Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions. George S. Boutwell
neither this case nor any similar one has ever occurred in real life—but suppose crime to increase as a people were educated, though there should be no increase of population; would this fact prove that learning made men worse? By no means. Our answer is apparent on the face of the change itself. By education, the business, and pecuniary relations and transactions of a people are almost indefinitely multiplied; and temptations to crime, especially to crimes against property, are multiplied in an equal ratio. Would person or property be better respected in New York or Boston, if the most ignorant population of the world could be substituted for the present inhabitants of those cities? The business nerves of men are frequently shocked by some unexpected defalcation, and short-sighted moralists, who lack faith, exclaim, "All this is because men know so much!" Such certainly forget that for every defaulter in a city there are hundreds of honest men, who receive and render justly unto all, and hold without check the fortunes of others. So Mr. Drummond argued in the British House of Commons against a national system of education, because what he was pleased to call instruction had not saved William Palmer and John Sadlier. But the truth in this matter is not at the bottom of a well; it is upon the surface. Where it is the habit of society generally to be ignorant, you will find it the necessity of that society to be poor; and where ignorance and poverty both abound, the temptations to crime are unquestionably few, but the power to resist temptation is as unquestionably weak. The absence of crime is owing to the absence of temptation, rather than to the presence of virtue. Such a condition of society is as near to real virtue as the mental weakness of the idiot is to true happiness.
Turning again to the discussion in the British Parliament of April, 1856, we are compelled to believe that some English statesmen are, in principle and in their ideas of political economy, where a portion of the English cotton-spinners were a hundred years ago. The cotton-spinners thought the invention of labor-saving machinery would deprive them of bread; and a Mr. Ball gravely argues that schools will so occupy the attention of children, that the farmers' crops will be neglected. I am inclined to give you his own words; and I have no doubt you will be in a measure relieved of the dulness of this essay, when you listen to what was actually cheered, in the British Commons. Speaking of the resolutions in favor of a national system of instruction, Mr. Ball said: "It was important to consider what would be their bearing on the agricultural districts of the country. He had obtained a return from his own farm, and, supposing the principles advocated by the noble lord were adopted, the results would be perfectly fearful. The following was the return he had obtained from his agent: William Chapman, ten years a servant on his (Mr. Ball's) farm; his own wages thirteen shillings, besides a house; he had seven children, who earned nine shillings a week; making together twenty-two shillings a week. Robert Arbor, fifteen years on the farm; wages thirteen shillings a week, and a house; six children, who earned six shillings a week; making together nineteen shillings. John Stevens, thirty-three years a servant on the farm; his own wages fourteen shillings a week; he had brought up ten children, whose average earnings had been twelve shillings weekly, making together twenty-six shillings a week. Robert Carbon, twenty-two years a servant on the farm; wages thirteen shillings a week; having ten children, who earned ten shillings a week; making together twenty-three shillings a week. Thus it appeared that in these four families the fathers earned fifty-three shillings weekly, and the children thirty-seven shillings a week; so that the children earned something more than two-thirds of the amount of the earnings of the fathers. He would ask the house, if the fathers were to be deprived of the earnings of the children, how could they provide bread for them? It was perfectly impossible. They must either increase the parent's wages to the amount of the loss he thus sustained, or they must make it up to him from a rate. Then, again, those who were at all conversant with agriculture knew that if they deprived the farmer of the labor of children, agriculture could not be carried on. There was no machinery by which they could get the weeds out of the land."—London Times.
The light which this statement furnishes is not hid under a bushel. The argument deserves a more logical form, and I proceed gratuitously to give the author the benefit of a scientific arrangement. "If a national system of education is adopted, the children of my tenants will be sent to school; if the children of my tenants are sent to school, my turnips will not be weeded; if my turnips are not weeded, I shall eat fat mutton no more."
After this from a statesman, we need not wonder that a correspondent of Lord John Russell writes, "That a farmer near him has been heard to say, he would not give anything to a day-school; he finds that since Sunday-schools have been established the birds have increased and eat his corn, and because he cannot now procure the services of the boys, whom he used to employ the whole of Sunday, in protecting his fields."—London Times, April 13th, 1856.
Now, I do not go to England for the purpose of making an attack upon her opinions; but, as kindred ideas prevail among us, though to a limited extent only, the folly of them may be seen in persons at a distance, when it would not be realized by ourselves. Moreover, the presentation of these somewhat ridiculous notions brings ridicule upon a whole class of errors; and when errors are so ingrained that men cannot reason in regard to them, ridicule is often the only weapon of successful attack. And it is no compliment to an American audience for the speaker to say that their own minds already suggest the refutation which these errors demand. If the chief end of man, for which boyhood should be a preparation, were to weed turnips or to frighten blackbirds from corn-fields, then surely the objection of Mr. Ball, and the complaint and spirit of resistance offered by Lord John Russell's farmer, would be eminently proper. But Lord John Russell did not himself assent to the view furnished by his correspondent. Mr. Ball's theory evidently is, "Take good care of the turnips, and leave the culture of the boys and girls to chance;" and Lord John Russell's wise farmer unquestionably thinks that cereal peculations of blackbirds are more dangerous than the robberies committed by neglected children, grown to men.
Mr. Clay, chaplain of Preston jail, says: "Thirty-six per cent. come into jail unable to say the Lord's Prayer; and seventy-two per cent. come in such a state of moral debasement that it is in vain to give them instruction, or to teach them their duty, since they cannot understand the meaning of the words used to them." Here we have, as cause and effect, the philosophy of Mr. Ball, and the facts of Mr. Clay. And, further, this philosophy is as bad in principle, when tried by the rules of political economy, as when subjected to moral and Christian tests.
Mr. Ball says there is no machinery by which the farmers can get the weeds out of the land. This may be true; and once there was no machinery by which they could get the seed into the land, or the crops from it. Once there was little or no inventive power among the mechanics, or scientific knowledge, or even spirit of inquiry, among the farmers. How have these changes been wrought? By education, surely, and that moral and religious culture for which secular education is a fit preparation. The contributions of learning to labor, in a pecuniary aspect alone, have far exceeded the contributions of labor to learning.
It is impossible to enumerate the evidences in support of this statement, but single facts will give us some conception of their aggregated value and force.
It was stated by Mr. Flint, Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, in his Annual Report for 1855, "That the saving to the country, from the improvements in ploughs alone, within the last twenty-five years, has been estimated at no less than ten millions of dollars a year in the work of teams, and one million in the price of ploughs, while the aggregate of the crops is supposed to have been increased by many millions of bushels." From this fact, as the representative of a great class of facts, we may safely draw two conclusions. First, these improvements are the products of learning, the contribution which learning makes to labor, far exceeding in amount any tax which the cause of learning, in schools or out, imposes upon labor. Secondly, we see that a given amount of adult labor upon a farm, with the help of the improved implements of industry, will accomplish more in 1856, than the same amount of adult labor, with its attendant juvenile force, could have accomplished in 1826. If we were fully to illustrate and sustain the latter inference, we should be required to review the improvements made in other implements of farming, as well as in ploughs. Their positive pecuniary value, when considered in the aggregate, is too vast for general belief; and in England alone it must exceed the anticipated cost of a system of public instruction, say six millions of pounds, or thirty millions of dollars, per year. But learning, as we have defined it, has contributed less to farming than to other