun- trymen are acting wisely who send their boys and girls abroad for education, by European methods, in European schools, acade- mies and colleges. Certainly, the custom is now quite common among those who have the means for its indulgence ; and it is likely to become still more prevalent. It is hardly to be doubted that in a religious aspect the custom is not promising of good results. Except in Great Britain, per- haps there is no part of Europe in which youth at school or col- lege are not subject to the insidious instillment of dangerous spec- ulative theories concerning God and His revelation of Himself and of His works in Holy Scripture. There is scarcely a faculty in any of the continental colleges the members of which are not 62 EDUCATION ABROAD. largely infected with religious views — when they have any — which are unsound or positively dangerous. The same holds true of schools in the grades next to colleges, and which derive their tone and inspiration in a powerful degree from them. Parents will find, therefore, we fear, that the religious sentiment of their children will be seriously impaired by their contact with the almost universal scepticism, mysticism, and materialism which prevail in the schools and colleges of the continent, and which color its literature, its science, and its polite society. The transplantation of our youth to Europe for their education is equally full of peril in its social bearings. What becomes of the influence of home upon the youth of both sexes who are thus withdrawn from parental guidance and restraint? These home influences, so tender and so strong, so minute and so comprehen- sive, are the subtlest and the most potent of all the processes of education that can be brought to bear upon the plastic minds of the youth of a country. They are an essential part of education, of which none can be deprived without a serious injury to the entire range of the nobler afiections and sentiments. Nothing that may be done by a sojourn in Europe to quicken or sharpen the intellect can serve as a sufiicient substitute for the influences and training of the family — the example of and the intercourse with father, mother, and sisters, at home. There is peril, also, in this custom in a political view of it. Youth growing up in a foreign land are gradually weaned from and forget the land of their nativity, and thus lose their national distinctiveness. They cease to be operated upon by the tradi- tions, to be moved by the histories, or to be animated by the sym- pathies which quicken and keep alive the patriotism of a people. They lose their attachments foi* places — for their native village, city, State, or nation — and become cosmopolitan and un-Ameri- canized. They insensibly abate in their attachment to our insti- tutions, and as insensibly are taught to depreciate our form of government, and to discard the political truths upon which our republic was founded. No exalted love of country, and no inti- mate knowledge of its needs and capabilities, can be expected from those who have been nurtured through the generous season of youth on a foreign soil. There is, moreover, danger that the withdrawal of our youth abroad for their education, if it proceeds as largely as there is now reason to apprehend, will exert a seriously injurious reflex influence upon our higher educational institutions at home, by the abstraction of the material on which to work, and of the support and patronage which are essential to their progress and well- being. Besides, we all know the tyranny of fashion ; and if it should become the fashion for all our promising and brilliant youth to look forward to the completion of their education in Europe, it cannot fail to be a serious blow to the cause of higher education in this country. EDUCATION ABROAD. 63 As the result of our own observation, we have not discovered that any intellectual superiority has, in fact, been attained by those of our youth who have been educated in European acade- mies or colleges. As compared with those who have been edu- cated at home, they have reached no higher grade in culture, in scientific acquirement, or in substantial mental power ; and they are not as well fitted to cope with the practical needs of our polit- ical, social, moral, and commercial surroundings. With a few exceptions, they rather resemble hot-house plants, which are prone to wither or be stunted by the process of repeated transplanting, if the skies prove adverse. — Christian Intelligencer^ New York. It is becoming one of the fashionable follies to send American boys and girls to foreign boarding-schools. Being extra-expen- sive and rather the aristocratic thing to do is enough to settle the question with many; and there are others who, without much thought, assume that there must be some superior advantages in the training of European schools. That there are a few special advantages cannot be denied ; but when the account is made up and the balance struck, it is hardly a question but that an educa- tion abroad will result in decided injustice to our American youth. The acquisition of continental languages is one of the special advantages better gained by such an education. It is a graceful accomplishment to speak French, German 'or Italian with vernac- ular fluency and the proper accent. But it is very questionable whether the aTcrage exigencies of life will ever make it of much positive advantage. The general benefit of travel and intercourse with polite society in forming the manners and address of a young person is something, especially if he be accompanied by his parents or other family friends. But having said this, let us glance at the per contra side. The foremost objection is, that it exiles and un- Americanizes our young folks just at the formative period when it is so important that they should be surrounded by the atmosphere and spirit of their native land. '' The man without a country " was painfully conscious of his unhappy lot, but the boy without a country is an unconscious sufferer. He will get over home-sickness as he does sea-sickness, and at that receptive age readily takes in foreign ideas and takes on foreign airs and customs, to the real detriment of his future character and success in life. The American home and school, especially the public school, are the natural out- growths of the American spirit, and every American boy has a natural right to grow up in their congenial soil. It is a positive injustice to banish him from such surroundings, and tear away and transplant him into a foreign soil just when the tender and multitudinous fibers of his being are rooting themselves and gath- ering strength. The German home and school are the outgrow^th of the German spirit, and as to the French home and education, 64 EDUCATION ABROAD. the least said the better. Bismarck is a fair product of German education, and Louis Napoleon was not a very unfair specimen of French development, and the puny and vapid prince imperial has had probably the best done for him that French education could do for a boy. But none of these characters would run well in our country, as measured by their prestige and success abroad. Precisely the same line of argument applies to the education of our young girls. By and by, when they can see and judge for themselves, hav- ing been rooted and grounded in the American faith, let them go abroad. We have none of these objections to urge against the after advantages of a reasonable range of foreign travel. But enough of Paris and Vienna is already imported here. The malaria of foreign immoralities of idea and custom is sufficiently permeat- ing our society, without our taking pains to settle down our boys and girls, during their most absorbent period, right in the midst of it. We are glad to see that many thoughtful and intelligent Americans, who had ample opportunities for observation abroad, most fully and emphatically confirm these opinions. Mr. North- rop, whose large experience as an educator entitles his decisions to special weight, in the closing lecture of his recent course before the Lowell Listitute, while setting forth fully and clearly all the points of peculiar excellence and possible superiority belonging to European schools, at the same time urged the strongest reason why American youth should not be educated abroad. As to the outcry from some quarters against our public schools as being " godless," and deprecating the proposed substitute of parochial and sectarian schools, Mr. Northrop asserts that our American and unsectarian plan of teaching only the universal and compre- hensive ethical principles of a common Christianity is far more effective than the continuous drilling in religious dogmas and cer- emonies, and that in those countries where they teach the cate- chism more than Christianity, it is at the practical expense of Christianity. Infidelity and immorality actually most abound where an hour each day is specially devoted to so-called religious instruction. — Springfield Republican. We have for years held to the views set forth and defended by Hon. B. G. Northrop, as to the serious error many American families are falling into, in sending their young children abroad to be educated in foreign schools. There are no important advantages to be gained in placing lads in any of the great classical schools of England, and many marked disadvantages arising from the peculiar discipline of these institutions, and the traditionary customs still in force in them. The curriculum of these schools is narrow, although the classical drill may be thorough enough. The provision for the training of young ladies in Europe is, to say the least, not in advance of portions of the EDUCATION ABROAD. 65 United States. We have repeatedly conversed with both parents and young people who have passed years upon the European con- tinent, the latter attending the schools in Switzerland and Ger- many. The one advantage gained has been a correct and ready- pronunciation of the German or French tongue, or both, but this has been secured at a great loss, socially, morally and intellectu- ally. With one accomplishment, these young students have found themselves much behind their American peers in general knowl- edge. The schools they have attended, instead of being agreeable and holding upon them with pleasant memories, are only referred to with positive disgust. After young gentlemen or ladies have well advanced in their rudimental English studies, have become acquainted with the grammatical construction of European lan- guages, and learned to translate them freely, then a residence, under proper guardianship, in France or Germany, to secure the native pronunciation, or to attend the learned advanced course of lectures, or to cultivate, under extraordinary advantages, the aesthetic arts, is certainly to be greatly desired. Even at this stage of their education, to send young persons, of either sex, without suitable family companionship, is a serious experiment, attended with great discomforts, and often with no little moral peril. The cheapness of living in Europe has been one great reason, on the part of persons with limited means, for seeking its educa- tional opportunities. This advantage is every day decreasing. With the increasing flood of travelers, and of temporary residents from America and Great Britain, ordinary family expenses have greatly advanced. The Franco-Prussian war, like our own, by awakening a spirit of speculation, has enhanced the value of almost all forms of merchandise, as well as of land and rents, throughout central Europe. It costs fifty per cent, more to live in any of the university towns than ten years since. Dr. Northrop, from per- sonal examination, clearly shows the advantages of our public- school training for young pupils over the foreign public or board- ing schools, and points out distinctly the evil influences, of a political and moral character, as well as the great intellectual loss, attending the education of our children abroad. This paper, from such a source, will awaken thought in the minds of intelli- gent parents harboring such a purpose, and hinder any hasty act of this nature which may prove of irremediable injury to a lad or girl. — Zioii's Herald^ Boston. We fully agree in opinion with those who look upon the expa- triation of youth during the all-important years of their early education as extremely perilous. It is surely much better to labor for the elevation of our own institutions of learning, than to look to other lands for the training of our future citizens. To imbibe the aristocratic ideas of monarchical nations would fit the youth for contented citizenship of those lands, but may unfit them for 6Q EDUCATION ABROAD. their future as republicans. Let us learn all we can of the wisdom of other lands, and profit by their experience, but by no means expose our youth to the possible demoralization of a French or German boarding-school during the years when their characters are most impressible. If parents accompany their children the dangers are lessened, as they may take with them the restraints and inspirations of home ; but far better would it be to offer strong pecuniary inducements to accomplished educators, to make our country their home, and aid us in the work of training our youtli for the great future that lies before them as citizens of this favored land. — Friends hitelligencer^ Philadelphia. Just now the tide is setting in for parents and guardians to take their children or wards abroad, with the view of visiting the Exposition at Vienna, and various other places on the continent during the summer, and then in the fall fix them at some school in France or Germany. It is urged that this course will make them refined in their tastes and manners, and that the schools abroad are better, and the course of education is more thorough. Plausible, however, as all this is, we are convinced it is a seri- ous mistake, and the consequences of this foreign residence, these foreign studies, and these foreign associations, in a necessary sep- aration from their own country at the most susceptible period of their lives, are of the most serious character. At some of the universities in Germany, or divinity halls in Scotland, or the hospitals and clinics of Paris and elsewhere, young men, on the completion of their course here, may perhaps go and spend a season with advantage. But to be placed at an earlier period of life in the schools of almost any part of Europe, and thus be separated from home and country, cannot but be attended with serious risks. Is it asked, " What are the grounds for this position ? " 1. The systems of education or training abroad are not, as a whole, and for the thorough practicalities of life, equal to those in our own country. 2. Separation from home and country during the most impor- tant formative period of life cannot but tend to undermine that love of kindred and country which always goes so far to make the most devoted patriots. 3. The very fact of a young man or woman being sent abroad to study, implies an inferiority in our schools and educational institutions at home; and thus the whole tendency is to have such persons enter upon life with a feeling that their own coun- try is not equal to foreign countries. 4. With human nature as it is, the tendency of this foreign course will be to give aristocratic ideas, and of superiority in soci- ety and in practical life, and thus unfit such persons to engage in almost any profession or calling here. — W. TT. Presbyterian^ JPhil- ' la. EDUCATION ABROAD. 67 We have heard much, probably too much, said in favor of the institutions of Gennany. In the study of the classics and in gesthetic culture no doubt they do excel. In fitting the American pupil for practical life in America, they are as far from us in points of adaptability as they are in statute miles. If the schools of Prussia or Austria were considered in regard to their adaptability to the wants of American life and citizenship, they would be seen to be foreign in more senses than one. The father says, " J/y son shall receive a /ore^^^^ education." And so he will if you deny him tl\e associations and republican influences of his own country during eight or ten years of the best part of his life, and place him under the unstimulating and incom- patible monarchial influences of another's " Fader land." To be sure their higher universities are magnificent in plans, architecture and appliances, but the instruction there given is classical and presents a grand array of literary achievements, while its main practical teaching is that the man is the creature of the government and exists for the government. How unfitting is this for American life. The youth returns and for a few weeks may live on the flourish of his " foreign airs," but soon awakens from the delusion to see every American energy outstripping him, every republican princi- ple avoiding his tainted touch, and the time in which he should have gro^ n into the sympathy of his own country and her inter- ests, gone, gone forever. Of the moral education of the American pupil while in Europe, the most that can be said is that it is questionable. An inter- change of thought between nations we would do all in our power to promote, but the undeveloped mind of the pupil in no way ac- complishes such a comparison. That the Germans laugh at our experiment is evident from the fact that they have established private schools for foreigners which are vastly inferior to their public institutions. — Iowa /School Journal. Hon. B. G. Northrop has taken in hand a growing evil, with a determined purpose to check it if possible. We refer to the prac- tice of sending our American youth to Europe for their education. He has begun by the publication of an able, and rather startling, article on the subject. He proposes to follow up the work, and in this he is aided by some of the most eminent friends of educa- tion in the country. We do not understand that his work has reference to men of some maturity and culture, college graduates and others, who go to pursue extended studies in the Universities, but rather to quite young persons who go to Europe for early training in the public schools, or worse still, in the boarding schools. Mr. Northrop, by his long connection with educational aff*airs in this country, by his extensive acquaintance, and his per- sonal observation of the schools of which he speaks, is eminently qualified for the work he has undertaken. 68 EDUCATION ABROAD. Mr. Northrop's paper shows that, for the purpose of intellectual drill and acquisition, our own institutions are better suited to the wants of our youth than those they will find in France or Prussia. — Illinois Schoolmaster. Few Americans have had better opportunities of studying German schools and institutions, or of mingling with American students abroad, than Rev. J. P. Thompson, D.D., long a resi- dent in Berlin. I therefore? asked his opinion on the question of educating our youth abroad. He replied in full and elaborate letters, appearing in the New York Observer^ from which I condense the following statements : The question of sending American youth abroad to be educated is of high public importance, since it concerns, in no small degree, the future of American scholarship, literature, patriotism, manners and religion. As a contribution towards these principles, I pro- pose to give an analysis of the German and American methods and courses of instruction, with reflections suggested by a some- what close observation of German training and its results upon mind and character. 1. For the easy acquisition of the French and German lan- guages by their children, parents who can arrange to live in Europe might do well to reside for a term of years in France or Germany, with children between five and twelve years of age. In such cases it is assumed that the children, while mingling in school and at play with children of another tongue, will be kept under the social and moral influences of an American home ; will learn lessons of patriotism and of religion with the English speech ; and will be trained in the table manners, the j^ersonal habits, and the social courtesies, in which the well-bred Englishman or Ameri- can is so superior to the average German, and even to the French- man. If you do not wish your child to eat with his knife, to suck down his soup like a maelstroom, to help himself to butter or salt with his own knife — because there is neither butter-knife nor salt- spoon upon the table — to comb his hair and blow his nose vocifer- ously where others are eating, to talk at the top of his voice, to mix all sorts of vegetables in greasy gravies steaming with onions, and to content himself with a teacupful of water for his daily ablu- tions, and with the alternate ends of the same towel for a week, and to carry huge chunks of black bread and raw sausage in a bit of dirty newspaper to school for his lunch ; if you do not wish him to puflT cigars with his infant breath, and to utter a " Gott !" a " Bewahre !" or a " Herr Jesus !" at every incident of school or play ; if you would not have him learn to sit stolidly staring at a lady in church without oflering her his seat, or to shove her off the sidewalk by always keeping to the right ; in a word, if you would not have your child grow up in all things the reverse of EDUCATION ABROAD. , 69 the quietness, the cleanliness, the decorum, the courtesy, that mark the true English and American gentleman, then do not place him in his growing and plastic years in any average " pen- sion" in Germany. If circumstances should necessitate his enter- ing such a home, wait till he is old enough to stand it or stomach it, without sacrificing those properties of life which are inculcated in good American families. To sum up all on this head, if you can arrange to live abroad, and thus to surround young children in their earliest years with the healthy influences of home and the invigorating atmosphere of patriotism, in that case you may con- trive, without detriment to other interests, to give them the facility of acquiring modern languages, and also the taste for nature and art, which may be cultivated to such advantage at any well-selected point in Europe. But, on returning to America, you will need to take special pains lest the knowledge of foreign tongues should be lost through want of practice in speaking. Experience shows that a language picked up so easily in child- hood may be dropped almost as easily through disuse in riper years. 2. Young men and young women, between twenty and twenty- five, who have passed through the customary training of American schools and colleges, and who have sufiicient stability of mind and character to be entrusted with the care of their own principles, habits and opinions, may be sent abroad to good advantage for the pursuit of some specialty in literature, science and art, under celebrated teachers, and for that enlargement of mind, that gener- osity of judgment, that amenity of feeling, that cosmopolitan appreciation of men, peoples and institutions, which a sagacious and susceptible spirit will gain from travel and residence in for- eign lands. A thorough college course at home, supplemented by an eclectic course at a German university, and this again capped with the professional course in America — or the latter two inverted — would give a young man the best possible preparation for his calling in life. The sending of American youth abroad with such a preparation, and for such accomplishments, is by all means to be encouraged ; and the college officers at home will be found the best advisers as to time, place, and lines of study. 3. But for the interval between twelve and twenty, Germany can offer to American youth no better means of training than they have at home, nor so good a preparation for American life as American schools and colleges provide. A youth at this period might, indeed, be well-enough educated abroad, so far as mental culture is concerned, though this is questionable ; and if attended throughout his course with parental guidance and control, he might be kept true to the tone of American manners, ideas and principles — yet even then he must suffer a lack of discipline in the English language, in American history, and above all, in the practical, common-sense American logic, and a loss of the esprit de corps of the American Fraternity of Letters, and of the inspirations of American patriotism and progress, for which no facility in for- 5 70 EDUCATION ABEOAD. eign tongues could ever compensate. There will be exceptional cases, hut no wise American parent loho can avoid it will subject a child to the risks and privations of a European education during the critical period from twelve to twenty — certainly not alone ! The private schools of Germany are so far inferior to the best private schools in the United States that these can be left out of the estimate, and the comparison will be made most fairly be- tween the Gymnasium of Germany and the Classical Academy and College of America, which cover the same period of life, and between the Polytechnic Schools or the Gewerbe-Akademie and the corresponding Scientific School — say, for instance, the " Shef- field" department at Yale University. The course of study in the Gymnasium covers a period of nine years ; in the first five years the student is exercised in the follow- ing studies ; 1. Beligion : History of the Old Testament, the Gospels, the Catechism, and the Songs of the Church. 2. The German Language: Readings and declamations, studies in the Sagas, the poets and the historians, with lectures and gram- matical practice. 3. Latin: Grammar, with oral and written translation, prosody, selections from Ovid, Csesar de bello Gallico. 4. Geography : Physical and political. 5. Mathematics : Arithmetic to decimals ; Algebraic signs and formulas ; Elements of Geometry. 6. Natural Science : Preliminary lessons in the Animal King- dom, in Botany, Mineralogy, and Anthropology. 7. Greek: Grammar, translation and composition, selections from Xenophon's Anabasis. 8. French : Grammar, Chrestomathy and composition. 9. History : Greek, Roman, and German. To these are to be added lessons in drawing, in writing, and in singing. Compare this with the studies at Phillips Academy or at Willis- ton Academy, and you will see that in classical and mathematical studies the first five years in a Berlin Gymnasium do not carry a student so far as is required for admission to the Freshman class at Yale. In geography and history no greater advance is made ; and the study of German and French would be at the expense of English to an American boy at a time when he most needs to be exercised in his native tongue. Is it wise, then, to send him abroad for no greater advantages than these ? The remaining four years of the Gymnasium run nearly parallel with the collegiate course in America. Compared with the course at Yale College, neither in extent nor variety of instruction, in text-books nor in topics, is there a shadow of advantage in the German Gymnasium over the Ameri- can College. Why then send a boy of sixteen to Germany ? EDUCATION ABROAD. 71 The comparison given above of the course of study in a Berlin gymnasium with that pursued in the parallel years at Phillips' Academy and Yale College demonstrates to the eye that, in respect of discipline in the classics and the mathematics, and of general attainments in literature, history, and science, the Ameri- can youth from 12 to 20 would gain nothing by forsaking his home-schools for the schools of Germany. The Gymnasium is the gate-way to the University ; in the University, Faculties cor- responding to the schools of Law, of Medicine, and of Theology in the United States, and to the post-graduate Faculty of Philos- ophy and the Arts lately established at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and other colleges, are grouped about a common center ; instruc- tion is given wholly by lectures, and the student selects his own course, and in that course his favorite professors. The Gymnasium and the University are sought by the sons of the wealthy, the titled, and the cultivated classes, with whom education is a pass- port to good society, and also by young men who are looking forward to one of the liberal professions, to the civil service, to a professorship, or to the pursuit of literature, philosophy, or science, m some specialty of the higher learning. This course is denomin- ated " the spiritual culture." But Germany has been awake also to the demands of recent limes for an education directed to more practical ends, and based more largely upon the physical sciences and the knowledge of things than upon letters and the classics. For such an education provision is made in the Gewerbe-schools, crowned with the Gewerbe-Acsidemj or Polytechnic. The course in the latter as to topics and aims is parallel to that of the Scientific schools in Amer- ica, and since the German Polytechnic is supposed to offer special advantages to American youth, I propose to test this claim by an analytical comparison of the best specimens of each — say the Polytechnic at Carlsruhe or Berlin with the "Sheffield" at New Haven. In the Gewerbe-^chool, which is preparatory to the Poly- technic, the division and subdivision of classes corresponds with that of the Gymnasium ; but the four upper classes will answer for a comparison with — say the "Hopkins Grammar School" at New Haven, as a preparation for the Sheffield. These classes study as follows. 1. Religion : Biblical History ; Heathenism and Judaism ; the first century of the Church ; the Reformation ; the Augsburg Confession, and the Canon of the Scriptures. 2. German: the poets, lyric, epic, and dramatic; history of German literature in the Middle Ages and in modern times. 3. French : Thierry, Rollin, Voltaire, Souvestre, Montesquieu, Barran, Moli^re, Guizot, with grammatical exercises, translations, and criticisms. 4. English: Survey of English literature; study of selected authors, in which Dickens' Child's History of England, and Irving's Sketch Book are combined with Bancroft, Macaulay and Shakespeare ! 72 EDUCATION ABROAD. 5. History and Geography: Greece, the Orient, Rome, the Middle Ages and Modern Times. 6. Mathematics : Algebra, Logarithms, Geometry (both analytic and synthetic), Trigonometry, Stereometry, elements of Differen- tial and Integral Computation, with special reference to Analytical Mechanics. 7. Physics : Heat, Electricity, Magnetism, Motion, Steam, Elec- trodynamics, Cosmical Physics, Optics and Acoustics. 8. Chemistry and Natural History : Botany, Zoology, elements of the Anatomy and Physiology of plants and animals, Crystal- lography, Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Geognosy, Chemical Technology with laboratory work, elements of Compar- ative Anatomy. Neither Latin nor Greek is taught at all in this school. In comparison with the Academic preparation for a Scientific School in the United States, the Gewerhe-^o^dooX shows a superior- ity in the study of French (and naturally of German), and in the departments of Physics and Natural History, where the studies of the Freshman year in the Sheffield are, to some extent, anticipated in the Prima of the Gewerbe. But in Mathematics, Geography, History and English, the Academy boy in America is carried quite as far as the Gewerbe boy in Germany ; and besides, the Academy boy has a training in Latin and Greek, in Caesar, Cicero, Virgil and Xenophon, of which the Gewerbe boy has nothing at all, though one would think that a scientific education should embrace at least the rudiments of the languages from which the whole terminology of science is constructed ! Thus far then the account between the Academy and the Gewerbe is fairly balanced, and the apparent superiority of the Gewerbe in preliminary scien- tific studies disappears when we pursue the comparison between the " Scientific" and the " Polytechnic" ; for it is then seen to be not at all a difference of quantity or degree in the matter of a scientific course, but simply of the distribution or classification of studies through a given term of years. Commonly the boys in the Gewerbe-school are of a lower grade socially than the boys in the Gymnasium, especially in large cities ; — as a friend expressed it, " Gentlemen send their sons to the Gymnasium and the University^ only the common people send to the Gewerbe-schools." From ocular and nasal inspection of some of these schools, I must say that an American boy of nice family ought not to be subjected to such companionship, for if " cleanli- ness is akin to godliness," the average Germans have sadly fallen from grace ! And for that matter, even in the Berlin University, an American student informs me that his German seatmates dis- gust him daily, in the brief intervals of the lectures, by taking from their pockets bread, cheese and sausage, done up in a smutty newspaper, eating with a jack-knife, and then combing their hair with unwashed hands. Such habits are largely national, but one sees less of them in the Gymnasium and the University than in the Gewerbe-school Many boys use the latter as boys once used EDUCATION ABROAD. 