Popular Education Part 13

[40] The New York Free School State Convention, held in Syracuse the 10th and 11th of July inst. (1850), _unanimously_ adopted an Address to the People of the State, written by Horace Greeley, in which the following pa.s.sage occurs, inculcating the same sentiment: "Property is deeply interested in the Education of All. There is no farm, no bank, no mill, no shop--unless it be a grog-shop--which is not more valuable and more profitable to its owner if located among a well-educated than if surrounded by an ignorant population. _Simply as a matter of interest, we hold it to be the duty of Property to itself to provide Education for All._"

John Clark, Esq., of Lowell, who has had under his superintendence for eight years about fifteen hundred persons of both s.e.xes, gives concurrent testimony. He has found, with very few exceptions, the best educated among his hands to be the most capable, intelligent, energetic, industrious, economical, and moral, and that they produce the best work, and the most of it, with the least injury to the machinery. They are, in short, in all respects the most useful, profitable, and the safest operatives; and as a cla.s.s, they are more thrifty, and more apt to acc.u.mulate property for themselves. "I am very sure," he remarks, "that neither men of property nor society at large have any thing to fear from a more general diffusion of knowledge, nor from the extension and improvement of our system of common schools. On our pay-roll for the last month are borne the names of twelve hundred and twenty-nine female operatives, forty of whom receipted for their pay by 'making their mark.' Twenty-six of these have been employed in job work; that is, they are paid according to the quant.i.ty of work turned off from their machines. The average pay of these twenty-six falls eighteen and one half per cent. below the general average of those engaged in the same departments.

"Again: we have in our mills about one hundred and fifty females who have at some time been engaged in _teaching schools_. Many of them teach during the summer months, and work in the mills in winter. The average wages of these ex-teachers I find to be seventeen and three fourths per cent. _above the general average of our mills, and about forty per cent.

above the twenty-six who can not write their names_. It may be said they are generally employed in the higher departments, where the pay is better. This is true; but this again may be, in most cases, fairly attributed to their better education, which brings us to the same result. If I had included in my calculations the remaining fourteen of the forty, who were mostly sweepers and scrubbers, and who are paid by the day, the contrast would have been still more striking; but, having no well-educated females in this department with whom to compare them, I have omitted them altogether. In arriving at the above results, I have considered the _net wages_ merely, the price of board being in all cases the same. I do not consider these results as either extraordinary or surprising, but as a part only of the legitimate and proper fruits of a better cultivation, and fuller development of the intellectual and moral powers."

Mr. Mann gives the entire letters from which I have so freely drawn, and also introduces into his report extracts from a letter of Jonathan Crane, Esq., who has been for many years a large rail-road contractor, and has had several thousand men in his employment. The testimony of this gentleman is corroborative of that already presented. Testimony similar to the preceding might be introduced from the proprietors and superintendents of the princ.i.p.al manufacturing establishments in America not only, but from every part of the civilized world. Before concluding this chapter, I shall, for another purpose, refer to statements made by extensive manufacturers in England and Switzerland.

These are no more than a fair specimen of a ma.s.s of facts which Mr. Mann obtained from the most authentic sources. They seem to prove incontestably that education is not only a moral renovator, and a multiplier of intellectual power, but that it is also the most prolific parent of material riches. It has a right, therefore, not only to be included in the grand inventory of a nation's resources, but to be placed at the very head of that inventory. It is not only the most honest and honorable, but the surest means of ama.s.sing property.

Considering education, then, as a producer of wealth, it follows that the more educated a people are, the more will they abound in all those conveniences, comforts, and satisfactions which money will buy; and, other things being equal, _the increase of competency and the decline of pauperism will be measurable on this scale_.

EDUCATION AND AGRICULTURE.--The healthful and praiseworthy employment of agriculture requires knowledge for its successful prosecution. In this department of industry we are in perpetual contact with the forces of nature. We are constantly dependent upon them for the pecuniary returns and profits of our investments, and hence the necessity of knowing what those forces are, and under what circ.u.mstances they will operate most efficiently, and will most bountifully reward our original outlay of money and time.

