Chapter 17

But apart from all these considerations, taking the question in its naked form, is it true that mere intellectual education has the tendency alleged? I do not believe it. The constitution of the human mind gives no warrant for such an inference. Recorded, indisputable facts, overwhelmingly disprove it. So far is it from being true that the mere diffusion of knowledge has a tendency to make men knaves and infidels, I believe the very opposite to be true. Knowledge is the natural ally of religion. To hold otherwise, is to disparage and dishonor religion--to imply, if not to say, that ignorance is the mother of devotion.

There is an inborn antagonism between the intellectual and the sensual nature of man. If you give to the intellect no development, you leave the senses as the ruling power. We see this strikingly illustrated in the idiotic, who are for the most part disgustingly sensual. Among a population grossly ignorant and uneducated, sensualism prevails in its most appalling forms. The man is a sensualist, simply because he knows no higher pleasures. He is degraded, because he has no motives to be otherwise. He is barely above a brute. The amount of crime, of the coarsest and most debasing character, among the uneducated peasantry of England, is almost incredible. Here is a description of an English peasant of the present day, given by a competent unimpeached witness, himself an Englishman. I quote from a work on "The Social Condition and Education of the People of England," by Joseph Kay, Esq., of Trinity College, Cambridge, who was commissioned by the Senate of the University to travel for the purpose of examining into the social condition of the poorer classes. Says Mr. Kay: "You cannot address an English peasant, without being struck with the intellectual darkness which surrounds him. There is neither speculation in his eye nor intelligence in his countenance. His whole expression is more that of an animal than of a man. He is wanting too in the erect and independent bearing of a man. As a class, our peasants have no amusements beyond the indulgence of sense. In nine cases out of ten, recreation is associated in their minds with nothing higher than sensuality. About one half of our poor can neither read nor write, have never been in any school, and know little, or positively nothing, of the doctrines of the Christian religion, of moral duties, or of any higher pleasures than beer-drinking and spirit-drinking, and the grossest sensual indulgence. They live precisely like brutes, to gratify, so far as their means allow, the appetites of their uncultivated bodies, and then die, to go they have never thought, cared, or wondered whither. Brought up in the darkness of barbarism, they have no idea that it is possible for them to attain any higher condition; they are not even sentient enough to desire, with any strength of feeling, to change their situation; they are not intelligent enough to be perseveringly discontented; they are not sensible to what we call the voice of conscience; they do not understand the necessity of avoiding crime, beyond the mere fear of the police and the jail; they have unclear, indefinite, and undefinable ideas of all around them; they eat, drink, breed, work, and die; and while they pass through their brute-like existence here, the richer and more intelligent classes are obliged to guard them with police and standing armies, and to cover the land with prisons, cages, and all kinds of receptacles for the perpetrators of crime."

Surely it must be some hallucination of mind, which leads men to suppose that the diffusion of knowledge among such a population, even though it be only scientific and intellectual knowledge, can have any natural or general tendency adverse to religion and morals. Apart, however, from speculation, and as a pure question of fact, the recorded statistics of crime point unmistakably the other way. Criminal records the world over prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that the overwhelming majority of crimes are committed by persons deplorably ignorant. Intellectual education, therefore, I contend, even when deprived of its natural ally and adjunct, religious training, has no natural tendency to produce knaves and villains. On the contrary, it is a most efficient corrective and restraint of the evil and debasing tendencies of human nature. If the intellect is not so high a region in man's constitution as the moral powers, which I readily grant, it is at least above the mere sensual part, in which vice and crime have their chief spring and aliment. The question fortunately is one susceptible of a direct appeal to facts. Who are the men and women that people our jails and prisons? Are they persons of education, or are they in the main persons deplorably ignorant? What is the record of criminal statistics on this point?

I will quote a few of these statistics, from a great mass of similar evidence lying before me.

Out of 252,544 persons committed for crime in England and Wales, during a series of years, 229,300, or more than 90 per cent., are reported as uneducated, either entirely unable to read and write, or able to do so only very imperfectly; 22,159 could read and write, but not fluently; and only 1085 (_less than one half per cent. of the whole_) were what we call educated persons.

In nine consecutive years, beginning with the year 1837, only 28 educated females were brought to the bar of criminal justice in England and Wales, out of 7,673,633 females then living in that part of the United Kingdom; and in the year 1841, out of the same population, not one educated female was committed for trial.

In a special commission, held in 1842, to try those who had been guilty of rioting and disturbance in the manufacturing districts, out of 567 thus tried, 154 could neither read nor write, 155 could read only, 184 could read and write imperfectly, 73 could read and write well, and only one had received superior instruction.