73 the Free Academy in New York, as a recommendation for busi- ness. The catalogue of one of the best of these schools in Berlin shows that the lower classes average about 100, the middle classes only from 40 to 50, and the upper classes dwindle to 10 or 12 ! Coming now to the Polytechnic, to which the Gewerbe-school is preparatory, how does this compare with the corresponding Scientific School in America — say the "Sheffield " at New Haven ? [I beg to be understood that I take Yale University as a standard with no invidious reference to other American colleges, but be- cause I am familiar with Yale, and have its latest catalogue at hand.] To draw out in detail the comparison of studies, text- books, exercises, etc., between Sheffield and a German Polytechnic, would require too much space ; so the reader will be so good as to accept the writer's testimony, from a minute analysis, that each and every study, in each and every subdivision, is as specifically and as thoroughly provided for at the Sheffield Scientific as at the Carlsruhe Polytechnic, not excepting the German and French languages, with only this proper diflerence, that the prominence given in the Polytechnic to German history and literature, in the Sheffield is assigned to English literature, history and composition. If a boy does not master his own language, as to style and expres- sion, between 12 and 20, he never will; and no matter how many foreign languages he may know, his knowledge will be of no avail, unless he can use it readily, clearly and effectively in his own tongue. The superiority of European education is pretty much a tradi- tion^ which many cling to through ignorance of what has been gained in America in the past generation. What would I not give to-day to have had in my yoath the classical and literary training of a German Gymnasium and University as compared with what Yale College could offer forty years ago! But for the youth of to-day the difference is not worth the voyage across the sea. Unless private reasons should otherwise direct, the un- dergraduate period, whether in the College or in the Scientific School, can be spent to better advantage at home than abroad, even for the general object of intellectual training, apart from the specific adaptation of that training to American life. After graduation, the well-balanced student should come to Germany, if possible, for a year or two of eclectic study at a University. For the same reason the young German who is look- ing forward to public life, and who would fit himself for the re- sponsibilities of these times, should go to Yale or Harvard for a year or two of study in political philosophy, and in the Constitu- tional history and law of the United States. And what a world of good it would do these young German licentiat*?s to spend a year or two at New Haven, Andover or Union in learning to put thought into their sermons. The immense superiority of the American pulpit over every other excepting that of Scotland lies in its thinking power; and it will be a sorry day for the American churches if, in a blind quest of popular effect or of the baser ele- 74 EDUCATION ABROAD. ment of commercial success, they shall part with one iota of what has made their strength, their glory, and their increase. Said a leading English minister to me, " Your American preachers thinh where we Englishmen talk!'''' Said the greatest Professor of Theology in Germany, " We have no such preaching as the Ameri- can in Germany. Ah ! if we could only have your union of thought with heart, of strength with feeling, of science with scrip- ture, we might get hold upon the mind of Germany with the Gospel." ^ Tliis thing lies partly in the mental habit of the American, but much also in the method of training — the breadth, the comprehen- siveness and the logical vigor of the American education, compared with the minuteness, the particularity, the exhaustive tradition- alism, and the speculative fantasy of the German. Beloit College, ) Beloit, Wis., July 10th, 1873. ] Bear Sir, — For the prosecution of study in particular lines of research, no doubt one can find superior advantages in some of the European schools. But it seems to me evident that so far as the beginning of mental culture and the broad basis of general intelligence and manly development . are concerned, an educa- tion in America is quite essential for American citizens. While the leading parts of science, and the principles of phil- osophy and the substance of learning are the same for all the world, the national life of any people is sustained mainly by those ideas which are peculiar to its social organization and history; and those ideas are best imbibed by young minds through the unconscious tuition incidental to courses of train- ing and culture, presented for years in the atmosphere which is charged with them. The rapid inflow upon us of foreigners whose ideas can be but slowly assimilated to their new rela- tions, makes it all the more important that those who are to be leaders of thought and influence among us be thoroughly imbued with the national spirit and prepared to guide the swift movement of our nation's progress. Then we are steadily developing a distinctively American system of education best adapted to the circumstances and needs of our own country. Our youth need to hold themselves perseveringly to the course of training thus provided. The dissipating effect of frequent changes of school regimen so com- mon with our people works mischievously. More than any- EDUCATION ABROAD. 75 thing else, it hinders thorough scholarship and high attain- ment. These considerations produce in mj mind the strong convic- tion that for the training period of education, that is, from the beginning in the primary school to the graduation from col- lege, our home institutions furnish the best facilities for edu- cating our youth for the privileges, the duties, the honors and responsibilities of American citizens. After the foundation has thus been well laid, every one who has the opportunity will gain much in general intelligence and breadth of views and in whatever specific research may be desired, by contact with the institutions of the old world. Very truly yours, A. L. CHAPIN, President of Beloit College, Dartmouth College, ) Hanover, N. IL, July 14, 18V3. j My Dear Sir. — I approve fully and heartily the view you take, and that on intellectual, moral and patriotic grounds. I have been amazed at the disposition on the part of those who ought to know and do better, to send mere children abroad for education. It is un-American. It is contrary to the funda- mental laws of culture. To reverse a Scripture figure, it is sewing old cloth into a new garment. It is like transferring a young and tender American plant to a European soil, only to grow there a little while, and then be transplanted again. It interrupts and confuses the process of development. It lays foreign foundations for what should be an American edifice. It forms, or is apt to form, a mongrel character, with an infe- licitous mixture of old-world and new-world associations and habitudes. And there are moral dangers connected with it still more momentous. That there is a period in the process of education when for- eign study may be useful, either in certain academic special- ties or in professional directions, I have no doubt. I would not underrate the advantages offered by some of the great European universities. Yet I have as little doubt that we are by-and-by to have like advantages in our own land. My advice to those who think of study abroad is, to make it not 76 EDUCATION ABROAD. fundamental or constituent, so to speak, but rather supplement ary. I have known students to transfer themselves from a col- lege class to a German university, even as early as Sophomore year, but always with a loss — not to say, in some cases, with an utter failure. Let the college curriculum be finished in some good American institution, and then, perhaps, it may be well to go abroad. Yet it would ordinarily be better, in my judg ment, to take first the professional course, and then supple- ment and enrich it at some foreign institution. He who does this is better prepared to profit by whatever teaching he avails himself of He knows what he wants. His outline of acquisi- tion is marked out. The principles are mastered around which all new informations will easily crystallize. He has, every way, a better receptivity, and will make a broader, more complete, more symmetrical tiling of his whole education. He will be a truer and better American scholar. Yours very truly, ASA D. SMITH, President Dartmouth College. Paris, Prance, July 3, 1873. Bear Sir^ — I fully sympathize with you in the sentiments expressed in your excellent article on " tlie Education of American youth in Europe," and it seems to me tbat your warning has come not a moment too soon. The paragraph beginning with " In philological studies and researches," etc., and ending with " The American boy needs about two years of preparation," etc., is strongly and tersely put, and contains truths which should be gravely pondered by all American parents who think of giving their children a European educa- tion, yet would shrink from seeing them intellectually or morally Germanized or Gallicized. After my return to the United States, when in a fitter condition to do it, I will try to give you my impressions on the subject more in full. Thank- ing you for your kind invitation to write, I remain, with many pleasant recollections of my compagnon de voyage in the Algeria, Yours with esteem, WILLIAM MATHEWS, Professor in the University of Chicago. (The above letters were received too late for insertion in their proper place.) LEGAL PKEYENTION OF ILLITERACY. My former objections to compulsory education were fully removed by observations recently made in Europe. Mingling much with plain people in Germany and other countries where attendance at school is compulsory, I sought in every way to learn their sentiments on this question. After the fullest inquiry in Prussia, especially among laborers of all sorts, I no- where heard a lisp of objection to this law. The masses every- where favor it. They say education is a necessity for all. They realize that the school is their privilege. They prize it and are proud of it. Attendance is voluntary, in fact. No- body seems to think of coercion. The law is operative, but it executes itself, because it is right and beneficent and commands universal approval. It is only the legal expression of the pub- lic will. Education, more than anything else, has fraternized the great German nation. "Whatever you would have appear in a nation's life, that you must put into its schools," was long since a Prussian motto. The school has there been the prime agent of loyalty. Love of country is the germ it long ago planted in the heart of every child. The fruit now matured gladdens and enriches the whole land. Wherever that lesson is heeded it will enrich the world. Devotion to fatherland is a characteris- tic sentiment of the German people. Shall such a people with such a history complain of compulsory attendance ? This law itself has been a teacher of the nation. It has everywhere pro- claimed the necessity and dignity of the public school. Kings and nobles and ministers of State have combined to confirm and diffuse this sentiment till now it pervades and assimilates all classes. The absence of complaint about coercive attendance is not due, as some have supposed, to an enforced reticence or re- straint. Proofs of the utmost freedon of speech abound. The Prussian military system is a grievous burden to the people. They dread it and bitterly denounce it. The law which takes 78 LEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. away every young man from "his friends, his business and his home for three weary years of military service, is hard, and is freely condemned. Many young families have left their father- land for America, and many more are now planning to emigrate in order to escape this arbitrary conscription. But even the father who is most aggrieved by the army draft, lauds the school draft. In various parts of Saxony I inquired of school -directors and others, " Do you have any difficulty in executing the coer- cive law ? The answers were all substantially the same. " Many years ago," replied one, " there was some opposition. But the results of the law have commended it to all, and they obey it without complaint and almost without exception." The pres- ent generation of parents having themselves experienced its advantages, are its advocates. Said a resident oi Dresden, "A healthy child of school age can hardly be found in this city who has not attended school. Were the question of compul- sory attendance to be decided to-morrow in Saxony by a ple- biscite, it would be sustained by an almost unanimous verdict. Public opinion is now stronger even than the law. The people would sooner increase laan relax its rigor." I nowhere learned of any recent cases of punishment for its infractions. In many places I was assured that the penalty is practically unknown. The principle of obligatory instruction was advocated by the people before it was enacted by the government. The address of Luther to the municipal corporations in 1554 contains the earliest defence of it within my knowledge, in which he says, " Ah, if a State in the time of war can oblige its citizens to take up the ^word and the musket, has it not still more the power, and is it not its duty to compel them to instruct their children, since we are all engaged in a most serious warfiire waged with the spirit of evil which rages in our midst, seeking to depopu- late the State of its virtuous men? It is my desire, above all things else, that every child should go to school, or be sent there by a magistrate." The germ of this system in Prussia is found in a decree of Frederic II, in 1763 : " We will that all our subjects, parents, guardians, and masters send to school those children for whom they are responsible, boys and girls, from their fifth year to the LEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. 79 age of fourteen." This royal order was revised in 1794, and in the code of 1819 made more stringent, with severe penalties ; first warnings, then small fines, doubling the fines for repeated offences ; and finally imprisonment of parents, guardians and masters. The penalties now are : 1. Admonition, in the form of a note of warning from the president of the local school commission. 2. Summons to appear before the school commission, with a reprimand from the presiding ofl&cer. 8. Complaint to the magistrate by the commission, who usually exacts a fine of twenty cents, and for a second offiense forty cents, for a third eighty cents, doubling the last fine for each repetition of the offense. The registers of attendance and absence are kept with scrupu- lous exactness by the teacher, and delivered to the president of the school commission. Excuses are accepted for illness, exceedingly severe weather, great distance from school, and sometimes on account of the pressure of work in harvest time. What may America learn on this subject from the long and successful experience of Germany and Switzerland? The con- trast between those countries and England, or even New York city, in regard to the number of ignorant " street Arabs." is too conspicuous to be questioned. For the patriot and the phi- lanthropist there is no more important question than : " How shall we reclaim our neglected children ?" With growing- faith in moral suasion as our main reliance in preventing ab- senteeism, I now contend for the authority of the law with its sterner sanctions to fall back upon in extreme cases. When paternal pride, interest, or authority fails, and juvenile perverse- ness is otherwise incorrigible, legal coercion should be em- ployed. When our population was homogeneous, as was the case in the early history of New England, there was little absenteeism from school. All valued education, and with rare exceptions, all native-born citizens could read and write. " Where were you born?" was the inquiry of Judge Daggett, long the Kent Professor of Law in Yale College, on finding any witness on the stand, or criminal in the dock, who could not read and write ; 80 LEGAL PKEVENTION OF ILLITERACY. and with only three exceptions, during his long time of judicial service, he never received the answer, " In Connecticut." But recently, immigration has caused startling figures of illiteracy, especially in our large cities. With this ignorance comes in- difference to education, for illiteracy involves insensibility to the evils it engenders. To remedy truancy, we should inquire first for its causes. These are various. So should be the remedies in order to meet each exigency. We should not despair of reclaiming the most desperate. They may be desponding, with no hope of bettering their condition, no pride of character, respect for truth, or even sense of shame, — yes, false and profane, and yet we must not give them up as hopeless cases, but with faith in Christian incen- tives, strive to stir the conscience and win the heart. Though unaccustomed to kindness, such boys are not of course insensi- ble to its influence. The tones of sympathy may touch a chord which will vibrate more sweetly because of its very strangeness. If we will put ourselves in the place of wayward children, so as to appreciate their wants, weakness, and wickedness even, we may tell them not in vain both of the perils they incur and the privileges they neglect. The most forlorn child I have met, when properly approached, has kindly received friendly counsel and even warnings as to his offenses. I can recall many in- stances of youth thus rescued from the street school who are now virtuous citizens. How amply have such services been compensated by grateful acknowledgments, or tears of joy, more eloquently showing a cherished remembrance of timely aid and counsel ! Neglect of school may usually be traced to parental indiffer- ence, intemperance, or other evil home influence. How many youth receive no right parental training and have no home worthy of the name. The house where they only eat and sleep is the scene of contention and profanity, fitted to drive away its inmates to the street school. Dissolute habits of parents bringing rags and wretchedness into the home turn the children as truants or beggars into the streets. These vagrants, accustomed to " bunk out " where night overtakes them, soon lose pride of character, self-respect, and even all sense of their degradation. To them the prospect of self-improvement brings LEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. 81 no bright visions of better days. Forlorn and without hope and ambition, they live from hand to mouth, content with the supply of their animal wants. Sometimes poverty, loss of parental control, orphanage, hard experience of neglect and conscious degradation, are the sources of this mischief. The "street Arabs," the juvenile vagrants and beggars who abound in certain European coun- tries, are the hardest to get to school, or to teach when there. They live in the street, without guardianship and without employment, except such as chance throws in their way. Many imported specimens of the same sort are now thronging our large cities. A due consideration of their early exposures, hardships and temptations would awaken sympathy for these unfortunate waifs in place of the coldness and disdain with which they are too often treated. When poverty detains from school, public or private charity should meet the exigency, supplying the lack of decent cloth- ing, and inviting the attendance of the most destitute absentees. In Sweden and other European countries, those children whose parents are unable to clothe them are relieved by the parish. Among us, the parents of neglected children, if not vicious, are mostly immigrants. Of the advantages of education they yet know little. A dormant parental pride, if not a sense of their duty as the divinely -appointed guardians of their offspring, may be awakened. They may be led to see that education will promote their interest and increase their children's happiness, thrift, and prosperity through life. Personal kindness, tact, and persuasion may thus win those who seem perverse. Public sentiment is moving rapidly in the direction of com- pulsory education. During the last year this question has been discussed in the legislatures of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Michigan, and other States. It is the most important school question of modern times. It is the leading question which divides the friends of education in France and England. In this great conflict, the older American States should take the lead. In each State our plans should embrace more than our boundaries. The interests of all the American States are virtually one. Like that of Switzerland, our motto should be, " One for all, all for one." The unification of Ger- 82 LEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. many and of Italy — the most important of the recent political events in Europe — are largely the results of public instruction. Our people also, diverse in race and character, need now to be fused into one. More than anything else universal education will thus fraternize all. The extension of the franchise in our country demands a corresponding expansion of the school. To give the ballot to the ignorant would be suicidal to the nation. In the interest of public morality and order, the security of life and property, as well as for the safety and perpetuity of our free institutions, every agency should be employed to secure universal education. Obligatory attendance is a corollary from the compulsory school tax. The power that claims public money for the pur- pose of educating and elevating all classes may justly provide that such public expenditure shall not fail of its appropriate end through the vice, intemperance, or perverseness of parents. The State has the same right to compel the ignorant to learn that it has to compel the penurious to pay for that learning. If education is of universal interest, it must be universal in its diffusion. Many taxpayers have said to me, " If you compel us, who have no children, to support schools for the good of the State, you must effectively provide that the children of the State fail not to share the advantages thus furnished. While we, willing or unwilling, must support the schools, the children, by constraint if not from choice, should attend school." And why not ? The following are all the objections I have heard : " Such a law would create a new crime." I reply, it ought to. To bring up children in ignorance is a crime, and should be treated as such. As 'the most prolific source of criminality, it should be under the ban of legal condemnation, and the re- straint of legal punishments. All modern civilization and legis- lation have made new crimes. Barbarism recognizes but few. To employ children in factories who are under ten years of age, or who have not attended school, or to employ minors under eighteen years of age more than twelve hours a day, is each a " new crime" in the New England and several other States. If the law may justly protect children from being overworked, surely it may prevent their continuing uneducated, for " un- educated mind is educated vice." LEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. 83 '* Such a law is a substitution of force for reason." So are all laws. They must be compulsory. At least force must always be in reserve. To the good citizen " the statutes " bring no terror. They formulate his choice and are the pledge of his safety, or the monitor of his duty. Force should always stand in the background, unless lawlessness challenges it to the front. But criminal provisions without penalties are only a burlesque of legislation. "We should draw and jiot drivel I reply "draw" to the utmost. Try all the measures and motives which kindness and argument can suggest. I have already urged the importance of making moral suasion our main reliance, and of seeking to the utmost by sympathy, encouragement and material aid where needed, to gain the confidence and cooperation of parents and children. Admitting that it is better for children to attend school of their own accord, I would use every reasonable device to make the school attractive as well as profitable. " It interferes with the liberty of parents." I reply again, it ought to, when they are incapacitated by vice or other causes for the performance of essential duties as parents. Many other laws limit personal liberty. The requisition to serve on juries, or to aid the Sheriff in arresting criminals, or the exactions of military service in the hour of the country's need, — these and many other laws do this. If the law may prohibit the owner from practicing cruelty upon his horse or ox, it may restrain the parent from dwarfing the mind and debasing the character of his child. If the State may imprison and punish juvenile criminals, it may remove the causes of their crime and its con- sequences of loss, injury and shame. To protect the rights of the child and enforce the duties of parents is not an invasion of rights nor any usurpation of parental authority. The child has rights which not even a parent may violate. He may not rob his child of the sacred right of a good education. The law would justly punish a parent for starving his child, and more mischief is done by starving the mind than by famishing the body. The right of a parent to his children is founded 6n his ability and disposition to supply their wants of body and mind. When a parent is disqualified by intemperance, cruelty, or insanity, society justly assumes the control of his children. In 84 LEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. ancient Greece, the law gave almost "anlimited authority to the father over his offspring. The same is true in some semi-bar- barous nations now. In all Christian lands, the rights of the parent are held to imply certain correlative duties, and the duty to educate is as positive as to feed and clothe. Neglected chil- dren, when not orphans in fact, are virtually such, their parents ignoring their duties, and thus forfeiting their rights as parents. The State should protect helpless children, whose rights are sacred, and especially these, its defenceless wards, who other- wise will be vicious as well as weak. We should recognize the claim of the humblest child to an education as that which it cannot neglect without detriment to itself and harm to a human soul. The State may not by act or omission doom a single child to ignorance and its consequent evils. The temporary hardships incident to the observance of such a law will be counterbalanced a thousandfold by the perma- nent advantage of both parents and children, but its neglect will inflict lasting evil upon them and the whole community. The poor cannot afford to transmit their poverty by depriving their children of education — the surest source of thrift. The old proverb, " penny wise and pound foolish," fitly characterizes the short-sighted policy of permitting indigence to perpetuate ignorance, and in turn ignorance to perpetuate indigence. " It arrogates new power for the government." So do all quarantine and hygienic regulations and laws for the abatement of nuisances. Now ignorance is as noxious as the most offen- sive nuisance, and more destructive than bodily contagions. Self-protection is a fundamental law of society. Education is the universal right, duty and interest of man. If the State has a right to hang a criminal, it has a better right to prevent his crime by proper culture. The right to imprison and to execute implies the right to use the best means to prevent the need of either. The State has an interest in all its children, for its thrift and virtue and its very life depend upon their training. "It is un-American and ill adapted to our free institutions." Such a law in our country should command popular sympa- thy more than in any monarchy, for here the law is made by the people and for the people. It is not pressed upon them by some outside agency or higher power. It is their own work, LEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. 85 embodying their judgment and preference, and expressing their own view of the necessity of universal education. The form of compulsory education which existed in Connecticut for over a century was not forced upon the people as " subjects." It was rather a living organism, of which they as "sovereigns," proudly claimed the paternity, growing up with their growth, and recognized as the source of their strength and prosperity. But to put the question in the most offensive form, it may be asked, " Would you have a policeman drag your children to school ?" I answer, " Yes, if it will prevent his dragging them to jail a few years hence." But this law in our land would involve no " dragging" and no police espionage or inquis- itorial searches. With the annual enumeration and the school registers in hand, and the aid of teachers and others most conversant with each district, school officers could easily leaFn who are the absentees. There is no country in the world more jealous of liberty and more averse to any form of usurpation than our sister republic of Switzerland. It rejoices in being the land of freedom. It glories in free schools, free speech, free press, free trade, free roads, free bridges ; for its roads, though the best in Europe, are without toll, and even the most costly suspension bridges are free. It has freedom in religion and freedom in traveling, no passports being required and no examination of luggage ; no standing army, and no gensd^armes brandishing the threaten- ing hand of power, as everywhere else in Europe. And yet this free people in all their twenty-two cantons, except four of the smallest, choose for themselves the system of compulsory attendance. As a matter of fact, with some rare exceptions, every healthy child in his turn attends school. Director Max Wirth of Bern proudly asserts that " no grown up boy or girl exists in this confederation — save an idiot here and there — who cannot read and write," Till he is six or in some can- tons seven years of age, the Swiss child may only dream of school, as he sees his brother or sister going thither before seven o'clock in summer, and eight in winter. Swiss parents see to it that these shall be pleasant dreams. The school is the center of attraction and interest. Attendance is held as a privi- lege rather than a legal necessity. The law itself has helped 6 8Q LEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. to invest the school with dignity and honor. "Attention to his school is not a fixed and formal business to. a Switzer, as it might be to a Briton and a Frank, but an unceasing and engrossing duty from his cradle to his grave." The cost of education in Switzerland is, for them, immense — greater than that of the army. In contrast with Switzerland, France spends fifteen times more for the army than for schools, and even in London and Berlin the war budgets are in excess of the edu- cation budgets. The cost of education in Switzerland is con- siderably over two millions, while that of army is less than two millions. In our own country there is efvery assurance of kindness and conciliation in the execution of this law. The plan is truly democratic, for its entire management is for the people, and by the people, through school officers chosen by and responsible to them. In 1871, Connecticut passed a law enforcing attendance at school of all children discharged from factory or other work for that purpose, with a penalty of five dollars a week for every week of non-attendance, not exceeding thirteen weeks in each year. The people plainly approve that law, stringent as are its provisions. It has already accomplished great good, and brought into the schools many children who otherwise would be absen- tees. There have been no penalties, no prosecutions, no oppo- sition even. The law itself has been a moral force. It is itself an effective advocate of education to the very class who need it most. In 1872 the same law was made universal in its applica- tion. The official returns for the current year since the latter law went into operation have not yet been received. The law is generally approved and its wisdom and necessity are admitted. Since its enactment, no article, editorial or contributed in any Connecticut paper has expressed disapproval of it, so far as my knowledge extends. It is certainly increasing the a^ttendance in many places. The Trustees of the State Reform School say it has already lessened commitments to that institution. As yet there have been no prosecutions under this law. Persua- sion rather than penalties should be the main reliance. Bat kindness and argument prove more effective when it is under- stood that the sanctions of law might be employed. LEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. 