Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1871-02-01
GEN. HARD1Ne's DEFENSE REVIEWED

opsis of the views of General Harding up
on educating laboring men, and upon inn
migration as advanced in an address de-
liyered before the Farmers Club Of David
son county. The sentiments seemed so OBJ
uoxious to Justice and sound common
sense that they were rather severely COM
nented on by portion of the State press,
/ md by several speakers at an indignation.
/ Meeting of foreign citizens in Nashville.
I These comments have called forth an elab-
crate article from the General, which we
find in the Sunday Nashville papers. This
article, while complaining of its author be-
ing naisrepresented, is in fact,as it seems to
us, intended as defense of his former po-
sition. His views are certainly novel, if
not entirely original, and show him to be
better adapted toraising stock than to dis
eussing questions of social and political re-
form. tfsig1 @
| Upon the subject of education, he delib-
ately advances this proposition: II do be-
lieve, where ignorance is bliss It's folly to
be wise;;' that the class of people whose
lot is to do the drudgery of the world, be
they white or black, avould be made dis
contcnted and unhappy by q high order of
edacdtion. No intelligent and highly ed
| ucated man would be content to spend his
life with the shovel and the hoe, or ak
and the pillow. This dradgc,y must be left
to- feed the scum.
Gen. Harding has lived fifty years in
this world to very poor purpose if his
observations have not taught him that the
very object of education is to prevent the
class of our people he calls "scum" from
increasing SO rapidly as to drag the more
favored of our race down to their level.
God, in His infinite wisdom, does not give
the brains to one class and the muscle to
another. He never intended that the
"scum " should always be scum, or the
rich always be rich. To have created us
so would have crushed out all hope and
emulation in our hearts. We need but to
look about us to see how many of our good
and great men have risen from the scum"
simply because their Creator implanted in
them brains and hearts as good and true as
in those more favored in the circumstances
of their birth. This is the great error Gen.
Harding makes. His theory would keep
the "scum y always "scum.n He im-
AGNES that, by combining education only
to the rich, he would keep them always
the ruling class. But the great race for
life is one of constant change. The swift
and strong lead for time, but fall back
surely and inevitably to give way for the
plodding n1eritorious, who slowly but
surely work up from the rear. The rich
and ruling class lead in their day, and 4
then fall backward until they reach the
scum and begin again from the rear.
These are the inevitable laws of progress |
sion, and Gen. Harding has been blind not
to see them. Education, then, we con-
tend, is necessary for the higher classes to
make up to them, by gains from the poorer, |
what the former lose by natural, inevita- |
bic losses. Give encouragement and hope /
to the bright-eyed, active-minded, ragged |
boys of the scum" by giving them the adj
vantages their Maker intended they should |
have, and if they do not rival in merits |
and true worth their more fortunate COM
petitors, they have no one to blame.
Mr.. Harding's arguments against immi-
grafton are equally novel. As he sums them
up, they are these:
"PopuLdtion increases competition; COM
petition reduces aU0ges reduction of aO0Qes-
generates tCdnt; rant leads to degradation |
and criBle.o
We have not time now to expose their /
fallacy. Population, of course, increases /
but it at the same time ere
ates new demands for labor-enlarges the |
field for labor-and, therefore, does not re-
duce wages. The old cry that sewing ma
chimes, reapers and mowers, and all other /
kinds of labor-saving machines reduced t
wages and destroyed labor, has long since /
been exploded SO, it can be demonstrated, /
are the theories of General Harding.
The great burden of his argument |
against immigration is based upon the idea
that it is to escape from population that
emigrants come to America. He never
considers that emigrants leave Europe be-
cause of the laws, institutions and re-
straints there surrounding them. But all
these considerations aside, we in Tennes-
see, with scarce one-third the population
we actually need, should not now labor
under our present disadvantages, simply
because hundred years from now our
population may be too dense.
We think on the whole Gen. Harding
has not changed the impression he first |
made, and that his views are calculated to
do us, as people, great harm, and him in
no good.
yrvy anVrpTISEMENrs