Our country yields a great variety of agricultural productions, and this brings into requisition all that chemical and experimental knowledge which pertains to the rotation of crops and the enrichment of soils. If rotation be disregarded, the repeated demands upon the same soil to produce the same crop will exhaust it of the elements on which that particular crop will best thrive. If the chemical ingredients and affinities of the soil are not understood, an attempt may be made to reenforce it by substances with which it is already surcharged, instead of renovating it with those of which it has been exhausted by previous growths. But for these arrangements and adaptations knowledge is the grand desideratum, and the addition of a new fact to a farmer's mind will often increase the amount of his harvests more than the addition of acres to his estate.

Why is it that, if we except Egypt, all the remaining territory of Africa, containing nearly ten millions of square miles, with a soil most of which is incomparably more fertile by nature, produces less for the sustenance of man and beast than England, whose territory is only fifty thousand square miles? In the latter country, knowledge has been a subst.i.tute for a genial climate and an exuberant soil; while in the former, it is hardly a figurative expression to say that all the maternal kindness of nature, powerful and benignant as she is, has been repulsed by the ignorance of her children. Doubtless industry as well as knowledge is indispensable to productiveness; but knowledge must precede industry, or the latter will work to so little effect as to become discouraged, and to relapse into the slothfulness of savage life. This is ill.u.s.trated by the condition of the inhabitants of Lower California, as described by an intelligent friend of the author, who left this country a year ago. He says this is a "most beautiful country, with the finest climate in the world. But its inhabitants, who are princ.i.p.ally Spaniards and Indians, are in a state of semi-barbarism, and consequently its resources are, to a certain extent, undeveloped. The land, which is generally level and of the richest quality, is divided into ranchos or plantations, the largest of which are twenty miles square, and feed twenty or thirty thousand head of wild cattle, with horses and mules in proportion. But these are all. The arts are in the lowest state imaginable. Their houses are mere pens, without pen floors; their plows are pointed logs; their yokes are straight sticks, which they tie to the horns of their oxen; and every implement of industry shows an equal want of ingenuity and enterprise. They are too indolent to raise much grain, though the soil will yield, I am told, eighty bushels of wheat to an acre; consequently, wheat is sold to the immigrants at three dollars per bushel, while the finest beef cattle in the world bring from eight to ten dollars per head. b.u.t.ter, cheese, and even milk, you can not obtain at all, for they are too lazy to tame their cows. A few Americans, who own large ranchos, have American plows, and are doing better than the rest. Many ranchos have been abandoned, and their owners have gone to the mines. This state of things the energetic Anglo-Saxon will soon change. The immigration for the next few years will be immense, and the whole community will yield to American customs. The large ranchos will be cut up into farms, and their products will supply the wants of a dense population. Property will rapidly change hands, and it will be easy for the shrewd Yankee to reap the benefit of the change."

But, without further exposition, it may be remarked generally, that the spread of intelligence, through the instrumentality of good books, and the cultivation in our children of the faculties of observing, comparing, and reasoning, through the medium of good schools, would add millions to the agricultural products of nearly every state of the Union, without imposing upon the husbandman an additional hour of labor.

EDUCATION AND THE USEFUL ARTS.--For the successful prosecution among us of the manufacturing and mechanic arts, if not for their very existence, there must be not only the exactness of science, but also exactness or skill in the application of scientific principles throughout the whole processes, either of constructing machinery, or of transforming raw materials into finished fabrics. This ability to make exact and skillful applications of science to an unlimited variety of materials, and especially to the subtile but most energetic agencies of nature, is one of the latest attainments of the human mind. It is remarkable that astronomy, sculpture, painting, poetry, oratory, and even ethical philosophy, had made great progress thousands of years before the era of the manufacturing and mechanic arts. This era, indeed, has but just commenced; and already the abundance, and, what is of far greater importance, the _universality_ of the personal, domestic, and social comforts it has created, const.i.tute one of the most important epochs in the history of civilization.