87 It is largely through immigration that the number of ignorant, vagrant, and criminal youth has recently multiplied to an ex- tent truly alarming in some of our cities. Their depravity is sometimes defiant, and their resistance to moral suasion is obsti- nate. When personal effort, and persuasion, and organized benevolence have utterly failed, let the law take them in hand, first to the public school, and if there incorrigible, then to the reform school. Those who need education most and prize it least are fit subjects for coercion, when all persuasives are in vain. The great influx of this foreign element has so far changed the condition of society as to require new legislation to meet the new exigency. The logic of events demands the recognition of compulsion, for we have imported parents so im- bruted as to compel their young children to work for their grog, and even to beg and steal in the streets when they should be in school. " Compulsory education is monarchical in its origin and his- tory." Common as is this impression, it is erroneous to say " It is an exotic, a plant of foreign growth which can never be transplanted here." In Connecticut, certainly, it is. indigenous, and for more than a century it grew with the vigor of a native stock. Massachusetts and Connecticut may justly claim to be the first States in the world to establish the principle of compul - sory education. On this point their earliest laws were most rigid. They need but slight modification to adapt them to the changed circumstances of the present. Before the peace of Westphalia, before Prussia existed as a kingdom, and while Frederick William was only " elector of Brandenberg," Massa- chusetts and Connecticut adopted coercive education. The Connecticut code of 1650 comprised the most stringent provi- sions for compulsory education. The selectmen were required to see that so much •' harharism' was not permitted in any family '' as that their children should not be able perfectly to read the English tongue .... upon penalty of twenty shillings for each neglect therein." "If after the said fines paid or levied, the said officers shall still find a continuance of the former negligence, every such parent may be summoned to the next court of magistrates, who are to proceed as they find cause, either to a greater fine, or may take such children 88 LEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. from such parents and place them for years, boys till they come to the age of one-and-twenty, and girls till they come to the age of eighteen years, with such others who shall better educate and govern them, both for the public convenience and for the particular good of the said children." In our early history, public opinion so heartily indorsed the principle of compulsory attendance, or rather, so thoroughly accepted the necessity of universal education and so generally desired and secured it for children and wards, that attendance lost its involuntary character. ISTo doubt the law itself origin- ally contributed to diffuse and deepen this sentiment. If at first it was the cause, it became at length only the expression of public opinion. The requirement of this law, that " the har- bartsm^^ of ignorance should not be tolerated in any family, helped to make it disgraceful to keep even an apprentice from school. To bring up a child or ward in ignorance was shameful and barbarous in the eyes of our fathers. This is still the senti- ment of the genuine "Yankee." High appreciation of educa- !tion is one of the most precious traditions of New England. To it we owe our growth, prosperity and liberty. But now we are a polyglot people. Immigrants from every nation of Europe abound, and some have come from Asia and the islands of the sea. The Germans and the Jews, the Hollanders, Scotch, Swedes and Swiss, almost without exception, and most of the Irish, favor universal education. But there have come among us many, ignorant themselves, and caring not if their children grow up like them. They are so ignorant as to be insensible to the evils of illiteracy. Yet, on the other hand, there is a growing number of immigrants, who, realizing how they have suffered all their lives from ignorance, desire a good education for their children. The most plausible objection to such a law is that it would sometimes bring hardship upon poor parents. But the Connec- ticut law provides for extreme cases, and authorizes the school officers to make such exceptions as necessity may require. No public of&cers will show more sympathy for the poor than they. In their hands the administration of the law will be kind and paternal. The right to enforce will be used mainly as an argu- ment to persuade — an authoritative appeal to good sense and LEGAL PEEVENTION OF ILLITERACY. 89 parental pride. If any parents are too poor to send their chil- dren to school, individual charities or town benefactions cannot be better expended than for their relief Pauperism cannot always be prevented, but illiteracy may be. Even paupers should not be left to transmit their pauperism, by robbing their children of the sacred rights of education. If the schooling of all should involve some hardships, evils more and greater far would follow from ignorance. Better stint the stomach for three months a year than famish the mind for life. There need be, and in this land of plenty there would be, no starvation to the body, while that education is insured which will lessen the amount of hardship and poverty a thousand -fold. It has been objected that the school system has taken so deep a root in the sympathies and social habits of the German people that attendance would be just as large without the law as it is now. It may be so. But so far from being an objection, this fact is strong proof of the efficiency of that law which has itself helped to create so healthful a public sentiment. Were the law to be abrogated to-morrow, the individual and general interest in public education would remain. The same might have been said of Connecticut for more than one hundred and seventy years after the adoption of compulsory education. During all that period, a native of this State, of mature age and sound mind, unable to read the English language, would have been looked upon as a prodigy. Such a citizen of the old New England stock I have never met. Still, in Connecticut, as well as in Germany, it was the law itself which greatly aided in awakening public interest, and in fixing the habits, associations and traditions of the people. It has been said that, " In some countries, without any coer- cive law, the attendance is as good as in Prussia or Saxony with such a law." This is simply a mistake. Holland has been cited as an illustration of this statement. But while the Dutch show commendable zeal for public schools, the attendance is not relatively so large as in Prussia, and illiteracy is by no means so rare as in Germany. But Holland has^ indirectly, a system of compulsory attendance. It denies certain immunities and privileges and honors to the uneducated. The parents of children who are not instructed up to the required standard 90 tEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. cannot receive relief from certain charitable institutions. The ban of legal condemnation falls upon them as truly, though not so effectively, as in Prussia. In Eotterdam, Hague, Amsterdam, and elsewhere in Holland, I was assured that the working classes regard the school law as practically compulsory. No one is permitted to teach even a private school who has not been duly " examined and ap- proved," and the public supervision includes private as well as public schools. The tendency throughout all Europe is more than ever toward the recognition of the right and duty of the State to educate its entire population. Public sentiment, educated by recent events, now connects ignorance with crime and poverty, with individual and national weakness, as cause and effect. Sadowa taught Austria, and indeed all Europe, a salutary lesson. "Defeated in war, let it be our policy to excel in the arts of peace," became the national idea under the inspiration of Count Beust. There was no wasting of zeal and strength in the mad cry of revenge, as now in prostrate France. Austria was not unwilling to learn from an enemy, and adopted the educational system of her conqueror. Her school system was re-organized and vitalized, and the principle of compulsory attendance made prominent. Education is obligatory in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and also in Switzerland, except in the four small can- tons of G-eneva, Schy wz, Uri and Unterwalden. The total pop- ulation of these four cantons is less than one-seventeenth that of the whole nation. The new school law of Italy provides for both free schools and obligatory attendance, and includes the following important '' Civil Service Eeform :" "No one can be appointed to any State, Provincial, or Communal office what- ever, who cannot read and write." More than thirty years ago, Guizot, in his Educational Re- port to the French G-overnment, ably opposed obligatory edu- cation " as the creature of centralization and as one of those rules which bear the mark of the convent or the barrack," but the recent experience of France has changed his views, and now he is its earnest advocate. That one of his advanced age, long ranked among the foremost men of France both as a scholar and statesman, cautious, yet positive in his con- LEGAL PKEVENTION OF ILLITERACY. . 91 victions, a historian in liis tastes and studies, and therefore conservative, should now stoutly advocate that compulsory sys- tem which he so successfully opposed when himself the Minis- ter of Public Instruction, in 1833, is significant The logic of events during the last forty years proves that the very system which he largely originated is unsuited to the wants of the nation and the age. M. Jules Simon, late Minister of Public Instruction, explained to me his plan for the re-organization of Primary Instruction, by making it both gratuitous and compul- sory. The penalties were to be a maximum fine of one hundred francs, and loss of suffrage for three years. After the year 1880, no citizen was to become a voter who could not read and write. But his bill was promptly rejected at Yersailles. While Thiers proposed an increase of eighty millions in the budget for the army, he said nothing for education. Even under Napoleon, fifteen times more was spent for the army than for education, including Primary, Secondary and Superior. The provisions for Superior education were liberal, and absorbed nearly one- half of the whole appropriation, leaving the Primary schools most meager, both in quantity and quality. The [Jltramontane party, now dominant, stoutly oppose both gratuitous and obli- gatory instruction, and little is likely to be done for the better education of the masses. The objection that obligatory instruc- tion would challenge resistance as an act of usurpation, seems ludicrous in a land where military conscription and the most rigorous police surveillance are universal and unresisted. Gam- betta as well as Gruizot, and the liberal republicans, strongly advocate obligatory instruction. Even the Commune favored universal and compulsory education, as also do the majority of the Parisians still. The opposition comes from the clerical and conservative parties. The new school law of England permits all local Boards to enforce attendance. Public sentiment throughout England is now changing rapidly in favor of making compulsory attendance national and universal, instead of permissive. As one of many illustrations of the change, Kev. Canon Kingsley, formerly favoring non-compulsion, now advocates the compulsory prin- ciple. 92 LEGAL PEEVENTION OF ILLITERACY. The motto of tiie National Educational League, of which George Dixon, M. P., is President, is, " Education must be Universal, Unsectarian, Compulsory." At the General Con- ference of Nonconformists, held in Manchester, January, 1872, and attended by 1,885 delegates, there was great unan- imity in favor of enforced attendance. This assembly was as remarkable in its character as its numbers. The argument of Mr. Jacob Bright, M. P., on this subject was received with great applause. He said that the best part of the Education Act, that which is worth all the rest put together, is the per- mission to compel attendance, which should be the absolute law throughout the entire kingdom. The laboring classes are not opposed to such a law. They advocate it and would welcome it. The fear so often expressed that compulsory education would be offensive to the laboring classes as a usurpation of parental and popular rights seems unfounded. Certainly in Europe the workingmen in their various conventions show a remarkable unanimity on this sub- ject. At the late International Workingmen 's (Congress held at Lausanne, the subject was fully discussed. The sentiment cordially adopted was, " Education should be universal, com- pulsory and national, but not denominational." Such declara- tions of the workingmen refute the objection that the prepo- sessions of the masses are against obligatory education. Be- ginning with the Eeformation, and first fully applied in demo- cratic New England, " on both sides of the ocean it is associated with the growth of liberty. One of the blows dealt against the ancient regime by the French Revolution was the establish- ment of compulsory education, showing what was thought liberal by those to whom liberalism was a matter of life and death." In England the working classes are asking for a Tiational compulsory system of education. By invitation of A. J. Mundella, M. P., I attended the National Trades-Union Con- gress, held at Nottingham for the week beginning January 8th, 1872. That body seemed unanimous in favor of compulsory attendance. One of the leading members, an able and effective speaker, said that in large and crowded assemblies of working- men he had often distinctly asked, " Do you agree with me that we want a national compukory system of education?" and LEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. 93 not a dissenting voice had he ever heard from the working- men. The leader in the new organization of the agricultural laborers of England, Joseph Arch, in a paper read at the last annual meeting of this National Congress, held in Leeds during the second week of January, 1873, advocated universal and compulsory education. Himself a farm laborer, he was denied early school advantages. From his own bitter experience he is led strongly to condemn the virtual exclusion of children from school by their constant employment in factories, farms and workshops. " Child labor means pauperism, crime, igno- rance, immorality and every evil," is his motto. Joseph Arch, who taught himself to read, aided only by some associate mem- bers of the " Primitive Methodist " Church, may be fairly regarded as a representative of the laboring classes. Gifted by nature, he has already become the idol of the farm laborers, and eminent members of Parliament, like Samuel Morley, Geo. Dixon, Thomas Hughes, Lord Fitzmaurice, the Hon. Auberon Herbert, and others, are openly co-operating with him. The Congress at Leeds heartily endorsed and supported his views. The latest reports from England show that the attendance has increased most in those towns which adopted the compulsory system. This plan is no longer an experiment in England. The absence of all opposition from the lower classes, and the good effects already witnessed, commend this measure to gen- eral favor. It is expected that the permissive clause will be dropped by the next Parliament, and compulsory attendance be made universal. In the discussion of the Education Act Amendment Bill, in Parliament, during the present summer, Mr. W. E. Forster, the author of the original bill and Head of the National Educa- tional Department, speaks of himself as long since " an advo- cate of compulsory education. It is due to myself to say that as regards compulsory attendance I have personally the same opinion as that which I expressed in debate last year. It is my conviction that direct compulsion might be safely made the general law for England and Wales. But I do not deny, that if we are mistaken in this opinion, a premature step would be fatal to our own cause." The National School Sys- -^^^^^ >^ OP THB ^. UNI7EIISIT7?, 94 LEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. tern of England, being not yet three years old, requires careful nursing in its infancy. The schools are not free, but supported in part by a small rate or tuition al charge. Mr. Forster adds, ^' Compulsion must fail if we try to punish a parent who is too poor to pay a school fee, for not sending his child to school. There are in the kingdom at least 200,000 children of school age, of out-doors paupers^ I fear there are more, — and from among these children come a large proportion of those whose educa- tion is neglected." The required fees or tuitional charge furnish the most serious obstacle in the way of enforced atten- dance. Let the schools be made free as everywhere in Switzer- land and the United States, and this great difficulty vanishes. The fear that it would tend to pauperize the people to give schooling free to all is groundless. When schools are supported by taxation, all contribute alike in proportion to their means. Instead of pauperizing the people, it liberalizes and enriches them. In Switzerland, the land of free schools, there is less pauperism than in any other country of Europe. "The school fee" ol* rate-bill, as it was here called, was fully tried in many American States, for long periods and under varying circum- stances, and it was everywhere " found wanting." All experi- ence in this country favors free schools, and this is now the universal system in the United States. Wherever repealed, the rate-bill has never been re-enacted, and the free system once tried has been retained. It is admitted that the school fees repel large numbers from the schools of England, and form the chief hindrance to the compulsory system. On this subject the test of experience was decisive in Connecticut, when in 1870 the first years' trial of free schools showed a great increase of attendance, and proved that nearly 6000 children had been regularly kept from school, by the " odious rate-bill," which was almost unanimously con- demned by the people as burdensome to the poor, imposing an unequal tax upon those more blessed with children than in their basket and store, becoming a tax upon parental affection and a barrier between poverty and intelligence. Experience has disproved the objection that free schools would lessen the interest and responsibility of parents. The argument was, that men never value what costs them nothing. LEGAL PREVENTION OF ILLITERACY. 95 But the fact is that all parents do pay, according to their means, their fair and equal share for the support of this central public interest. This system not only enhances the interest of the parent, but dignifies the school in the esteem of the pupils, and quickens the educational spiiit of the whole people. Every tax payer, having contributed his share to the support of the schools, even if it be only his poll-tax, naturally looks after this investment. Such was our theory, and now we say such is the fact. The school registers show a great increase in the number of visits of parents to the schools. The united testimony of teachers and school officers affirms the quickened sympathy and zeal of parents. Their visits to the school-room are always welcome. Where all are partners in the concern, none need be debarred by fear of intrusion. Our best teachers most cordially welcome the visits of even the humblest pa- rents. There is ample evidence that the "free system" has in many ways increased the efficiency and popularity of pubjic schools. Such it is confidently believed would be the result in England. Then the compulsory system would work as well there as in Switzerland. CULTUEE AND KNOWLEDGE. The motto of President Woolsey so mach applauded at the last commencement of Yale College, applies to the College no more than to the Common School. In the primary classes as truly as in the University, " we should place character before culture and culture before knowledge." The theory of Education is an important subject of investi- gation for teachers and school officers. While there is general agreement as to the end of Collegiate studies, widely different views still prevail in regard to the primary purpose of a Com- mon School education, and of course, to the processes of attain- ing it, for the theory of education w^hich is adopted will sub- ordinate all the processes to itself. Correct views on this sub- ject are of the utmost consequence. It is very desirable that parents as well as teachers and School Officers should investi- gate this topic and acquire definite and settled views upon it, in order that there may be harmony of plans and sentiments, and efficient cooperation between them. Complaints are sometimes urged against teachers for intro- ducing Object Lessons, Drawing, and Map-Drawing, "Mental Combinations" in Arithmetic, various blackboard exercises, LessoDs in English Language and Literature, with the memor- izing of choice selections in poetry and prose, and other im- proved methods of instruction which now have the sanction of the most experienced and successful educators. These ob- jections arise from the novelty of the measures adopted and the fact that the reasons that favor them are not yet understood. As all truth is in harmony, so the best processes of acquiring truth accord with the conditions of mental growth. The true processes to develop each faculty of the juvenile mind are identical with the best methods both of gaining and retaining knowledge. The alphabet itself is learned most rapidly, when it is used as a means of observing and remembering given sounds and forms. The teacher w^ho aims thus to train the CULTURE AND KNOWLEDGE. 97 ear, tlie eye and the voice, makes sliort as well as pleasant work of the a, b, c's. Even the simple exercise of spelling may and should be disciplinary. With beginners, spelling should be the chief exercise, commenced the first day of school attendance before they have completed the alphabet, and as soon as three or four letters are learned. The early printing of words on the slate and blackboard imprints their form on the memory, thus training both the eye and the hand. Increasing observation confirms my belief that the art of spelling may be essentially completed under twelve years of age. The memory changes with our years and acquisitions. In early life it is circumstantial, at a later period, philosophical ; that is, the little child naturally and easily grasps items and details, like words and their forms. In riper years, while the memory grows more tenacious of principles, comprehensive facts, general truths and classifications, it retains such minutiae with difficulty. While the reflective faculties are yet latent and the child is unprepared for grammar or any study specially exercising these faculties, and when the perceptive powers are most active, is the favorable time for the mastery of spelling. Though the child can now do little in any of the higher studies, he can accomplish most in this. Spelling and reading go together. If early and rightly taught, spelling more than any- thing else will facilitate reading. As the most important study in the elementary school, the latter deserves far more promi- nence, as well as improved methods of teaching it. It is no exaggeration to say that four-fold more time should be devoted to this fundamental study in the primary school. In compari- son with its importance^ no subject is usually so much neglected and so poorly taught. In visiting many thousand schools for the last twenty years, I have had occasion to observe how generally proficiency in this, one department infuses new interest into every other study and elevates the whole school. Such results often wit- nessed seem to demonstrate the wisdom and necessity of the change above named. What a revolution would be seen in our higher schools and with all advanced classes if the dreaded " drudgery " of spelling and the difficulties of mere reading, I do not here speak of elocution — were completed under ten 98 CULTURE AND KNOWLEDGE. or twelve years of age. The ability to recognize ordinary words at sight, and thus read with rapidity and without con- scious effort, gives to the juvenile mind the encouragement and impetus which it then most needs. This is the surest method to facilitate all other and higher studies, for early mastery of this art fosters a love ot reading and a fondness for books, while aversion to study and hatred of school are often produced by tasking children in grammar and kindred studies, before they can readily read and understand them. Once implant a love of reading, and you have a strong pledge of scholarship through life. Instead of being a monotonous and mechanical drill, spelling, by a great variety of methods, should be made an attractive and intellectual exercise ; pursued not merely to learn the lite- ral elements of words, but for the higher aim of cultivating the eye and conceptive faculty, acquiring the power to bring before the mind's eye the form of a word as a unit^ as it looks on the printed page, just as one would so carefully examine a robin, a dog, a rose or a picture, as to be able vividly to recall the image of the object. It is a great and most important art to see so accurately, that one's conception of visible objects may ever be as clear and distinct as were the original percep- tions. This process early developed in spelling may be repeated at will in reference to any objects of perception and descrip- tion, and thus the child gains a new and invaluable power which enters into all the graver operations of the mind in natu- ral science, history, poetry, and the fine arts. The principle w^hich I have illustrated in regard to the alphabet and spelling is of general application. Any and every study is more thor- oughly mastered when it is pursued not as an end, but as a means of the higher end of mental culture. Many parents seem to labor under the mistaken impression, that the attainment of knowledge is the first if not the only thing to be aimed at in school, while the training of the faculties is regarded as a matter of secondary importance. The power of repeating, parrot-like, what has been crowded into the mem- ory, is looked upon as the highest evidence of scholarship. The quantity, rather than the quality of attainment, is with them the test of improvement The great work of education CULTURE AND KNOWLEDGE. 99 is thus reduced to a mere system of mnemotechny. Instead of seeking to discipline and develop the faculties of the pupil, his mind is treated as a mere receptacle, which is somehow— and in their view it matters little how — to be filled. It is not strange that where such views prevail, a mechanical method of instruction should be followed, which goes through a certain routine of mnemonic exercises, without any definite aim to train the mind and awaken thought and reflection. Nor should it be a matter of surprise, when we witness the legiti- mate results of such a system, and see pupils pass through the ordinary course of study with little control over their minds, utterly deficient in the power of application, with little interest in study, and without any purpose or prospect of future improve- ment. Thus the most ample and varied acquisitions become of little worth, because there is no power to use them, to arrange and classify them, and form new combinations. For it is the power of using the faculties and resources of the mind, in which lies the secret of success. The elements of the several branches may be fixed indelibly in a child's memory ; he may even have the leading facts and principles of the sciences upon his tongue's end, and become a walking encyclopedia, and yet be only a learned driveler. He can tell you what he has read or heard, and nothing more. Take him off the beaten track, ask him any inference from the stores which he has gained memoriter^ and he is dumb. He has not learned to think for himself, nor ever dreamed that the great object of study is to draw out and exercise the various faculties of the mind. ^ The habit of learning words and formal propositions without understanding their meaning, is still too prevalent in our schools. This practice arises from the mistaken theory of education under consideration. Such superficial attainments are always chaotic, and sometimes worse than useless. They lead the pupil complacently to imagine that he has the substance, when he has only the shell and semblance of knowledge. He has stud- ied the book, but not the subject of which it treats. A sense of our ignorance is the first step towards knowledge ; but a system of instruction which leads pupils to over-estimate their attainments, fosters conceit and indolence, and removes the incentives to study. 100 CLTLTURE AND KNOWLEDGE. Our Bcliools still suffer greatly from too frequent changes in teachers, involving confusion and discouragement, if not retro- gression, in the school, and sacrificing system, efficiency and progress. When a teacher thus retains a school for a single term only, he finds it much easier to hear recitations repeated by rote, than to secure a thorough comprehension of the prin- ciples which they involve. He is strongly tempted to overtask the memory, for the sake of flattering parents with the desired tokens of progress. This course is more productive of imme- diate and showy results. It is supposed to make a fine display at examinations. Hence the lesson must be committed to memory, whether understood or not. The pupils must rehearse fluently, although, to borrow a simile of Lord Bolingbroke, " they rattle on as meaningless as alarm-clocks that have been prematurely sprung." In reference to the permanency of their teachers, Grermany and Switzerland greatly excel us. On no other point did I hear our system so generally and justly criticized by promi- nent educators of other countries as in regard to the frequent changes of teachers in the rural portions of America. They were puzzled by the fact that our educational reports so often speak of the " wages " instead of " salaries " of teachers as is the case everywhere abroad — our wages being so much a lueeh or month. like those of changeable farm or factory hands. Kev. Edward Kyerson, D.D., the able Superintendent of Education for On- tario, from personal observations, thoroughly conversant with American schools^ gives a friendly but well -merited criticism of our system in this particular. As he fully appreciates the excellences of our schools wherever they are not marred by this radical defect, and as by the improvements introduced into the schools of Canada West, under his administration, he has practically demonstrated that even the rural districts may over- come this difficulty, I commend his words and this example of Ontario, to all friends of educational progress : " Now, whatever may be the liberality of Legislatures, and the framework of the school system, and the patriotic as- pirations and efforts of great numbers of citizens, in such a system of temporarily employing and perpetually changing teachers, there can be no material improvement in the qualifi- CULTURE AND KNOWLEDGE. 