Under This System Of Popular Education, The Average Cost Per Scholar For 5
Years, Including Books, Stationery, Fuel, And All Other Expenses, Is 7
Dollars 2 Cents Per Annum.
This system of education is followed in nearly
all the States; and while it reflects the highest credit on America, it
contrasts strangely with the niggard plan pursued in England, where so
important a thing as the education of the people depends almost entirely
on precarious subscriptions and private benevolence.
With a gratuitous and comprehensive educational system, it may excite some
surprise that the citizens of New York and other of the populous cities
are compelled to supplement the common schools with those for the
shoeless, the ragged, and the vicious, very much on the plan of our Scotch
and English ragged-schools. Already the large cities of the New World are
approximating to the condition of those in the Old, in producing a
subsidence or deposit of the drunken, the dissolute, the vicious, and the
wretched. With parents of this class, education for their offspring is
considered of no importance, and the benevolent founders of these schools
are compelled to offer material inducements to the children to attend, in
the shape of food and clothing. At these schools, in place of the cleanly,
neat, and superior appearance of the children in the common schools, dirt,
rags, shoeless feet, and pallid, vicious, precocious countenances are to
be seen. Nothing destroys so effectually the external distinguishing
peculiarities of race as the habit of evil. There is a uniformity of
expression invariably produced, which is most painful. These children are
early taught to look upon virtue only as a cloak to be worn by the rich.
This dangerous and increasing class in New York is composed almost
entirely of foreign immigrants. The instruction in these schools is given
principally by ladies of high station and education. It is a noble feature
in New York "high life," and in process of time may diminish the gulf
which is widening between the different classes, and may lessen the
hideous contrasts which are presented between princely fortunes on the one
hand, and vicious poverty on the other.
Taking the various schools throughout the Union, it is estimated that
between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 individuals are at this time receiving
education.
To turn from the social to the material features of the United States:
their system of internal communication deserves a brief notice, for by it
their resources have been developed to a prodigious extent. The system of
railways, telegraphs, and canal and river navigation presents an
indication of the wealth and advancement of the United States, as
wonderful as any other feature of her progress. She contains more miles of
railway than all the rest of the world put together.
In a comparatively new country like America many of the items of expense
which attend the construction of railways in England are avoided; the
initiatory expenses are very small. In most of the States, all that is
necessary is, for the company to prove that it is provided with means to
carry out its scheme, when it obtains a charter from the Legislature at a
very small cost.
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