SPECIAL STUDIES.
Next in value to a love of good reading is a habit of concentrating the attention upon one subject through a long course of reading. In this way only can any thorough mastery be obtained. The child should be taught not to be satisfied with the thought of any one writer, but to investigate the ideas of all upon the topic in hand, and then form his own opinion. Thus he will gain breadth, depth, tolerance, independence, and scientific method in the search for truth. Of course it is impossible in a work of this kind to map out lines of study for the multitudinous needs of young people. The universities and the libraries provide the means of gaining full information as to the literature of any subject that may be selected. A few topic-clusters may, however, be of use here in the way of illustration. Many examples will be found in Baldwin's "The Book Lover."
The Industrial Question.—Suppose a young man desired to study the industrial question, which is one of the most important subjects of to-day, the proper method would be to go to one of the great libraries, or examine the catalogues of the large publishing-houses, to discover the names of recent books on the given topic, or on such subjects as Labor and Capital, Socialism, Co-operation, etc. Such books usually refer to others, and name many kindred works on the last pages. Thus the student's list will swell. I have myself investigated more than two hundred books on this topic and those it led me to. A few of the more important I will name as a starting-point for any one wishing to follow this research.
Labor, Thornton.
Conflict of Labor and Capital, Bolles; also, Howell.
Political Economy, Mill.
Progress and Poverty, George.
Profit-Sharing, Gilman.
In Darkest England, Booth.
Wages and the Wages Class, Walker.
Book of the New Moral World, Owen.
Communistic Societies of the United States, Nordhoff.
Dynamic Sociology, Ward.
Looking Backward, Bellamy.
Destinée Sociale, Considérant.
More's "Utopia."
Co-operative Societies, Watts.
History of Co-operation, Holyoake.
The Margin of Profits, Atkinson.
Gronlund's "Co-operative Commonwealth."
Capital, Karl Marx.
The State in relation to Labor, Jevons.
Organisation du Travail, Louis Blanc.
Co-operative Stores, Morrison.
Labor and Capital, Jervis.
Newton's "Co-operative Production and Co-operative
Distribution in the United States."
Property and Progress, Mallock.
Principles of Sociology, Spencer.
Mill on Socialism.
The Progress of the Working Classes, Giffen.
Ely's "French and German Socialism," "Problems of To-day,"
and "Labor Movement in America."
Dilke's "Problems of Greater Britain."
Contemporary Socialism, Rae.
Outlines of an Industrial Science, Symes.
Early History of Land-holding among the Germans,
Ross; etc.
Malthusianism.—To take a smaller example. Suppose the student wishes to make a thorough study of the doctrine of Malthusius in regard to population, he will have to refer to Macaulay's "Essay on Sadler," and the works on Political Economy of Ricardo, Chalmers, Roscher, etc., in support of Malthus, and to George's "Progress and Poverty," Spencer's "Biology" (Vol. II.), Sadler's "Law of Population," and the works of Godwin, Greg, Rickards, Doubleday, Carey, Alison, etc., against him.
For an example of a very different kind, cluster about the myth of Cupid the poems "Cupid and my Campaspe," by Lilly; "The Threat of Cupid," translated by Herrick; "Cupid Drowned," by Leigh Hunt; and "Cupid Stung," by Moore.
A great deal depends on selecting some department of thought and exhausting it. To know something of everything and everything of something is the true aim. If a child displays fine musical or artistic ability, among the books given it ought to be many that bear upon music and art,—the "Autobiography of Rubenstein;" the Lives of Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Mendelssohn; and Rocksho's "History of Music," Upton's "Woman in Music," Clayton's "Queens of Song," Lillie's "Music and the Musician," Haweis' "Music and Morals," Jameson's "Lives of the Painters," Crowest's "Tone Poets," Clement's "Painting and Sculpture," Mereweather's "Semele, or the Spirit of Beauty," etc.
Probably these examples, with those to be found in the [notes to Table I]., are amply sufficient to show what is meant by grouping the lights of literature about a single point so as to illuminate it intensely; but one more specimen will be given, because of the interest the subject has for us now and is likely to have for many years.
The Tariff Question may be studied in Ely's "Problems of To-day," Greeley's "Political Economy," Carey's "Principles of Social Science," E. P. Smith's "Manual of Political Economy," Byles's "Sophisms of Free Trade," Thompson's "Social Science and National Economy," Bastiat's "Sophisms of Protection," Mill's "Political Economy," Sumner's "Lectures on the History of Protection in the United States," Fawcett's "Free Trade and Protection," Mongredien's "History of the Free Trade Movement," Butt's "Protection Free Trade," Walters' "What is Free Trade," "The Gladstone-Blaine Debate," etc.