101 cations of teachers or the efficiency of the schools, or the edu- cation of the country youth ; but the lamentations in the annual Keports of State Superintendents will, in my opinion, be the next ten years what they have been the last ten years. In Ontario there is much room for improvement in these respects ; but we have a national programme for the examina- tion and distinct classification of teachers, and nearly uniform methods of examination ; our teachers, except in comparatively few cases of trial, are almost universally employed by the year, in the townships equally with the cities and towns. By our method of giving aid to no school unless kept open six months of a year, and aiding all schools in proportion to the average atten- dance of pupils and length of time the school is kept open, we have succeeded in getting our schools throughout the whole country kept open nearly eleven months out of the twelve ; the teachers are thus constantly employed, and paid annual sala- ries ; and are as well paid, all things considered, in perhaps a majority of the country schools, as in cities and towns. Some of our best teachers are employed in country schools, a very large proportion of which will favorably compare, in style and fittings of school-house, and efficiency of teaching, with the schools in cities and towns. Indeed, for several years at the commencement of our school system, the country parts of Upper Canada took the lead, with few exceptions, of our cities, towns and villages. Our deficiences and shortcomings in these re- spects I shall plainly point our hereafter ; but they appear to me to be more palpable, and to exist to a vastly greater, and even fatal extent, among our American neighbors — so worthy of our admiration in many of their industries and enterprises." This glaring evil of perpetual change claims special attention. In chemistry, in the arts and agriculture, experiments, however expensive, are often necessary and useful. Persevering trials and repeated failures usually precede and sometimes suggest valuable inventions. But of all experimenting, the most need- less, costly and fruitless, and yet the most common, is the practice of " placing a new hand at the wheel " annually, or even twice a year, in our school-houses. When passing Hurl Gate in a severe storm, I observed how much the apprehen- sions of timid passengers were quieted by the simple state- 102 CULTURE AND KNOWLEDGE. ment, " our good captain has run safely on this Sound for forty years." The assurance that an experienced hand guided the helm, at once inspired hope and confidence. But if false economy, prejudice, caprice or favoritism placed new captains or pilots twice a year on our noble "Sound Steamers," how soon would they be condemned and forsaken by an indignant public. And yet not a few committees in our districts, from mere whim, or pique, or more often from open nepotism, prac- tice a system of change in teachers which introduces confusion, waste, weakness, discouragement, and often retrogression, in place of system, economy, efficiency and progress. This is a prolific source of the most serious defects now hindering the usefulness of American schools. True, there has been an en- couraging advance for some years in respect to the permanency of teachers. But my own observation convinces me that there is a pressing need of far greater progress in this direction. There are towns which retain the old system of semi-annual changes, male teachers in the winter and female in the summer, and even in each successive summer and winter the same teachers are too seldom reemployed. In such places I find the schools in the lowest condition, with no uniform methods, nor well arranged plan consistently and persistently sustained. This system, or rather want of system, is, to so great an extent, sacrificing the benefits of experience, and hindering thoroughness of instruction, that the subject demands the consideration of the people. In no other way can the genuine improvement of our schools be so easily and economically secured as by employing better qualified and more permanent teachers. It often requires nearly a term to initiate a new teacher into the policy of the school visitors, who officially direct his course. He cannot perhaps in less time correct the mistakes and bad habits formed under his predecessor, and get his own plans and processes fully into operation, and the result is very likely to be neglect of system. The conviction that there will not be time to carry- out any settled policy, and that, if commenced, it may be wholly counteracted by an incompetent successor, discourages the attempt. It has long been a conceded point among success- ful teachers, that a second term in the same school is worth at least one-third more than the first. The school-room is the CULTURE AND KNOWLEDGE. 103 most unfortunate place for those experiments which "rotation in office " must here involve — entailing a dead loss of more than thirty per cent, of the expenditures made for schools. A teacher must learn the characters of his pupils, intellectual and moral, before he can successfully teach them. He must make each child a study, and discover both the faults and ex- cellences of his heart, and the difficult and easy processes of his mind. He must avail himself of every means to find out his entire character, as a discriminating physician watches closely all the symptoms of his patient, in order to understand what ought to be done for him. Until he knows the peculiari- ties, the attainments and wants of each pupil, he cannot adapt himself to them, and must work in the dark. There is a great variety of methods of illustrating and simplifying each branch and lesson, and only the teacher who understands both his pro- fession and the character of his pupils, can adapt these count- less varieties of method to the endless diversities of mind and. character. The difficulty of understanding little children is exceeded only by its importance. The internal history of a. child is veiled from us, because it no longer lies within the view of our present consciousness and experience. In our eagerness to "put away childish things," we too soon forget how we " spake as a child," " understood as a child," and "thought as a child." By putting himself in the place of his. pupil, and becoming literally child-like, renewing his youth, and by the help of imagination where memory fails, reproduc- ing his own early feelings, impressions, difficulties, and varying experience, the teacher can best prepare himself to appreciate the instinctive tendencies, dangers, weaknesses, wants and primal aspirations of the juvenile mind and heart. He who can thus come down where children are, 'and be a child again,, instead of growing old in heart with advancing years, will ever maintain that rare grace and beautiful ornament of age, the ver- nal freshness of youthful feeling. Such vivid reminiscences of childhood, and such knowledge of the juvenile character, bring the teacher into close contact and conscious sympathy with his pupils, open their hearts, secure their conJSdence, and win their love. The man who retains a school for a single term only has little- opportunity or motive to acquire this accurate discernment of 104 CULTURE AND KNOWLEDGE. character, this sympathy and sensibility to penetrate the youth- ful spirit and arouse its dormant faculties, this keen and prac- ticed eye to discern what motives to urge upon this pupil, what passions to repress in that, what habits to check in one, what good tendencies to foster in another, what weak points to strengthen here, and what peculiar gifts to develop there. The teacher must thoroughly understand his pupils before he can discover, in each particular case, the best methods to subdue the obstinate, to stimulate the indolent, to arouse the stupid, to make the careless hunger and thirst for knowledge, and to win the confidence and affections of all. Surely, this is a great work, in which the most exalted talents, enriched by the treas- ures of science and experience^ will find ample employment for all their resources. However large the school, the teacher should regard an intimate knowledge of each pupil as essential to his thorough instruction. This knowledge cannot be obtained intuitively, nor by the facile process of phrenology. It is the result of patient and long-continued observation of individual children, and it is well worth all the labor it costs. This most valuable acquisition belongs only to the permanent teacher. It is his most available capital. Some days usually pass before a stranger in the school-room learns the names and former classi- fication of his pupils. Weeks or months are gone before he is fully prepared to judge of the propriety of this classification ; and then so little time of his short term remains that it seems inexpedient to introduce any changes, however much they may \)Q needed. How different is the position of the permanent teacher on re- opening his school. He is cordially greeted, and welcomed as a friend and benefactor, by the pupils, whose respect and love he has won. He knows every class and every scholar. On the first day the school is in working order. The teacher and scholars alike enter upon the new term without any abatement of interest, and at the outset he is able to suit his modes of instruc- tion to the character and standing of each pupil. The teacher, for the time being, stands in the place of the parent. And what results would be realized in the family, were a new step father or step-mother to be semi-annually invested with parental authority ? The picture of anarchy and alienation which this CULTURE AND KNOWLEDGE. 105 question suggests need not here be drawn. The evil is hardly less serious in the school than it would be in the household. What would be the effect of a semi-annual change of clerks and book-keepers in our mercantile establishments, or of agents and overseers in our manufactories, or of financiers in our banks, or of masters of our merchantmen, or commanders of our iron- clads, or of doctors in our families, or of pastors in our parishes? Shrewd men never made such blunders in business matters, al- though such frequent changes would be less disastrous to material enterprises than they are to the best interests of schools. Let us not practically deny the value of experience in the most vital interests committed to our charge, the training of our children. It often appears to be the chief aim of our transient teachers, and still more generally of parents, to secure simply a rapid rehearsal of lessons and text-books, as if the repetition of the words with a voluble tongue was evidence of the acquirement and comprehension of the thoughts. But it is doing violence to the soul, to its innate love of truth, and of growth by the nutriment of truth, to feed it thus with the mere husks of knowledge, rather than knowledge itself. Such training is quite as likely to make pupils flippant as fluent. They learn everything, and know nothing. They pursue too many studies at a time, and are encouraged to enter upon advanced studies before they understand the simple rudiments. They forget that true progress depends less on the number of branches pur- sued, than on the thoroughness with which a few are mastered. Undertaking to learn too much, they become smatterers in everything. Their acquirements are as superficial as they are extensive. Their knowledge will be more apt to make them wordy than wise ; and, " Words are like leaves, and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense is rarely found." They seem to act upon the principle that " knowledge is power," but not in the sense of the great author of the maxim, who also tells us that "knowledge is the concoction of reading into judgment r This system of instruction tends to inflate pupils with an over-estimate of their attainments, and such conceit as an ele- ment of juvenile character obviously has other tendencies,, 106 CULTURE AND KNOWLEDGE. quite as pernicious as those to which I have referred. But the appropriate effect of trae mental discipline and the highest cul- ture is not self-admiration, but modesty, since the first lesson which science teaches is the greatness of our ignorance and the littleness of our knowledge. It has been well said, " the greater the circle of our knowledge, the greater the horizon of ignor- ance that bounds it." Those who, flushed with their fancied achievements, are already complacently reposing on the very pinnacle of science, are invited to spend a little of their ample leisure in pondering a couplet of Cowper : " Kjiowledge is proud that he has learned so much ; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more." In plain terms, the conceit of wisdom is in inverse ratio to one's attainments. The less he knows, the more he thinks he knows. To the embodiments of self-satisfaction only, " a little learning is a dangerous thing." That pupil has not yet advanced far, who has not learned enough to know that his highest acquisitions are yet meagre indeed. The truly learned man feels that his knowledge is but a drop out of the bound- less ocean of truth. Thus, for example, Socrates represented his knowledge as nothing ; Bishop Butler compared his to a point ; and Newton his to a few pebbles which a child picks up on the shore. The prevalent evils to which I have adverted, are the natural results of an erroneous but common idea as to the primary objects of education. This error is fundamental. It would greatly impair the best system of instruction. A want of agreement and of concurrent action on this point is frequently the occasion of serious embarrassment, even to the best teach- ers. The most judicious instructors are particularly liable to incur the complaints and objections of parents, because their children are "put back." One of the greatest obstacles to thoroughness, and one which the most successful teachers are continually encountering, is found in the impatience of pupils at reviews, encouraged and sustained by the eagerness of par- ents to have them get through the text-books. It should therefore be a familiar maxim in all common school instructioii, that while the object of education is always two-fold, discipline of the mind is more important than storing CULTURE AND KNOWLEDGE. 107 it with facts. However valuable these may be, they should be learned, not primarily^ for their own sake, but as instruments for forming right mental habits. All the teacher's plans and methods of instruction should be modified by the paramount consideration that the prescribed studies are to be pursued, not as ends, so much as means, to the higher end of disciplining and developing the mental powers. Knowledge is indeed essential to education, but, as we have already shown, does not constitute it. If right habits of mental activity and self- reliance are formed, knowledge will come in due time, as a matter of course; and any degree of knowledge, without men- tal discipline, will be of little use. The process of pure " cram " attains little genuine knowledge and retains less, while the true method of study gains the richest acquisitions and has them ever at command. It is the discipline of the intellectual and moral faculties that constitutes the man, and gives him his individual character and power. It is by means of this dis- cipline that he will be able to excel in any pursuit or pro- fession. Now the object of the Common School is not to finish the education, but to lay the foundation for future and higher attainments ; to teach the pupil how to study, and to inspire him with a love of learning. If this be done, he will, for the rest, educate himself He will feel that his education is only begun, when his school days are ended. To complete it will be the aim and pleasure of his life. Place him where you will, let his calling be what it may, he will find leisure for study, and will feel an insatiable desire for self -improvement. The child can ordinarily be so trained that he will be a scholar through life, and occupy the intervals of labor or business engagements in the cherished work of mental improvement This great end of study should determine the methods of instruction. Such dis- cipline is not to be gained by learning a few text-books by rote, nor by any degree of skill in mnemonics. It is the result of mental discipline, secured by close application and the thorough understanding of every branch pursued. From what has been said, it is obvious that it is the teacher's chief business to see, not how much he can get into the heads of his pupils, but how much he can get out of them. Draw- 108 CULTURE AND KNOWLEDGE. ing out is, in the end, the best way to put in. The culture of the mind is to be measured not by what it contains, but by what it can do. Efficiency is the proper test of mental im- provement. Hence the teacher should make every effort to awaken and sustain a spirit of self-reliance. He should throw the pupil upon his own resources, and make him feel that he must train himself by his own efforts. In reference to educa- tion it is pre-eminently true, that " every one is the architect of his own fortune." In the breast of each pupil are the germs of those plastic faculties, which he can mould and shape as he will, and which, if rightly trained, will secure his usefulness and happiness. They are always the best taught who in the highest sense of the term are self-taught, who make use of the lessons of their teachers, chiefly as guides in the work of self- training. The best scholars in our schools are those who lean least upon their instructors, and rely most upon themselves. It is the teacher's office not so much to impart knowledge as to show his pupils how to get it ; to give a strong impulse to their minds, and lead them, in conscious self-reliance, to put forth their utmost energies. He will thus inspire them with a love of study and delight in mastering diflSculties, till they feel all the incitements of victors, and are encouraged to go on from conquest to conquest. To train a school to such habits of study, is no easy task. Under the most favorable circumstances, it will involve great difficulty and demand persevering effort. The accomplish- ment of this one result is the greatest achievement of the suc- cessful teacher. It is the cardinal secret of a good education. These principles, should guide committees and boards of educa- tion in the selection of teachers ; a'nd any one who, on trial, is found to lack this important faculty, however excellent in other respects, and however popular in the district, is not equal to the responsible task assumed. It is a radical defect, for which no degree of literary attainments or suavit}^ of manners can compensate. Boys or girls educated on the system advocated above can hardly fail of success, when they pursue, in a like spirit, their appropriate callings in life. They will have clear ideas, and know what they are talking about when they speak at all. If CULTUKE AND KNOWLEDGE. 109 they undertake to write, they will be capable of concentrating their powers upon a given subject, and will write sensibly, and to the point. If they are called, in the business of life, to decide in some novel emergency, they will think accurately, and decide promptly, for a thoroughly disciplined mind will always furnish a clue for the solution of the problem. Such a mind, even when overtaken by a perplexing combination of cir- cumstances, will not resolve on one thing to-day, and to-mor- row the opposite ; nor begin to doubt and waver as soon as any thing positive has been determined upon. It is not difficult to recognize such a person as well in a brief conversation as in the whole course of life. He is distinguishable, at a glance, from those who are forever lingering among unexecuted reso- lutions and abandoned projects, always making up their minds, but never reaching a fixed and an abiding conclusion. Those who are alternately drawn in opposite directions soon find their efforts frustrating one another, and come to feel de- meaned in their own eyes. Conscious that they are powerless, they have neither the heart to attempt nor the force to accom- plish anything. Such instances of fickleness are not rare. It is a tendency against which our youth need to be guarded with special care. The erroneous theory of education under con- sideration directly fosters fickleness, while thorough mental dis- cipline imparts unity and force to the character. Without such discipline, a man will not think for himself, he will waver and hesitate, now almost persuaded, and soon not persuaded at all. He will have neither accurate discrimination nor sound judgment; he may be very learned in appearance, but never strong, self-relying and original. THE PEOFESSIONAL STUDY. Among the practical studies for teachers, Mental Philosophy is foremost. Teaching never can and never ought to rise to the dignity of a profession with those who do not practically recognize this science as its foundation. Its relation to Didac- tics has not been duly appreciated, and as a natural result, it has received too little attention in the training of teachers. Its advantages may not merely be inferred from the intrinsic interest and dignity of the science. It has special adaptations to the wants and daily work of the teacher. This study will he of preeminent service to the teacher in his own mental discipline. Just views of the powers, capacities, and laws of the mind are obviously conducive to self culture, for they reveal the conditions of its growth . Philosophy is as old as the race, and is a necessity of man. Every thinker will have some philosophy. Certainly the teacher should have a definite system, for his philosophy, whatever it may be, will mould his plans for self-improvement, and shape his efforts for the training of others. He must cease to think, if he abjure all philosophy. As he will hold and consciously or unconsciously apply some theories of mind and its culture, it is a question of paramount interest whether these principles are true or false, partial or systematic, mastered as a science, by the study of the book and the living subject, or picked up incidentally, intelligently and persistently applied to a well chosen end, or casually and unconsciously employed, without reference to a definite result. That is most valuable in education which sets the mind to the most intense activity. No science is better adapted to sharpen, energize, and expand the mind, and form habits of attention, discrimination, and reflection. The study of its great principles, comprehending the sublimest subjects of human thought, is fitted to awaken a love of truth, of investigation and discovery, and to free the mind from the thralldom of trivialities. THE PKOFESSIONAL STUDY. Ill Mental Philosophy is of interest to teachers^ as one of the appro- priate school studies. The common explanation of its neglect in the preparatory course of teachers is the fact that they are not required to give instruction in this department. But it will be found a most useful study for advanced classes in our high schools and academies, and many of its leading principles can be profitably taught in familiar oral lessons to those who have not sufficient time or maturity to pursue the science. An important result is gained if pupils are thus led early to watch the operations of their own minds and to adopt the best meth- ods of cultivating the Perceptive and Representative Powers, and of gaining the command of the faculties and the discipline of the will. Skillful instruction will initiate processes of observa- tion and thought which the child will himself delight to repeat, and by repetition, they will become the fixed and controlling habits and vitalizing forces of the mind. A true understanding of the relation of Psychology to Teaching luould greatly modify, if not revolutionize, our systems and processes of instruction. Mental philosophy underlies the whole work of education, which can claim the dignity of a science only as it rests on this broad basis. Among the many practical questions which this subject suggests to the teacher, are theifollowing : 1. What is the great end of intellectual education, to which all processes should be strictly subordinate and subservient ? In the chapter on Culture and Knowledge I have aimed to show that this is a question of paramount importance. Cor- I'ect views on this point will modify and determine all the teacher's plans and methods. A mistake here would be funda- mental, and would greatly impair any system of education, however complete in other particulars. 2. W*hat are the faculties of the human mind which are to be e'ducated? The teacher too often assumes the sacred responsibilities of his profession without a definite outline of his work. Although it is his great business to operate upon mind, he has not yet considered the number and nature of the intellectual powers, and the implements which he is to employ in all study and science. The physician must understand the organs and structure of the body, the conditions of growth, the laws of health, the causes and preventions as well as the reme- 112 MENTAL PHIIiOSOPHY. dies of disease. The law demands this knowledge as essential to the medical practitioner. Does not the training of the mind equally require the study of its faculties and their laws of devel- opment? May the culture of the mind — far more subtle and important than the body — be safely entrusted to those who are ignorant of its nature ? Useful in any profession, this knowl- edge is essential to the true teacher who lives and moves and has his being in the sphere of mind, and whose constant duty is to mould and develop it. 8. What is the order, as to time, in which these faculties are to be addressed and developed ? This question, though seldom raised, is most important and practical. When properly an- swered, it will effect radical changes, especially in primary schools, and suggest numerous and useful methods of interest- ing the smallest children. The inquiry so frequently made, " How can I keep these little ones out of mischief?" receives only a partial answer in the common direction : — " Give them something to do." It should rather be the study of the teacher to find occupations adapted to their years and tastes, accordant with the natural law of development, and fitted to improve as well as please. Such, for example, are frequent general exer- cises, object-lessons, exercises in drawing, and the innumerable expedients well suited to interest children, and at the same time to train the senses and cultivate observation. 4. What exercises are required for the healthful training of each faculty ? What processes and directions will be most conducive to habits of attention, analysis, and classification, and to the improvement of the Perceptive and Eepresentative faculties ? These, and many similar questions of equal interest, belong to the department of Mental Philosoph3^ 5. What is the relation of the several school studies to the different faculties of the mind? Each subject of study has some special adaptations to particular necessities of the juve- nile mind. The teacher who has duly pondered this question will no longer employ any text-book or science as an end, but only as a means to the higher and more important end of dis- ciplining some particular faculty or faculties of the mind. A text-book designed to train the reasoning powers will be more likely to accomplish its object when that paramount end and THE PROFESSIONAL STUDY. 113 the adaptation of the means are both distinctly before the mind. When Geography is employed primarily as an instrument of cultivating observation, conception and memory, the lessons illustrated on the globes, and the maps mastered hy mahing them from memory^ will remain vividly daguerreotyped on the retina in their exact forms, relations, and proportions ; and, what is still better, as the result of this intelligent training for a specific end, the process can be repeated at will, in reference to any objects of perception and description ; and thus the child gains a new and invaluable power, which enters into all the graver operations of the mind, in natural science, history, poetry, and the fine arts. 6. What is the proper arrangement and succession of studies ? ' My present purpose and space forbid the attempt to answer these questions. They all grow out of the philosophy of the mind, and are now presented to indicate its practical bearings. Psychology will aid the teacher in understanding himself. — ''What of all things is best?" asked Chilon of the Oracle. " To know thyself," was the memorable reply. " To know one's self," reiterated the sages of Greece, " is the hardest and yet the most important discovery of man.'' " Man, know thy- self; all wisdom centres there," says a philosophic poet of modern times. And no words of Burns have met a more gen- eral response from the world than the familiar couplet : " Oh, wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as others see us." To attain this knowledge of ourselves, the importance of which has been thus universally conceded in every age, we must give heed to the testimony of consciousness. Mental Philosophy is properly called the science of self-reflection, and its facts are chiefly those which lie under the eye of conscious- ness. Without the habit of introversion we can know little of ourselves ; with it we may find the noblest themes of study in the wonderful mechanism and movements of our own minds, and in the deepest solitudes verify the aphorism of Swift, "A wise man is never less alone than when alone," or the words of Novalis, " A certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the full growth and spread of the highest mind, and therefore con- 114 MENTAL PHILOSOPHY. stant intercourse with men will stifle many a holy germ, and scare away the gods, who shun the restless tumult of merry companions and the discussion of petty interests." Thvi self-knowledge will aid the teacher in self-control. The first requisite in the government of others, and especially of chil- dren, is the command of one's self Self-possession fosters discretion, decision and firmness, which are the essential ele- ments of administrative talent. The most disastrous conse- quences in the school-room frequently result from the loss of self-command. Here the teacher, liable to sudden contingen- cies and numberless annoyances and provocations, is peculiarly exposed. At this point of ever-imminent danger should the trusty sentinel — "self-command" — guard with sleepless vigi- lance. To secure this end, the teacher must know himself ; especially must his consciousness mirror to him his weah points^ his tendencies to haste, excitement or passion. The teacher will he compensated for the study of Menial Philoso- phy^ by his tendency to exalt his estimate of mind, its wonder- ful nature and priceless worth, its illimitable capacities of culture, its glory as created in the image of God, its oppor- tunity of still higher glory in literally becoming a, partaker of the Divine Nature, its power of endless progression in knowledge and felicity, and the consequent sacredness of the teacher's daily work. All natural science is a production of the human mind, and hence a striking proof of its greatness and glory ; but no other science so highly exalts man, no other can so fill and satisfy the soul, and rise evermore above its soaring thoughts, no other justify the ancient maxim, — "On earth there is noth- ing great but man, in man there is nothing great but mind." Such a clear consciousness of the lofty powers which God has implanted in the human soul, their laws and capacities of illimitable expansion, will be a powerful incentive to their earnest culture. But while philosophy thus exalts mind, it humbles the man. It rebukes conceit without impairing self-reliance, and by the electric affinity of thoroughness and humility forms the best antidote to the prevailing sciolism and charlatanry of the day, — ever re-affirming the classic aphorism, " Qui nescit ignorare, THE PROFESSIONAL STUDY. 115 ignorat scire," — " whoever knows not that he is ignorant, is not sure that he knows." We here find the true limitation of human science — the greatness of our ignorance, and the little- ness of our knowledge. The history of all genuine scholars confirms the lesson of philosophy, — " That the pride of wis- dom is proof of folly." " For the pride of man in what he knows Keeps lessening as his knowledge grows." As this sense of ignorance is the first step towards knowl- edge and a constant stimulus to higher attainments, so, on the other hand, conceit of wisdom enervates the mind and lessens the incentives to studiousness. Arrogance and assurance bear no semblance to the fruits of true learning and self-reliance. Yet, from the days of Johnson, " the school-master " has been characterized in our literature as magisterial, opinionated and dogmatical, and sometimes, it must be admitted, not without reason. With all his need of high culture, the business of the teacher does not enforce the tension of every nerve in the grapple of mind with mind, as in forensic contests. Asso- ciated, as teachers habitually are, with beginners, or at least inferiors in attainments, separated in their professional work from equals and superiors, there is danger of imbibing the spirit of conceit, if not of assuming an air of dogmatism. What is dryer than an old, opinionated, self-satisfied, unpro- gressive school-master. He despises "all your new-fangled notions." He glories in the good old ways. He has a glib tongue indeed, but its monotony is as vapid as it is fluent. His flippant routine feeds his complacency, while it really enervates his own mind, and stupefies his pupils. Dryasdust still lives. Whoever, either in the college or primary school, has ceased to learn, should by all means stop teaching. Chil- dren need impulse, even more than instruction. Any one who no longer thirsts for higher knowledge, cannot fitly lead the youngest to its fountain. As a teacher, one must be progres- sive, or cease to be at all. The mind that stagnates will soon retrograde. Such a teacher would serve to stultify rather than stimulate his class. But, there are teachers worthy of their work, whose ideal is high, and who are enthusiastic in the life- long work of personal culture. 