In 1840, in 20 counties of England and Wales, with a population of 8,724,338, there were convicted of crime only 59 educated persons, or one for every 147,870 inhabitants. In 32 other counties, with a population of 7,182,491, the records furnished _not one convict_ who had received more than the merest elements of instruction.

In 1841, in 15 English counties, with a population of 9,569,064, there were convicted only 74 instructed persons, or one to every 129,311 inhabitants, while the 25 remaining counties and the whole of Wales, with a population of 6,342,661, did not furnish one single conviction of a person who had received more than the mere elements of education.

In 1845, out of a total of 59,123 persons taken into custody, 15,263 could neither read nor write, and 39,659 could barely read, and could write very imperfectly.

In the four best taught counties of England, the number of schools being one for every seven hundred inhabitants, the number of criminal convictions was one a year for every 1108 inhabitants. In the four worst taught counties, the number of schools being one for every 1501 inhabitants, the number of convictions was one a year for every 550 inhabitants. That is, in one set of counties, the people were about twice as well educated as in the other, and one half as much addicted to crime. In other words, in proportion as the people were educated, were they free from crime.

Thrift and good morals usually keep pace with the spread of intelligence among the people. This has been the result in all those countries of Europe where good common schools are maintained, as in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and most of the German States. Pauperism, with its attendant evils and crimes, is almost unknown in those countries, while in England, where the common people are worse educated than those of any Protestant nation in the world, pauperism has become an evil which her wisest statesmen have given up as unmanageable. In 1848, in addition to hundreds of persons assisted by charitable individuals, no less than 1,876,541 paupers (_one out of every eight of the population!_) were relieved by the boards of guardians of the poor, at an expense from the public purse of nearly thirty millions of dollars.

In our own country, the same pains have not been taken to collect statistics on this subject, because comparatively little controversy about it has existed here to call forth inquiry. We as a people have generally taken it for granted that popular education lessens crime and pauperism. Still, facts enough have been recorded to show the same results here as elsewhere. When an educated villain is convicted, like Monroe Edwards or Professor Webster, the fact becomes so notorious by means of the press, that it is unconsciously multiplied in our imagination, and we think the instances more numerous than they really are. We never think of the scores of obscure villains that are convicted every week all the year round. A quotation or two from the facts which have been recorded, will be sufficient to satisfy us on this point.

In the Ohio penitentiary, out of 276 inmates, nearly all were reported as ignorant, and 175 as grossly so.

In the Auburn prison, New York, out of 244 inmates, only 39 could read and write.

In the Sing Sing prison, no official record has been made on this point. But the Rev. Mr. Luckey, for more than twenty years chaplain of the prison, is obliged by the prison regulations to superintend and read all the letters between the prisoners and their friends. In this manner he becomes personally acquainted with the condition of the convicts in regard to education. He reported a few months since to the writer of these pages, that while there are always some among the convicts who have been educated, yet the great mass of them are stolidly ignorant. There are usually between one and two hundred learning to read, and this does not include the half of those who are unable to read, as the attendance upon the class is voluntary, the accommodations are meagre, and most of the prisoners are indifferent to their own improvement. Not five in a hundred can write otherwise than in the most clumsy and awkward manner, and with the grossest blunders in orthography, and not more than two in a hundred can write a sentence grammatically. Out of the 700 then in prison, only three were liberally educated, and two of these were foreigners.

Throughout the State of New York, in 1841, the ratio of uneducated criminals to the whole number of uneducated persons was twenty-eight times as great as the ratio of educated inhabitants.

In view of the facts which have been given, and which might be multiplied to almost any extent, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that mere intellectual education has some power to restrain men from the commission of crime. Assuredly, ignorance and sin are natural adjuncts and allies.