The cultivation of these arts is conferring a thousand daily accommodations and pleasures upon the laborer in his cottage, which, only two or three centuries ago, were luxuries in the palace of the monarch. Through circ.u.mstances incident to the introduction of all economical improvements, there has. .h.i.therto been great inequality in the distribution of their advantages; but their general tendency is greatly to ameliorate the condition of the ma.s.s of mankind. It has been estimated that the products of machinery in Great Britain, with a population of eighteen millions, is equal to the labor of hundreds of millions of human hands. This vast gain is effected without the conquest or part.i.tioning of the territory of any neighboring nation, and without rapine or the confiscation of property already acc.u.mulated by others. It is an absolute creation of wealth--that is, of those articles, commodities, and improvements which we appraise and set down as of a certain moneyed value alike in the inventory of a deceased man's estate and in the grand valuation of a nation's capital. These contributions to human welfare have been derived from knowledge; from knowing how to employ those natural agencies which from the beginning of the race had existed, but had lain dormant or run uselessly away. For mechanical purposes, what is wind, or water, or the force of steam worth, until the ingenuity of man comes in, and places the wind-wheel, the water-wheel, or the piston _between_ these mighty agents and the work he wishes them to perform? But after the intervention of machinery, how powerful they become for all purposes of utility! In a word, these great improvements, which distinguish our age from all preceding ages, have been obtained from Nature by addressing her in the language of Science and Art, the only language she understands, yet one of such all-pervading efficacy that she never refuses to comply to the letter with all pet.i.tions for wealth or physical power, if they are preferred to her in that dialect.

Now it is easy to show, from reasoning, from history, and from experience, that an early awakening of the mind is a prerequisite to success in the useful arts. But it must be an awakening to thought, not to feeling merely. In the first place, a clearness of perception must be acquired, or the power of taking a correct mental transcript, copy, or image of whatever is seen This, however, though indispensable, is by no means sufficient.

_The talent of improving upon the labors of others_ requires not only the capability of receiving an exact mental copy or imprint of all the objects of sense or reasoning; it also requires the power of reviving or reproducing at will all the impressions or ideas before obtained, and the power of changing their collocations, of re-arranging them into new forms, and of adding something to or removing something from the original perceptions, in order to make a more perfect plan or model. If a s.h.i.+p-wright, for instance, would improve upon all existing specimens of naval architecture, he would first examine as great a number of s.h.i.+ps as possible; this done, he would revive the image which each had imprinted upon his mind, and, with all the fleets which he had inspected present to his imagination, he would compare each individual vessel with all others, make a selection of one part from one, and of another part from another, apply his own knowledge of the laws of moving and of resisting forces to all, and thus create, in his own mind, the complex idea or model of a s.h.i.+p more perfect than any of those he had seen.

_Now every recitation in a school, if rightly conducted, is a step toward the attainment of this wonderful power._ With a course of studies judiciously arranged and diligently pursued through the years of minority, all the great phenomena of external nature, and the most important productions in all the useful arts, together with the principles on which they are evolved or fas.h.i.+oned, would be successively brought before the understanding of the pupil. He would thus become familiar with the substances of the material world, and with their manifold properties and uses; and he would learn the laws, comparatively few, by which results infinitely diversified are produced.

When such a student goes out into life, he carries, as it were, a plan or model of the world in his own mind. He can not, therefore, pa.s.s, either blindly or with the stupid gaze of the brute creation, by the great objects and processes of nature; but he has an intelligent discernment of their several existences and relations, and their adaptation to the uses of mankind. Neither can he fasten his eye upon any workmans.h.i.+p or contrivance of man without asking two questions: first, How is it? and, secondly, How can it be improved?

