The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1888-10-31

Statistics have been given from the
reports of the state officers that show a
large and rapid increase in certain de-
partments of state expenses, but that
in other departments, particularly agri-
culture and public instruction, the
sums appropriated are ridiculously
small and have not increased ma
terially, if at all, during the past ten
years. Public schools, free to all and
upon which all children of school age
shall be compelled to attend, are the
first reliance, among human instru-
mentalities, of enlightened statesman
ship, in government based on popu-
lar suffrage, for the promotion of good
citizenship. The prosperous employ
ment of the people in useful industries
is another. An idle brain is the DEVILS
workshop. In theory, at least, gov
eminent has held it to be its first duty
to provide public schools and sustain
them. A duty hardly second in i'm
portance has been the encouragement
and support of those industries in the
pursuit of which the people earn their
support and which are the basis of ma
tional wealth and prosperity. In pro-
portion as useful knowledge is diffused
and industry practiced, the necessity
for jails, prisons and reformatories d.
minishes.
We have been led by an examination
of the reports of state officers to call
public attention, somewhat pointedly,
to an apparent reversal by the legisla-
ture, in late years, of the relation of
industry and education on the one hand,
and penal or reformatory institutions
on the other, to public virtue. The
history of legislation shows that great
solicitude has been felt in certain quar-
tiers about the prisons and reform
schools; that influences have been sue
cessfully employed on the legislature
to persuade it to enlarge and embellish
these institutions and provide them
with comforts that, to the mass of the
common people of the state, would be
positive Injuries. To certain extent
and in certain sense, premium has
been placed on crime. More careful
provision has been made for the Grim
inal than the average laborer who has
never departed from virtues ways is
able, by constant industry and the
strictest economy, to make for him
self or his family. This system of deal
ing with criminals or incipient crimi-
nality, this disposition to provide
goody-goody institutions that make
comfortable refugees and not places of
discipline" seems to have had a tend
ency to recruit the ranks of the Grim
inals, and to demand, consequently, en-
larged facilities for reformation and
correction and a rapidly-increasing eX-
penditure. The main effort seems to
be to punish crime or to reform Grim
inals, not to prevent crime or the devel-
opment of criminal tendencies.
This appears in the fact that while
the state has taken into its own hands
the management, and pays from its
treasury the expense, of its penal and
correctionary institutions, it has left TO
the town or school districts the super
vision and management of the public
schools, the prime moral agency for the
prevention of crime or forestalling the
development of criminal tendencies.
1t has satisfied itself, in its care directly
for the common schools, by paying a
small sum for nominal and per-
functory state supervision of education
and for holding few teachers insti-
tutes of doubtful utility. 1t appears
again in the very stinted appropria-
tions for the encouragement of the
states chief industry, agriculture, and
the spasmodic character of its efforts to
develop and improve this industry. The
state has grossly neglected the schools;
it has practically abandoned its agri-
culture in it's struggle with gigantic
competition and left it to languish I'M