Every child was expected to learn the three R's at the little red school-house, and to perfect his education by taking hold of material nature with his hands, and learning what it was by mastering it. That was education. The parson knew a little Latin, and he was all. They thought this worked well. Lamentable indeed!
The man expected to marry a capable wife, and to bring up children; he expected to work on his land or in his shop, to dress decently in clothes which his wife had made, securing a reasonable support in this world by his own labor, not by hocus-pocus; he provided for his future salvation by imbibing the five points of Calvin through fifty-four sermons a year, with now and then a Thursday lecture to fill in the cracks. Thus he was sure of his food here and of salvation hereafter—through the merciful providence of God, and not his own righteousness. New England thus produced a breed of people unlike and they fancied not inferior to any that history tells of.
But it would not do. There was no progress—it was a lamentable condition of things. They had not got a population of 211.78 to the square mile, raked together from the four corners of creation, making the State the sixth in density of all in the world, as she now boasts she has, and thus she had totally failed to secure the higher and better civilization.
They had not "developed their resources"; they had not built up splendid great cities; they had little knowledge of the delights of trade. Things could not get on so—that was not "progress." Here was water power running to waste all over Massachusetts; there were keen and able heads who believed they knew how to set these powers to work to grind their grists; it was quite ridiculous that these tumbling streams should not be turning millwheels and spinning cheap cotton. And then too not a railroad ran through Massachusetts—no transportation except in wagons. "Good God!" the pious people naturally exclaimed; "what misery, what a slow set!" Money—money was then loaned at only six per cent.! Things must be changed. They were changed. Mill after mill was built, among them the "Atlantic." Railway after railway was built, among them the "Eastern," and the stock was quickly paid up, and all went merry as a marriage bell. But some people own those stocks now, and do not find themselves happy!
What is the cure for these shrivelled dividends? Clearly, is it not, to bring in cheap labor? Let every man who has nothing and wants much, take shares in
"The Cheap Labor Society."
Seeing what has been done for Massachusetts, it is easy to see what can be done. And what has been done? In fifty years she has built up Lowell, and Lawrence, and Worcester, and Holyoke, and many more great towns. She has increased Boston to a population of 341,919 souls—or bodies—in the year of grace 1875. She has "improved" things so, has made such progress, that Boston now spends yearly $15,114,389.73 (auditor's report 1875-6), which means that out of every man, woman, and child of Boston was taken in 1875, for public expenses, the sum of forty-four dollars! The happiness resulting from this may be partly understood when I relate that this tax is some four hundred per cent. greater than the "effete aristocracies" of Europe have ever got out of their down-trodden serfs, or have even dared to try to get. One other charming effect of this style of self-government (?), as we please to call it, is, that it has driven out of Boston a set of bloated money getters, who fancy it is not pleasant to pay large taxes, so they go to Nahant, and Barnstable, and Concord for a few months, and rid Boston of themselves and—their taxes! Shrewd fellows those Boston Democrats! They know how to govern a city. So they do in New York. So they do in Cambridge.
But let us look at another of the evidences of true progress. Every man votes, you must know, whether he owns any property or not. Now, Mr. Daniel L. Harris has discovered, in his researches at Springfield, that of the voters there, four pay taxes and five do not; that is, four-ninths of the voters pay the taxes and five-ninths who pay none outvote the four who pay all. This is so generous on the part of the four that we ought to try to see what it is the four really are about. Applying the same ratio to Boston, we find that every tax-payer, every man of the four-ninth party, really paid to the yearly expenditures of the city of Boston, in the blessed year 1875-6, the neat little sum of three hundred and ninety-nine dollars, money of this realm.[1 ]
And yet the business men of Boston complain that they have made no money for three years, and that they can't make any. How absurd that is, when they can pay such taxes as these! And then think what they do in Boston for the intellect (as it is called). While they stupidly complain that they can't make any money, they spend on their common schools every year—over two millions of good dollars (2,015,380)—and they teach what—what don't they teach? I counted, I think, thirty-six branches as being taught in the Boston schools last year. "Art" and "culture," you know! And in those brutal old times of fifty years ago, they taught only the three R's. Unhappy and despicable! Did they not deserve it?
And then the generosity of these Boston merchants who can't, as they pretend, make anything. Look for a moment at that!