Schools undoubtedly cost something. The community that undertakes to educate the masses, or the individual that undertakes to educate his children, must expect to have a serious bill to pay. It is a pernicious folly to inculcate the contrary. The advocate of popular education, who tries to persuade people into the experiment, under the assurance that the expense will be trifling, misleads his readers, and puts back the cause which he would fain put forward. But there is a most significant _per contra_ in the account, and on this there is no danger of dwelling too much. Nothing is so costly as crime, and no preventive of crime is more efficient than education. Schoolhouses are cheaper than jails, teachers and books are a better security than handcuffs and policemen. There are educated villains, it is true. But they are rare, and they attract the greater attention by the very fact of their rarity. But go into a prison, or a criminal court, or a police court, and see who they are that mainly occupy the proceedings of our expensive machinery of criminal justice. Nine-tenths of those miserable creatures are in a state of most deplorable ignorance. Degraded, sensual, with no knowledge of anything better than the indulgence of the lowest passions, without mental resources, or any avenue to intellectual enjoyment, they often resort to crime from sheer want of something better to do. When Dr. Johnson was asked, "Who is the most miserable man?" his reply was, "The man who cannot read on a rainy day." There is profound meaning in the answer. The man who has been educated, who not only can read, but has acquired a taste for reading, and for reading of a proper kind, is rarely driven into low and debasing crime. He has resources within himself, which are a counterpoise to the incitements of his animal nature. His awakened intellect and conscience also make him understand more clearly the danger and guilt of a life of crime. Many of the deeds which swell the records of our criminal courts spring from poverty, as every criminal lawyer well knows, and there is no remedy against extreme poverty so sure as education. The old adage says that knowledge is power. It is also wealth. A man with even an ordinary, common school education, can turn himself in a hundred ways, where a mere ignorant boor would be utterly helpless. The faculties are developed, ingenuity is quickened, the man's resources are enlarged. An educated man may be tempted to crime, but he is not driven into it, as hundreds are daily, by mere poverty, or by an intolerable hunger of the mind for enjoyment of some kind.

Schools, then, especially schools in which moral and religious truth is inculcated, are the most powerful means of lessening crime, and of lessening the costly and frightful apparatus of criminal administration. As schoolhouses and churches increase in the land, jails and prisons diminish. As knowledge is diffused, property becomes secure, and rises in value. A community, therefore, is bound to see that its members are properly educated, if for no other reason, in mere self-defence. The many must be educated, in order that the many may be protected. A great city is just as sacredly bound to provide for its teeming population the light of knowledge, as it is to provide material light for its streets. The one kind of illumination, equally with the other, is an essential part of its police. No matter what the cost, the dark holes and alleys must be flooded with the light of truth, before which the owls and bats and vampyres of society will be scattered to the winds. A great city without schools would be a hell,--a seething caldron of vice, impurity, and crime. No man of sound mind would choose such a place for the residence of himself and family, who had the means of living in any other place. If we could suppose two cities entirely equal in other respects, but in one of them a superior and costly system of free schools, while the other spent not a dollar upon schools, but depended solely upon the rigors of the law and the strong arm of avenging justice for restraining the ignorant and corrupt masses, can there be any doubt which city would be the safest and most desirable place of residence?

Whatever view of this subject may be taken in other countries, we in this country are shut up to the necessity of popular education. We at least have no choice. Universal suffrage necessitates universal education. If we do not educate our people, educate universally, educate wisely and liberally, we can hardly expect to maintain permanently our popular institutions. The man's vote, who cannot read the names on the ballot which he throws into the box, counts just as much in deciding public affairs as yours, who are versed in statesmanship and political economy. He is a partner in the political firm. You can neither withdraw from the firm yourself, nor can you throw him out. In the absence of general education, this tremendous power of suffrage is something frightful to contemplate. "The greatest despotism on earth," says De Tocqueville, "is an excited, untaught public sentiment; and we should hate not only despots, but despotism. When I feel the hand of power lie heavy on my brow, I care not to know who oppresses me; the yoke is not the easier, because it is held out to me by a million of men."

The danger from this source is intensified by the immense immigration from abroad which is going on, and which bids fair very greatly to increase. The great majority of those who seek our shores, come here ignorant. With little knowledge of any kind, and with no knowledge whatever of the nature of republican institutions, these men, almost at once, are made sharers of the popular sovereignty, with all its tremendous powers of peace and war, order and anarchy, life and death. Not to have a system of public education, by which these ignorant and dangerous masses shall be enlightened, and shall be assimilated to the rest, and to the better part, of the population, is simply suicidal. Our national life hangs upon our common schools.

Besides this grave political consideration, affecting the interests of the entire body politic, and the question of the success and stability of our national institutions, there is another consideration coming home closely and individually to each man's personal interests. Where the law of trial by jury prevails, every citizen, whether educated or ignorant, takes part in the administration of justice. Twelve men, taken indiscriminately from the mass of the people, or if with any discrimination, taken more frequently from the lower walks of life than from the higher, are placed in a jury box to decide upon almost every possible question of human interests. The jury decides your fortune, your reputation. The jury says whether you live or die. Go into a court of justice. Are they light matters which those twelve men are to determine? Look at the anxious faces of those whose estates, whose good name, whose worldly all hangs upon the intelligence of those twelve men, or of any one of them. What assurance have you, save that which comes from popular education, that these men will understand and do their duty? Who would like to trust his legal rights or his personal safety to the verdict of a jury of Neapolitan lazzaroni?