Hence it is that all the processes of nature and the contrivances of art are so many lessons or communications to an instructed man; but an uninstructed one walks in the midst of them like a blind man among colors, or a deaf man among sounds. The Romans carried their aqueducts from hill-top to hill-top, on lofty arches erected at immense expenditure of time and money. One idea--that is, a knowledge of the law of the equilibrium of fluids; a knowledge of the fact that water in a tube will rise to the level of the fountain--would have enabled a _single individual_ to do with ease what, _without that knowledge_, it required the _wealth of an empire to accomplish_.

It is in ways similar to this--that is, by accomplis.h.i.+ng greater results with less means; by creating products at once cheaper, better, and by more expeditious methods; and by doing a vast variety of things otherwise impossible--that the cultivation of mind may be truly said to yield the highest pecuniary requital.

_Intelligence is the great money-maker, not by extortion_, but by PRODUCTION. There are ten thousand things in every department of life which, if done in season, can be done in a minute, but which, if not seasonably done, will require hours, perhaps days or weeks for their performance. An awakened mind will see and seize the critical juncture; the perceptions of the sluggish one will come too late, if they come at all.

A general culture of the faculties, also, gives versatility of talent, so that, if the customary business of the laborer is superseded by improvements, he can readily betake himself to another kind of employment. But an uncultivated mind is like an automaton, which can do only the thing for which its wheels or springs were made. Brute force expends itself unproductively. It is ignorant of the manner in which Nature works, and hence it can not avail itself of her mighty agencies.

Often, indeed, it attempts to oppose Nature. It throws itself across the track where her resistless car is moving. But knowledge enables its possessor to employ her agencies in his own service, and he thereby obtains an amount of power, without fee or reward, which thousands of slaves could not give.

Every man who consumes a single article in whose production or transportation the power of steam is used, has it delivered to him cheaper than he could otherwise have obtained it. Every man who can avail himself of this power in traveling, can perform the business of three days in one, and so far add two hundred per cent. to the length of his life as a business man. What innumerable millions has the invention of the cotton-gin, by Whitney, added, and will continue to add, to the wealth of the world! a part of which is already realized, but vastly the greater part of which is yet to be received, as each successive day draws for an installment which would exhaust the treasury of a nation.

The instructed and talented man enters the rich domains of Nature not as an _intruder_, but, as it were, a PROPRIETOR, and makes her riches his own.

Why is it that, so far as the United States are concerned, four fifths of all the improvements, inventions, and discoveries in regard to machinery, to agricultural implements, to superior models in s.h.i.+p-building, and to the manufacture of those refined instruments on which accuracy in scientific observations depends, have originated in New England? I believe no adequate reason can be a.s.signed but the early awakening and training of the power of thought in her children.

Improvements, inventions, and discoveries have been made in other states of the Union to an extent commensurate with the progress they have made in perfecting their systems of public instruction, and these improvements will ever keep pace with the attentions which a people bestow upon their common schools.

Mr. Mann remarks that, in conversing with a gentleman who had possessed most extensive opportunities for acquaintance with men of different countries and of all degrees of intellectual development, he observed that he could employ a common immigrant or a slave, and, if he chose, could direct him to shovel a heap of sand from one spot to another, and then back into its former place, and so to and fro through the day; but, added he, neither love nor money would prevail on a New Englander to prosecute a piece of work of which he did not see the utility.

There is scarcely any kind of labor, however simple, pertaining to the farm, to the work-shop, or to domestic employments, and whether performed by male or female, which can be so well done without knowledge in the workman or domestic as with it. It is impossible for an overseer or employer at all times to supply mind to the laborer. In giving directions for the shortest series or train of operations, something will be omitted or misunderstood; and without intelligence in the workman, the omission or mistake will be repeated in the execution.

