the price of stocks, let the former be destroyed, let those lights be extinguished, let ignorance and vice take the place of intelligence and virtue, let the prevailing influence here be against schools and churches, and my opinion is, that the moral character of the people would not decline faster than the price of manufacturing stocks. The founders of this place were clear and far-sighted men, and they put in operation a train of moral influences which has formed and preserved a community distinguished for intelligence, virtue, and great energy of character. Should any owner or manager think otherwise, and surround himself with the ignorant and unprincipled, because for a time he might get them for less wages, I am confident that loss in production would more than keep pace with reduction in pay, to say nothing of the insecurity of property in the hands of such persons.

In short, in closing my answer to your fifth interrogatory, I consider that "those who possess property and hope to transmit it to their children," have nothing to fear from the general diffusion of knowledge, that if their rights are ever invaded, or their property rendered insecure, it will be when ignorance has corrupted the public mind, and prepared it for the controlling influence of some master-spirit, possessing intelligence without principle..

Finally, in answering your sixth and last interrogatory, I remark, that "those who possess the greatest share in the stock of worldly goods," are deeply interested in this subject as one of mere insurance';—that the most effectual way of making insurance on their property would be to contribute from it enough to sustain an efficient system of Common School education, thereby educating the whole mass of mind, and constituting it a police more effective than peace officers or prisons. By so doing they would bestow a benefaction upon "that class, who, from the accident of birth or parentage, are subjected to the privations and temptations of poverty," and would do much to remove the prejudice, and to strengthen the bands of union between the different and extreme portions of society. The great majority always have been, and probably always will be, comparatively poor, while a few will possess the greatest share of this world's goods. And it is a wise provision of Providence which connects so intimately, and as I think so indissolubly, the greatest good of the many, with the highest interest of the few.

Extract of a Letter from J. Clark, Esq.,Lowell.

I have recently instituted some inquires into the comparative wages of our different classes of operatives; and among other results, I find the following applicable to our present purpose. On our pay-roll for the last month, are borne the names of 1229 female operatives, 40 of whom receipted for their pay by "making their mark." Twenty-six of these have been employed in job-work, that is, they were paid according to the quantity of work turned off

Again. we have in our mills about 150 females who have at some time, been engaged in teaching schools. Many of them teach du ring the summer months, and work in the mills in winter. The average wages of these exteachers I find to be 17 per cent. above the general average of our mills, and about 40 per cent. above the wages of the twenty-siz who cannot write their names. It may be said that they are generally employed in the higher departments, where the pay is better. This is true, but this again may be, in most cases, fairly attributed to their better education, which brings us to the same result. If I had included in my calculations, the remaining 14 of the 40, who are mostly sweepers and scrubbers, and who are paid by the day, the contrasts would have been still more striking; but having no well educated females engaged in this depart ment with whom to compare them, I have omitted them altogether. In arriving at the above results I have not considered the net wages merely-the price of board being in all cases the same. I do not consider these results as either. extraordinary, or surprising, but as a part only of the legitimate and proper fruits of a better cultivation, and fuller devel, opment of the intellectual and moral powers.

The Secretary in view of these facts and opinions, remarks:

These are a fair specimen, and no more than a fair specimen, of a mass of facts which I have obtained from the most authentic sources. They scem to prove incontestibly that edu cation is not only a moral renovator, and a multiplier of intellectual power, but that it is also the most prolific parent of material riches. It has a right, therefore, not only to be included in the grand inventory of a nation's resources, but to be placed at the very head of that inventory. It is not only the most honest and honorable, but the surest means of amassing property.

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Considering education, then, as a producer of wealth, it follows that the more educated a people are, the more will they abound in all those conveniences, comforts and satisfactions which money will buy; and, other things being equal, the increase of competency and the decline of pauperism will be measurable on this scale. There are special reasons giving peculiar force to these considerations in the State of Massachusetts, [and, we may add, in New England generally. Our population is principally divided into agriculturalists, manufacturers and mechanics. We have no idle class, no class born to such hereditary wealth, as supersedes the necessity of labor, and no class subsisting by the services of hereditary bondmen. All, with exceptions too minute to be noticed, must live by their own industry and frugality. The master and the laborer

are one; and hence the necessity that all should have the health and strength by which they n work, and the judgment and knowledge by which they can plan and direct. The muscle of a laborer and the intelligence of an employer must be united in the same person.

