45o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



they leave, with meager education, the public school, they must im- 

 mediately plunge into the breadwinning maelstrom to emerge the 

 same fatigued, misguided voters that their fathers are. Much of the 

 information which it is essential that the intelligent voter possess, in 

 order that he may make the most of every day in his life, can not be 

 taught by the public school system. First, because the amount of 

 knowledge which they are obliged to purvey is so great that the entire 

 public school machinery is already overworked, and they could not, 

 even if they thought it feasible, install the necessary equipment to 

 extend their labors to other fields. Second, because the juvenile mind 

 is not capable of weighing and determining matters of economic 

 importance. 



A large proportion of our voters, after securing a rudimentary 

 education, are obliged to labor, and fail to pursue further the studies 

 begun. They seldom read anything save a more or less misguided, 

 hysterical and misleading newspaper. The fatigue resulting from 

 daily physical labor is not conducive to intellectual activity in the 

 form of instructive reading at night, and hence we find our average 

 voter growing up woefully ignorant of the essentials of good govern- 

 ment, and dependent, as already indicated, upon self-interested, irre- 

 sponsible and unreliable sources for his misinformation. 



The great disease at the root of almost all evil is ignorance, and 

 the remedy is education. Were it not for ignorance, that universal 

 malady, it would not be possible for so many agencies to exist which 

 diminish the happiness and its corollary, the producing capacity, of the 

 race. 



In the supplemental education of the laboring adults upon a broad 

 and practical basis rests the remedy for the present unhappy condi- 

 tion. A large proportion of our countrymen fail to keep abreast of 

 the times in their methods of thinking and of living, because the de- 

 mands which breadwinning makes upon their strength and time pre- 

 vent their obtaining authoritative information on the thousand and 

 one subjects, a knowledge of which would lighten their burden and 

 brighten their pathway. 



If it can be borne in upon the public mind that many diseases can 

 be avoided, that the amount of insanity can be reduced, that crime with 

 its great attendant expense can be decreased, that the producing 

 capacity of man can be increased, while augmenting at the same time 

 the number of his comforts and the extent of his leisure, there will be 

 a demand for something looking toward relief, and almost any reason- 

 able measure will be actively supported. 



Information of the sort needed to secure the interest and co- 

 operation of the voter, whose support is essential to the accomplish- 

 ment of his own betterment, must be easily accessible, and presented in 