116 MENTAL PHILOSOPHY. A knoiuledge of mental philosophy will aid the teacher in school government This is confessedly tlie most difficult part of bis work. Even of the graduates of the Normal School it is said, " The most general as well as the greatest complaint is inabil- ity to govern." But so far from being peculiar to the Normal graduates, this is everywhere, and among all classes of teachers, the most common source of failure. An extensive observation of schools of all grades, and consultations and correspondence with parents, and committees, in all parts of the country, seem to me, after making due allowance for acknowledged instances of failure, to establish the conclusion that the grad- uates of Normal Schools have secured more than an average degree of success in government as well as in instruction. This superiority is often manifested in improved methods of influence and discipline, — a matter of the utmost consequence, though too little noticed by parents and committees. The value of any given result in school government depends very much upon the jnotives which produced it. I have seen pupils benumbed with fear and still as the grave, and heard their teacher — whose only rule was a reign of terror — lauded by the visitors as a model disciplinarian. The stillest school is not always the most studious. Pupils may be controlled for a time by motives which will ultimately debase the character and enfeeble the will, or they may be stimulated to the highest effort by incentives which will be healthful and permanent in their influence upon the mind and heart. School government is a difficult subject to teach by any gen- eral rules, and yet its intrinsic importance assigns to it the first place among the preparatory studies of the teacher. It is based on a thorough and practical knowledge of the laws of mind, of influence, and motive, the philosophy of the sensibilities and the will. Sagacity in the discernment of character is one of the secrets of success both in the government and instruction of children. The surest way to know others is first to know ourselves ; and if we would understand the juvenile mind — an attainment as rare as it is important — we must ourselves be children again, and, so far as possible, recall our earliest feelings, passions, motives, prejudices, and all our mental processes. He who THE PROFESSIONAL STUDY. 117 thus reads himself will readily read others, while ignorance of one's self presupposes and necessitates a misjudgment of men. An intimate knowledge of our pupils, — their charac- teristic traits of mind and heart, their good qualities, and still more, their evil tendencies and inclinations, will facilitate the adaptation of motives to their individual necessities. "I will try to get on the right side of him," said an eminent teacher in regard to a turbulent boy, whom the School Officers had determined to expel as a " hopeless case," but the teacher's skill and kindness transformed that reckless lad into an affec- tionate and diligent pupil, who in later years, when raised to high eminence as a staternan,* still gratefully and repeatedly acknowledged his indebtedness for success to the patience and discrimination of General Salem Towne, his early teacher. There is a " right side " to the roughest character. Let the teacher find it, and adapt the requisite influences to his actual wants, instead of abandoning the wayward youth in despair. The philosophy of motive is of great practical importance. Here the teacher should not practice empirically. The train- ing of the mind and heart involves too sacred interests to be hazarded in trying a series of experiments. Such, however, is the common process when the teacher enters upon his work with no matured system of influences. He should have the whole arsenal of motive at command. His success will depend upon the number of these implements he can wield, upon his judgment in their selection, and his skill in their use. He is sure to excel as a disciplinarian who can felicitously adapt the countless varieties of motive to all diversities of character. To be able to do this most happily, the teacher must understand the philosophy of the sensibilities. He must know what are the emotions which he can awaken, and what are the natural desires and affections which God has implanted as the impel- ling forces in the human soul. I will not now discuss, or even enumerate them. They are the springs of all action, and to them all motives must be addressed. The best clue to the discernment of the ever-varying phases of human nature is a practical knowledge of those causes which control and those traits which constitute individual character. * Hon. William L. Marcy. 8 118 MENTAL PHILOSOPHr. While all admit the importance of a knowledge of liuman nature, and are ever ready to say with Pope, that '• The proper study of mankind is man," it is objected tliat the only true mode of studying human nature is not from books, but from the living subject in the daily inter- course and transactions of life, and it is true that our first ideas of rhind and of those elemental principles of which all men learn more or less, are thus acquired. Mental Philosophy, or anything else, learned from books alone, will be of very little use. This knowledge becomes practical only when it is veri- fied in our own consciousness, and tested by our observation and experience. The close and constant observation of men, the habit of analyzing character and watching the play of the different faculties and the manifestation of individual traits of mind and heart, tracing actions to their motives, giving always the first and severest scrutiny to our own motives and menial operations, are the most direct, safe and certain methods of study- ing Mental Philosophy. The mere knowledge of philosophical systems and nomenclature can give only the shell without the substance. The man who studies mind from books alone will know less of genuine human nature than the unlettered, but eagle-eyed, observer of men and things. Text-books and sys- tems serve a most important purpose, but can furnish no sub- stitute for observation and reflection. The text-book is, how- ever, as useful in Mental Philosophy as in the Natural Sciences. All men have the opportunity of studying nature. Minerals, animals and plants are the most familiar objects which have surrounded us from childhood. But his knowledge of Mineral- ogy, Natural History, or Botany is most thorough and scientific who diligently employs the best productions of others to aid his own observation and reflection. Practical sagacity in the conduct of affairs and the control of men can usually be traced to the union of science and observation. The one unfolds great universal principles and invests them with interest, dignity and power ; the other confirms them by the rigid test of exper- ience, and facilitates their application in personal influence or persuasion. The importance of Mental Philosophy has not been generally admitted by teachers. The brilliant discoveries in the Natural THE PROFESSIONAL STUDY. 119 Sciences, and their manifold applications to practical purposes, have elicited universal admiration. As Psychology does not display immediate and palpable results to the casual observer, it is often disparaged, and pronounced devoid of practical utility. But its importance — like the foundations of an edifice — is none the less real because less observed. With earnest and thoughful minds in every age of the world its imperial sway has been freely acknowledged, and only less absolute has been its authority when men have failed to recognize the source of the principles which form popular sentiment and con- trol public affairs. Each historic period reflects certain great philosophic ideas, which now color and characterize the picture of the historian, simply because they once were the formative elements in the original. Hence, History has been fitly styled " Philosophy teaching by examples," and its highest use and value may be found in the lessons of human nature which it furnishes. And when, instead of a dry record of events in chronological order, it investigates the causes and consequences of the successive changes and conditions of society, it becomes worthy of the name of the " Philosophy of History.'' Mental Philosophy is only another name for a thorough and scientific knowledge of human nature. It deals- with those first principles which are the foundation of all knowledge and phi- losophy, literature and theology. Infidelity itself is ever trace- able to some false philosophy. " All Sciences," says Hume,, "have a relation to human nature, and, however wide they may seem to roam from it, they still return back by one passage or another ; this is the center and capitol of the Sciences, which being once master of, we may easily extend our conquests everywhere." And says Sir William Hamilton, " There is no branch of Philosophy which does not suppose Psychology as its preliminary, which does not borrow from this as its light. It supplies either the materials or the rules to all the Sciences." So far as our teachers are induced to pursue this subject, our schools will be elevated. The study should indeed be mastered in the Normal School. But I commend the subject to those in actual service, whose "school days" are ended, but who, if' worthy to teach, feel that their education is just begun. STUDY AND HEALTH. Alarmists have written eloquently on "the Slaughter of the Innocents" in school by over study, alleging that severe appli- cation is impairing the health of multitudes, and that the study hours should be reduced to five, four, and, as some^ strenuously contend, three hours a day. If " The Slaughter of the Innocents" in school be not a "Yankee Notion," it is at least one little known in Europe. The German boys and English girls study more hours than our youth, and yet have better health. In Europe young and old are out more in the open air. The bloom and vigor of English women is due largely to their freer and fuller exercise in the street, the park, the forest and the field. The physical education of children is everywhere encouraged if not enforced. Out-door recreation is systematized. Besides the daily walks, fi-equent excursions into the country and appropriate plays are provided, for girls as well as boys. The American girl is not a match for her English cousins in these pedestrian excursions. We have yet to learn that air and exercise are as essential to health as food and sleep. The single habit of late hours harms our children more than hard study. The example of Germany is well worthy of imitation. Early hours are there the rule, early to !School (at seven in summer and eight in winter) and early to bed. Even the opera, concert and theater begin at six or seven o'clock and close at nine or ten. It is a common but mistaken impression that study is unfav- orable to health. That the laws of hygiene are sadly neglected and that ignorance of physiology breeds serious mischief is no doubt true. There are also exceptional cases of children who are constitutionally too frail or nervous to bear the stimulus or tasks of school. But wide observation confirms the conclu- sion that, as a rule, our schools do not overtask the brain or injure health. It is fashionable to charge to the school a long list of ills which really belong to a different "account." STUDY AND HEALTH. 12 i The proper training and exertion of the mind will not harm the health. The body is the instrument through which the mind works, and its power depends, in no small degree, on the vigor of the physical system. Increased effort and energy of mind must be balanced by proper activity of the body. The mischievous error prevalent on this subject is a common excuse for indolence and inefficiency. Study need not be injurious to health. The mind itself was made to work. Its primal law is growth by work. It can gain strength only by spending it. The intensest study invigorates the body as well as the mind, strengthens both the nervous and muscular system, makes the blood course in stronger health-giving currents through the system, enlarges the brain, erects the form, softens the features, brightens the eye, animates the countenance, dignifies the whole person, and in every way conduces to health, provided only that it is pursued in accordance with the laws of hygiene as to diet, exercise, rest, sleep and ventilation. Dr. Flint says, in the American Practitioner : "Sanitarians have of late had much to say respecting the evils of over-exer- tion of the intellect. But there is another aspect of the etiology of morbid mental conditions concerning which much less has been said, namely, deficient exercise of the intellectual powers, or insufficient activity of the mind as a source of morbific agencies. The diseases of both body and mind originate quite as often in a want of the proper action of the intellectual and ' moral faculties as in their over use or excitation. Occupations which employ the intellect are likely to prevent inordinate attention to the bodily functions, and herein their influence is prophylactic. Abundant illustrations of the evils of deficient activity of the mind are to be found among those who, under the delusive expectation of enjoying leisure and rest, have relinquished pursuits which involved a habitual exercise of the mental faculties." Henry Ward Beecher well says: "It is not work but worry that kills men. Work is healthy. You can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. Men literally worry themselves to death. Worry is rust upon the bladeT It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction. Fear secretes- acid, but love and trust are sweet juices." 122 STUDY AND HEALTH. Undoubtedly the minds of very little children are often stim- ulated by parents and nurses to premature and therefore injurious activity. I have no sympathy with any processes for initiating babes in the knowledge of books. Such prodigies, how- ever they may gratify the pride of parents, always suggest pain- ful apprehensions of future debility and premature decrepitude. Precocity is unnatural and undesirable, because it is the symp- tom, if not the cause, of disease. Early ripeness of mind, as of fruit, is hastened by a secret enemy at the core, and however attractive the exterior, it is found in reality lifeless and iosipid. It shows well for a time, like plants in a hot-house with large tops and little roots. What is gained in time poorly compen- sates for the loss of maturity and spirit. Precocity stints the growth of both body and mind, if it does not become the tomb of talents and health. Lucretia Maria Davidson wrote verses at four years, and died before completing her seventeenth year, leaving over two hundred separate pieces of poetic composition. Her sister Margaret began to write poetry at six, at ten acted in a passionate drama in New York City, and died at fourteen. Where is to be found a man of strength who was a prodigy in reading and reasoning at four years? Dr. Johnson used dryly to ask, " what becomes of all the clever children?" Many children begin the study of books when they should be follow- ing the strong native bent of childhood in observing objects. The perceptive faculties should be first addressed. Teachers too seldom inquire what is the order in which the juvenile powers are to be developed, and hence lessons are often assigned which task the reflective faculties chiefly, when, in the natural order of growth, they should be comparatively latent. Violence is done to a child who, at this tender age, is harrassed with problems of arithmetic or the intricacies of grammar. Observa- tion precedes reflection. At the earliest school age, the memory as well as the perceptive faculties may be pleasantly and safely exercised with attractive lessons, or observations rather, on form, color, size, weight, place, number, time, the obvious qual- ities of common things, and the form or spelling of words, and in reading. Let those exercises be very brief — relieved after each lesson by gymnastics or marchings and music, and the primary school becomes a sort of play or kindergarten, safe and healthful for vigorous children of five years of age. STUDY AND HEALTH. 123 Bat the objection under consideration relates chiefly to much older children. In regard to them even the wise man is quoted to confirm that view : " Much study is a weariness of the flesh." Very true. So also the most invigorating and healthful kinds of labor and exercise bring for the time weariness, till relieved by repose. There are undoubtedly exceptional cases of older children, whose nervous state, or otherwise abnormal condition, requires the partial or entire suspension of study. But even in these cases, the illness is commonly due to other causes than excessive study. When the plainest laws of health are vio- lated, when, for example, children are crammed with mince- pies, colored candies, or doughnuts, between meals and before retiring, it is hardly fair that the inevitable result should be charged to the overtasking of the teacher. After the earnest studies of school, and in addition to all the gymnastics there introduced, let children be encouraged to walk and ride, work and play, run and romp ; let them row boats, jump rope, trundle hoop, twang the bow, pitch quoits, try for ten strikes, play at ball, base, cricket, or croquet, or with shuttlecock and battledoor, and then we shall hear far less of the evil of overtasking the brain. I have no fear of stimula- ^ ting healthy children, of suitable age, to excessive study during school hours, provided they are relieved by proper intervals for gymnastics and music. The history of West Point well illustrates the healthfulness - of study, and recommends to all students the hygienic regula- tions there f jund to be so successful. Though the standard of admission is low, the demand for application is unusually exact- ing, and the relative progress remarkable. No other institu- tion has so uniformly and rigidly insisted on thoroughness of study and instruction. The example of such exact methods, both of learning and teaching, is fitted to exert a happy influ- ence upon the cause of education throughout the land. Says a competent observer and a graduate : " The course of the Mili- tary Academy is probably the most severe of any similar one in the world." The cadets are instructed, not in classes, but in small sections of from ten to twelve each, and in these small sections not less than one hour and a half is devoted to each recitation in mathematics, science, natural philosophy or en- 124 STUDY AND HEALTH. gineering, and the shortest recitations occupy at least one hour. The great characteristic excellence of the system here adopted is the amount of personal instruction given to individuals, and in adaptation to the perceived deficiences, or excellences, of each cadet This plan soon tests and discovers the capacity of individuals. It necessitates the mastery of every lesson. It leaves no way to shirk knotty points, to dodge hard problems or calculate " the chance of not being called up to-day," as is so often done in other institutions. The cadet never has occasion to say that he has mastered the lesson, for nothing is taken for granted, and nothing is done by proxy. He must always give the proof by himself solving every problem or de- monstrating every theorem, or stating and defending every prin- ciple or fact in clear and exact terms. In geometry, for exam- ple, in addition to the demonstrations, he must be ready, at every recitation, to draw from memory all the diagrams embraced, both in the advance and review lesson, and enunciate accurately all the propositions and principles involved. He must be prepared in this way to state and demonstrate any proposition over which he has passed in any part of his course. All the diagrams of both the advance and review lesson must be daily drawn by every cadet in each section. The same method is substantially adopted in the various branches of mathematics, until, by frequent reiteration, the most profound principles and difficult processes become familiar as the daily drills have rendered the manual of arms. Notwithstanding the severity of the studies and exacting rigor of the recitations, and the rivalry of the students, the health of the cadets is uncommonly good. It is a rare thing for a cadet to break down from over-study. This is due, not primarily to the fact that all candidates admitted must possess a sound constitution, but more to the excellent hygienic rules of the academy. In no other literary institution within ray knowledge are the laws of health so rigidly observed ; in no other are the requirements for study so severe and unrelenting, especially in the higher mathematics. One of the cadets, among the best scholars of his class, said to me, " Before I came under this rigid regime, I could scarcely bear a tithe of the application I STUDY AND HEALTH. 125 have here safely practiced." There are regular hours for study, recreation, exercise, sleep and meals. The food is ample but the diet plain. No restaurant is tolerated on the premises, to suggest or facilitate the noxious practice of eating between meals, or at late hours in the evening. No tempting " saloon" disturbs the stomach with pastry, cakes, or confectionery. The regular and frequent military drills, the gymnasium, and the equitation-hall, invite or exact abundant and most invigorating exercise. Our colleges have recently provided new facilities and encour- agements for gymnastic training. The results are everywhere happy, and happiest where, as at Amherst College, it has been made a department of positive duty, under the direction of a college instructor. But no college within my knowledge com- pares favorably with the United States Military Academy in regard to the prominence uniformly, and hy regulation^ given to physical education. Besides the wide range of gymnastic exercises, infantry tactics, sabre practice and fencing, the cadets are trained in mortar practice, use of howitzers, coast and siege batteries, target tiring with light and heavy ordnance, but es- pecially the Parrott gun, and in the still more exciting and ex- hilarating drills of flying artillery, cavalry and trooper. The trooper's drill requires the most perfect horsemanship and quick- ness of eye and hand. To vault into the saddle and sit erect and easy, and carry in proper position the toe, heel, knee, bridle- arm and fingers, is but the first step in the trooper's training. The hurdle race next tests his nerve, and tells the horse the spirit of his rider as quicklj^ as the drill-master. I never saw elsewhere so striking an illustration of the unity of the horse and his rider. On one occasion I was visiting West Point when a new class were taking their first lessons in the hurdle race. The horsemanship of each rider seemed to be as apparent to the horse as to the observer. The bold and upright attitude of one showed him to be at home in the saddle, and his horse leaped the hurdle hke a deer ; the hugging legs, and timid, crouching position of another, so dispirited the horse that noth- ing but the lash of the drill-master would carry him over. Another drill demands both coolness and agility. Dumb- heads are placed on movable posts, standing about ten yards 126 STUDY AND HEALTH. apart, two on each side of tlie equitation-hall. The trooper, with his revolver, fires at these heads while riding at full speed. If the first head is hit, to cock, aim and fire while going rap- idly ten yards, is a discipline of skill and dexterity. Again, for sabre practice, ten yards beyond the second dumb head, on each side of the hall, is placed a pendent ring about three inches in diameter. In this drill, spurring his horse to the gal- lop, he pierces the first head with the point of his sabre in a forward thrust, and cuts off the second with a back stroke, and picks on the point of his sabre the pendent ring. A majority of the first class would hit every head and carry off both rings. Besides these various forms of physical training, the bath- rooms, hospital accommodations, and other arrangements for health are truly admirable. The bath-rooms are so neatly kept and furnished as to invite a ready obedience to the rule that every cadet must bathe at least twice a week, at certain pre- scribed hours. The hospital accommodations are ample, and usually empty, and, fortunately, the ofiice of the excellent post' surgeon seems to be nearly a sinecure. Long may he keep it so. The reveille early summons all to duty, and the close alternation of study, recitation, drill, or gymnastics so fully uses up both time and strength, that the cadets are quite ready for tattoo at 10 o'clock at night, when all lights must be extinguished. There is, therefore, nearly the same uni- formity in the hour of retiring as of rising. Well would it be if a tattoo, or regard to the laws of health, no less impera- tive, closed all lights and eyes as seasonably in our schools and colleges. How many students graduate from other institutions, with mental energy braced by no physical vigor, attended by a positive aversion to active exercise, if not enfeebled by bodily languor, impaired health or a broken constitution. How sad a contrast to the exuberant health, the joyous glow of bodily energy, the strength of constitution, the power of endurance, the scorn of ease, the love of toil and adventure, and the eager- ness for exploits, which mark the cadets as they come forth like racers panting for the course. I have already referred to Amherst College as the only one of our larger Institutions, except the United States Military and STUDY AND HEALTH. 127 Naval Academies, which oflficially requires the systematic train- ing of the body. Physical culture is there made a regular de- partment as much as Chemistry or the Classics, with a professor, who is a thoroughly educated physician and guardian of the health of the institution. In illustration of the plan and its happy results, I quote the following statements from Dr. Nathan Allen, calling attention to the fact that the standard of hotti scholarship and health has been thus raised. It is the duty of the head of this department " to see that the laws of Hygiene are observed, to watch over the physical welfare of everj^ stu- dent, striving to correct as far as possible all physical weaknesses, defects, and habits injurious to health, and in case of sick- ness advising and directing the best treatment. It is also made his duty to give lectures upon Hygienic Physiology, and the great laws of life and health : and in order to preserve a sound constitution and thereby prevent disease, a series of gymnastic exercises has been introduced as a part of the regular college duties, and every student, (except for physical imperfection,) is required to take part in them, under the inspection of his in- structor. These exercises are so designed and varied as to exercise every part of the body in the most natural and bene- ficial manner. It is no part of the plan to develop particular muscles for great feats of agility and strength, but to train the whole body for its highest and most efficient action. It is in- tended that every muscle and tissue of the system shall be developed in harmony with every portion of the brain and faculty of the mind. By this systematic training, it is found that the students accomplish far more in their studies, thus elevating the standard of scholarship in this institution, while their constitutions in the meantime are not broken down or im- paired, — so that physically as well as mentally they are better prepared for the more public and responsible duties of after years. It is also a well known fact that since the introduction of these exercises there has been a decided improvement in the health of students generally, and less sickness as well as mortality. These exercises are not only compulsory, but faithful atten- dance upon them, as well as careful observance of the laws of Hygiene generally, are taken into account in making up the rank and scholarship of each student. Every year's experience 128 STUDY AND HEALTH. Las satisfied the officers of tlie College more and more of the great advantages derived from this department. And so hearty in the appreciation of these advantanges are the students, that they would dispense with any other department in college sooner than that of Physical Culture. The true secret of its success is found in the fact, that the Trustees and Faculty, from its commencement, have attached great importance to it, and given it character by making it one of the departments of the College. The students also deserve much credit for their zeal- ous and practical endorsement of these measures. If such is the connection of the mind with the body as to render all mental development and acquisition greatly dependent upon the strength and condition of the physical system, is it not the part of wisdom and duty to see, that in the training of youth, in the educational process, the laws of the mind and body should be taken into account ? Can any good reason be given why the laws of the one should be ignored or violated, when experience shows that such a course so often results in failure ? Are not the laws of the body a part of the government of God, to which we owe allegiance as much as those of the mind or soul ? Modern science, in connection with the most advanced views of education, is teaching us more and more, every year, tbe importance of good health — of a sound constitution, in order to secure the highest success in life; and this depends very much upon the proper care and training of the body in youth. It is becoming evident that physical culture is yet to occupy a far more prominent position in all our systems of education than heretofore, and must ere long be introduced in some form into the regular exercises of all our schools, seminaries, and higher institutions of learning. We venture this prediction, that in no department of education will there be greater im- provement for the next fifty years, than in a more perfect development of the human system and harmony of function, between the laws that govern both the mind and the body." To be healthful and inspiring, study must be pursued not as a task — hated and coerced, but under the impulse of such incentives as make it a noble, worthy, cheerful, joyous work. When interest is awakened, ambition kindled, and progress made, the consciousness of improvement becomes a reward of STUDY AND HEALTH. 129 past effort, and a healthful motive to new exertions. The exhilaration of success is a standard hygiene for the body, and cures many maladies which no therapeutic agents can reach. In the school, as in the world, far more rust out than wear out. Study is most tedious and wearisome to those who study least. Drones always have the toughest time. Grumblers make poor scholars, and their lessons are uniformly "hard" and "too long." The time and thought expended in shirking would be ample to master their tasks. Sloth, gormandizing and worry kill their thousands where over-study harms one. The curse of Heaven rests on laziness and glutton3^ By the very consti- tution of our being they are fitted to beget that torpor and despondency which chill the blood, deaden the nerves, enfeeble the muscles, and derange the whole vital machinery. Fretting, fidgeting, ennui and anxiety are among the most common causes of disease. While now, as of old, " a merry heart doeth good like medicine," a weak will easily succumbs to the ills of life. The alarm occasioned by the approach of a contagious disease often weakens the power of resistance, and directly invites the very disease so much dreaded. Bad news cloys the appetite and clogs digestion ; fear relaxes the muscles and checks both the breathing and circulation ; and fright makes the extremities cold, the face flushed and the temples throb. On the other hand, high aspiration and enthusiasm help diges- tion and respiration, and send an increased supply of vital energy to all parts of the body. Courage and work invigorate the whole system, and lift one into a purer atmosphere, above the reach of contagion. The lazy groan most over their " arduous duties ;" while earnest workers talk little about the exhausting labors of their profession. Of all creatures, the sloth would seem to be most wearied and worn. " He that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster" — first of all of health. Said Dr. Humphrey, for twenty-two years the President of Amherst College, and who reached the age of eighty -two: "I have yet to see the man who died from the effects of study." Kant, an indefatigable student in the most profound themes of meta- physics, and leader of a new school in philosophy, lived beyond the limits of three-score and ten. As the result of his long 130 STUDY AND HEALTH. experience and wide observation, he was wont to say : •' Intel- lectual pursuits tend to prolong life/' He placed great re- liance on the power of cheerfulness and will in resisting disease. ''Be of good cheer" is as wise a prescription for the health of the body as of the soul. Barbaric races are comparatively puny and short-lived. The increase of knowledge and the advance of civilization have greatly lengthened human life. This fact is abundantly estab- lished by statistics in all of tbe most educated countries of tbe world, and the careful investigations of life insurance com- panies. Old men are seldom found among savages, and the rate of mortality is proportioned in some measure to the degree of barbarism ; while early deaths everywhere diminish as science and general culture advance. It is said that the statis- tics of Geneva show that from 1600 to 1700, the average length of life in that city was 18 years and 3 months. From 1700 to 1750, it was 27 years and 9 months. From 1750 to 1800, it was 36 and 8 months. From 1800 to 1833, it was 43 years and 6 months. The great scholars, philosophers, poets, statesmen, orators, discoverers and savants, have been, as a general fact, men of abounding health and long-lived. The Necrology of ministers, as shown in the annual reports of different denominations, is striking in this particular, especially in view of the well-known fact that physical infirmity sometimes determines the choice of a professional life. In some families, the son who is too frail to work goes to college. Many years ago, one of five sons of a New Hampshire farmer was sent to college, because his feeble constitution could not endure the labors of the farai, which his rugged brothers pursued for life. He was long a scholarly and successful pastor, and recently died at eighty -five, surviving all his brothers. Study evidently prolonged his life. To give a few out of a multitude of illustrations. Lord Bacon, Milton, Mcintosh, Burke, Berkely, Sir William Hamilton, President Stiles, President Dwight, Washington, Benjamin Kush and Audubon, reached nearly three-score and ten years. Dry den, Adam Clark, Leibnitz, Linnaeus, Lock, Crabb, Dugal Stewart, Swift, Koger Bacon, Haydn, Handel, Webster and Wilberforce, ranged from seventy to eighty. STUDY AND HEALTH. 