The healthful and praise-worthy employment of Agriculture, requires knowledge for its successful prosecution. In this department of industry, we are in perpetual contact with the forces of nature. We are constantly dependent upon them for the pecuniary returns and profits of our investments, and hence the necessity of knowing what those forces are, and under what circumstances they will operate most efficiently, and will most bountifully reward our original outlay of money and time. Why is it, that, if we except Egypt, all the remaining territory of Africa, containing nearly ten millions of square miles, with a soil, most of which is incomparably more fertile by nature, produces less for the sustenance of man and beast, than England, whose territory is only fifty thousand square miles. In the latter country, knowledge has been a substitute for a genial climate and an exuberant soil; while in the former, it is hardly a figurative expression to say, that all the maternal kindness of nature, powerful and benignant as she is, has been repulsed by the ignorance of her children. Doubtless, industry as well as knowledge is indispensable to productiveness; but knowledge must precede industry, or the latter will work to so little effect as to become discouraged and to relapse into the slothfulness of savage life. But without further exposition, it may be remarked generally, that the spread of intelligence through the instrumentality of good books, and the cultivation in our children of the faculties of observing, comparing and reasoning, through the medium of good schools, would add millions to the agricultural products of the Commonwealth, without imposing upon the husbandman an additional hour of labor.·

In regard to another branch of industry, the State of Massachusetts presents a phenomenon which, all things being considered, is unequalled in any part of the world. I refer to the distribution or apportionment of its citizens, among the different departments of labor. With a population of only eighty-seven thousand engaged in agriculture, we have eightyfive thousand engaged in manufactures and trades. If to the eighty-five thousand engaged in manufactures and trades, are added the twenty-seven, (almost twenty-eight) thousand employed in navigating the ocean, and to whom, as a class, the succeeding views are to a great extent, applicable, we shall find that the capital and labor of the State embarked in the latter employments, far exceed those devoted to agricultural pursuits.

Now for the successful prosecution,-it may almost be said, for the very existence amongst us of the manufacturing and mechanic arts, there must be, not only the exactness of sci

ence, but also exactness or skill in the application of scientific principles, throughout the whole processes, either of constructing machinery, or of transforming raw materials into finished fabrics.

The cultivation of these arts is conferring a thousand daily accommodations and pleasures upon the laborer in his cottage, which, only two or three centuries ago, were luxuries in the palace of the monarch. Through circumstances incident to the introduction of all economical improvements, there has hitherto been great inequality in the distribution of their advantages, but their general tendency is greatly to ameliorate the condition of the mass of mankind. It has been estimated that the products of machinery in Great Britain, with a population of eighteen millions, is equal to the labor of hundreds of millions of human hands. This vast gain is effected without the conquest or partitioning of the territory of any neighboring nation, and without rapine or the confiscation of property already accumulated by others. It is an absolute creation of wealth,-that is, of those articles, commodities, improvements, which we appraise and set down, as of a certain monied value, alike in the inventory of a deceased man's estate, and in the grand valuation of a nation's capital. These contributions to human welfare have been derived from knowledge, from knowing how to employ those natural agencies, which from the beginning of the race had existed, but had lain dormant, or run uselessly away. For mechanical purposes, what is wind, or water, or the force of steam worth, until the ingenuity of man comes in, and places the wind-whec,l the water-wheel, or the piston, between these mighty agents and the work he wishes them to perform; but after the invention and intervention of machinery, how powerful they become for all purposes of utility.

But the talent of improving upon the labors of others, requires not only the capability of receiving an exact mental copy or imprint of all the objects of sense or reasoning;-it also. requires the power of reviving or reproducing, at will, all the impressions or ideas before obtained, and, also, the power of changing their collocations, of rearranging them into new forms, and of adding something to, or removing something from, the original perceptions, in order to make a more perfect plan or model.

