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Centralization, however, grows daily, and with its growth we find a growing tendency to the production, in the Western world, of all the evils that, as we see, have been produced in England. Exhaustion of the soil of the older States, expels the men, while leaving helpless women behind, to seek a livelihood as best they may. Manufactures decline, with constant diminution in the demand for female skill and taste, and corresponding tendency towards forcing them to seek, in distant cities, the employment no longer found at home. Competition for the sale of female labor, therefore, grows steadily-thousands being "crazy to work at any price."'* Look where we may, throughout the Union, we shall find conclusive evidence, that freedom for both man and woman comes with diversity in the demand for human powers- slavery, with all its attendant evils, being a necessary consequence of limitation to the labors of the field. American policy tends in the latter direction, and therefore it is, that crime and prostitution so rapidly increase.† How it affects the relations of the family, we may next inquire.

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"Many would hesitate to believe the smallness of the compensation received by women for their labor, and the amount of work exacted from them in return for it, were it not capable of such strong proof. Even the skilled work of the professed dress-maker, milliner, and tailoress, is very poorly remunerated. But the sum received by that large class who look to plain sewing for a support, is least of all, and very often is wholly inadequate, even with the greatest economy and management, to procure the commonest necessaries of life. We have known here, in our own city, women employed in making coarse shirts at fourteen cents a piece. Two of these were as much as they could possibly make in a day, sewing incessantly. Working six days in the week, the amount earned was not much over a dollar and a half. Out of this they were to clothe, board, and lodge themselves. And this was their only resource for a livelihood, and a precarious one, too; for a steady supply of this kind of work, unprofitable as it is, cannot be looked for."-New York Tribune.

"What is the position of the needle-woman? Far worse than that of the servant. ... Nor is the position of a milliner or dress-maker, much superior to this. It matters not if she faint from exhaustion and fatigue; Mrs.

wants her ball-room dress to-morrow, and the poor slave must labor as if her eternal salvation rested on her nimble fingers. But the gay robe which is to deck the face of beauty is completed; the hour of release has come at last; and as at night the wearied girl walks feebly through the almost deserted streets, she meets some of her own sex bedecked in finery, with countenances beaming from the effects of their potations, and the thought flashes across her mind, They are better off than I am.' Her human nature can scarcely repress such an exclamation, which is too often but the precursor of her own ruin."- SANGER: History of Prostitution, New York, 1858.Dr. Sanger's book abounds in facts in proof of the rapid growth of prostitution, and its attendant crimes.

The penitentiary of Blackwell's Island, New York, contains no less than 800 females, of all ages, and all degrees of crime.

VOL. III. 25

UNIVERSITY
Library.

Of Californis

CHAPTER LI.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

Of the Relations of the Family.

§ 1. THE wretched savage, slave as he is to nature, and limited to the work of mere appropriation, sees in the birth of his child but an addition to his burthens, and, but for the affection of the mother, few, particularly of the weaker sex, would live for even a single day. Arriving at maturity, the child, in time, sees in the parent only a useless competitor for the poor supply of foodthe disease of over-population thus presenting itself, and in its most malignant form, where land is most abundant, and men are least in number. In this case, however, the remedy is simple — the parent being sometimes buried alive, and, at others, left to become the prey of tigers, or of wolves.

The civilized man, master of nature, rejoices in each addition to his little family circle. Cultivating the richer soils, and finding in the neighboring markets a demand for all their various products, his land and labor become, from day to day, more valuable, with corresponding decline in the value of commodities needed for his wife, his children, and himself. His leisure growing with every step in that direction, he becomes enabled to give his attention more fully to the study of his children's character, and to the formation of their minds-thus preparing them for becoming kind and respectful sons, and useful citizens. Combining with his neighbors, he aids in the establishment of schools and collegespreferring the happiness and prosperity of future generations, before his present appetites. The child, in turn, desires to aid his father in his age-paying the debts incurred in his youth, and respecting his parents' rights, as his own had been respected.

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Of all beings, the human infant is the most helpless - there being none whose faculties come so slowly into action. Of all,

the aged man most needs association with his kind

there being

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none whose faculties decay so slowly, in advance of death. Of all, the human animal is most dependent upon the maintenance of that commerce between the parent and its offspring, by means of which, alone, the latter is enabled to stand forth the real Man, master of nature, and shield and protector to those to whom he has owed his being.

How the power of combination grows for this, as for every other useful purpose, is fully exhibited in the diagram already so often laid before the reader, and to which he is now again referred -the law of progress proving to be every where the same, meet it where we may. Turning to it, he finds on the left the lowest condition of society- the relation of parent and child being little different from that existing among the lower animals. Passing thence eastward, we meet, at first, a scattered population, having little leisure to be given to instruction, and less ability for contribution to the support of schools or teachers. With each successive step, however, we see a growth of power for both these purposes, until at length, arriving in Massachusetts, we find a community in which the duty of developing the infant mind, and thus fitting the child for the maintenance of commerce with its fellows, was earlier recognized, and is now more thoroughly performed, than in any other of the world.

