Part 13 (1/2)

[40] The New York Free School State Convention, held in Syracuse the 10th and 11th of July inst (1850), _unanimously_ adopted an Address to the People of the State, written by Horace Greeley, in which the following passage occurs, inculcating the same sentiment: ”Property is deeply interested in the Education of All There is no far-shop--which is not more valuable anda well-educated than if surrounded by an ignorant population _Simply as a matter of interest, we hold it to be the duty of Property to itself to provide Education for All_”

John Clark, Esq, of Lowell, who has had under his superintendence for eight years about fifteen hundred persons of both sexes, gives concurrent testimony He has found, with very few exceptions, the best educated aetic, industrious, economical, and moral, and that they produce the best work, and the most of it, with the least injury to the machinery They are, in short, in all respects the most useful, profitable, and the safest operatives; and as a class, they are more thrifty, and more apt to accumulate property for themselves ”I am very sure,” he ree have any thing to fear froe, nor from the extension and improvement of our system of common schools On our pay-roll for the last month are borne the names of twelve hundred and twenty-nine female operatives, forty of who their mark' Twenty-six of these have been e to the quantity of work turned off froe pay of these twenty-six falls eighteen and one half per cent below the general average of those engaged in the saain: we have in our mills about one hundred and fifty fe schools_ Many of the the sues of these ex-teachers I find to be seventeen and three fourths per cent _above the general average of our mills, and about forty per cent

above the twenty-six who can not write their naher departain may be, in most cases, fairly attributed to their better education, which brings us to the sa fourteen of the forty, ere mostly sweepers and scrubbers, and who are paid by the day, the contrast would have been stillno well-educated females in this departether In arriving at the above results, I have considered the _net wages_in all cases the same I do not consider these results as either extraordinary or surprising, but as a part only of the legitimate and proper fruits of a better cultivation, and fuller developives the entire letters from which I have so freely drawn, and also introduces into his report extracts from a letter of Jonathan Crane, Esq, who has been for e rail-road contractor, and has had several thousand entleman is corroborative of that already presented Testiht be introduced from the proprietors and superintendents of the principalestablishments in America not only, but fro this chapter, I shall, for another purpose, refer to stateland and Switzerland

These are no more than a fair specimen of a mass of facts which Mr Mann obtained from the most authentic sources They seem to prove incontestably that education is not only a moral renovator, and a multiplier of intellectual power, but that it is also the ht, therefore, not only to be included in the grand inventory of a nation's resources, but to be placed at the very head of that inventory It is not only theproperty

Considering education, then, as a producer of wealth, it follows that the more educated a people are, the more will they abound in all those conveniences, comforts, and satisfactions whichequal, _the increase of competency and the decline of pauperism will be measurable on this scale_

EDUCATION AND AGRICULTURE--The healthful and praiseworthy ee for its successful prosecution In this department of industry we are in perpetual contact with the forces of nature We are constantly dependent upon them for the pecuniary returns and profits of our invest what those forces are, and under what circumstances they will operate inal outlay of ricultural productions, and this brings into requisition all that chee which pertains to the rotation of crops and the enricharded, the repeated demands upon the same soil to produce the same crop will exhaust it of the elements on which that particular crop will best thrive If the cheredients and affinities of the soil are not understood, an attempt may be made to reenforce it by substances hich it is already surcharged, instead of renovating it with those of which it has been exhausted by previous growths But for these arrangerand desideratum, and the addition of a new fact to a farmer's mind will often increase the amount of his harvests more than the addition of acres to his estate

Why is it that, if we except Egypt, all the re nearly ten millions of square miles, with a soil most of which is incomparably more fertile by nature, produces less for the sustenance of land, whose territory is only fifty thousand square e has been a substitute for a genial climate and an exuberant soil; while in the forurative expression to say that all the nant as she is, has been repulsed by the ignorance of her children Doubtless industry as well as knowledge is indispensable to productiveness; but knowledge must precede industry, or the latter ork to so little effect as to becoe life This is illustrated by the condition of the inhabitants of Lower California, as described by an intelligent friend of the author, who left this country a year ago He says this is a ”most beautiful country, with the finest climate in the world But its inhabitants, who are principally Spaniards and Indians, are in a state of semi-barbarism, and consequently its resources are, to a certain extent, undeveloped The land, which is generally level and of the richest quality, is divided into ranchos or plantations, the largest of which are twenty miles square, and feed twenty or thirty thousand head of wild cattle, with horses and mules in proportion But these are all The arts are in the lowest state iinable Their houses are s; their yokes are straight sticks, which they tie to the horns of their oxen; and every ienuity and enterprise They are too indolent to raise hty bushels of wheat to an acre; consequently, wheat is sold to the irants at three dollars per bushel, while the finest beef cattle in the world bring froht to ten dollars per head butter, cheese, and even milk, you can not obtain at all, for they are too lazy to tae ranchos, have A better than the rest Many ranchos have been abandoned, and their owners have gone to the lo-Saxon will soon change The iration for the next few years will be immense, and the whole coe ranchos will be cut up into farms, and their products will supply the wants of a dense population Property will rapidly change hands, and it will be easy for the shrewd Yankee to reap the benefit of the change”

But, without further exposition, it ence, through the instruood books, and the cultivation in our children of the faculties of observing, coood schools, would add ricultural products of nearly every state of the Union, without i upon the husbandman an additional hour of labor

EDUCATION AND THE USEFUL ARTS--For the successful prosecution a and mechanic arts, if not for their very existence, there must be not only the exactness of science, but also exactness or skill in the application of scientific principles throughout the whole processes, either of constructingraw materials into finished fabrics This ability to make exact and skillful applications of science to an unlimited variety of encies of nature, is one of the latest attainments of the hu, poetry, oratory, and even ethical philosophy, had ress thousands of years before the era of theand mechanic arts This era, indeed, has but just coreater importance, the _universality_ of the personal, domestic, and social comforts it has created, constitute one of the most important epochs in the history of civilization

