Workmen's advocate., 1889-06-29
A LETTER FROM BElLAMY. Demanding a Law to Raise the Age
 for Compulsory Schooling.

The following letter from Edward Belamy was read at recent meeting of the Boston Nationalist Club. It shows that the gifted author is a man of progress, as well as the possessor of a large heart
 First of all, we must heed the cry of the children. We must deliver them from the taskmasters and turn them over to the schoolmasters. The present school system of Massachusetts, with its wretched twenty weeks of compul. sory attendance up to the age of four. teen, with grammar and high schools for few fortunate ones, is not a se- rious attempt to educate the people, and it Is time that this was said plainly. The age of fourteen is no time to bring to close the education of prospective sovereign of the United States and cus- todian of it's liberties. Merely to raise the age limit of compulsory schooling to l5 l6, F Tor Is would, however, not help matters, for the reason that in the majority of instances those parents who take their children out of school as soon as the law is off do so because they must, because they are themselves too poor to support them longer in idleness. Now, whatever others may think, Ma tionalsts do not consider that the ina bility, or even the thriftlessness. of a parent is any sufficient reason why child should be condemned to the life- long serfdom of ignorance. The duty tho norant and ,,,,J l> @n ward his child the State must do.
 "lt is my earnest hope that the Ma tionalist clubs may see their way clear to formulating and presenting to the vot- CTS of the State, as q test for legislative candidates at the next State election, a demand for law raising the age of con- pulsory education to at least seventeen years, and the school year to at least thirty-tive weeks, with a sufficient State provision for the support of chil- dren of indigent parents while at school. It appears to me that this is a measure which all persons who hope for the evolution of better social order will be prepared to support, The children are of no party. The children have no enemies, and surely it is most rational to begin the reform of so- ciety with that portion of it which is most plastic, that is, with the children. The advocates of all modes and schools of reform must here agree, for under whatever figure we may sev- erally fancy the hoped-for new order, we must depend upon the children who now ought to be in school, to put it into effect. Those, on the contrary, who disbelieve in all reform or progress, and hold that the present heartrending social conditions are to endure forever, will be quite consistent in opposing the proposed measure. If their view is cor rect, the schools should all be closed and education forbidden the masses en- tlrely, that, being more nearly brutal ized, they may be less sensible of their degradation.
 'The attitude of persons on all im- portant questions of improving the edu- cation of the masses will, think, be found to correspond quite closely with their general belief on the larger ques- tion of the possibilities of human prog ress. One other point want to speak of. The transfer to the schools of all children under seventeen now at work in stores, shops and factories, would create demand for adult labor which would not a little relieve the present glutted labor market. To make work by waste is poor political economy; but this would be to make work by saving by saving the children"