The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1873-01-30
Education of the Masses.


The wealth of country or community does
not consist in its stores, its mines its productive
lands or its thrifty manufactures, but in its
people, in it's intelects, the fundamental ma
chimes by which all other machinery is moved
the productive energy that fills the stores, and
digs the mines and works the lands, and from
which all other property springs. 1t is an as
tonishing thing that governments have been so
long patting the cart before the horse, and un-
able TO see their error; fostering and encour-
aging arts and sciences, navigation, agriculture
and manufactures, and carelessly and indifer-
emily fostering mind, the power that develops
and propels them all. Public education is the
direct and the shortest road to wealth and
power. 1t only requires to wake UP the intel
lects Of any country, the very poorest, to ex-
tract gold from its barren heaths and hills, to
conyert its pestiferous bogs into gardens, to
metamOrphose its huts and palaces, and to send
the sntrting steam horse dashiHg over its plains
1t is the very wisest investment of public funds
as soon as possible to convert it in educated
mind. Wealth, prosperity and power exist
precisely in proportion to educated intellect
1t would confer infinitely more prosperity, Wis
ible, real prosperity, upon any community to
pour into it stream of educated mind than to
pour into it stream of gold; for the latter
would relax industrious energy and prove to be
positive calamity, but the former would in
troduce many elaborate machines, oiled and
trained, capable of extracting use and profit
out of everything within their reach. There is
not business Or calling among men, not even
the meanest and lowest, which will not lead to
wealth in the hands of an active and discip-
lined mind.
Mind is the governments mint, for this old
Anglo-Saxon word means not merely an expe-
dient for coming, but an inventive power, q
faculty of mind. 1t is not mans business or
calling that makes money, but the man, and
that in proportion to the disciplined energy of
his mind-in other words, his education. For
education is not lore, but mental energy. 1t is
strange that governments bestow 80 much at
tention upon railroads and manufactures, and
so little upon popular education, the prinaun'
mobile Of national prosperity.
It is strange that parental foresight does not
invest more of their children's capital in this
kind of stock-less in property heritages-
since it is not property that makes the man,
but the man that makes the property, and
makes it sooner and more surely by being thor
oughly educated. He who commences life by
nibbling down big pile of property has less
enjoyment and more mishaps than they who
toiled to make it. The young man who COM
mences life with his capital invested in his
brains, commences with the best patrimony his
father could give him, and is the best gift which
that father could bestow upon his country.
The improvements of the present day require
some respectable knowledge of the sciences to
cope with them and to make use of them. Me-
tallurgy may in few years make many smiths
look wild for living. Steam and improved
mechanical machinery may take away many
poor mechanics bread 1t will require ere
long an education to farm on the most ap-
proved plan, or otherwise leave many laggard
to wonder what is the matter. The world is
moving onward so fast in improvements of
every kind, that in few years those who have
neglected their minds will be lost, and scarcely
know in what world they live.