131 The advanced age of the great British statesmen, among the most intense thinkers of the world, strikingly illustrates the healthfulness of intellectual pursuits. Lord John Russell is now eighty-one. Lord Palmerston was Premier at eighty and died at eighty-one. Lord Brougham made able speeches in Parliament after he was eighty-seven and died at ninety. Lord Lyndhurst electrified the House of Lords by a brilliant speech when he was ninety and died at ninety-one. The average of the deceased Presidents of Yale College was sixty-nine years, and of all the deceased Presidents and Profes- sors, over sixty-five years. The average age of all the deceased Presidents of the United States, now fifteen in number, was seventy-four and one-half years. Mr. Lincoln, falling by the hand of an assassin while in health and with one exception the youngest of all the Presi- dents at his premature death, of course unduly reduces this average. One — Millard Fillmore — is still living at the age of seventy-three. Wordsworth, Rollin, Roscoe, Dr. Harvey and Chief Justice Marshall died at eighty. The three Adamses — Grovernor Sam- uel, John and John Quincy — and Noah Webster, averaged eighty-five. John Wesley, leading a life of intense activity, continued to work without faltering till one week before his death, at the age of eighty-eight. Carl Ritter, Franklin, Pestalozzi, Herschel, Newton, Sweden - borg, Mirabeau, Rowland Hill, Washington Irving, the astron- omer Halley, the mathematician Hutton, the theologians Beecher, Emmons and Dana, averaged eighty-five years. Hobbs, Humboldt, Ferguson, Sir Christopher Wren, Bishop Wilson, Fontenelle, William Ellery, Presidents Johnson, of Columbia College, Day, of Yale, and Nott, of Union, averaged ninety-two. These individual cases illustrate rather than prove my posi- tion. Many similar facts might be given to confirm this theory. But the statistics and table given below amount to a demon- stration of 'the healthfulness of intellectual pursuits — clearly proving that longevity of scholars is greater than that of any other class of men. This evidence is the more satisfactory because it embraces large numbers and a long period of time. 132 STUDY AND HEALTH. During the eighteenth century the average age of the de- ceased graduates was over 62 years. The average of deceased graduates reported from 1841 to 1873 was 56f. A TABLE, Showing tfie age of deceased graduates of Yale College, whose deaths were reported from August, 1841, to June, 1813. Report of No. of deaths 20 to 30 80 40 50 60 70 80 Over Average f the year. report'd years to 40 to 50 to 60 to 70 to 80 to 90 90 Agef s. 1842 36 6 5 5 7 7 5 2 57i* p 1843 28 1 4 2 3 2 6 8 2 66^ 3 52 1844 55 8 6 6 8 8 9 10 66A 1845 66 8 12 15 5 5 14 7 62f 1846 41 8 9 2 3 4 8 7 53 1847 40 2 7 8 7 8 2 6 64f 1* 1848 65 7 11 11 12 8 9 7 52^ t3* 1849 50 10 3 6 5 9 10 7 55i 1850 60 9 1 4 7 8 9 5 1 54| B 1851 57 8 15 5 7 9 4 6 3 52 f 1852 44 6 3 7 7 7 3 8 3 59 ^ 1853 66 13 6 12 6 11 10 6 2 53f 1-1 1854 42 8 8 9 5 5 3 4 49 S. 1855 58 8 10 9 8 10 9 4 52-/9 1856 44 6 9 5 7 4 8 4 1 53A- i 1857 50 3 7 3 6 8 14 6 3 62 1 1858 50 2 6 5 6 8 20 4 61f 00 1859 46 2 4 6 6 13 9 4 3 63 05 or 1860 43 7 7 3 7 9 6 5 54 1861 57 2 5 10 10 12 8 1 60i 1 1862 69 3 10 10 9 6 15 5 2 57f 4 1863 68 20 12 6 8 7 9 5 1 48 27 1864 66 18 7 12 5 8 10 4 2 49f 18 1865 62 11 10 4 5 8 14 7 3 56| 18 1866 66 8 7 5 5 17 16 6 1 59* 6 1867 54 7 4 6 8 8 14 7 69 1868 56 7 7 2 8 11 15 4 2 69,\ 1 1869 65 4 8 7 6 11 18 10 1 6H 4 1870 55 4 7 2 7 14 17 4 61 9 t " 55 5 13 6 7 14 6 4 54 1871 72 6 8 8 10 11 23 6 2 60i 1872 53 5 8 11 2 11 10 6 66* 1873 75 5 6 11 8 15 18 10 2 55f Totals, 1793 225 255_ 218 211 293 356 198 37 56| 88t The thorough investigations of Life Insurance Companies establish the same conclusion, so that it is strenuously urged that the lives of youth connected with the learned professions, and especially clergymen, may safely be insured at much below the average rates. * Three lost at sea, whose average age was 23 years. + Supplementary to the eleven previous Reports. l Average age of these 88, 31 years. STUDY AND HEALTH. 183 Dr. Palmer's statistics of Harvard College from the year 1851 to 1868 show the average age of Harvard graduates deceased during that period to be 58, while throughout the State of Massachusetts, the average of all who die after they reach 20 is only 50. Here adults only enter into the comparison in either case. The period selected by Dr. Palmer embraces few war casual- ties, while the above table includes not only the 74 who died in the service, but also the 11 whose death since the war was caused or hastened by exposures in the army. The average age of these 88 whose deaths resulted from the war was only 81. Considering also the three lost at sea at the average of twenty-three, we may safely put the real average at Yale for the entire period of thirty-two years as at least fifty-eight, instead of fifty-six and five-ninths. In an article on the Vital Statistics of College Graduates, Gen. John Eaton, United States Commissioner of Education, says : " Vital statistics show^ an increase in the average dura- tion of life, due in great part to the multiplication of comforts, the better protection from the elements, the improvement in the quantity and quality of food, and the great saving of physical effort and exposure caused by the invention and wide-spread introduction of labor-saving machinerj^, the improvement of morals, or, in one phrase, the progress of civilization. These results may be largely credited to the increasing general intel- ligence of the people, the direct result of that common-school system which seeks to educate every child in the community." These investigations establish another striking and important fact. As a general rule in the most advanced years of literary men, when the bodily sight has failed in part or entirely, the mental eye has remained undimmed. This remarkable contin- uance of reason and intellectual vigor to extreme age is itself a proof of the healthfulness of study. The following testimony secured by Gen. Eaton, confirms the preceding statements. President Porter, of Yale College, says : " So far as my knowl- edge at present extends, not more than eight of the academical graduates of this college, between 1886 and 1860, have become insane, while none are known to have been convicted of crime, or to have become paupers, or dependent on the public for sup- 9 134 STUDY AND HEALTH. port." President Cummings, of the Wesley an University, writes : " I know of no one of the alumni of Wesleyan Uni- versity who has become insane ; none who are known to have been convicted of crime ; none who have become paupers ; none who have become or are dependent on the public for sup- port." It is not study itself, then, that injures health, but habits and conditions that have no necessary connection with study. Aside from facts, it seems improbable that the culture and exer- cise of the noblest part of our nature should prove a drain upon the vital functions of the body. Let study be pursued in our schools in accordance with the laws of hygiene ; let singing and gymnastics alternate with lessons and recitations ; let the posture of pupils be erect, their breathing deep and the rooms ventilated, and all proper rules of health be heeded, and little will be said of "the slaughter of the innocents in school." Indiscretions at home do a thousand fold more harm than over- study at school. Concerts, parties, balls, late hours generally, neglect of exerci^ in the open air, three or four hours' daily confinement at the piano, excessive or indigestible food and unventilated sleeping rooms, suggest the secret of many pale faces and frail forms. LABOR AS AN EDUCATOR. Every child should learn to work. A practical knowledge of some industrial pursuit is an important element in intel- lectual culture. The son of affluence who is conscious that he could maintain himself by honest labor, can the better use his wealth, as well as appreciate the condition and needs of the poor. Froude, the historian, well says : " The ten command- ments and a handicraft make a good and wholesome equipment to commence life with. A man must learn to stand upright upon his own feet, to respect himself, to be independent of charity or accident. It is on this basis only that any super- structure of intellectual cultivation worth having can possibly be built. It hurts no intellect to be able to make a boat, or a house, or a pair of shoes, or a suit of clothes, or hammer a horse-shoe, and if one can do either of these, he has nothing to fear from fortune. Spinoza, the most powerful intellectual worker that Europe had produced for the last two centuries, waving aside the pensions and legacies that were thrust upon him, chose to maintain himself by grinding object-glasses for microscopes and telescopes." It is a partial view of education which assumes that books and schools, indispensable as they are, do the whole work. Every thing which the child sees and hears, and still more, what he does, educates. This practical training begins in the cradle, and runs on through life. The educating value of labor has not been duly appreciated. Whatever compels one to think and decide on practical business questions, awakening conscious responsibility and self-reliance, develops mental power. Busi- ness pursuits frequently discover and draw out great talents. A degree of foresight, sagacity, practical wisdom and executive ability are often displayed in the management of commercial, manufacturing or agricultural interests, which would win the, highest eminence if devoted to either of the professions. 136 LABOR AS AN EDUCATOR. Every child's education is deficient who has not learned to work in some useful form of industry. Labor aids in disciplin- ing the intellect and energizing the character. Especially does farm work task and test the mind, by leading a boy to plan and contrive^ to adapt means to ends, in a great variety of ways, and under constantly varying circumstances. The necessities and struggles of the farm demand patience and perseverance, develop force of character and energy of will, and teach the needful lesson, "Where there is a will, there is a way." How many of the leading men of our country, like Washington, Webster, Clay and. Lincoln, grew up on the farm and gained there an invaluable discipline for the conflicts and achievements of life. Labor develops inventive talent. The exigencies of the far- mer, remote from villages and shops, compel him to be some- thing of the carpenter, joiner, blacksmith and harness-maker — a man of all work — " handy at anything." His business varies with the seasons, and sometimes changes every day. A farmer's boy myself, early trained in practical industry and familiar with all forms of farm work, I have ever valued highly these ■practical lessons learned among the rough hills of grand old Litchfield County. I counsel even the sons of affluence to spend at least one sea- son at hard work on the farm or in the shop. The practical business drill there gained, the knowledge of nature and do- mestic animals, will amply compensate for the consequent loss 'in book learning, to say nothing of the health and physical training thus secured. With all our improved gymnastics, none is better than manual labor, when it is cheerfully and intelligently performed, and especially farm work. The habits of industry, once formed on the farm or in the shop, may shape all the future, teaching one to value time, to husband " the odd moments," to scorn sloth and love labor, or at least to practice "diligence in business." The pupils who luxuriate in the wealthiest homes of the city would profit by one year in the country, with its peculiar work and play, its freer sports and wider range of rambles by the springs and brooks, the rivers and water-falls, the ponds and lakes, over the hills and plains, through the groves and forests ; LABOR AS AN EDUCATOR. 137 in observing nature, searching for wild flowers and curious stones, learning to recognize the different trees by any one of their distinctive marks, viz., the leaf, flower, fruit, form, bark and grain, watching the ant-hills, collecting butterflies and vari- ous insects, noticing the birds so as, to distinguish them by their beaks or claws, their size, form, plumage, flight or song. Study- ing nature in any one or more of these varied forms, each so fitted to charm children, would refresh their minds as well as recreate their bodies, and stimulate that curiosity which is the parent of attention and of memory. Nature is the great teacher of childhood, and with her the juvenile mind needs closer con- tact. Facts and objects are the leading instruments of its early development. We do violence to the child's instinctive cravings for natural objects if we give it books alone, and confine it ex- clusively to the city. When I once found over three hundred children in a city Grammar School, who had never visited the country, I did not hesitate to say that, shut out from nature, and shut in by brick walls, with all their ample apparatus and able teachers, and superior school-house, these children cannot possibly gain here a full and symmetrical, development of their various faculties. More needs to be done to combine the advantages of country and city life. With poorer schools and shorter terms, and with far less apparatus, but under the kindly and invigorating influence of rural scenes and employ- ments, the country sends forth its full share to the profes- sions, and into posts of most commanding influence in the Commonwealth and nation. Some of the retired rural districts and small hill towns have been exceedingly fertile in the rich- est treasures of intellect. "Little Lebanon," for example, has raised up five goveniors of Connecticut. The Litchfield County Jubilee showed a proud array of her sons among the most emi- nent men in our country. Idleness and vice are twins, and while idleness is always a curse, work may be a blessing. Certainly, industry is essential to thrift and virtue, to the culture of the mental as well as moral nature. The Devil tempts everybody, but the idler tempts the Devil, who gives plenty of work to all whom he finds with nothing to do. "There are but three ways of living ; by work- ing, by begging, or by stealing. Those who do not work, dis- 138 LABOR AS AN EDUCATOK. guise it in whatever pretty language we please, are doing one of the other two ! Every man should have one vocation, and as many avocations as possible."* Men of mark are men of work. The most industrious individuals and races are the most intelli- gent and powerful ; the most elevated morally as well as men- tally. In whatever land man can subsist in indolence, he droops in intellect, and there is the greatest demoralization in those tropical climates where leisure rather than labor is the rule of life. Man rises in the scale where his necessities compel constant industry, as he sinks where his wants exact no labor. Where industry becomes habitual and skillful, it not only sup- plies mere necessities, but stimulates demands above absolute ^ants. Every pure enjoyment gained by labor prompts the desire for other and higher gratifications. Theodore Parker well said : " The fine arts do not interest me so much as the coarse arts, which feed, clothe, house and comfort, people. I should rather be a great man as Franklin than a Michael Angelo ; nay, if I had a son, I should rather see him a mechanic who organ- nized use, like the late George Stephenson, in England, than a great painter like Eubens, who only copied beauty." The waning of the old system of apprenticeships is a serious evil. The limitation fixed by the "Trades Unions" on the number of apprentices allowed to each shop or master mechanic is working mischief. It is a gross infringement of the rights and privileges of thousands of minors. It deprives them of that thorough training in the several trades which is essential to the attainment of the highest skill and success. Multitudes of boys anxious to learn trades and to become skillful mechan- ics, are thus unjustly oppressed and prevented from becoming trained artisans and valuable members of society. They are defrauded of the true means of personal improvement and per- manent prosperity. The system of apprenticeship lies at the foundation of skilled industry, and should be encouraged to the utmost as an indispensable part of the practical educa- tion of our future artisans. Otherwise, our youth must be forever debarred from the most lucrative positions, or sur- render them to skilled mechanics imported from abroad. This plan is short-sighted and suicidal. It cripples our future * Froude. LABOR AS AN EDUCATOR. 139 meclianics. It seeks a temporary gain at the sacrifice of their permanent prosperity. This plan of temporary protection to themselves at the expense of the rising generation, and, as often happens, of their own children, is a delusion. The plan is arbi- trary and inconsistent with the first principles of a Republican Government. I have known many a father trying in vain to put his boy to a trade where his services were desired, and the employer was reluctantly compelled to refuse the applicant, because "the Union permits only one apprentice to five or seven journeymen." This rule is unreasonable and ought to be illegal. Last October the Pennsylvania Council of the Order of United American Mechanics wisely resolved "to take active measures for the restoration of the good old system of appren- ticeship, in order that the children of the members of this order may be enabled to learn trades thoroughly, so as to compete with foreign mechanics^^^ and also petitioned the Pennsylvania Legis- lature to pass a State law " to prohibit any art or trade associa- tion or combination of mechanics, or others, from making lim- itations upon the number of apprentices that may be employed by any master or association, for the purpose of carrying on any art, trade or manufactory." The ambition for easier lives and more genteel employments, and the silly but common notion that labor is menial, that the tools of the trades or of the farm are badges of servility, have greatly lessened apprenticeships. These pernicious notions ought to be refuted in our schools, and our youth should there be taught the necessity and dignity of labor, and its vital relations to all human excellence and progress, the evils of indolence, the absurdity of the prevalent passion for city life and wide-spread aversion to manual labor. The popular dis- taste for mechanical pursuits should be early counteracted, and more should be done in our schools to dignify labor, and ren- der mechanical pursuits attractive and reputable. The Indus- trial Schools for girls as well as boys, so numerous and useful in Germany, Switzerland and other portions of Europe, will be described in full in a volume on " The Schools of Europe," soon to appear. The influence of these Industrial Schools is as important in dignifying labor, as in increasing its efficiency and productive value. Boys and girls are early taught in the 140 LABOR AS AN EDUCATOR. family as well as the school, that to learn to be useful is alike their duty, privilege and interest. But the theory that labor is a degrading drudgery will consciously demean any artisan and bar improvement in his art. On the other hand, pride and pleasure in his work lead to higher excellence both in his craft and character. He who always does his best to-day can do better still to-morrow. It was a wise provision of the Hebrews that all parents should teach their children some handicraft. This was with them, as it should be with us, an essential part of the education of every child. Among the Hebrews labor was always honorable. No man was ashamed of his trade. A man was not considered entitled to live unless he could support him- self No matter what his rank, he must be trained to work. While proclaiming the new gospel for all the world, Paul by the aid of his handicraft could assert his independence and be burdensome to no one. By his own " ensample," he enforced his precept, " If any would not work, neither should he eat," and his censure of " the disorderly busy-bodies working not at all." "The chief of the apostles" did not degrade his high office when he resumed his early trade of tent-maker. His asso- ciates seemed never to suspect that their old business of fish- ermen was disreputable. The Great Teacher honored manual labor, and therefore as a carpenter's son worked patiently at his father's trade. Many of our youth are afflicted with the infatuation that city clerkships are the most eligible positions, while the trades are not " respectable." Let them learn that intelligeni mechanics have a better chance of securing wealth, eminence and influence than the over-crowded clerkships can afford. The most exten- sive manufacturer of silver in the world, John Gorham of Provi- dence, declined the position of clerk in the counting-room, that he might master the trade in his father's shop as a regular apprentice, where he learned thoroughly how to do with his own hands all that he has since had to direct others in doing. A.- multitude of similar facts might be cited to show that the mastery of a trade is one of the best preparations for practical life and prosperity in business. Clerks are often paid less than skillful mechanics, and are less independent. In their precari- ous positions they are liable to disappointments and humilia- LABOR AS AN EDUCATOR. 141 ting straggles with the thousands of others "looking for a place." Every advertisement for a clerk brings a swarm of applicants. How pitiable the condition of this super-abun- dance of book-keepers and exchangers wasting their lives in " waiting for a place," while our factories, railroads and trades are clamoring for educated superintendents, foremen, engineers, skillful managers and "cunning workmen." The position of the educated and well trained mechanic is far preferable to that of average city clerks. The latter may dress better, talk more glibly, bow more gracefully, not to say obsequiously, but they compare unfavorabty with our best mechanics in manly inde- pendence, vigor of thought and strength of character. Too many of our young men leave the homestead on adven- tures less safe and reliable than the arts of industry. A good trade is more honorable and remunerative than peddling maps, books, pictures, patent- rights and clothes wringers, or in a city store to be cash or errand boy, store-sweeper, fire-kindler and counter jumper generally. Without disparaging the useful and honorable position of the clerk, our young men may properly be cautioned against further crowding this already " plethoric profession." To the boys in the country I say, instead of aspiring to an uncertain and precarious clerkship, stick to the farm or learn a trade, and you will lay the broadest foundation for prosperity, Those who have well improved the opportuni- ties now offered in our Free Schools, can afford to apprentice themselves at sixteen years of age, supplementing their educa- tion by evening schools, or by self training in their evenings and leisure hours. In the coming struggles for material pros- perity, he will win who can best wield physical forces. Bacon well says, " The empire of man over material things has for its only foundation the sciences and the arts, for we triumph over nature only as we learn to obey her laws." Promotion and success are open to all in })roportion as they master this lesson. The superintendents at first selected for the large manufac- turing corporations in this country, as at Lowell, were frequently professional men, often practicing lawyers. But experience long since led to a regular system of promotion. " Encourage merit," " promote from the ranks," are now the mottoes. The best superintendents of these large conce rns a,re n ow those who V^ OP TEB^. 142 LABOR AS AN EDUCATOR. have worked themselves up from the humblest positions, who are thoroughly and practically familiar with all the processes and details. In our factories every room has its foreman and assistant foreman. These overseers are now selected from the workmen by reason of superior education, aptitude and industry. Many conductors and some superintendents of our railroads began as brakemen. A prominent member of Congress passed from farmer's boy to stage driver, brakeman, conductor, super- intendent, and finally to the position of president of a large railroad in New England. The following facts in regard to the early history of some of our great statesmen are furnished to me by one of our most honored civilians, whose life happily illustrates the same princi- ple. Multitudes have gained a similar promotion from the humblest to the highest positions. " Yery few of the fathers of our republic were the inheritors of distinction. Washington was almost the only gentleman by right of birth in all that astonishing company of thinkers and actors. Two or three Virginians, John Jay, of New York, and half-a-dozen inferior men from other provinces, were exceptions. But Franklin was a printer's boy ; Sherman a shoemaker ; Knox a book-binder ; Grreen a blacksmith ; John Adams and Marshall the sons of poor farmers; and Hamilton, the most subtle, fiery and electrical, but at the same time the most orderly genius of all, excepting the unapproachable chief, was of as humble parentage as the rest, and himself, at the beginning, a shopkeeper. And if we come down to a later period, Daniel Webster was the son of a country farmer, and was rescued from the occupation of a drover only by the shrewd observation of Christopher Gore, whom he called upon for ad- vice in respect to a difficulty arising from the sale of a pair of steers ; John C. Calhoun was the son of a tanner and currier ; the father of Henry Clay belonged to the poorer class of Baptist ministers ; Martin Yan Buren, during the fitful leisure of the day, gathered pine knots to light his evening studies ; Thomas Corwin was a wagoner ; Silas Wright, by heritage, a machinist 5 Lincoln, Douglass and Stevens were farmer's boys ; and many others among our statesmen, who receive the applause and rever- LABOR AS AN EDUCATOR. 148 ence of mankind, passed their earlier years in the practical school of labor." I began to enumerate the inventors, manufacturers and busi- ness men of Connecticut — now our men of wealth — who were trained on the farm or in the shops, but found the list too large for publication. It would comprise most of the successful busi- ness men of the State. Those who despised labor and aspired to " genteel occupations" in their youth, have not been the bene- factors of the community, nor of themselves. The great inventors were not dandled in the lap of affluence, nor were they contemners of the trades, ambitious of " elegant" employments. They were "clad not in silks but fustian, and grimed with soot and oil." In the language of Professor Lyman, '* The artificers and inventors of the world, the men who revo- lutionize human industry and manifold the wealth and power of nations by new machines and new processes of art — the Watts, the Arkwrights, the Bramahs, the Clements, the Nas- myths, the Stephensons, the Fairbairns, the Fultons, the Erics- sons, the Goodyears, the Howes, the McCormicks, have usually had their training in the shops." EDUCATION AND INDUSTEIAL ARTS. The industrial interests of our country are vital to its pros- perity. We are a working people, and the cause of the work- man is the cause of all. The problem of our day is to elevate work by elevating the workman. The masses are learning that mere muscle is weak, that brains help the hands in all work, that knowledge multiplies the value and productive power of muscular efforts. If knowledge is power, ignorance is impo- tence. What a man 25, stamps an impress upon what he does, even in the humblest forms of industry. The character of the work depends on the workman. Whatever elevates the laborer improves his labor. In proportion as you degrade the opera- tive, you depreciate his work. The wealth and welfare of indi- viduals and communities thus dependent on labor, can be most fully secured only by educated labor. You can dignify work in no way so surely as by educating and thus elevating the workman. As mind triumphs over matter, the amount of manual labor requisite to secure equal results constantly les- sens. The invention of labor-saving machinery, though tempo- rarily depreciating the hand labor thus supplanted, ultimately benefits every one. Eminent physicists are successfully applying the latest re- searches of science to the industrial arts. Their discoveries have already contributed largely to our material prosperity, and prove that the future improvement of the mechanic arts depends on brain as well as brawn, — on the substitution of physical forces for muscular strength. " Subdue the earth, and have dominion over it," was the primeval command. The progress of civilization has always been commensurate with man's dominion over nature, and his utilization of her forces and resources. Science has not only built our railroads, locomotives, steamships and telegraphs, but permeated all our factories, and rendered labor incomparably more productive. To give one or two illustrations, applications of chemistry and metallurgy EDUCATION AND INDUSTRIAL ARTS. l4o have made the din of industry continuous all along the Nauga- tuck Valley, in Connecticut, from Birmingham to Winsted. Electro-metallurgy is bringing untold wealth to Meriden, Wal- lingford, Hartford and New Haven. During my connection with the Board of Education of Massachusetts, the Secretary, Hon. George S. Boutwell, sent circulars to the leading corporations of the State, asking the opinion of the superintendents as to the relation of educa- tion to wages, the relative profitableness of employing ignorant or intelligent laborers, and the comparative quality of the work of these two classes of operatives. The replies, with striking unanimity, showed that ignorant labor was always expensive ; that the amount and quality of w^ork performed were pro- portioned to the intelligence of the laborers ; -'that intelligent laborers learn more readily, are more skillful when learned, are more easily controlled, perform more as well as better work, require less looking after, keep their machines cleaner and more judiciously oiled, incur less liability to breakage of machinery, less waste of oil and of stock. As a general rule there is a higher sense of moral obligation, and more honesty, fidelity and regard for the interest of employers, among the intelligent than among the ignorant laborers." These replies showed that among a large number of persons, and upon an average, " trust- worthiness in labor, and honesty in the custody of property, are proportioned to the intelligence of the operative." Education favors inventions and improvements in machin- ery. Intelligent mechanics are continually devising improved methods of accomplishing given results. In a very large lock establishment in Connecticut, where the work is done mostly by the piece or job, so constant have been improvements in the processes or 'machines, that the workmen have for some years reduced their " proposals" in the annual contracts, with- out decreasing, and sometimes increasing, their wages. Kecent improvements in the rapidity of the processes are surprising. In a cotton mill, one carder can now do the work which would require five thousand persons by hand. Six hundred of the old hand wheels cannot spin as much yarn in a day as one girl can produce by machinery. In Hindostan a man can spin one hank a day ; a modern spinner with his mule can 146 EDUCATION AND INDUSTRIAL ARTS. produce 3,000 hanks in the