The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1876-01-09
Centennialism.

matters the old gentleman 10 especially
loud. He would not exactly say T." that
American schools surpassed those of other
countries, still the foundation was laid for
a system of free schools which within a
quarter of a century would surpass them"
And yet Gov. Hendricks is Democrat.
He is essentially opposed to hot house
Legislation. He Is opposed to protective
tariffs as an intermeddling with private
business. He rejects the paternal phase
of government and insists on the control of
personal business by personal Influences. He
sees no right in q political corporation to
foster one private interest at public expense
and leave another Upholstered. According
to him and all other Democrats, the bust
ness of government is simply to protect the
rights of men, individually and collectively,
and not to intermeddle in matters of per-
sonal policy OF private interest. That idea
is abandoned to countries where govern
ment is based on the presumption that reo-
Pile are not capable of governing them
selves or managing their own business.
But when it comes to the American
hobby of d" free schools" even the staunch
Democrat ia dazed. By some intellectual
hocas- pocus, the schooling of children gets
to be excepted from the general rule of
letting the individual attend to his own
business and is adopted into the domain of
political control. In that particular, gov
eminent is no longer limited to the protec-
ton of the rigbts of men, but somehow gets
vested with the additional power of going
into the school business on grand scale.
After the school industry is firmly estab-
lished as q government business, then it
will perhaps be found advisable to provide
nurseries for small children. "THE GRAND
FREE NURSERY SYSTEM" will be an attrac-
tive card, without which in his hand the
politician must play a losing game. We
make no claim to originality in this sug-
gestion. 1t was long ago reduced to practi-
cal use on Southern plantations, and GER
tainly worked very benefcially. One old
woman, skilled in the business and known
to be careful, would be selected to take
charge of all the little ones while their
mothers were at work. The consequence
was that the children were much better
cared for than they would have been under
the thriftless, ignorant mHmanagement of.
their Indifferent mothers. At Paris, and
perhaps other large European cities, there
are institutions where working women
daily place their children for attention
during their hours of absence from home.
when they have no one there in whose care
to leave them. But whether they have any
one at home or not, and, even, if they stay
at home themselves, the babies must be
Of Inv, a
mother ia not skillful in that line it GER
tainly is expensive to have separate nurse
for every house where there are babies;
how much better, then, to turn the business
over to government The governments
nurseries will be palaces we'll warmed,
furnished and ventilated, in place of damp,
dark, unwholesome novels which many
poor children have to call home. The at
TENT given them will be all that skill can
suggest and money CON mand. Everything
will be so much more scientific and, oh so
much more economical.
| The prospect is charming. TuIn the
babies over to government 10y all
means. They will grow up healthy
and vigorous. The government will puah
tuem on through its free schools and turn
them out we'll developed, genteel, finely
educated ladies aud gent'eman-whatt the
majority of them certainly never would get
to be under home rti1enccs-and, withal,
so cheaply, so very cheaply.
Then one step further would bring US to
the old Spartan system of Communism,
where the family was utterly merged in the
State and the individual was reared with
the sole view to his utility "a citizen. 1t
was found much more economical and con-
ducive to regularity that all should live in
common. The family disappeared, the in
dividual lost his self control, the State be-
came paramount, yet the people were called
citizens, when they were really nothing but
slaves. Such system is conducive to
profitable results among slaves, but freemen
will never submit to it.