In a few short years, the idle boys who are now prowling about the streets and alleys of our towns, the wharf-rats of our cities, will be a part of our jurymen. Is it of no consequence to me, whether their minds shall be early trained and disciplined, so that they will be capable of following a train of argument, or of comprehending a statement of facts? How is it possible to administer justice with any degree of fairness and efficiency, where the majority of those who are to constitute the jurymen and the witnesses are stolidly ignorant? By common law, every man has a right to be tried by his peers. Let law then provide that those shall, in some substantial sense, be my peers, on whose voice my all in life may depend.

But let us recur once more to the economical part of the argument. When a community is taxed for the support of common schools, the question naturally rises among the taxpayers, Is the system worth the cost? Does the community, by the diffusion of knowledge and education, gain enough to counterbalance the large expense which such education involves? Even if this question could not be answered in the affirmative, it would not follow that common schools should be dispensed with. Common schools are needed as the best and cheapest protection against the crimes incident to an ignorant and degraded population. Common schools are right and proper, because without them the majority of those created in the image of God will never attain to that noble manhood which is their rightful inheritance. But the argument will receive additional force, if it can be shown that general education increases the wealth of the community.

That education does have this effect is evident, I think, from two independent lines of argument. First, an intelligent, educated man is capable individually of achieving greater material results than one who is ignorant. Secondly, the general diffusion of intelligence through a community leads to labor-saving inventions, and thus increases its producing power.

In regard to the first line of argument, some curious and instructive facts were collected a few years since by the late Horace Mann. His inquiries were directed to the efficiency of operatives in factories, a class of men who would seem to require as little general intelligence as any kind of laborers. It was found that, as a general rule, those operatives who could sign their names to their weekly receipts for money, were able to do one-third more work, and to do it better, than those who made their mark. Nor is this at all to be wondered at. There is no kind of work, done by the aid of human muscle, that is purely mechanical. Mind is partner in all that the body does. Mind directs and controls muscle, and even in emergency gives it additional energy and power. No matter how simple the process in which an operative may be engaged, some cultivation of his mental powers is needed. Without it he misdirects his own movements, and mistakes continually the orders of his superintending workman. A boy who has been to a good common school, and has had his mental activities quickened, and whose mind has been stimulated and roused by worthy motives, not only will be more industrious for it when he becomes a man, but his industry will be more effective. He will accomplish more, even as a day laborer, than the mere ignorant boor. When we come to any kind of skilled labor, the difference between the educated and the ignorant is still more apparent. An intelligent mechanic is worth twice as much as one ignorant and stupid.

Many years ago a very instructive fact on this point came under my own personal observation. A gentleman of my acquaintance had frequent need of the aid of a carpenter. The work to be done was not regular carpentry, but various odd jobs, alterations and adaptations to suit special wants, and no little time and materials were wasted in the perpetual misconceptions and mistakes of the successive workmen employed. At length a workman was sent who was a German, from the kingdom of Prussia. After listening attentively to the orders given, and doing what he could to understand what his employer wanted, Michael would whip out his pencil, and in two or three minutes, with a few rapid lines, would present a sketch of the article, so clear that any one could recognize it at a glance. It could be seen at once, also, whether the intention of his employer had been rightly conceived, and whether it was practicable. The consequence was, that so long as Michael was employed, there was no more waste of materials and time, to say nothing of the vexation of continued failures. Michael was not really more skilful as a carpenter than the many others who had preceded him. But his knowledge of drawing, gained in a common school in his native country, made his services worth from fifty cents to a dollar a day more than those of any other workman in the shop, and he actually received two dollars a day, when others in the same shop were receiving only a dollar and a quarter. He was always in demand, and he always received extra wages, and his work even at that rate was considered cheap.

What was true of Michael in carpentry, would be true of any other department of mechanical industry. In cabinet-making, in shoe-making, in tailoring, in masonry, in upholstery, in the various contrivances of tin and sheet iron with which our houses are made comfortable, in gas-fitting and plumbing, in the thousand-and-one necessities of the farm, the garden, and the kitchen, a workman who is ready and expert with his pencil, who has learned to put his own ideas, or those of another, rapidly on paper, is worth fifty per cent. more than his fellows who have not this skill.