same time. In 1807, Boston and Salem merchants imported cotton cloth from India ; now, mil- lions of yards are exported to India and remote parts of Asia. A machine recently invented is turning out fish-hooks in New Haven at the rate of 62,000 a day, and another by the same ingenious inventor can make 50,000 needles a day. Other very curious inventions of his are saving hand labor in the ratio of five hundred or even a thousand to one. A thousand men in the old English style could hardly make and stick as many pins per hour as one boy now does by machinery ; for a single boy can " tend" an indefinite num- ber of these almost thinking automatons. Within less than thirty years, mobs of laborers have destroyed labor-saving machines, or resisted their introduction, and menaced their proprietors. Opposition to sewing machines and steam fire engines is not yet forgotten. But the sewing machine is a benefactor of the needle women. It has already made the " song of the shirt" obsolete, and helped the seamstress to earn far more than she ever could by hand. Such machines, by reducing cost and increasing production, increase also the demand for labor, as well as its efficiency and remuneration. The Universal Exposition of Industry in Paris six years ago taught some bitter but profitable lessons to the English Govern- ment and people. Prominent among the six causes which influ- enced Parliament in the adoption of a new national system of education, was this International Exposition. It formed a good school for England, and through England for all Europe. The investigations instituted by Parliament were thorough and conclusive. The epitome of that Eeport (given below) was circulated widely in various journals on the continent, and reached Turkey, China and Japan. Perhaps no Report of Parliament attained greater celebrity or exerted a wider and happier influence. It was accepted as a demonstration of the influence of education in protnoting individual thrift and na- tional prosperity. Even English reviews and newspapers, and the largest and most intelligent manufacturers, were compelled to admit that Britain fared ill in that comparison of the world's industries. This was an unwelcome surprise to the nation. Her superiority to all the world in manufactures had been long EDUCATION AND INDUSTRIAL ARTS. 147 assumed as unquestioned. The most keen-sighted and practi cal British observers admitted the mortifying fact that England was surpassed, either relatively or absolutely, by her Continen- tal rivals. This was true, not in a few, but in many and vari- ous branches of manufacturing and mechanical industry. There was great unanimity in this view on the part of those English "Jurors" and observers especially appointed to examine and report the results of their observations. Professor Tyndall says : " England will be outstripped both in the arts of peace and war by the Continental nations, in virtue of their better education." Dr. Lyon Playfair, a juror in the Exhibition, " found some of our (British) chief mechani- cal and civil engineers lamenting the want of progress in their industries, and pointing to the wonderful advances which other nations were making. The one cause upon which there was most unanimity of conviction (among British manufactu- rers) is that France, Prussia, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland poss^ess good systems of industrial education for the masters and managers of factories and workshops, and that England pos- sesses none ; " he also found British chemical, and even textile manufacturers uttering similar complaints. The Rev. Canon Norris, an inspciitor of schools, found evidence at the Exposition that " in all that tends to convert the mere workman into the artisan^ Austria, France and Prussia were clearly passing us." Mr. Edward Huth, familiar as a juror and otherwise with the Expositions of 1851 and 1862, as well as with that of 1867, says of Great Britain : " We no longer hold that preeminence which was accorded to us in the Exhibition of 1851." He fears especially for the woolen manufacturers of his country. Mr. James E. McConnell, another juror, "made a very careful ex- amination and comparison of British locomotive engines, car- riages, railway machinery, apparatus and material, with the same articles exhibited by France, Germany and Belgium, and became firmly convinced that former British superiority no longer exists. It requires no skill to predict that unless we adopt a system of technical education for our workmen in this country, we shall soon not hold our own in cheapness of cost as well as excellence of quality of our mechanical produc- tions." Capt. Frederick Beaumont says: "There can be no 148 EDUCATION AND INDUSTRIAL ARTS. doubt as to the immense strides which foreign mechanical engineering has lately made, by which France and Belgium are rapidly overtaking the industrial power of Great Britain." The evidence of loss of prestige for British manufactures was too clear to be disputed. Leading men and journals at once discussed the cause. There was general unanimity as to the fact itself; and the cause was found to be the absence of technical and general education in Grreat Britain, and the prev- alence of both on the Continent Says Mr. Huth: "It is the want of industrial education in this country which prevents our manufacturers from making the progress which other nations are making. Many of our workmen have no education. Their education is superior. With them it is not a machine that works a machine^ hut brains sit at the loom and intelligence stands at the spinning -wheeV^ Mr. Mundella, managing partner of a firm employing five thousand work-people in the manufacture of hosiery, says : " I have for five years been increasingly alarmed for our industrial suprem- acy, and my experience of the Paris Exhibition has only con- firmed and strengthened my fears. Our best machines are improved on in France and Germany by men who have had the advantage of a superior industrial education. The frightful ignorance found in our factories is disheartening. The English workman is gradually losing the race, through the superior in- telligence which foreign governments are carefully developing in their artisans. The contrast between the work-people of Saxony and England is most humiliating : [one of the facto- ries of Mr. Mundella's firm is in Saxony.] In Saxony, our manager, an Englishman of superior intelligence, has never met, in seven years, with a workman who could not read and write well. If we are to maintain our position in industrial competition, we must secure an educational system equally effective and complete, otherwise we shall be defeated, and gen- erations hence shall be struggling with ignorance, squalor, pau- perism and crime." Mr. James Young is represented as tiie possessor of the most lucrative establishment of one branch of practical chemistry in the world. Originally a workman, he learned chemistry and natural philosophy and other subjects under various professors. This was the basis of his fortune, EDUCATION AND INDUSTRIAL ARTS. 149 and in view of it he says : " It would be most ungrateful in me if I did not recognize the importance of scientific and technical education in improving and advancing manufactures." In regard to the Paris Exhibition he says that " the rate of pro- gress of other nations appeared so formidable that several meet- ings of jurors, exhibitors and others, took place at the Louvre Hotel on the subject." Mr. J. Scott Eussell made a collective expression of the opinions of jurors to this effect, that "the progress of the leading Continental nations in the last sixteen years since the first Exhibition of 1851, has been remarkably greater than ours, and they seem to exhibit growing skill and progress in proportion to the excellence of the education and training they give to their manufacturing population. Some- thing must be done, or our working classes will be grievously- wronged, and the whole nation suffer. In the race we are no- where. Our defeat is as ignominious and as disastrous as it is possible to conceive. The mere mechanical workman stands not the slighest chance witli a workman of cultivated taste. On the Continent the young artisans are distinguishing them- selves and their countries by the excellence of their work, the higher quality of their manufactured materials, the economy of their execution, and the beautifulness of their designs. Poor England, standing by idle, is too late. Her workingmen, fore- men and masters, grown up uneducated, cannot now be edu- cated — are too old to learn. We have lost a generation. Whose was the fault? whose the blame? Why did not our statesmen and aristocracy, already provided with special universities and schools for their own training, foresee that our trade was going away to more skilled nations, and warn us in time? The con- trast between England and Switzerland is this : England spends more than five times as much on pauperism and crime as she does on education, and Switzerland spends seven times as much on education as on pauperism and crime." These revelations that British manufactures were losing ground from the lack of proper education claimed the atten- tion of Parliament, and accordingly in March, 1868, a select committee of nineteen was appointed to inquire into the pro- visions for giving instruction in theoretical and applied science to the industrial classes. That committee continued in session 10 150 EDUCATION" AKB INDUSTRIAL ARTS. for over tbree montlis, sending for persons and j^apers from all parts of the kingdom. The minutes of evidence fill nearly 500 double column folio pages. The epitome of their conclusions given below has an important lesson for us, and suggests the practical inquiry, what is America doing for technical educa- tion ? They should lead us to foster our Schools of Agricul- ture and Mechanic Arts, Industrial and Evening Schools for Mechanics and Apprentices, and to introduce drawing and prac- tical science into our public schools. If in proportion to our area and population. New England manufactures now hold the foremost place in this country, let us consider that fifteen years ago, the same preeminence belonged to Great Britain, and not forget why it does so no longer. Manufactures constitute to-day the leading source of the growing wealth of New England, and for its future increase we must look mainly to them. But this will depend on the skill of our artisans, the ingenuity of our inventors, and the con- sequent superiority of our fabrics. Connecticut clocks, for example, command the market of the world. England alone in a single year has bought 160,000. An order was lately received in New Haven from Birmingham, England, for 800,000 fish-hooks. Similar orders come to the same firm every week from foreign lands. Seven years ago, England had a monopoly of this business both for Europe and America. Two Connecticut firms make over a million eyelets or paper- fasteners daily. A multitude of similar facts might be cited where the cost of material is slight and skill and inventive tal- ent make the process easy and the profits large. If our wares continue to be better and cheaper, we gain and retain the mar- ket of the world ; if we fail to progress, we shall lose it. How to maintain our manufactures in the highest perfection and by keeping up with the times command the market, is the problem for us to solve. Stagnation or mediocrity here means retrogression. The Committee of the British Parlia- ment say : " The industrial system of the present age is based on the substitution of mechanical for animal power ; its development is due in this country to its stores of coal and metallic ores, to our geographical position and temperate climate, and to the EDUCATION AND INDUSTRIAL ARTS, 151 unrivaled energy of our population. The acquisition of scien- tific knowledge has been shown by the witnesses to be only one of the elements of an industrial education and of indus- trial progress. ITearly every witness speaks of the extraor- dinarily rapid progress of continental nations in manufactures, and attributes that rapidity not to the model workshops which are met with in some foreign countries, and are but an indif- ferent substitute for our own great factories, and for those which are rising up in every part of the continent, but, besides other causes, to the scientific training of the proprie- tors and managers in France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Ger- many, and to the elementary instruction which is universal among the working pojoulaiion of Switzerland and Germany y My limits permit only a condensed summary of the more important con- clusions of this suggestive report : " 1. That with the view to enable the working class to benefit by scientific instruction, it is of the utmost importance that ef&cient elementary instruction should be within the reach of every child. 2. That unless regular attendance of the children for a suffi- cient period can be obtained, little can be done in the way of their scientific instruction, 3. That elementary instruction in drawing, in physical ge- ography, and in the phenomena of nature, should be given in elementary schools. 4. That adult science classes, though of great use to artisans, to foremen, and to the smaller manufacturers, cannot provide all the scientific instruction which those should possess who are responsible for the conduct of important industrial under- takings. That all whose necessities do not oblige them to leave school before the age of fourteen, should receive instruc- tion in the elements of science as part of their general edu- cation. 5. That the reorganization of secondary instruction and the introduction of a larger amount of scientific teaching into secondary schools are urgently required, and ought to receive the immediate consideration of Parliament and of the country. 6. That it is desirable that certain endowed schools should be selected in favorable situations for the purpose of being 152 EDUCATION AND INDUSTKIAL ARTS. reconstituted as science schools, having in view the special requirements of the district; so that the children of every grade may be able to rise from the lowest to the highest school. 7. That the managers of training colleges for the -teachers of elementary schools should give special attention to the instruc- tion of those teachers in theoretical and applied science, where such instruction does not exist already." This Parliamentary Eeport is a remarkable document. The ■abundance of her coal and the cheapness of labor and raw material, confirmed England in the assumption of permanent preeminence in manufacturing. This report has dispelled that ■complacency. It convicts the government of the fatal blunder •of neglecting popular education. While fostering Cambridge and Oxford it has overlooked the masses. Here is a demon- stration of the bearing of popular education on national in- dustry. It proves that education is economy and that ignorance means waste ; that the skilled workman so forecasts and plans his work that every blow tells, while he economizes both his strength and stock ; that even in the humblest labor he will do more work, in better style, with less damage to tools or machinery, than the boor who can use only brute muscle. EDUCATION AND INVENTION. On this subject facts furnish the most convincing arguments. The educational history of Connecticut gives a demonstration of the influence of education in developing inventive talent. The schools of Connecticut were once the best in this country. The founders of that State were the pioneers in the great move- ment of popular education. Their example has not only been a power in this land, but is known and honored in all Christen- dom. It has led to the organization of other and even better systems in the newer States. The text-books of those times, even those published in Boston, New York and Philadelphia, lauded the Common School system of Connecticut as the best in the country. President Porter, in his Prize Essay on Com- mon Schools, says : " Connecticut was once the star of hope and guidance to the world. She was the first to enter the lists and was foremost in the race." These expenditures for educa- cation proved to be wise investments. Up to 1860, Connecti- cut was relatively the richest State in the Union. With poor soil, little mineral wealth, and meager natural resources, com- pared with many other States, universal education rendered her varied industries the most productive. In visiting the towns of this State, one is struck with the number and kinds of manufacturing establishments, and the endless diversity of their fabrics, varying from pins and needles to car wheels and cannons. Yankee " notions some of them may be called, but it requires ingenuity and skill to invent and make them, and "they pay." The ingenuity and inventive talent of Connecti- cut is remarkable and unrivalled. For a long series of years, in proportion to its population, this State has taken the lead in the number, variety and value of its inventions, as is proved b}'' the statistics of the Patent Office. In 1867, the number of patents issued to citizens of Connecticut, New York and Massa- chusetts, and the proportion to population was as follows: 154 EDUCATION AND INVENTION. To citizens of Connecticut, 662, being one to each 695 " " " Massachusetts, 1,451, " '^ " " 848 '' New York, 2,803, " " " " 1,382 This is on the basis of the census of 1860, and the proportion is in the nearest whole numbers. The whole number of patents granted during the year 1867 was 12,301. The states here named are the ones which stood highest in the list of the Patent Office. In the year 1871, the whole number of patents granted to the citizens of the United States was 12,511, and in part as follows : To citizens of Connecticut, 667, being one to each 806 " " " Dist. Columbia, 136 " 970 " " " Massachusetts, 1,386 " 1,051 " " " Ehode Island, 184 " 1,181 " '^ New York, 2,954 ^' 1,450 " '' " New Jersey, 496 " 1,827 The following are the figures for 1872. Connecticut, 648 patents issued, being one to every 829 Massachusetts, 1,435 " li u 1,014 Ehode Island, 179 " u a 1,214 New Jersey, 682 " iL c( 1,328 New York, 3,079 " u a 1,423 These figures fairly illustrate the average preeminence of Connecticut in inventiveness, and clearly show the pecuniary value of intelligence, verifying the words of Burke: "Taxes raised for purposes of education are like vapors, which rise only to descend again in fertilizing showers to bless and beau- tify the land." The influence of public schools in promoting individual thrift and general prosperity is well shown by the following statements of Gen. John Eaton, United States Commissioner of Education : " The number of patents issued to the inhabitants of Arkan- sas was one to every 37,267 persons, while in Connecticut there was one patent issued to every 695 persons. In Arkansas there are sixteen adults unable to write to every one hundred inhabitants ; in Connecticut there are four adults unable to EDUCATION AND INVENTION. 155 write to every one hundred inhabitants.* In Arkansas the receipts of internal revenue are twentj-six cents and nine mills per capita ; in Counecticut the receipts are two dollars and fifty-four cents per capita. In Arkansas there resulted during the last year to the Post Office Department a dead loss of over forty-iiiue cents for each inhabitant of the State, a loss in amount almost double the internal revenue receipts from the State ! In Connecticut their accrued a net profit to the Post Office Department of twenty-six cents per capita. In Florida there are twenty- three adults unable to write to every one hun- dred inhabitants. In that State one patent was issued to every 81,291 inhabitants, or only six in the entire State. The inter- nal revenue collected amounted to sixty-four cents per capita of the entire population. From that State the Post Office Department suffered a loss of ninety-two cents per capita. Contrast this with California, where the number of patents issued was one to every 2,422 inhabitants, and the amount of internal revenue collected was six dollars and forty-three cents per capita ! But in California there are only four adults unable to write to every one hundred of the inhabitants. In Tennes- see twelve adults are unable to read and write to every one hundred of the inhabitants, and the State pays internal revenue at the rate of sixty-nine cents per capita ; while Ohio, in which there are four illiterate adults to every one hundred inhabitants, pays five dollars and sixty-eight cents internal revenue per capita." * These are believed to be of foreign origin. LABOR AND CAPITAL THEORETICALLY HAR- MONIZED. The adjustment of labor and capital is one of the pressing questions of the age, now arresting public attention more than ever. No question in political economy touches the masses so broadly throughout the civilized world. The difficulty in- volved cannot be adjusted by force, as has been vainly at- tempted in some European countries, nor by money or num- bers. It will nowhere stay settled till it is settled rightly on a basis which, in the long run and on a broad scale, will secure the highest interests of both parties. Everything possible should be done to ameliorate the condition of the operative, hard at best. No one thing will help him so much as that schooling which awakens hope and ambition to better his con- dition, to improve bimself and his home and to educate his children. My work and my sympathies are much with the laboring- classes. A desire to promote their true interests, as well as the education of their children, has led me often to discuss the labor question. While seeking especially to help the working- men, I have had the happiness of gaining their confidence as well as that of our manufacturers. It has long been both my duty and desire to care for neg- lected children. For this purpose I have visited many manu- factories in different parts of Connecticut. As the supervision of the schooling of minors employed in factories, or at any service in Connecticut, devolves on the State Board of Educa- tion, it has been my aim to watch this important interest, and confer both with manufacturers and operatives in order to secure their co-operation. Labor is both superior and prior to capital, and alone origin- ally produces capital. For this result, labor must be intelli- gent, and brain-work and hand-work co-operate. Many a penni- less laborer, by industry, intelligence and economy^ has become LABOli AND CAPITAL THEORETICALLY HARMONIZED. 157 an independent capitalist. Our most successfal manufacturers have toiled up from penury to affluence. This aspiration and opportunity are open to all who are educated enough to combine skill with labor. But the condition and opportunities of the laborer improve with the increase of industrial capital, which alwaj^s befriends labor when it multiplies the opportunities for education and profitable employment. The chances for the laborer in this country are far better than they were sixty years ago, before the commencement of our manufacturing system, when the poor slept without sheets. Now that manufiacturers have made sheeting five times cheaper, and more than doubled wages, the operative has sheets and shirts as white as his em- ployers, and the children of both attend the same school. Parisian Internationals denounced capital as the enemy of labor, but in the same breath they boasted that it was the unaided product of labor, and therefore rightly belonged to its producers, whoever may be the legal owners. It is a strik- ing fact that in Paris itself, not long after this International pro- clamation, nothing but the capital thus attacked kept its assail- ants from starvation during the siege, when production ceased. Laws and unions, strikes and communes cannot equalize things in their nature essentially unequal ; nor put the infelicities of ignorance and the misfortunes of improvidence and indolence on a level with the advantages of education, industry and fore- thought. ''Equality of conditions," "property is robbery," was the mad outcry of the commune. It did succeed in sweep- ing away capital, and had it longer held sway, it would have destroyed also the motive and the means alike for the future accumulation and protection of capital and introduced that anarchy which is fatal to all culture and progress. The equality of conditions it would secure, would be the low level of a com- mon barbarism. Inequalities are ordained by nature, and must continue as long as the capacities and habits of men differ. Even to enforce equality of wages, lessens the motives to in- dustry, skill and fidelity, interferes with individual liberty and restrains the freedom of competition. If capital were annihilated to-morrow, labor would suffer first and most. Capital and labor therefore are not enemies. There is only an apparent opposition of interests which van- 158 LABOR AND CAPITAL THEORETICALLY HARMONIZED. ishes on a careful examination. Instead of open strikes or smothered jealousies, dissolving all social ties, there should be kindness and sympathy between the employer and the em- ployed. There should be no impassable gulf between the rich and the poor, no tyranny of capital over labor, nor hostility and hatred of labor to capital. The capitalist should fully know the wants and trials of the laborer's lot, and the work- man should understand the risks, anxieties and conditions of success on the part of the manufacturer. There should be liberal pay on the one side and fair profits on the other. The interests of both classes are bound together. If either one is harmed, the other must ultimately suffer. Certainly the laborer cannot long suffer in health, education or pay without harm to the employer, and large losses to employers inevitably extend to the operatives. They are copartners, and cannot afford to be antagonists. Capital is as dependent on labor as labor is on capital, and only as both work in harmony can the highest good of each be secured. There is need of mutual considera- tion and often of mutual concession. Wages no doubt have been too low, and have been deservedly raised. In the long run it is not for the interest of the operative that wages should be so high or the hours of labor so few as to suddenly or seriously increase the cost, and thus lesson the amount, of pro- duction. In this age Commerce is a great equalizer. Manu- facturing will expand wherever it can be carried on most eco- nomically. With present facilities of exchange and intercom- munication, manufacturing will gravitate to those lands which furnish the best facilities, and open the most favorable condi- tions for production, as naturally as water finds its level. In the industries of this age, not states only, but nations are rivals. The late strikes in New York city drove important manufac- turing enterprises to other cities and states, and thus lessened the demand for labor. The poor are often the greatest sufferers when capital is thus withdrawn and industrial enterprise re- pressed. American manufactories are now increasing in num- ber, variety and value. In the future development of our resources, certainly in the Eastern States, we must look largely to them for the retention of our best men at home, and the attraction of labor from abroad. LABOR AND CAPITAL THEORETICALLY HARMONIZED. 159 The simple elements of political economy should be taught in our schools, if not formally from text-books, at least in oral lessons. The few principles which govern supply and demand, cost and production, profit and loss, could easily be taught without interfering with the prescribed studies. No mechanic can afford to be ignorant of these elementary econo- mies. Our youth should early understand that labor and capi- tal are inseparably yoked together. Being co-partners, there should always be a fair division of profits between them. If each can but understand the other, the folly of alienation and conflict will be seen. The outrages sometimes connected with strikes are usually the acts of ignorant men, with whom brute force seems the most effective, if not the only means of rectify- ing wrong. Education should check these tendencies to vio- lence and find better means for the redress of injuries, real, or fancied. It is the testimony of those who have the widest op- portunities of observation, that the educated laborer is less liable to join in unreasonable and unseasonable strikes, not only be- cause they drive away capital and ultimately diminish the demand for labor, but remembering that he himself is a con- sumer, he may not wisely set an example which would tend to a general enhancement in the price of all products and prove disastrous to all. Education becomes more essential in pro- portion as our manufacturing processes become more scientific. We should encourage the aspiration of working men to better their circumstances and rise above the condition of drudges, by making labor more honorable and remunerative. Already the intelligent American mechanic is far better off than the laborers of Europe, better paid, fed, clothed, housed, better appreciated and better situated in every respect. I can best illustrate general principles by citing facts com- ing under my observation in Connecticut. In many of our manufacturing villages, employers have allayed prejudice and disarmed hostility by a liberal policy. As enlightened, liberal, philanthropic men, they have generously aided both the school and the church, provided reading-rooms and lectures for the special benefit of their operatives, and erected boarding and tenement-houses in a style favorable for their health and com- fort. They have encouraged the purchase of homesteads or 160 LABOR AND CAPITAL THEORETICALLY HARMONIZED. erection of houses, by selling land and loaning a large percent- age of the cost of building on favorable terms. There are many thriving manufacturing villages in Connecticut where a strike, or anything like antagonism of labor to capital, has never been known. Instead of isolating themselves from their operatives, these capitalists have treated them as partners, cast in their lot with them, guarded their health, provided for their material comfort and intellectual and moral welfare. The three Governors of Connecticut — Jewell, English, and Buckingham — extensive manufacturers, have each illustrated the wisdom of a liberal policy toward their employees. The harmony and good- will thus secured have proved an important part of their effective capital. I have had occasion to know that their workmen feel a pride in their service, and a genuine interest in their success When all manufacturers feel it to be their duty and interest to show like sympathy and interest toward their employees, the problem of harmonizing labor and capital will be solved. It is a significant fact that in referring to the efficient mea- sures adopted for the schooling of minors employed in factories or at any service — measures most liberally sustained by the manufacturers of the state — Governor Jewell, in his message in 1871, was able to congratulate the Legislature on the general good feeling between employees and employers, using the fol- lowing language : " The law in regard to minor children has worked happily and has been wisely administered by the Board of Education. It has received alike the sanction of operatives and manufacturers. While strikes and strifes between capital and labor, injurious alike to all parties, abound in other states, 'perfect harmony exists here between employer and employed.^'' Substantially the same language might have been truthfully used in each succeeding annual message. LABOR AND CAPITAL PRACTICALLY HAR- MONIZED.^ How to harmonize labor and capital is now one of the great questions of the age. Their alienation has recently caused idle- ness, distress and crime on one side, and lock-outs, derange- ment of business and enormous losses on the other. Tbe many millions lately lost in New York by mistakes on this question furnish only a new version of the old story of antagonisms between those who should be partners. The Internationals in session this week at the Hague have raised questions which will perplex the Emperors of Russia, Austria*and Germany, in their interviews at Berlin next week, quite as much as Bis- mark's "guarantee for the peace of Europe." My interest in the practical solution of this hard problem, now puzzling kings and peoples through the civilized world, brought me to this northeastern corner of Vermont. Here is a great manufactory of scales, by far the largest establishment of the kind in the world, employing about six hundred men, and nearly four hundred in branch departments elsewhere, and manufacturing over 50,000 scales annually. They are of all sorts and sizes — over three hundred varieties — from the most delicate standard of the druggist or banker, to the ponderous hay, railroad-car, or canal-boat scales, weighing 600 tons at a time. They are adapted to the standards of all nations, and marked with the signs of each. This week a large invoice was sent to Japan, and for a long time they have been sold in China, Australia, India, Persia, Turkey, Arabia (where they have been carried on mules' or camels' backs), in the Bar- bary States, Cape Colony, Sandwich Islands, all the South American States, and still more largely in the great commercial nations of the earth. For use in Europe, India and South America, the larger proportion are based on the metric system, which, I think, ought to be and in time will become the uni- * This article was written as a letter from St. Johnsbury, Vermont, for the ChrisUan Union. 