It is a fact of universal notoriety, that the manufacturing population of England, as a cla.s.s, work for half, or less than half the wages of our own. The cost of machinery there, also, is about half as much as the cost of the same articles with us; while our capital, when loaned, produces nearly double the rate of English interest; yet against these grand adverse circ.u.mstances our manufacturers, with a small per centage of tariff, successfully compete with English capitalists in many branches of manufacturing business. No explanation can be given of this extraordinary fact which does not take into the account the difference of education between the operatives in the two countries.

One of our most careful and successful manufacturers remarks that, on subst.i.tuting in one of his cotton-mills a better for a poorer educated cla.s.s of operatives, he was enabled to add twelve or fifteen per cent.

to the speed of his machinery, without any increase of damage or danger from the acceleration. How direct and demonstrative the bearing which facts like this have upon the wisdom of our laws respecting the education of children in manufacturing establishments.[41]

[41] In Connecticut the statutes provide "that no child under the age of fifteen years shall be employed to labor in any manufacturing establishment, or in any other business in the state, unless such child shall have attended some public or private day school where instruction is given by a teacher qualified to instruct in orthography, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, and arithmetic, at least three months of the twelve months next preceding any and every year in which such child shall be so employed. And the owner, agent, or superintendent of any manufacturing establishment who shall employ any child in such establishment contrary to the provisions of this act, shall forfeit and pay for each offense a penalty of twenty-five dollars to the treasurer of the state." In Ma.s.sachusetts the forfeiture is fifty dollars. Similar provisions exist in other American, and in several European states.

The number of females in the State of Ma.s.sachusetts engaged in the various manufactures of cotton, straw-platting, etc., has been estimated at forty thousand, and the annual value of their labor at one hundred dollars each on an average, or four millions of dollars for the whole.

From the facts stated in the letters of Messrs. Mills and Clark above cited, it appears there is a difference of not less than fifty per cent.

between the earnings of the least educated and of the best educated operatives--between those who make their marks instead of writing their names, and those who have been acceptably employed in school-keeping.

Now suppose the whole forty thousand females engaged in the various kinds of manufactures in that commonwealth to be degraded to the level of the lowest cla.s.s, it would follow that their aggregate earnings would fall at once to two millions of dollars. But, on the other hand, suppose them all to be elevated by mental cultivation to the rank of the highest, and their earnings would rise to the sum of six millions of dollars annually.

There can be no doubt but that education, or the want of it, affects the pecuniary value of female labor in the ordinary domestic employments of the s.e.x not less than in manufactures. If, then, the females of the thirty states of the Union be estimated at eight millions--and the number sustaining the relations of daughters, wives, and mothers must exceed the supposition--the effect of giving them all an education equal to the best would at once raise their earnings, annually, two hundred millions of dollars! But this is the lowest sense in which we can estimate the value of education, even in the sterner s.e.x. This sum, vast as it may seem, is as dross to gold when compared with the refining and elevating influence which eight millions of educated females would exert upon the domestic and social inst.i.tutions of our country, in uplifting our national character and improving the condition of the race.

Not more than thirty years ago it was uncommon for a glazier's apprentice, even after having served an apprentices.h.i.+p of seven years, to be able to cut gla.s.s with a diamond without spending much time and destroying much of the gla.s.s upon which he worked. But the invention of a simple tool has put it into the power of the merest tyro in the trade to cut gla.s.s with facility, and without loss. A man who had a _mind_, as well as _fingers_, observed that there was one direction in which the diamond was almost incapable of abrasion or wearing by use. The tool not only steadies the diamond, but fastens it in that direction.

The operation of tanning leather consists in exposing a hide to the action of a chemical ingredient, called tannin, for a length of time sufficient to allow every particle of the hide to become saturated with the solution. In making the best leather, the hides used to lay in the pit for six, twelve, or eighteen months, and sometimes for two years, the tanner being obliged to wait all this time for a return of his capital.

By the modern process, the hides are placed in a close pit, with a solution of the tannin matter, and the air being exhausted, the liquid penetrates through every pore and fiber of the skin, and the whole process is completed in a few days.

