In proportion as man's intelligence increases is his labor more valuable. A small compensation is the reward of mere physical power, while skill, combined with a moderate amount of strength, commands high wages. The labor of an ignorant man is scarcely more valuable than the same amount of brute force; but the services of an intelligent, skillful person are a hundred fold more productive. I will pause and illustrate, for I wish to have every person who arises from the perusal of these pages do so with the fullest conviction that mental culture is of the highest importance even in the ordinary departments of human industry. It is, indeed, hardly less important for the man of business, the farmer, or the mechanic, than for statesmen, legislators, and members of the so-called learned professions.
An intelligent farmer of my acquaintance having a piece of greensward to break up, and having three work-horses, determined to employ them all. He hence, possessing some mechanical skill, himself constructed a three-horse whipple-tree, by means of which he advantageously combined the strength of his horses. A less intelligent neighbor, pleased with the novel appearance of three horses working abreast, resolved to try the experiment himself. But not possessing the skill requisite to construct such a whipple-tree, he waited till his better-informed and more expert neighbor had got through with his, and then, borrowing it, tried the experiment with his own team. Early one morning, and full of expectation, aided by his two sons and a hired man, he harnessed his three horses to the plow. But one of them, for the first time, refused to draw. After several fruitless attempts to make the team work as first harnessed, the relative position of the horses was changed, when, lo! although this horse would draw as formerly, one of the others would not. By and by another change was made, and the third horse, in turn, refused to draw. The farmer could not understand it, nor his sons, nor his hired man. His three horses, for the first time, were each fickle in turn. And, what was most surprising, they would all work in either of two positions, but in the third none of them would draw. The honest farmer thought the age of witchcraft had not yet passed. At the conclusion of the forenoon he gave up the undertaking in disgust, and, carrying the whipple-tree home, told the story of his unsuccessful and vexatious experiment.
"And how did you harness the horses to the whipple-tree?" inquired the more intelligent farmer. "Why, one at the short end, and two at the long end, where there is the most room for them, to be sure!" was the frank reply.
The power at the short end, I need not say, should be twice that at the long end; whereas he had it reversed. One horse drew against two with a double purchase. He then would have to draw twice as much as both of them, or four times as much as one of them. The fickleness of the horses, then, instead of being the result of witchcraft, as he was inclined to believe, was chargeable solely to the ignorance of their hardly more intelligent master. A knowledge of the first principles of mechanics, or, in the absence of this, an ordinary degree of active, available common sense, would teach the proper use of such a whipple-tree. For want of this knowledge, the farmer suffered much chagrin, lost the time of four men, and did great injury to his team.
After mentioning this circumstance on a certain occasion, a gentleman present gave a parallel case, that occurred under his immediate observation. His neighbor had a yoke of oxen, one of which was large, strong, and beautiful. One day, as the neighbor was passing the residence of the gentleman, the latter remarked to him, "You have one very fine-looking ox." "Yes," replied the neighbor, with apparent satisfaction, "and a bonny fellow he is too. He can carry the long end of the yoke, and grow fat under it." Here, again, the weaker ox had to tax his strength doubly on account of the advantage which the ignorance of his kind master had unintentionally given to his superior yoke-fellow.
A farmer, or laborer of any kind, who possesses a knowledge of the merest elements of science, and is accustomed to think and investigate, can not only work more advantageously with his team, but he can do more work himself, and do it easier too, than his neighbor of superior physical strength, though of inferior mental capacity. The correctness of this statement may be satisfactorily proved and amply illustrated in loading timber, in moving buildings, in plowing, and in almost every kind of work done on a farm or among men, either on land or at sea. The ignorant man will spend more time in running after help to do a supposed difficult job, than it will require for a skillful one to do it alone. This is true in carpentry, and in all of the mechanic arts. Increase the practical and available education of the laborer, and you enable him to do more work, and better work too, than his less informed associate. The following is a striking illustration.
A practical teacher employed some mechanics to build him a barn. The day after the frame was raised, the teacher discovered that it needed to be turned a few inches upon its foundation, to range properly with other buildings. While the mechanics went in several directions to procure what they regarded as necessary help, the teacher, who was familiar with the various combinations of the lever, effected the work alone, and before their return! Other equally striking illustrations might be cited.
But education increases the productiveness of labor in a wider and more extended sense. By its omnipotent influence, man is enabled to lay the elements under tribute. The water and the wind, by its mysterious power, are made to propel his machinery for various purposes. The utmost skill of the untutored savage enables him to construct a rude canoe which two can carry upon their shoulders by land, which is barely capable of plying upon our rivers and coasting our inland seas, and which can be propelled only by human muscles, but the educated man erects a magnificent vessel, a floating palace, and, spreading his canvas to the breeze, aided by the mariner's compass, can traverse unknown seas in safety. To such perfection has he attained in the science and art of navigation, that he contends successfully with wind and tide, and makes headway against both, even when he depends upon the former for his motive power. Yes, education enables man even to tax the gentle breeze to urge a proud ship, heavily laden, up an inclined plane, thousands of miles, against the current of a mighty river.
I can not, perhaps, so satisfactorily establish the proposition which I am now endeavoring to elucidate, nor so well maintain the universality of its application, as by referring to the writings of the most indefatigable and successful laborer in the department of popular education of which our country can boast. I refer to the Hon. Horace Mann,[39] who, a few years ago, in his official capacity, opened a correspondence, and availed himself of all opportunities to hold personal interviews with many of the most practical, sagacious, and intelligent business men in our country, who for many years had had large numbers of persons in their employment. His object was to ascertain the difference in the productive ability, where natural capacities were equal, between the educated and the uneducated; between a man or a woman whose mind has been awakened to thought, and supplied with the rudiments of knowledge by a good common school education, and one whose faculties have never been developed, or aided in emerging from their original darkness and torpor by such a privilege. For this purpose he conferred and corresponded with manufacturers of all kinds—with machinists, engineers, rail-road contractors, officers in the army, etc.; classes which have means of determining the effects of education on individuals equal in their natural abilities that other classes do not possess.
A farmer hiring a laborer for one season who has received a good common school education, and the ensuing season hiring another who has not enjoyed this advantage, although he may be personally convinced of the relative value or profitableness of their services, yet he will rarely have any exact data or tests to refer to by which he can measure the superiority of the former over the latter. They do not work side by side, so that he can institute a comparison between the amounts of labor they perform. They may cultivate different fields, where the ease of tillage or the fertility of the soils may be different. They may rear crops under the influence of different seasons, so that he can not discriminate between what is referable to the bounty of nature and what to superiority in judgment or skill.