The cultivation of these arts is conferring a thousand daily accoe, which, only two or three centuries ago, were luxuries in the palace of the h circumstances incident to the introduction of all econoreat inequality in the distribution of their advantages; but their general tendency is greatly to ameliorate the condition of the mass of mankind It has been estimated that the products of hteen millions, is equal to the labor of hundreds of ain is effected without the conquest or partitioning of the territory of any neighboring nation, and without rapine or the confiscation of property already accumulated by others It is an absolute creation of wealth--that is, of those articles, commodities, and improvements which we appraise and set down as of a certain moneyed value alike in the inventory of a deceased rand valuation of a nation's capital These contributions to hu how to e of the race had existed, but had lain dormant or run uselessly away For mechanical purposes, what is wind, or water, or the force of steaenuity of man comes in, and places the heel, the water-wheel, or the piston _between_ these ents and the work he wishes them to perform? But after the intervention of machinery, hoerful they becoreat ies, have been obtained froe of Science and Art, the only language she understands, yet one of such all-pervading efficacy that she never refuses to comply to the letter with all petitions for wealth or physical power, if they are preferred to her in that dialect

Now it is easy to show, fro, fro of the mind is a prerequisite to success in the useful arts But itmerely In the first place, a clearness of perceptiona correct e of whatever is seen This, however, though indispensable, is by noupon the labors of others_ requires not only the capability of receiving an exact mental copy or i; it also requires the power of reviving or reproducing at will all the i their collocations, of re-arranging the soinal perceptions, in order to ht, for instance, would i specireat a number of shi+ps as possible; this done, he would revive the ie which each had imprinted upon his mind, and, with all the fleets which he had inspected present to his iination, he would compare each individual vessel with all others, make a selection of one part from one, and of another part fro and of resisting forces to all, and thus create, in his own mind, the complex idea or model of a shi+p more perfect than any of those he had seen

_Now every recitation in a school, if rightly conducted, is a step toward the attainment of this wonderful power_ With a course of studies judiciously arranged and diligently pursued through the years of reat phenomena of external nature, and the ether with the principles on which they are evolved or fashi+oned, would be successively brought before the understanding of the pupil He would thus become familiar with the substances of the material world, and with their manifold properties and uses; and he would learn the laws, comparatively few, by which results infinitely diversified are produced

When such a student goes out into life, he carries, as it were, a plan or model of the world in his own mind He can not, therefore, pass, either blindly or with the stupid gaze of the brute creation, by the great objects and processes of nature; but he has an intelligent discernment of their several existences and relations, and their adaptation to the uses of mankind Neither can he fasten his eye upon any work two questions: first, How is it? and, secondly, How can it be improved?

Hence it is that all the processes of nature and the contrivances of art are so many lessons or communications to an instructed man; but an uninstructed one walks in thecolors, or a deafsounds The Romans carried their aqueducts from hill-top to hill-top, on lofty arches erected at immense expenditure of tie of the law of the equilibriue of the fact that water in a tube will rise to the level of the fountain--would have enabled a _single individual_ to do with ease what, _without that knowledge_, it required the _wealth of an empire to accomplish_

It is in ways sireater results with lessproducts at once cheaper, better, and by s otherwise impossible--that the cultivation of hest pecuniary requital

_Intelligence is the great money-maker, not by extortion_, but by PRODUCTION There are ten thousand things in every department of life which, if done in season, can be done in a minute, but which, if not seasonably done, will require hours, perhaps days or weeks for their performance An awakened mind will see and seize the critical juncture; the perceptions of the sluggish one will coeneral culture of the faculties, also, gives versatility of talent, so that, if the customary business of the laborer is superseded by improvements, he can readily betake himself to another kind of employment But an uncultivatedfor which its wheels or springs were norant of the manner in which Nature works, and hence it can not avail itself of her encies

Often, indeed, it attempts to oppose Nature It throws itself across the track where her resistless car is encies in his own service, and he thereby obtains an amount of poithout fee or reward, which thousands of slaves could not give

Every le article in whose production or transportation the power of steam is used, has it delivered to him cheaper than he could otherwise have obtained it Every , can perform the business of three days in one, and so far add two hundred per cent to the length of his life as a business man What innuin, by Whitney, added, and will continue to add, to the wealth of the world! a part of which is already realized, but vastly the greater part of which is yet to be received, as each successive day draws for an installment which would exhaust the treasury of a nation

The instructed and talented man enters the rich domains of Nature not as an _intruder_, but, as it were, a PROPRIETOR, and makes her riches his own

Why is it that, so far as the United States are concerned, four fifths of all the iard to ricultural i, and to the manufacture of those refined instruments on which accuracy in scientific observations depends, have originated in New England? I believe no adequate reason can be assigned but the early awakening and training of the power of thought in her children

Improvements, inventions, and discoveries have been made in other states of the Union to an extent co their systems of public instruction, and these improvements will ever keep pace with the attentions which a people bestow upon their co with a gentleman who had possessed most extensive opportunities for acquaintance with rees of intellectual developrant or a slave, and, if he chose, could direct him to shovel a heap of sand from one spot to another, and then back into its forh the day; but, added he, neither love nor lander to prosecute a piece of work of which he did not see the utility

There is scarcely any kind of labor, however si to the farm, to the work-shop, or to domestic employments, and whether performed by e in the workman or domestic as with it It is impossible for an overseer or e directions for the shortest series or train of operations, soence in the workman, the omission or mistake will be repeated in the execution