The bleaching of cloth, which used to be effected in the open air, and in exposed situations where temptation to theft was offered, and in England hundreds and probably thousands of men have yielded and forfeited their lives, is now performed in an unexposed situation, and in a manner so expeditious, that cloth is bleached as much more rapidly than it formerly was as hides are tanned.

It is stated by Lord Brougham, in his beautiful Discourse on the Advantages of Science, that the inventor of the new mode of refining sugar made more money in a shorter time, and with less risk and trouble, than perhaps was ever realized from any previous invention.

Intelligence also _prevents loss_ as well as _makes profits_. How much time and money have been squandered in repeated attempts to invent machinery, after a principle had been once tested and had failed through some defect inherent and natural, and therefore insuperable! Within thirty years not less than five patents have been taken out, in England and the United States, for a certain construction of paddle-wheels for a steamboat, which construction was tested and condemned as early as 1810.[42] A case once came within my own knowledge, says Mr. Mann, of a person who spent a fortune in mining for coal, when a work on geology, which would have cost but a dollar, and might have been read in a week, would have informed him that the stratum where he began to excavate belonged to a formation lower down in the natural series than coal ever is, or, according to the const.i.tution of things, ever can be found. He therefore worked into a stratum which must have been formed before a particle of coal, or even a tree, or a vegetable existed on the planet.

Numerous similar and equally striking ill.u.s.trations might be cited, but this is not necessary.

[42] This statement was made eight years ago. More such patents may have been taken out within this time.

These are a few specimens, on familiar subjects, taken almost at random, for the purpose of showing the inherent superiority of any a.s.sociation or community, whether small or great, where _mind_ is a member of the partners.h.i.+p. What is true of the above-mentioned cases is true of the whole circle of those arts by which human life is sustained and human existence comforted, elevated, and embellished. Mind has been the improver, for matter can not improve itself, and improvement has advanced in proportion to the number and culture of the minds excited to activity and applied to the work.

_Similar advancements have been effected throughout the whole compa.s.s of human labor and research;_ in the arts of Transportation and Locomotion, from the employment of the sheep and the goat as beasts of burden, to the steam-engine and the rail-road car; in the art of Navigation, from the canoe clinging timidly to the sh.o.r.e, to steam-s.h.i.+ps which boldly traverse the ocean; in Hydraulics, from carrying water by hand in a vessel or in horizontal aqueducts, to those vast conduits which supply the demands of a city, and to steam fire-engines which throw a column of water to the top of the loftiest buildings; in the arts of Spinning and Rope-making, from the hand distaff to the spinning-frame, and to the machine which makes cordage or cables of any length, in a s.p.a.ce ten feet square; in Horology or Time-keeping, from the sun-dial and the water-clock to the watch, and to the chronometer, by which the mariner is a.s.sisted in measuring his longitude, and in saving property and life; in the extraction, forging, and tempering of Iron and other ores having malleability to be wrought into all forms and used for all purposes, and supplying, instead of the stone hatchet or the fish-sh.e.l.l of the savage, an almost infinite variety of instruments, which have sharpness for cutting or solidity for striking; in the art of Vitrification or Gla.s.s-making, giving not only a mult.i.tude of commodious and ornamental utensils for the household, but subst.i.tuting the window for the unsightly orifice or open cas.e.m.e.nt, and winnowing light and warmth from the outward and the cold atmosphere; in the arts of Induration by Heat, from bricks dried in the sun to those which withstand the corrosion of our climate for centuries or resist the intensity of the furnace; in the arts of Illumination, from the torch cut from the fir or pine tree to the brilliant gas-light which gives almost a solar splendor to the nocturnal darkness of our cities; in the arts of Heating and Ventilation, which at once supply warmth for comfort and pure air for health; in the art of Building, from the hollowed trunk of a tree or the roof-shaped cabin, to those commodious and lightsome dwellings which betoken the taste and competence of our villages and cities; in the art of Copying or Printing, from the toilsome process of hand-copying, where the transcription of a single book was the labor of months or years, and sometimes almost of a life, to the power printing-press, which throws off sixty printed sheets in a minute; in the art of Paper-making, from the preparation of the inner bark of a tree, cleft off and dried at immense labor, to machinery from which there jets out an unbroken stream of paper with the velocity and continuousness of a current of water; in the art of Painting, from the use of the crayon, and artificial colors imperfectly blended, requiring whole days to present an incomplete picture, to the production, as by enchantment, of perfect likenesses in nature's own penciling, executed in a few seconds; in the art of Telegraphing, from communicating information by signs which may be seen from one station to another, to conveying intelligence to any given distance with the velocity of lightning; and, in addition to all these, in the arts of Moulding and Casting, of Designing and Engraving, of Preserving materials and of Changing their color, of Dividing and Uniting them, etc., etc., an ample catalogue, whose very names and processes would fill volumes.