Now, every recitation in a school, if rightly conducted, is a step towards the attainment of this wonderful power. With acourse of studies judiciously arranged, and diligently pursued through the years of minority, all the great phenomena of external nature, and the most important productions in all the useful arts, together with the principles on which they are evolved or fashioned, would be successively brought before the understanding of the pupil. He would thus become familiar with the sub. stances of the material world, and with their manifold properties and uses, and he would

learn the laws, comparatively few, by which results, infinitely diversified, are produced. When such a student goes out into life, he carries, as it were, a plan or model of the world, in his own mind. He cannot, therefore, pass, either blindly or with the stupid gaze of the brute creation, by the great objects and processes of nature; but he has an intelligent discernment of their several existencies and relations, and their adaptation to the uses of mankind. Neither can he fasten his eye upon any workmanship or contrivance of man, without asking two questions,-first, how is it? and, secondly, how can it be improved?

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Intelligence is the great money-maker, not by extortion, but by production. There are ten thousand things in every department of life, which, if done in season, can be done in a minute, but which, if not seasonably done, will require hours, perhaps days or weeks, for their performance. An awakened mind will see and seize the critical juncture; the perceptions of a sluggish one will come too late, if they come at all. A general culture of the faculties gives versatility of talent, so that if the customary business of the laborer is superseded by improvements, he can readily betake himself to another kind of employment; but, an uncultivated mind, is like an automaton which can do only the one thing for which its wheels or springs were made.

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And why is it that, so far as this Union is concerned, four fifths of all the improvements, inventions and discoveries in regard to machinery, to agricultural implements, to superior models in ship-building, and to the manufacture of those refined instruments on which accuracy in scientific observations depends, have originated in New England. I believe no adequate reason can be assigned, but the early awakening and training of the power of thought in our children. The suggestion is not made invidiously, but in this connection it has too important a bearing to be omitted,-but let any one, who has resided or travelled in those States where there are no Common Schools, compare the condition of the people at large, as to thrift, order, neatness, and all the external signs of comfort and competence, with the same characteristics of civilization in the farm-houses and villages of New England.

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In conversing with a gentleman who had possessed most extensive opportunities for acquaintance with men of different countries and of all degrees of intellectual development, he observed that he could employ a common immigrant or a slave, and if he chose, could direct him to shovel a heap of sand from one spot to another, and then back into its former place, and so to and fro, through the day; and that, with the same food or the same pay, the laborer would perform his tread-mill operation without inquiry or complaint; but, added, he, neither love nor money would prevail on a New Englander to prosecute a piece of work of which he did not see the utility.

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It is a fact of universal notoriety, that the manufacturing population of England, as a class, work for half, or less than half the wages of our own. The cost of machinery there, also, is but about half as much as the cost of the same articles with us; while, our capital when loaned, produces nearly double the rate of English interest. Yet, against these grand adverse cir cumstances, our manufacturers, with a small per centage of tariff, successfully compete with English capitalists, in many branches of manufacturing business. No explanation can be given of this extraordinary fact, which does not take into the account, the difference of education between the operatives in the two countries. Yet where, in all our Congressional debates upon this subject, or in the discussions and addresses of National Conventions, has this fundamental principle been brought out,— and one, at least, of its most important and legitimate inferences displayed, viz., that it is our wisest policy, as citizens,-if indeed it be not a duty of self-preservation as men,-to improve the education of our whole people, both in its quantity and quality. I have been told by one of our most careful and successful manufacturers, that on substituting, in one of his cotton-mills, a better for a poorer educated class of operatives, he was enabled to add twelve or fifteen per cent. to the speed of his machinery, without any increase of damage or danger from the acceleration.

The number of females in this State, engaged in the various manufactures of cotton, strawplatting, &c. have been estimated at forty thousand; and the annual value of their labor, at one hundred dollars each, on an average, or four millions of dollars for the whole. From the facts stated in the letters of Messrs. Mills and Clark, above cited, it appears that there is a difference of not less than fifty per cent, between the earnings of the least educated and of the best educated operatives,-between those who make their marks, instead of writing their names, and those who have been acceptably employed in school-keeping. Now, suppose the whole forty thousand females engaged in the various kinds of manufactures in this Commonwealth, to be degraded to the level of the lowest class, it would follow that their ag gregate earnings would fall at once, to two millions of dollars. But, on the other hand, suppose them all to be elevated by mental cultivation to the rank of the highest, and their earnings would rise to the sum of six millions of dollars, annually.

EXTRACTS From Minutes of Evidence taken by Edwin Chadwick, Esq., Secretary of the Poor Law Commis

sioners.

