Vermont farmer. [volume] (Newport, Orleans County, Vt.) 1870-1877, 1873-08-08
NECESSITY OF A BETTER Pop
uLAR EDUCATION.

have heretofore made and kept them poor
and subordinate,--the influences that have
created class consisting of great capital
lists and their satellites, which rules the |
working class and takes from il the greater |
portion Of its surplus earnings for its own
enriChment,-it can only be through such |
general diffusion Of knowledge as will awak- |
en- the producers to realizing sense Of the |
fact that they are thus defraudcd, and enable |
them to devise way of emancipation from
the unjust domination of massed capital.
Free schools and free ballot are the
levers Of liberty for laboring men.
Heretofore all except the common or dis
trict schools of this country have been found
ed and managed for the purpose of giving
ruling class that superior education which
enables it to retain its power over the peo-
pie. Universal free education, carried out
so that every boy and girl can have, at the
public expense, just as thorough training
in every branch of learning as they are ca
pable of receiving, will destroy class power,
1.-THE worst of monopolies,) and by giving
knowledge both of tho wrong and the reme-
DIV, lead to fair division of the products Of
labor.
All the old academies and colleges in
New England were established for the bene-
fit of a ruling class which has been and is,
even in this free country, almost a caste, and
has indeed in its highest development been
named by the witty DIR. Holmes, "ths Brah-
Minis of New England"
II was originally designed that this class
should be the clergy, and the academies in
every large town, with the colleges above
them, were established to give US can edu-
Gated ministry" knowledge is power" and
the founders of these institutions designed to
rule the new colonies enthusiastically. But
the Reformation had already laid the axe to
the root of the tree Of ecclesiastical power,
and although the offshoot from it set out in
New England soil throve for awhile, it soon
began to lose its vitality, and is now but
withered stock In its place we have had
however first the lawyers, who for years
governed towns, states and the union; and
now we are ruled by the great capitalists,
who by the power of money, have reduced
their predecessors in authority to a subor-
dinate and even satellite condition. Few
clergymen dare to preach against the crimes
of capital, for capital pays their salaries.
The clergy of the south all sustained slavery,
and the clergy of our large towns, who are
the ablest of the class, are generally mum up
on the crying abuses of power in the hands
of the money kings.
The lawyers, too, have fallen from their
high estate, and although they still monopo-
lie most of the offices, it is but as the SUBJ
servient agents of those same money kings.
They are allowed to forage on the country
for living, but at the sound of the capital
lists bugle they rally to his support, like well
trained hounds.
Knowledge wins wealth,and wealth gives
power. This is inevitable. And in every
country those who now hold power are the
enemies Of general education. In England
the ruling class has, with characteristic
Anglo Saxon brutality and thoroughness,
carried this policy SO far that in the Ian
guage of a recent writer, no laboring
class, except perhaps the fcllahs Of Egypt
arc SO ignorant and SO degraded as the En-.
glish farm laborers Consequently, in Eng
land 80, 600 men and women hold undisput
cd possession of every foot of land, and
mouopolize nearly all the means, even il
that wealthiest of nations, OF human enjoy
ment and progress
Sometimes the ruling class, knowing thai
knowledge in the laborer increases the wealth
producing power Of labor has given to it
subordinates a limited amount Of education
1t was attempted in the South, but the slave
holder pretty soon found out that while al
educated slave could earn him more money
he also had strange desire to have tina
money himself and would either strike fo
freedom or run away. So the teaching o
slaves was made penal The Prussian gov
ernment, essentially military aristocracy
found out that thinking bayOnets were mos
efficient, and educated an army to aveng
the conquest of their territory by Napoleon
Those thinking bayonets have done that jo
for their masters, aud will now in few
years avenge their own wrongs on ruler
whose desire for vengeance so unwisely out
ran their prudence.
In New England since the failure Of tn
plan Of ecclesiastical government upon whic
the colonies of Massachusetts, Bay and Con
necticut were founded, there has been no de
clared Or defined design on the part of tn
educated class to confne education to Itse
for the purpose of securing wealth and hold
ing power. 1t has not been necessary. TIL
original machinery for producing an educat
ed ministry remained, and it has been run
produce educated men, mainly lawyers VIII
first ruled in their own right, and now rul
as the tools Of the massed capital Of th
country, aggregated largely in the hands {
the specializing (gambling) class, This elias
having got, by circumstances, special edr
cation in the art of lawfully stealing til
results of the labor Of the uneduoated, BIZ
outstripped the men trained in the old fasl
toned literary academies and colleges, an
reduced them to vassalage, so that now v
are ruled by the capitalists, through Il
clergy and the lawyers; but mainly the la
ter; for the former are simply muzzled
L IL