Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1891-07-10

The newspapers of the State are busy
discussing the question of using the
$4,000 odd which the State will receive
by the refunding of the direct tax. A
majority of them, perhaps, are in accord
with Gov. Page. who is understood to
favor adding it to the Huntington school
fund, the income from which is devoted
to the support of the common schools :;
others would have it employed as an en-
dowment for military school, and we
presume the university people at Bur-
lington would be willing to gobble it up
and try to find place for the income
there.
The necessity for having any more
school funds is not at all apparent. The
common schools of the State are doing
good work, or else the testimony of such
men as Congressman Powers is of no
value. He said, Saturday, In his Grafton
at the centennial celebration in Lyndon
vile:
However much discomfort may have
been expressed by "Mrs. Grundy" re-
specting our system of education, vet.
after all, no son or daughter of Vermont
can Justly complain of any lack of oppor-
tunity for solid intellectual training
Every town does maintain good schools,
many Of them superior academies and
high schools, one of the very best of
which is planted on yonder hillside. and
our colleges, though small in preten-
ton and lacking in endowment or in
fn dlti ion hi. A.
of any in the land. No Vermonter has
any right to go beyond our borders for
educational equipment. If he does he
ought to receive the old traditional
punishment of our fathers-thirty-sev
lashes upon the back. The same moral
dyspepsia that decries our educational
system with equal Inconsistency belttles
our opportunities for industrial and ag-
ricultural welfare.
The military school idea is pretty eff
fectually knocked in the head by the Free
Press when it says:
The State already has military school
at Northfield and students at the univer-
sity of Vermont, the Vermont Episcopal
institute and other institutions in the
State receive liberal education in this
direction. Beside, many visitors to Yer
mont think that we are making colonies
too fast already for the size of our popu-
lation.
There is, however, an institution that
Vermont needs and that badly. She
ought to have a first-class industrial
school-such an one as this money would
handsomely endow. The tendency of
the day is toward the mechanical indus
tries, and unless our State does something
in that line she is bound to be left at
the tail of the procession. We have few
factories where apprenticeships can be
served and there is nothing to turn the
thoughts of the young in this direction.
y properly managed school could do it,
and that is the only way it ever will be
done. If further argument than the bare
statement of the case were required. it
might be found in every Vermont town
of any size. Each of them has material
OF one sort or another that might be
made into a marketable commodity: In
many of them, like our own town of
Mlddlebury, water-power is gong to
waste, and why? Simply because there
is no one in them who has the requisite
knowledge to carry on manufacturing.
We are a State of farmers and traders.
and hardly anything else. The money
for carrying on manufacturing is here,
but not the skill to do that sort of
business. And so Vermont towns, see
ing the value of manufactures for their
up-building, try to bribe outsiders to
come here and run manufacturing es-
adjustments for that is what the efforts
of Vermont boards of trade amount to,
practically. This is all wrong, of course;
but a better condition of affairs will not
exist till the step which we advocate is
taken.