On the left, land remains undivided; men live by the exercise of their powers of appropriation, and those alone; the power of association has no existence; production is small; the disease of over-population is ever present; parent and child are foes. On the right, land is divided; the power of combination is great; production is large; man grows in value; agriculture tends to become a science; commerce, within and without the family, becomes more rapid from year to year. — Look where we may, it will be found, that as employments become diversified—as matter becomes more utilized-as the prices of rude products and finished commodities approximate-as man and land acquire valuethe commerce of the family becomes more intimate-parents and children becoming more fully sensible of their responsibilities towards each other, and the holiness of home becoming more fully appreciated.*

"Such is the holiness of home, that to express our relation with God, we have been obliged to borrow the words invented for our family life. Men have called themselves sons of a heavenly Father."-SOUVESTRE: Attic Philosopher, p. 101.

§ 2. Of the European nations, one portion, as we know, follows in the lead of Colbert-seeking to place the consumer by the side of the producer, and thus relieve the farmer from the grinding tax of transportation. Chief among these is France, to which we now may turn seeking to ascertain, to what extent the pursuit of a policy promotive of association, has led to manifestation of any feeling of responsibility in reference to development of the youthful mind.

Always at war, abroad or at home, the tendency, throughout that country, during a long series of centuries, was in the direction of consolidation of the land, centralization of power in the nobles and the Church, and enslavement of the people. Famines and pestilences being there of perpetual recurrence, children were generally regarded as incumbrances, and of those that were born, but a small proportion lived to the age of manhood. With the final adoption of Colbert's policy, however, there came a change -land becoming gradually divided, and the feeling of responsibility at length manifesting itself in a provision of the Constitution of 1791, by which it was declared, that there should be organized a system of instruction common to all, and "gratuitous, so far as regarded that instruction which was indispensable to all."— Unceasing wars and revolutions, however, prevented progress in this direction the result being seen in the fact, that so recently as 1830, of all the young men brought forward under the conscription, more than half could neither read nor write, while of the remainder, ten per cent. could only read. Writing about this period, M. Dupin told his countrymen, that, except the Spanish peninsula, the Turkish provinces, the south of Italy, the ruins of Greece, and the steppes of Russia, there was no part of Europe in which education was more backward than in France.* late as 1836, there were whole cantons, embracing fifteen or twenty communes, that were wholly destitute of schools, while, throughout the kingdom, out of nearly 23,000,000 adults, more than 14,000,000 could neither read nor write. Since then, however, the change has been very great-the law of 1833 having provided not only for the gratuitous instruction of the primary schools, but, also, for a system of secondary instruction, calculated to fit the youth. of the nation for employment in the arts, and in a scientific agri

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* Forces Commerciales, vol. i., p. 52.

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culture. In 1830, the total number of pupils in the primary schools was about a million. In 1850, it was 3,784,797-having almost quadrupled in the short space of 20 years. In the same

period, there has been a constant increase in the provision for instruction in the higher branches of education - the amount expended for that purpose having risen, six years since, to more than 27,000,000 francs = $5,000,000.*

Turning now to Denmark, in which, but seventy years since, the peasant was liable to be flogged and imprisoned at the pleasure of his lord, we find that not only is one in every four of the population at school, but that public and circulating libraries, museums, and newspapers, are to be found in each and all of the larger towns, while educational institutions, and other indications of intellectual tastes, are to be met with in all the smaller ones local centres of industrial activity, meanwhile, providing for the application to the various purposes of life, of the mind developed in the schools.t

In Sweden, one in every six of the population being an attendant of the schools, it is rare to meet with a person who cannot read and write.

In Belgium, in 1830, the number of children attending the primary schools, was 293,000. In 1848, it had risen to 462,000, or more than 1 in 9 of the population. The present proportion is 1 to 8.

In Northern Germany, every child, for the last 20 or 30 years, has been receiving a good education. "Four years since," ," says Mr. Kay, writing in 1850, "the Prussian Government made a general inquiry throughout the kingdom, to discover how far the school education of the people had been extended, and it was then ascertained that, out of all the young men in the kingdom who had attained the age of twenty-one years, only two in every hundred were unable to read. This fact was communicated to me by the Inspector-General of the Kingdom.

"The poor of these countries," as he continues, "read a great

* Dictionnaire de l'Economie Politique, art. "Instruction Publique." See ante, vol. ii., p. 115.

The feeling of responsibility here exhibits itself very strongly, in the regulations adopted by the proprietors of all the larger factories of Stockholm, given in a former chapter. See ante, vol. ii., p. 171.

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