EDUCATIONAL ADVANCE 551 



ments of children, living in a crowded city, with little opportunity for 

 constructive work or healthful recreation. Some progress has been 

 made in this direction ; but there is still great need of further improve- 

 ment. On the other hand, the rural school has assisted in augmenting 

 the growth of the cities and in encouraging the drift away from the 

 farm. Its curriculum has absolutely ignored, with a few very recent 

 exceptions, the fact that the farm presents problems which require 

 education and training to solve. " Every book they [the country 

 children] study leads to the city; every ambition they receive inspires 

 them to run away from the country; the things they read about are 

 city things; the greatness they dream about is city greatness." The 

 problems connected with the city, those relating to labor, and all our 

 great industrial and social questions, are at the root questions of 

 education. 



However, after the faults of the city have been examined and laid 

 bare, it is but just to recall that the cities have ever stood in the fore- 

 front of the educational advance and in the development of labor organi- 

 zations. Our free tax-supported schools, for example, originated in the 

 cities. A striking illustration of the position of the cities is found in 

 the result of the referendum of 1819, which established free schools 

 throughout the state of JSTew York. Forty-two out of a, total of fifty- 

 nine counties favored the repeal. Of the seventeen counties which 

 stood firm and won a victory for the tax-supported public school, four 

 were included in, or were directly adjacent to, New York City, eight 

 bordered the Hudson between Albany and New York, and three others 

 contained the important cities of Buffalo, Syracuse and Schenectady. 

 The vote revealed a sharp division of urban against rural counties; 

 and the former stood for progress and for better educational facilities. 

 Without entering exhaustively into an analysis of the situation, five 

 reasons may be assigned for this phenomenon which is by no means 

 confined to the Empire State : (a) A large percentage of our city 

 population are industrial workers who are small or non-taxpayers, (b) 

 In the large cities are found great masses of accumulated wealth which 

 can be taxed, (c) Here the home first lost its industrial character and 

 its surrounding playground, and as a result much of its educational 

 possibilities, (d) People are crowded closely together in cities, evils 

 and needs are more in evidence than in rural districts. Also, the 

 opportunities for agitation and propaganda are more numerous, 

 (e) Pauperism and juvenile crime are more prevalent and disturbing 

 in cities than in the country. 



Industrial progress has brought about the separation of the workers 

 into distinct, well-defined classes; particularly marked is the division 

 between the manual workers and the brain workers or the managers 

 of the business. Professor Veblen remarks that the progress of in- 



