The Jersey City news., 1899-05-15
MONDAY. MAY Is, 1899
This paper is Democratic IN principles
and Is Independent in its rieios ON dn toco
questions.
Mr.. Huntington's Gospel Of Ignor-


We notice, without any sort of surprise
this morning, that Mr.. Coils P. Hunting
ton thinks the people are over-educated.
Mr.. Huntington has the champion record
among living men as a despoiler OF the
people and corrupter of their servants.
The people are fully posted on his record
and, though they have never been able %
punish him as he deserves, they view hlm
with the horror and loathing which his
career so Justly calls for. 1t is only
natural that Mr.. Huntington should pre-
fer that the people were not well enough
educated to detect his villainy.
What Mr.. Huntington says, as he under
stands it and says it, is pure nonsense
There is nothing in existing conditions 10
show that we have too many college bred
men, nor is there any truth in the propo-
sition that college training is unfavoranie
to success in life. The direct opposite IS
the case. There is no walk of life in
which Ignorance is an advantage and the
prejudice against the higher education.
which Mr.. Huntington exhibits, is sur
vival of our provincial period of existence,
a period which ended with the civil war
its end being the best thing that resulted
TO the country from that terrible National
ordeal AS a matter of fact there is no
evidence that college bred men find II
hard to win places in active life or to
succeed in the places which they, find
On the contrary, we believe they generally
place themselves more congenially and
more fortunately than ignorant men, do
more for the world, gain more for them
selves and live far happier lives than the
british products of boyish avarice, who
degenerate into elderly machines, oscilat-
ing between bed and the counting house,
without a real interest in the present or
distinct hope in the future. At the most,
If the college man remains poor, he has
his own trained mind and his store of
knowledge as an inexhaustible source of
enjoyment, and with plain bread and
cheese and the free air of heaven he may
get more out of life and store up better
savings for the hereafter than the ignor
ant Croesus with his yacht and his man
sions, his horses and his club, and his
short-range mind and aborted soul.
1t is true that our National systems of
education are detestably bad. But the
badness is far more in the primary and
intermediary grades than in the higher
ranges. Our common schools are too
.practical'-accursed word, binding the
people to the true aims of life. They-the
might to make figuring machines of our
children, instead of trying to develop the
human element in them. They teach
arithmetic instead of life. They make
infant abacuses on graduation day, and
idealess dullards for all the rest of life.
why can our young men-so many of
them-find nothing better to do than stand
on corners, why do SO many of our young
women degenerate into tenement house
elatterns? Not because they are edu-
gated above their sphere surely, but be-
rause they are. not educated to be men
and women but figuring machines. The
schools which have had deadly grip on
them for from seven to ten years have
been so practical as to leave them with
put conception of the use or beauty of
life