162 LABOR AND CAPITAL PEACTICALLY HARMONIZED. versal system, and which is already adopted by nearly 350,000,000 of the world's population. The Fairbanks Com- pany are helping on this consummation. Many of their scales are fitted with double beams, giving both the common and the metric standards, thus facilitating the comparison and use of each. The yearly sales amount to about $2,000,000, and the demand is rapidly increasing. The business was never so pros- perous as during the present season. It has long been a marvel how such a concern could be made a permanent success for nearly fifty years in this remote corner of Vermont, so far from tide- water; with heavy and expensive freightage, the items of coal and iron being yearly about 10,000 tons ; with numerous other supplies from Boston or New York ; and the necessity of transporting the manufactured products to the sea-board. Throughout New England the tendency of manufacturers has been from the interior to the sea-side. The cost of transportation has led them to abandon old sites and water-privileges far inland and build nearer the great markets. For this reason, though they must there run by steam only, manufactories are multiplying in New Haven and along the shore to New York more rapidly than elsewhere in Connecti- cut. But in St. Johnsbury, notwithstanding these great disad- vantages, the business has steadily grown and become a success which, in view of the difficulties overcome, is unparalleled in this country. Now, what is the explanation of this marvelous prosperity ? What is the condition of the workmen ? These points I came here to investigate. For this purpose I inspected the works, covering ten acres, examined the processes, talked freely with the hands as well as with the owners and with the citizens of St. Johnsbury not connected with the factory. To observe the home-life of the operatives I entered their houses and conversed with their families. These inquiries brought out facts and in- ferences which will, I think, be of interest and use alike to employers and employed generally. This company maintains here the highest reputation for in- tegrity. Many names honored abroad are tarnished at home. Only the strictest honesty and fair dealing can stand the test of daily business intercourse with hundreds of hands for nearly LABOR AND CAPITAL PRACTICALLY HARMONIZED. 163 half a century. " They do everything on the square," was, in substance, the answer of many citizens and workmen to my inquiries on this point. The company has fairly earned and gained the confidence of their men and of this entire community, and a good name at home naturally follows them everywhere. The workmen say that they are never permitted to do any sham-work, even for the most distant market. To quote the pithy phrases of the men, **no shoddy here," "no veneering," "no puttying." The "test room " illustrates the thoroughness of their work. To avoid jar of machinery or movements of the air, all the scales are subjected to the nicest tests before being "sealed." The minutest films of metal are used for the more delicate trials. Masses of iron weighing hundreds of pounds are placed alternately on the diflPerent corners of the railroad scale platform, and if the difference in position changes the " record," the scale is condemned. The thoroughness of the work and this severity of the test is the explanation of the world-wide reputation of the Fairbanks' scales for accuracy. At the bottom of a chest of Japan tea, bought in New York and retailed in St. Johnsbury this month, was the following printed statement over the signature of the Yokahama tea merchant : " This chest contains forty-eight pounds of tea, as weighed by Fairbanks' scales. We warrant this tea to be free from any artificial coloring." It was a pleasant coincidence that this slip should come to a St Johnsbury store, though it has long been known that "Fairbanks" was the recognized standard for tea-packing in China as well as Japan. Indeed, their scales have done more to correct the standards, and secure both uniformity and accuracy in the weights of the world, than all the other agencies combined. There is a superior class of workmen in this establishment All are males. Their work is proof of skill. Their looks and conversation indicate intelligence. They are mostl}^ Americans, and come from the surrounding towns. More than half of them are married, and settled here as permanent residents, interested in the schools and in all that relates to the prosperity of the place. Many of them own their houses, with spacious grounds for yard and garden, and often a bam for the poultry and cow. These houses are pleasing in their exterior, neatly furnished, 164 LABOR AND CAPITAL PRACTICALLY HARMONIZED. and many of tbem supplied with pianos and tapestry carpets. How different from the nomadic factory population, swarming from Canada and from other lands to densely crowded tenement houses, who never bind themselves to civilization by a home, much less by a house of their own ! The tenement houses, also, are inviting and comfortable, and surrounded with un- usually large grounds. The town is managed on temperance principles, and drunkenness, disorder and strife among the hands are almost unknown. Most of them are church-goers, many of them church members. I examined the pay-roll and found the wages very liberal. The workmen seem well satisfied on that score. Wherever it is possible, the work is paid for by the piece. The work itself is largely done by machinery and that sui. generis, invented here and for the special and peculiar results here reached. The men are encouraged to expedite their processes by new inventions and share largely in the benefits of all such improvements. I conversed with one of the hands who invented a curious ap- pai atus by which he marks a hundred register- bars with greater accuracy and in but little more time than he could formerly do one. He now finds working by the job especially profitable. Paying by the piece has worked well hera The men say it is fairer to pay for results xhan by hours. The worth of labor depends upon its products. This plan stimulates industry, promotes skill, and fosters inventiveness. It apportions rewards to the quantity and quality of work done. But more than all, this plan is recognized by the men as just and satisfactory. With the time left practically to their own choice, there is no eight-hour movement here. No " Labor League " or Union has ever existed — no strike ever been suggested. This would be a poor place for the Internationals to preach the gospel of idleness or agrarianism. Imagine one of these delegates just arrived at St. Johnsbury and beginning his arguments for a strike with Mr. , w^hose house I visited. I fancy him replying somewhat as he did to my inquiry. " Why is it you never have any strikes here ? " " Well, we have a good set of men to start with — temperate and moral. Then we are well paid. Wages have often been advanced. The owners take an interest in the men. They are liberal and public spirited, and LABOK AND CAPITAL PKACTICALLY HARMONIZED. 165 are doing a great deal for the place, and we feel an interest in the success of the concern which has been the making of St. lohnsbury." There has evidently been mutual sympathy and interest be- tween employer and employed. Governor Fairbanks used to say to the men, "You should always come to me as to a father." He maintained relations of kindness with them, visit- ing the sick, helping the needy, counseling the erring, en- couraging their thrift, enjoining habits of economy. He taught them that it was their interest and duty to " lay up something every month," and that the best way to rise in the social scale was to unite economy with increasing wages. He himself both preached and practiced economy. He was a conspicuous ex- ample at once of strict frugality and princely liberality. His benefactions were munificent, both at home and abroad. The fact that so many of the workmen are " fore-handed," besides owning their homesteads, is due to his teaching and example. The worth and dignity of work he illustrated in theory and practice. The notion that labor was menial, or that the tools of a trade were badges of servility, he despised. His sons worked in the shop and thoroughly learned the trade. The brothers of the Governor were in full sympathy with him, and the same spirit characterizes the sons and the surviving brother who now manage the concern. There is still the fullest and happiest conciliation between labor and capital. It is not strange that the workmen •' hold on." Their permanency is a striking fact. Many have been here from twenty to forty years. I conversed with one man over seventy years of age — a foreman — who has worked here " from the start," forty- three years. A few months since he tendered his resignation on account of the infirmities of age. " I can't earn my salary now." Mr. Franklin Fairbanks replied to him, "No, sir; we cannot accept your resignation. Work more or less, as you are able. Rest when you please. I learned my trade of you, and wish you to continue in our service and draw your pay as long as you live." Years ago the men were aided in forming and sustaining a Lyceum, and liberal prizes were offered for the best essays read. Recently, Horace Fairbanks has founded a library, and opened 11 166 LABOK AND CAPITAL PRACTICALLY HARMONIZED. a large reading-room free to all. The AtheDseum containing the library, reading-room, and also a spacious lecture-hall, is an elegant structure, 95 by 40 feet, two stories high. The books, now numbering 8,800, are choice and costly. Though recently opened, over one thousand " takers " have registered their names : 230 volumes have been drawn in a single day. In the reading-room, besides a good supply of American peri- odicals, daily, weekly and quarterly, I noticed on the tables many European journals, including four English quarterlies, six London weeklies and ten monthlies. The library and read- ing-room are open every week-day and evening, except Wed- nesday evening, when all are invited to attend the weekly "lecture" which is held at the same hour in all the churches. Having visited nearly every town of Massachusetts and Con- necticut, and traveled widely in this country and in Europe, I have nowhere found in a village of this size an Athenaeum so costly, a reading-room so inviting, and a library so choice and excellent as this. W. F. Poole, the bibliographer, aided in the selection of the books. A large addition to the Athenaeum is now going up, 37 feet by 26, besides two very large " bays " for an Art Gallery, being lighted only from the dome. One room is to be appropriated to sculpture and the rest to paintings. Thaddeus Fairbanks, one of the three founders of the scale factory, and who still survives, has liberally endowed an acad- emy which already has o^^er one hundred pupils. A new academic hall and a large dormitory are now building. This promises to become the " Williston Seminary " for northeastern Vermont, furnishing to the ambitious youth of this State the best academic advantages at the lowest cost. There is also a free High School and a good system of Public Schools. These various provisions for the improvement, happiness and prosperity of this people, coupled with liberality and fair- ness in daily business intercourse, explain the absence of dis- content and alienation, and the uniform sympathy, good feel- ing and harmony which prevail. I have nowhere seen a better practical solution of the Labor Question. AKBITRATION AND CONCILIATIOISr. In England, no one plan has tended so widely to promote harmony between labor and capital as that of Boards of Arbi- tration and Conciliation, originated by A. J. Mundella, M.P., some twelve years ago. After careful inquiry among the labor- ing classes as to the working of this system, its wisdom and efficiency seem to be clearly established. It has nowhere failed. Though introduced in the face of much opposition, it holds all the ground gained. It stands the test of experience. Had it been adopted three years ago in New York city, it would have prevented a most disastrous strike and saved mil- lions of money to our laborers as well as manufacturers. It would have prevented the alienati(ms, jealousies, and conflicts which, in the long run, are more disastrous to society than the pecuniary loss. A detailed account of this plan and its work- ings, mainly as given me by the author, will be timely. If adopted here, it will aid in solving the perplexing question of harmonizing labor and capital. It will practically demonstrate that, instead of being natural enemies, the interests of both parties are practically one, and that each is alike concerned in the success of the other. Before his election to Parliament, Mr. Mundella was the managing partner of a firm in the city of Nottingham, employ- ing five thousand operatives in the manufacture of hosiery. By his invitation, I visited this extensive factory, and attended the National Trades' Union Congress, held in Nottingham for the week beginning January 8th. The Mayor anjd city author- ities gave the delegates, numbering about one hundred, an ele- gant dinner, on Monday evening. On Wednesday morning, four members of Parliament — Mr. Mundella, Mr. Samuel Mor- ley, Mr. C. Seeley, and Mr. Auberon Herbert, — gave the Con- gress a handsome breakfast, and on Thursday evening a supper. Such hospitalities promoted conciliation and good feeling. These members of Parliament and " the American gentleman'' 168 ARBITRATION AND CONCILIATION. were made hoDorary members, and all took part in the discus- sions. Their counsels were received with special interest. Mr. Morley was enthusiastically applauded when he said that among them he was '' sanguine that the days of strikes were ended ;" and also when he urged them " to consider their ohli- gaiions and duties as well as their rights, and to husband their resources, to recognize their duties to themselves, their families, to society and to Grod." One of the delegates, Mr. Guile, emphasized the remark of Mr. Morley, that " they had duties to perform as well as rights to expect ; that they had not only to ask, but to give ; not only to seek, but to render unto all, that justice which they themselves expected." He said " this visit of our Congress to Nottingham has done more to bring the different and too often hostile classes together than anything else that has transpired for a quarter of a century. Had em- ployers formerly met us in this way, as men, as breth- ren, instead of as master meeting slave, strikes would not have so marred our fair land." Instead of the indifference, not to say aversion and suspicion, too common towards them in America, I could not but wish that our Trades Unions might have the benefit of as wise and experienced advisers, and as genuine tokens of sympathy. The point which interested me most was the general approval which the members of this body gave to Mr. Mundella's plan of arbitration. I was repeatedly assured that no strikes have anywhere occurred where this plan has been adopted. As proof of its success, the Board of Arbitration in the great manufacturing city of Nottingham say : '' During the eleven years of its existence, no strike or lock- out has taken place, no personal attacks have been made, and no inflammatory handbills circulated. Never in the history of the trade has there existed so much good feeling betwixt em- ployers and employed as at the present moment. And during the years when labor has been scarce, and agitation on the question of wages prevalent throughout England, the manu- facturers who have adopted this plan of arbitration and con- ciliation have been able to accept contracts without apprehen- sion and execute them without delav." ARBITEATION AND CONCILIATION. 169 The plan was first tried among the hosiery manufacturers and operatives centering in the counties of Nottingham, Leices- ter, and Derby. Perhaps no other trade in England has for nearly a century experienced so much disturbance and aliena- tion as this. Time had increased the irritation. The griev- ances of the past embittered those of the present. Strikes had been numerous and prolonged, often disastrous to both parties, and sometimes leading to fatal consequences. Lock-outs fol- lowed strikes ; work stopped ; the streets were thronged with idlers. The innocent sufl'ered with the guilty. Destitution at home and a sense of injury emboldened some to despera- tion. The system of employing " middle masters " led to great abuse, and the cupidity of these employees at times occasioned gross oppression. The grievances of the workmen were real, even though their demands were often extravagant Strikes seemed their chief means of redress. These were aggravated by occasional " frame-breaking," burning in effigy, abusive personalities, and inflammatory placards. Capital and labor alike suffered from these conflicts. By reason of sharp competition with foreigTi manufacturers, espe- cially with the cheap labor of Saxony, strikes crippled the capitalists and then brought distress to the operatives. During 1860, there were four strikes in the wide frame branch alone. The manufacturers of Nottingham and vicinity held a meeting to devise means to terminate the conflict. As the other branches contributed to the support of the strikers, a lock-out was proposed. Before resorting to such an extreme course, Mr. Mundella proposed that conciliatory measures be tried, and that a friendly conference be held with the operatives. He was authorized to consult with them. A favorite with the masses, recognized as a man of philanthropic character, his invitation was cheerfull}^ accepted, and a committee of employers and workmen soon met, and after a protracted but friendly discus- sion^ occupying several days, all difficulties were adjusted and a Board of Arbitration and Conciliation was formed. This Board met for the first time on the third of December, I860, in the most attractive of the rooms of the Chamber of Com- merce, in Nottingham, where its sessions are still held. The Board consisted of nine representatives chosen by the Manu- 170 AEBITRATION AND CONCILIATION. facturers, and the same number selected by the operatives in the Trades Unions. One of. the first questions considered was the abominable practice of "the truck system." Some of "the middle mas- ters," though nominally giving regulation prices, defrauded their hands by " store-pay," advancing groceries and provisions at high rates. These goods were poor as well as dear. This system, though illegal, had proved dif&cult of suppression. It was carried on indirectly or through third parties with whom the employers had a secret interest. The Board advertised in the newspapers their determination to prosecute the offenders, and the manufacturers agreed to take all machinery from them. One prosecution was instituted, and now this oppressive sys- tem has been entirely stopped wherever these Boards are estab- lished. The custom of " paying off" at late hours on Saturday night when no markets were available has also been stopped. The Board publicly condemned this practice in the papers, and personally or by letter remonstrated with offenders, and that checked the evil. When first formed, the Board was generally considered a doubtful experiment. Some manufacturers were openly hostile, while "Utopian," "impracticable," " inquisitorial, pry mg into the secrets of our business," " derogatory to our independence," were the varying epithets of others. These objections have been satisfactorily answered by experience, and the resolutions of this Board are responded to by both masters and workmen. The discussions of the Board have alwaj^s been conducted in the most friendly spirit. There never has been the slightest contention as to who should fill the office of President or Yice- President. Questions of wages, methods of work, sources of profit, laws of trade, of supply and demand, of home and foreign competition, the trials of the workmen and risks of the capitalist, are fully discussed. Whenever any breach of economic laws has been suggested by workmen outside the Board, the operative delegates have promptly denounced it, while on both sides there has been the utmost freedom of speech. No manufacturer or workman has ever been known to suffer from the free expression of his views. ARBITRATION AND CONCILIATION. 171 By this interchange of thought, the workman becomes better acquainted with the laws which govern production and trade, and with the influence of foreign competition ; and the master learns better how to appreciate the difficulties and straggles of the workmen. A Committee of Inquiry investigates all com- plaints, and by a spirit of justice and conciliation, nine-tenths of the questions, which if allowed to go on would produce irritation and conflict, are thus amicably and promptly settled. Questions which this Committee cannot adjust are referred to the full Board. In former times strikes had proved equally injurious to the workmen and capitalists. The workers suffered as well as the strikers, by reason of the contributions levied upon the former to sustain the latter. This levy, often forty cents a week from the scanty earnings of the stocking-maker and continued sometimes for months, was paid by pawning clothes and furniture and at the cost of domestic comfort, if not the necessaries of life. At present the annual contribution to the Trades Union for a whole year does not exceed that of a single week under the old system. The manufacturers no longer regard these Unions as their natural enemies. These results of this system of Mr. Mundella should com- mend it to the favorable consideration of all parties concerned. While it may not be a panacea for all the ills of labor and capital, it has cured the worst cases in England, where its ap- plication is now extensive. Good as a curative, it is better still as a preventive. The important subject of Industrial Partnerships and Co- operation will be discussed in another volume. These plans have been more fully tried in England and Germany than in this country. The first method— capitalists allowing their workmen a certain share of the profits — is already successfully illustrated in America. APPENDIX SHOULD AMERICAN YOUTH BE EDUCATED ABROAD? LETTER FROM J. P. THOMPSON, D.D. Berlin^ July^ 1873. The laudation of the German system of training has not been without reason, in former times. The distinctive features of this system are, minuteness and accuracy of detail in the foun- dations of every study, patience and thoroughness of investiga- tion in the pursuit of particular branches, familiarity with the subject through iteration, examination, discussion and review, and the discipline of the memory to a ready command of the materials of knowledge. There can be no question that the method of teaching Latin, for instance, by constant drilling in the principles of the grammar, by oral and written translation from German into Latin, by composition in Latin prose and verse, by lectures given in Latin and followed by extempora- neous exercises from the students in the same tongue — that such training, begun in childhood and pursued for ten years, gives to the German student a facility in Latin quotation, speech, and writing, not common to the graduate of an Ameri- can college. The German feels at home in his Latin and Greek, so that he takes pleasure in keeping up his acquaintance with classic authors. I happen to know of several little circles in Berlin, in which gentlemen of official standing, judges, secre- taries, generals, etc., find recreation in a weekly reunion for reading Horace, Plautus, Terence, Homer, Plato, Tacitus, Thu- cydides and also the more fragmentary classics in the original, and I have been surprised at the facility with which one and APPENDIX. 173 another, without special preparation, would comment upon crit- ical niceties of the text or peculiarities of usage or construction. But there are such clubs also in Boston and New York, and the method of teaching Latin and Greek in the best academies and colleges of America is much more nearly assimilated to the German than it was thirty years ago. American professors have mastered the German method, and have so far applied this that students no longer need to go to Germany for it. Another feature of the German system is the pains- taking and exhaustive treatment of the literature of the topic, so that the student as far as possible is put in possession of all that has been said and done, and of all that is known upon the subject which he is pursuing. A German professor usually opens his course of lectures with a long catalogue of books upon his topic, with a brief characterization of each, thus bringing the student as it were into personal relation with authors, and guid- ing him in the use of the library. But this minuteness and thoroughness has also its narrow side. Said a German professor to me, "Our system tends always to Wenigheit ; we are continually searching after some little thing, some tiny point — Wenigkeit." This tendency of the German student to explore "the infinitely little," has proved of immense service to the scholarship of the world ; all literature reaps its benefits. My friend has himself twice vin- dicated the New Testament history by the discovery of a Wenigkeit in chronology, from contemporary Eoman history ; and a work he has now in preparation is likely to do this for the third time. Most enjoyable is his enthusiasm over the first faint trace of some Wenigkeit which may help to fix some date or to corroborate a fact ; and Christendom owes a debt of grat- itude to such investigators. " But,^^ he added with emphasis, " in America you do not need to make the Wenigkeit the object of your training. You have other uses for educated minds, and require other methods. With us this is a necessity." This necessity of German scholarship so fortunate for the general increase of knowledge, has arisen from the old political and commercial condition of Germany, now fast passing away. Formerly a young man of talent had before him few openings for commercial or political life, so he betook himself to scholar- 12 174 APPENDIX. ship. But here almost every inch of ground was pre-occupied, by the multitude of students and the sub-division of topics. How should he make his mark and gain a footing ? Having taken his doctor's degree, he would study to qualify himself for recognition as a privat docent in some university — the first step toward a professorship. But now he must write a book. Tholuck once said to me, " In America you ask, What has a man done f In Germany we ask, What has he written f " The book is the young scholar's introduction to those who are to judge of his ability, and to determine his future. But what shall he write ? Every topic has been discussed, every library is overstocked ; so he hunts up a Wenigkeit which others have overlooked, some question of accent, of punctuation, of date, and elaborates this into an octavo. Or failing of this he broaches some new theory, and launches forth a speculative treatise for his prufung^ or he writes over a subject that had been exhausted twenty times before, for the sake of giving some new version or interpretation to the well-worn theme ; as for example, I see before me at this moment a new octavo of 350 pages, stating afresh the theological system of Augustine. To this state of things, as well as to some native tendency of the German mind, is due that strange mixture of fact and fantasy that one finds in works of German scholarship ; — the Wenigkeit hunted with a most praiseworthy thoroughness, but the theoretical possibility, the Moglichkeit, assumed or asserted with the most provoking dogmatism ; — Niebuhr upsets all old traditions of Koman history, Mommsen upsets Niebuhr, and now my learned friend is writing a book to upset Mommsen with new facts and theories ! German scholarship, and per- haps, too, the German mind, though given to specious refinement, nevertheless lacks that sharp, clear, logical discrimination which is so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon mind, and pre-eminently of the New England type ; and it is a grave question for the future of American scholarship and philosophy, of the Ameri- can pulpit, and of American statesmanship, whether any con- siderable numbers of American youth shall be deprived of that discipline of the reasoning powers, that exercise in the logic of common sense, which is of the very essence of American train- ing, and be sent to Germany to hunt the Wenigkeit or chase APPENDIX. 175 after the fantasy ? The accuracy, the minuteness, the patience, the perseverance in quest of facts, the American boy should be trained to as thoroughly and as conscientiously as is the Grer- man — but he should also acquire the clearer, sharper, stronger American way, the more thoroughly scientific way, of handling and using facts, and of discriminating facts from vagaries. Track almost any German professor or author, upon almost any subject, and while you own your obligation for his patient research, you are pretty likely to catch him in some illogical deduction, some groundless assumption, some unconscious substitution of a theory for a fact ; or at the moment you are about to measure accurately the height and area of his knowl- edge, he will dodge behind the clouds ! When the American student is mature enough to take the fact and reject the fancy, let him place himself under the German professor; but by coming into such contact too soon, he may lose in breadth^ com- prehensiveness and for ce^ where he might gain in minuteness and in specific fullness. Not long ago I spent an evening in company with two or three German professors and one of the most accomplished of English scholars. The Englishman had occasion, in the most modest way, to show his familiarity with Greek, which was his specialty ; but as various social and philosophical questions came up, he showed a depth of understanding and a range of reading that gave to his conversation the charm of a cultivated lecture. I walked home with one of the GeiTnan professors — who stands at the head of his department, and whose works are prized in England and America — and on the way he broke out in this strain of impetuous melancholy : " / never meet a well-bred Englishman without being mortified at the narrowness of our German system of education. We learn one thing thoroughly ; aim to know all about it ; but for the rest, we must ask some one who has studied that ; whereas the English scholar, besides being good in his own department, knows much about many things, and can converse well upon many subjects. The fault is in our system ; it is too narrow. I intend to educate my son differently — more after the English Tnethod.'''' Said another German scholar to me, after I had expounded the American system, and had shown him the course at Yale : 176 APPENDIX. " I am satisfied that your system is better than ours, especially in the obligatory recitations." And on this point a professor said : " We need your obligatory method for our young men. We must have the American system. It is lamentable how many young men enter our Universities who never come to their degrees, but waste their time in idleness, in gaming, and in beer. This comes of having attendance upon lectures vol- untary, at too early an age." It should be understood that, in matters of education, Amer- ica is no longer a borrower on the European raarket. She has something to give in exchange for whatever she receives ; and she cannot afford to give her sons into the hands of strangers at the most critical period of youth. To sum up all, an American youth of from twelve to twenty would have little to gain in a Euro- pean education, and if left without parental guidance and con- trol, would run the risk of losing much. He might lose his manners and his morals ; his patriotic memories and aspirations ; his religious habits and beliefs ; he must needs lose his identity with American alumni — so desirable for his comfort and his influence in after years, and he would surely lack that faculty of speech and pen in his native tongue, and that discipline of his reasoning powers in the straightforward, honest, practical American way, which are so necessary to his success in any de- partment of professional or civil life, or in the employment of any knowledge or science to the advantage of his fellow men. An Americanized German can work his way far better, and is altogether a better sort of creature, than a Germanized Ameri- can. ^k^ 0? 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