STATE EDUCATION: A HELP OR HINDRANCE? 587 



his children. The richer classes, the disputing churches, the political 

 organizers, are too powerful for him. If he wishes to realize the fact 

 for himself, let him read over the names of those who make up the 

 school boards of this country. Let him first count the ministers of 

 all denominations, then of the merchants, manufacturers, and squires. 

 There is something abnormal here. These ministers and gentlemen do 

 not place the workmen on committees to manage the education of their 

 children. How, then, comes it about that they are directing the edu- 

 cation of the workmen's children ? The answer is plain. The work- 

 man is selling his birthright for the mess of pottage. Because he 

 accepts the rate and tax paid by others, he must accept the intrusion 

 of these others into his own home affairs the management and educa- 

 tion of his children. Remember, I am not urging, as some do, the 

 workmen to organize themselves into a separate class, and return only 

 their own representatives as members of school boards ; such action 

 would not mend the unprofitable bai-gain. To take away money from 

 other classes, and not to concede to them any direction in the spending 

 of it, would be simply unjust would be an unscrupulous use of voting 

 power. No, the remedy must be looked for in another direction. It 

 lies in the one real form of independence the renunciation of all obli- 

 gations. The course that will restore to the workmen a father's duties 

 and responsibilities, between which and themselves the state has now 

 stepped, is for them to reject all forced contributions from others, and 

 to do their own work through their own voluntary combinations. Until 

 that is done no workman has more, or has a claim to have more, than 

 half rights over his own children. He is stripped of one half of the 

 thought, care, anxiety, affection, responsibility, and need of judgment 

 which belong to other parents. 



I used the expression, the forced contributions of the rich. There 

 are some persons who hold that the more money you can extract by 

 legislation from the richer classes for the benefit of the poorer classes 

 the better are your arrangements. I entirely dissent from such a view. 

 It is fatal to any clear perception of justice. Justice requires that you 

 should not place the burdens of one man on the shoulders of another 

 man, even though he is better able to bear them. In plainer words, 

 that you should not make one set of men pay for what is used by 

 another set of men. If this law be once disregarded, it simply reduces 

 politics to a universal scramble, in which the most selfish will have the 

 most success. It turns might into right, and proclaims that each man 

 may rightfully possess whatever he can vote into his pocket. Whoever 

 is intent on justice must be as just to the rich man as to the poor man ; 

 and, because so-called national education is not for the children of the 

 rich man, it is simply not just to take by compulsion one penny from 

 him. No columns of sophistry can alter this fact. And yet, when once 

 the obligation disappears, and the grace of free-giving is restored, it is 

 a channel in which the money of the richer classes may most worthily 



