EDUCATION.

No. IV. - MARCH, 1884.

THE NATION, THE ONLY PATRON OF EDUCATION EQUAL TO THE PRESENT EMERGENCY.

BY GEN. JOHN EATON, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Since the days of the great George Mason, of Virginia, there have never failed to be patriots who believed that African slavery was a peril to our institutions. They sought for peaceful remedies, and when the great and terrible war burst upon the land their conscience did not forsake them; they stood by the country and saved the Union. Nearly twenty years have passed since the declarations of universal freedom; and the slavery of ignorance remains with all its perils. Joy is increasing in all the land that man no longer has property in his fellow-man; yet we must confess that the evils threatened by African slavery are only partly averted. The millions in ignorance are not free as American liberty must make free; their ignorance invites idleness, vice, crime, and petty demagogism to become their masters, and by ruling them to assail the foundations upon which rests the very citadel of our liberties.

We are among those who believe in all the possibilities of our destiny for our posterity and for the other nations of the earth; but we know that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Intelligence and virtue are ready now, as always, for the defence of our freedom against all the hosts of ignorance and evil. At this point in our national affairs the irrepressible conflict remains. We desire to consider how it may be terminated by measures of peace and moderation, and not eventuate amidst future generations in another catastrophe more dire and calamitous than our own civil war. We

offer no Utopian scheme. We do not come as destructives, purposing to tear down everything; we do not propose to arrest the growth of our institutions; but we invoke greater activity on the part of all the great agencies that enlighten, or mold, or preserve society for good.

Among the foremost of these is the family; and where outside of the borders of America is there a larger proportion of families to the whole population? Where have the better aspirations and forces of the family equal opportunity? All the possibilities of American citizenship are before every child in the American family. How many hallowed home influences guard the life of infancy, train its earlier activities, mold its power to high purposes and noble action! But, alas! how many homes are broken up by the death of father or mother, or by the weakness or criminality of the parent, and childhood's tender years exposed to the perils of orphanage or thrust into the midst of vice and crime! Society, in its benevolent action, already counts these children by tens of thousands. That noble effort of Brace and his coadjutors in New York alone has taken over 60,000 from the perils of city streets to the safeguards of country homes. Our reform schools and orphan asylums give most appalling testimony to the aid our home-life requires, and show the disproportionate increase of neglected children. The provision of summer parks, summer excursions, and infant sanitaria are beautiful efforts to do what so many families cannot for their children. All the efforts of organized and enlightened charity are not equal to the demand. Amid vital statistics everywhere, Rachel mourns her infant child. Nearly half the children die in infancy, and come not to the chances of future good and evil.

Near the family is the church, that other divine institution, established for man's enlightenment in his duties to God and to his fellowman, and for the conservation of the best interests of society. For this great institution, too, this assembly invokes greater activity; and we believe that the American church is not hindered but quickened to greater power in its separation from the State; we believe thereby it occupies an ideal position toward which its wisest adherents the world over would have it move as the sphere in which it may most serve man and honor God. Where else has the church greater respect, or more power over the consciences and lives of the people? Where else has its press and pulpit greater influence? Where besides, in the same length of time has it garnered a richer literature? Where are its schools on the Sabbath more effective? And yet, according to the last well-authenticated figures, their mem

bership numbered only about seven millions and a quarter. In what nation under the heavens have its schools for all grades more freedom and gained such endowments, or given promise for greater future triumphs?

The schools of theology, including Catholic and Protestant, number 142; have 633 professors, 5,242 students, and have invested in buildings and grounds $6,221,607. The productive funds of the Protestant schools amount to $8,537,683, and yield an income of $576,897. All the investments in all forms for instruction in the professions of law and medicine bear no comparison to these figures. But the churches have achieved far greater results in the provision of college instruction for men and women. Of these institutions an. nounced as belonging to one or the other denomination of Christians, Protestant or Catholic, there are 438, with 4,543 professors and 60,947 students. The value of their buildings, grounds, and apparatus is $31,898,510; the amount of their productive funds is $23,403,945, yielding, together with tuition, a reported income of $3,068,554. In this connection it is interesting, however unsatisfactory, to remark that the productive funds invested for the education of women are not one-fiftieth of the amount similarly invested for the college education of men.

Of that other grade of institutions established for secondary instruction, such as high-schools, academies, and preparatory schools, there are reported under denominational control 837, with 4,205 teachers and 73,770 students, owning in buildings, grounds, and apparatus $10,779,334, and having in productive funds $1,684,359.

In these three classes of schools,-those of theology, and those for secondary and superior instruction,-we find the grand total of 139,826 students, and an investment in property and productive funds. amounting to $82,195,728.

But we must pass to another great and special work of the churches. Rejoicing in the American Sabbath for man's rest and freedom to worship, the several religious denominations acknowledge it to be their special responsibility on that day to preach the gospel of man's redemption. Learning and eloquence may well rejoice in the power of their pulpits. The multitudes whose attention they command in places of worship no cursory glance can number, but our purpose requires a nearer view. We have not the data expected from the great census of 1880; but, on the supposition that the ratios for the decade, 1870-1880, are substantially the same for the increase of population and for the extension of church work, the following statistics will be sufficiently accurate for our argument.

Great as is the Sabbath worship on the first impression, allowing that there are now 28,170,000 sittings in the church edifices of all the various denominations, there would be required 21,830,000 additional sittings to accommodate the total population of 50,000,000,1 which, at an average expense of $12 per sitting, would cost $261,960,000. To supply the preachers required, at the usual average of one to three hundred and seventy-five persons, there would need. to be an addition of 58,213 clergymen. Now should the churches undertake to give these men a preparation of only three years, at present rates of aid and with present facilities, it would cost, over and above all that the young men could do for themselves, at the rate of $100 per year for each individual, $17,463,900; and their first year's salary as preachers, should they be able to live on an average of $500, would demand for its payment $29,106,500. The total of these three items for the supply of the preached gospels to all of our 50,000,000, not now having sittings, would cost $308,530,400.

Another special means of promoting religious progress is the circulation of books, newspapers, and especially the Holy Bible. Great and excellent as is this service, as now rendered, how many hundreds of thousands of souls are unreached by either agency! It would require a circulation of 10,000,000 of religious papers to furnish one to each family. When the spirit of American civilization invites religious organizations to a work so vast, so far beyond their present means and efforts, so out of proportion to all that they are undertaking, would there not be somewhat in the nature of the cruel or absurd to demand of our churches, as some would do, that they should assume the entire control of the education of the people in all its forms under all conditions? Or would the idea of those who advocate exclusive church direction of education limit that great work to a few, or to the ruling classes, or to those who could pay,-an idea consistent only with the great illiteracy and degradation of the masses.

We believe our New England fathers wisely sought a better way. Studying profoundly in the light of the divine word all the data in human experience that they could command, they finally discovered and accepted their well-known principles of separation of church and state, liberty, and rights of conscience and person and property. They also became convinced that the preservation of these principles which they so dearly cherished could be assured only by the training of the young, to whom they were to be committed, and that this education could only be made universal and sufficient for a free peo

1 No attempt is made here to take into account the increase of population in the last two years, or other variations, such as the number who might stay at home by reason of age or sickness, which would be possible with greater space.