Now, for the perfecting of all these operations, from the tedious and bungling process to the rapid and elegant; for the change of an almost infinite variety of crude and worthless materials into useful and beautiful fabrics, _mind_ has been the agent. Succeeding generations have outstripped their predecessors just in proportion to the superiority of their mental cultivation. When we compare different people or different generations with each other, the diversity is so great that all must behold it. But there is the same kind of difference between contemporaries, fellow-townsmen, and fellow-laborers. Though the uninstructed man works side by side with the intelligent, yet the mental difference between them places them in the same relation to each other that a _past age_ bears to the _present_. If the ignorant man knows no more respecting any particular art or branch of business than was generally known during the last century, _he belongs to the last century_, and he must consent to be outstripped by those who have the light and knowledge of the present. Though they are engaged in the same kind of work, though they are supplied with the same tools or implements for carrying it on, yet, so long as one has only an _arm_, but the other has an arm and a MIND, their products will come out stamped and labeled all over with marks of contrast; inferiority and superiority, both as to quant.i.ty and quality, will be legibly written on their respective labors.

It is related by travelers among savage tribes that when, by the aid of an ingeniously devised instrument or apparatus, they have performed some skillful manual operation, the savages have purloined from them the instrument they had used, supposing there was some magic in the apparatus itself, by which the seeming miracle had been performed; but, as they could not steal _the art of the operator_ with the instrument which he employed, the theft was fruitless. Any person who expects to effect with less education what another is enabled to do with more, ought not to smile at the delusion of the savage or the simplicity of his reasoning.

On a cursory inspection of the great works of art--the steam-engine, the printing-press, the power-loom, the mill, the iron foundery, the s.h.i.+p, the telescope, etc., etc.--we are apt to look upon them as having sprung into sudden existence, and reached their present state of perfection by one, or, at most, by a few mighty efforts of creative genius. We do not reflect that they have required the lapse of centuries and the successive application of thousands of minds for the attainment of their present excellence; that they have advanced from a less to a more perfect form by steps and gradations almost as imperceptible as the growth by which an infant expands to the stature of a man; and that, as later discoverers and inventors had first to go over the ground of their predecessors, so must future discoverers and inventors first master the attainments of the present age before they will be prepared to make those new achievements which are to carry still further onward the stupendous work of improvement.

EDUCATION DIMINISHES PAUPERISM AND CRIME.

Education is to be regarded as one of the most important means of eradicating the germs of pauperism from the rising generation, and of securing in the minds and in the morals of the people the best protection for the inst.i.tutions of society.--DR. JAMES PHILLIPS KAY, _a.s.sistant Poor-Law Commissioner, and Secretary to the Committee of Council on Education_.[43]

The different countries of the world, if arranged according to the state of education in them, will be found to be arranged also according to WEALTH, MORALS, and GENERAL HAPPINESS; at the same time, THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE, AND THE EXTENT OF CRIME AND VIOLENCE AMONG THEM, FOLLOW A LIKE ORDER.--NATIONAL EDUCATION, _by Fred. Hill, London_.