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 ship, 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 institutions of society.—Dr. James Phillips Kay, Assistant 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.
That education increases the productiveness of labor has been already conclusively established. It has also been incidentally shown that mere knowledge, valuable as it is to the laborer, is not the only advantage derived from a good common school education, but that the better educated, as a class, possess a higher and better state of morals, and are more orderly and respectful in their deportment than the uninstructed; and that for those who possess the greatest share in the stock of worldly goods, the most effectual way of making insurance on their property would be, to contribute from it enough to sustain an efficient system of common school education, thereby educating the whole mass of mind, and constituting it a police more effective than peace officers or prisons. If, then, poverty is at once a cause and an effect of crime, as is stated by a late writer,[44] who has made an extended survey of the relative state of instruction and social welfare in the leading nations of the world, it is directly inferable that education will, and, from the nature of the case, must act in a compound ratio in diminishing both pauperism and crime.
This proposition is not received by a few individuals merely in comparatively unimportant communities: it is one which is generally adopted by enlightened practical educators and by liberal-minded capitalists of both hemispheres. The views of several of our principal American manufacturers have been already presented. Let us now direct our attention to the testimony of enlightened and liberal-minded capitalists residing in some of the transatlantic states.
William Fairbrain, Esq., the sole proprietor of a manufactory in Manchester, and part owner of another establishment in London, and who has between eleven and twelve hundred persons in his employ, remarks in relation to the habits of the educated and uneducated as follows: There is no doubt that the educated are more sober and less dissipated than the uneducated. During the hours of recreation, the younger portion of the educated workmen indulge more in reading and mental pleasures; they attend more at reading-rooms, and avail themselves of the facilities afforded by libraries, by scientific lectures, and by lyceums. The older of the more educated workmen spend their time chiefly with their families, reading and walking out with them. The time of the uneducated classes is spent very differently, and chiefly in the grosser sensual indulgences. Mr. Fairbrain has given his own time as president of a lyceum for the use of the working classes, which furnishes the means of instruction in arithmetic, mathematics, drawing, and mensuration, and by lectures. In these institutions liberal provision is very properly made, not only for the occupation of the leisure hours of the laborers themselves, and for their intellectual and social improvement, but for that of their wives and families, in order "to make the home comfortable, and to minister to the household recreation and amusement: this is a point of view in which the education of the wives of laboring men is really of very great importance, that they may be rational companions for men."[45]
Albert G. Escher, Esq., one of the firm of Escher, Wyss, and Co., of Zurich, Switzerland, remarks as follows: We employ from six to eight hundred men in our machine-making establishment at Zurich: we also employ about two hundred men in our cotton-mills there, and about five hundred men in our cotton manufactories in the Tyrol and in Italy. I have occasionally had the control of from five to six hundred men engaged in engineering operations as builders, masons, etc., and men of the class called navigators in England.
After giving a list of the different countries from which his laborers are drawn, classifying the workmen of various nations "in respect to such natural intelligence as may be distinguished from any intelligence imparted by the labors of the schoolmaster," and remarking in relation to the influence of education upon the value of labor—where his testimony corroborates that of manufacturers in New England, already quoted—the same gentleman makes a statement which is applicable to the subject under consideration.
"The better educated workmen, we find, are distinguished by superior moral habits in every respect. In the first place, they are entirely sober; they are discreet in their enjoyments, which are of a more rational and refined kind; they are more refined themselves, and they have a taste for much better society, which they approach respectfully, and consequently find much readier admittance to it; they cultivate music; they read; they enjoy the pleasures of scenery, and make parties for excursions into the country; they are economical, and their economy extends beyond their own purse to the stock of their master; they are consequently honest and trustworthy."