The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-12-29
DR.. ANDREWS'S REMARKS
CREATED A PROFOUND IMPRESSION
AT TEACHERS MEETING.
Education and the Social Problem
Section Meetings-The
Librarians.

into difficulties with the faculty of Brown
University on account of his views on the
monetary question and the protective tariff.
After he resigned from that institution he
was made superintendent of the Chicago
schools, where he later had trouble over the
appointment of teachers, the School Board
desiring to maintain the old system, under
which the superintendent had practically
nothing to say about the appointment of
teachers. The result of the controversy
was that the School Board backed down
and DIR. Andrews had his way.
Last night the subject of DR.. Andrews's
address was THE Public School System as
an fundamentally in Social Advance" In
part he said:
The poverty in the world is a grewsome
feet. No other phase of our life seems to
me so sad. Every tenth child of Adam dy-
ing in New York city is buried at the public
much the same. Each of them. contains
caravans of people, not specially dissipated,
poor never free from fear of want, doomed
for life to the alternative of hard labor or
starvation, as thoroughly cut Off from al
means of culture, as completely precuded
from the rational living of life as were the
HelotS of old Sparta
1T will be seen that the question of ami
hilating poverty is one with the question OF
elevating poor peoples standard OF life
Speaking of the poor as class, one may say
TO be so. or, rather, because they are not
willing to use the means necessary to effect
for themselves a rise. And they lack this
resolution because they lack proper pride,
ambition, love of possession and of power;
in other words. because they have too low an
idea of the sort of thing a human beings life
ought to be. They stay down because, while
unhappy enough in many ways and frettng
at this or that detail of their situation they
feel no vigorous inner protest against the
general level or quality of their condition.
on the whole. 1t is not meant that every in
divdual poor man who might vigorously
wish and VOW to do so can rise, though this
is more nearly true than most suppose What
is asserted is that the INDECENT classes taken
together, fare as they do practically for the
sole reason that they have no arOuSing wish
for any better fare; or, recurring to the old
phrase, because their standard of life is too
low.
THE laboring masses can, within large
limits, have in remuneration for their tolls,
whatever they unitedly demand. Were all
laborers to stand together solidly for it in
prosperous times a general rise in wages of
several per cent could be enforced. If any
employers than were unable to go on, such
would give UP business, leaving all the pro-
ducing to be done by those who We're ADLER
or better situated. If the increase in wages
were not very great, it might take place
without any addition to the cost of goods.
employers saving by better machinery and
economy the extra sums paid for labor. If
the gain in wages were great, prices would
advance, the wage workers being better off
at the expense of the whole consuming COM
munity.
SLABS DOWN LABOR.
why do not laborers stand together thus
and secure better pay? For the simple rea-
son that large section of them-the
scabs' as they are cailed-having no high
thought of what life should be, are willing
to work for any wages that will keep them
from starvation. 1t is this readiness on the
part of so many to accept a dogs life-the
crumbs, the dirt, the kennels-that worsts
Lab xubO TN NIL hot
ties. =
1T is now time to inquire how it is that
a high standard of life, being entertained
by population, becomes an anti-poverty
specific. BY what means would 1t. if pres
ent, rid us of our submerged tenth and rem
der workers for wages relatively independ-
emit? How can idea or an ideal effect
SO much? The bettered ideal of life would
take effect by eliminating that weak, para
site population to which reference has been
made. Could we but found a. powerful sent
iment, universal throughout the labor world,
that tolerable human existence requires
about so many and about such and such of
life's comforts, and that an existence with
less or lower resources is absolutely into-
cradle such conviction could not but serve
as powerful check upon parenthood among
the poorest. Striving upward themselves
men and women would be unwilling to I'M
dertake the work of parenthood when it
was clear that their offspring would be con-
demned to an existence below the standard.
For instance, how many American children
would be born even now, low as our stand
ard is, II 1t were certainly known that all
American children must live or die as
Chinese children do in San Francisco or in
China? Poverty, says Stuart Mill like
most social evils, exists because men follow
their brute Instincts but society is possible
because man is not necessarily a brute.
CIVILIZATION In every one OF Its aspects
is struggle against the animal
instincts. Over some even of the
strongest of them it has shown
itself capable of acquiring abundant control.
1t has artiticialiZed large portions of man
KIND TO such an extent that OF many of their
a vestige or a remembrance left. If it has
not brought the instinct of population under
as much restraint as is needful we must re-
member that it has never seriously tried
What efforts it has made have mostly been
in the contrary direction
Mr.. Mill here refers to the unfortunate
incubation by clergymen and other moral
instructors of the view that technically legit-
innate parenthood. however horrible and
however widespread its results. ought still
to be promoted as a preventive of social vice.
Influence of this sort-as If legal parenthood
could never possibly be carried to criminal
eXtTeme-has much TO answer for. And SO
juring up wars or in expectation of them,
saw in multitudinous population, espe-
cially If poor, so as to be easily turned into
soldiers. a nations chief treasure Suppose
all the educating forces which have hitherto
wrought in this direction were to be turned
in the other! A strong public opinion en-
phasizing the undesirableness of multiplying
numbers among the poorest would work
wonders. as it would also should there arise
what has never yet animated any class
save the poor themselves-a general desire
that wages should be high. These observa-
tons are made, not to imply that the abate-
ment of poverty will ever begin in the pre-
else ways limited at but to illustrate the
working of a high ideal of life could it be
once launched among the people
PLATO AND MILL CONTRASTED.
'Platos remedy was thorough and direct,
but chimerical He would permit no chill
dren to be born, or at least. to live, save
from a select number of perfectly healthy
and perfectly moral parents. Except in
Utopia or in an artificial republic like that
of Plato's dream, one sees no way of ex-
ecuting this scheme. Mr.. Mill is far more
practical For the purpose of altering the
habits of the laboring people there is need,
he says of a twofold action, directed SIM
utaneously upon their intelligence and their
poverty. An effective national education of
the children of the laboring class is the first
thing needful, and CONFIDENTLY with this, a
system of measures which shall (as the rev.
olution did in France) extinguish extreme
poverty for one whole generation. Even If
the masses are schooled improvement is
doubtful unless means can be contrived of
raisins the enure body to a state of tolera-
bic comfort and maintaining them in II I'M
til a new generation grows up.
Il am Impressed with the chance of work.
ing out of the central purpose of MillS plan,
and OF doing this for the most part in Mill $
way. Only. as we give up his colonization
project. we must magnify considerably the
Office which he meant education to MI. This.
ladies and gentlemen, is the point to which
all the foregoing observations have been
tending BY rightly modifying and improV
ing our public educational system. we can
a force 10 uplift the masses standard of
life. Nor are the changes necessary to rem