The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1873-01-02
MeOnian Hail ia Augustn. ON Wednesday,
Decisive Action Needed.

decisive AcLlOu Ncou
Japan is ahead of Maine in one respect. Ii
we do not take care that semi-cislllzed coun-
try win lie ID us in all things. Despite the
patching which ou decaying common school
system received at the h nds of the Legisla-
ture last winter, only half our young people
are receiving an education in the public
schools. In Japan, under its new rulers and
its new light, every youth must attend school.
l things are to go on in this way we hall
soon be sending our young men to Yeddo to
finish off their education. Our scholars Will
go there to learn from almond-eyed instruc-
the sciences that Bowdoin College and Bates
are unable to teach them for the higher in
situations of learning, which are ted by the
common schools, share in their decay.
1t is one of the strangest phenomena OF the
times that enlightened people like those OF
Maine will look on with apathy year after
year seeing the very foundations of the State
crumbls away before their eyes. Men who
are yet young can well remember when not
only the common schools, but their depend
a cuts, the academies, country 'high schools
and colleges were much more fully attended
than now. The old academies where the ac-
tive men of the present generation received
their education, are tumDling off their sills
or being converted into "meeting houses
Travellers speak of the pathetic emotions ex-
cited by the contemplation of ruins in for
eign lands, but who can stand unmoved be-
Co. a. O,1f of
whose wide doors so many generations of
manly boys and sparkling, happy girls have
come forth to help do the great worlds work !?
The grassy own shipyard has furnished
theme for a good many eloquent or lions
within the last five years, but why will not
orators rouse their hearers to the awful sig
mica lee of abandoned schoolhouses
1t is especially in connection with the rap
i'd growth OF manufactures in Maine that the
subject of education presses on the atten-
ton. What then are the busy thousands
whom we are making frantic e torts to entice
within our borders, to avail our State, If they
are to be only such citizens as France, Eng
land or Belgium employs in like avocations?
Will it profit us to be able to say that "the
State is rich," if only one half its people
can read and write, as in France? Shall we
take pride in saying that 'the State is popu-
lous," if only one-eighth of its people are to
be counted among the comfortable and ssTas=
spectacle classes,'' as in England E Shall We
dwell with pride on the extent of our rail
roads, If the traveller looking from the win
aoSS OF the palace car is to see the huts OF The
stolid aud vicious because illiterate peasants
everywhere alternating with the palaces
the rich, as in Europe? Peasant is wore
tn vt has hitherto had no place in the vocabu
lazy of an American. Bat the thing is worse
than the word, and among the manufacture
we are introducing with so much zeal is The
m inufacturo of peasants. Is that a produc
which Maine will take pleasure in exhibiting
at the great exposition at Philadelphia on thu
one hundredth anniversary Of American in
dependence? Yet the common school tt
which every child can go and does go is the
only help to be found for the peasant-making
tendency.
And how are the dangers that threaten
democracy to be averted by an untaught pop
ulace2 It commonly said in the newspa-
pars of M inc that railroad monopoly threat
ems to undo us. Voters who cannot read
their ballots will not find it easy to protect
themselves from such peril as there may bt
in this, be The same greater or less 1t is also
c,nmo only said and believed that corruption
in hi III places is sullying the purity of Amer
lean life and making selfgovernment a fail
urs. Factory operatives whose nntaugh
eyes can ser. no further than the factory walls
and whose aspirations extend no flu Their thar
their weekly stipend will hardly find RENE.
dies for these evils. There are those, especi-
ally in New Y ork, where their attention is OF
necessity called to the subject who
o Rome and its disciples will. ultimately sub
vert all that is valuable in our national life
This danger, which is probably half imagina
ry, becomes trifling in community where
the common school preserves its sovereign
sway. Catholicism wisely strikes first at the
common school, in its effort to tear down the
Republic, knowing that education affords to
self government its only firm bulwark. In
short an enlightened people carry easily the
gravest responsibilities, and pass unframed
the most appalling dangers, where 'speas-
antry'' tall an easy prey to every adventurer,
of inhuman tyrants who regard them only as
the insensate instruments Of their own am
biton. This is so trite suggestion that
we are ashamed to repeat it, but what shall
be done when lofty factories are going up all
over the State by the side of crazy school
houses, that seem on the point of disappear
ing2 The factory is sign of progress. We
n aed as many as possible of them, but the
school house must rise with them, or they
I've an element of weakness. So prone is a
an artizan population to fall into ignorance
thats consequent vice and helplessness,
prevent >rdinary means are necessary to
thinks othe.mentabe a result. He who
the Massachuss should read the reports of
Labor. Factorieauleau of the Statistics of
es down mean feudg up and school-hous-
ism. and then barbar-
Let the Legislature tax.
vorabe to educa ion this winisive steps fa-
lars grudgingly given will not "a few dol
State exercise in behalf of the whd.et the
that bountiful generosity Thchit has faple
to reserved for private interests and mones-
corpora ions. Maine has fairly ALLEN int
disgrace on account OF its remissness in thi
matter. Let the tenth census restore GU
good name!
WE have received from the enterprisin.
publishers of the Kennebec Journal an at
tractive pamphlet entitled Biographies
Sketches of the Members of the Senata NM