By Albert G. Escher, Esq., one of the firm of Escher, Wyss & Co., Zurich, Switzerland.

We employ from six to eight hundred men in our machine making establishment at Zurich: we also employ about two hundred men

in our cotton mills there; about five hundred men in our cotton manufactories in the Tyrol and in Italy. I have occasionally had the control of from five to six hundred men engaged in engineering operations as builders, masons, &c., and men of the class called navigators in England.

In what order do you class the workmen of various nations in respect to such natural intelligence as may be distinguished from any intelligence imparted by the labors of the schoolmaster?

I class the Italians first; next the French; and the northern nations very much on a par. The Italians' quickness of perception is shown in rapidly comprehending any new description of labor put into their hands, of quickly comprehending the meaning of their employer, of adapting themselves to new circumstanccs, much beyond what anyother classes have. The French workmen have the like natural characteristics, only in a somewhat lower degree. The English, Swiss, German, and Dutch workmen, we find, have all much slower natural comprehension.

As workmen only, the preference is undoubtedly due to the English; because as we find them they are all trained to special branches, on which they have had comparatively superior training and have concentrated all their thoughts. As men of business or of general usefulness, and as men with whom an employer would best like to be surrounded, I should, however, decidedly prefer the Saxons and the Swiss, but more especially the Saxons, because - they have had a very careful general education, which has extended their capacities beyond any special employment, and rendered them fit to take up, after a short preparation, any employment to which they may be called. If I have an English workman engaged in the erection of a steam engine, he will understand that and nothing else; he will understand only his steam-engine, and for other circumstances or other branches of mechanics, however closely allied, he will be comparatively helpless to adapt himself to all the circumstances that may arise, to make arrangements for them, and give sound advice or write clear statements and letters on his works in the various related branches of mechanics.

The Saxon or the educated workman will under the same circumstances much sooner advance and become a foreman or manager. In other words, he will be found by his employer more generally useful.

The better educated workmen we find are distinguished by superior moral habits in every respect. In the first place, they are entirely sober; they are discreet in their enjoyments, which are of a more rational and refined kind; they are more refined themselves, and they have a taste for much better society, which they approach respectfully, and consequently find much readier admittance to it; they culti

vate music; they read; they enjoy the pleasures of scenery, and make parties for excursions into the country; they are economical, and their economy extends beyond their own purse to the stock of their master; they are consequently honest and trustworthy. The effects of the deficiency of education is most strongly marked in the Italians, who, with the advantage of superior natural capacity, are of the lowest class of workmen, though they comprehend clearly and quickly, as I have stated, any simple proposition made or explanation given to them, and are enabled quickly to execute and kind of work when they have seen it performed once; yet their minds, as I imagine from want of development by training or school education, seem to have no kind of logic, no power of systematic arrangement, no capacity for collecting any series of observations and making sound inductions from the whole of them. This want of the capacity of mental arrangement is shown in their manual operations. An Italian will execute a simple operation with great dexterity; but when a number of them are put together all is confusion; they cannot arrange their respective parts in a complicated operation, and are comparatively inefficient except under a very powerful control. As an example of this I may mention that within a few years after the first introduction of cotton spinning in Naples, in the year 1830, the spinners produced twenty-four hanks of cotton yarn from No. 16 to 20 per spindle, which is equal to the production of the best English hands; yet up to this time not one of the Neapolitan operatives is advanced far enough to take the superintendence of the operations of a single room, the superintendents being all northerns, who, though much less gifted by nature, have obtained a higher degree of order or arrangement imparted to their minds by a superior education. This example is derived from a new branch of industry; others have come within my experience in branches of industry in which the Italians excel, such as in masons' work. I look on the Neapolitans individually as being themost skilful masons in Europe. When, however, they are employed in numbers and concentrated masses, the same want of what I call logical arrangement again becomes perceptible, and I have constantly been obliged to employ as superintendents, northerns, such as the better educated Swiss and Germans, who, though inferior in personal ability, were from education fit to arrange and control the work with forethought and system. These observations apply to the Neapolitan workmen. Those in the north of Italy, chiefly in Lombardy, who have a comparatively better education, from a forethought and arrangement to their natural capacity, and in those employments in which they have experience, such as agriculture, road-making, and canal-digging, they are equal, if not superior, to the workmen of any nation, as must be evident