142 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



dorse and realize, it should be an intent to educate, not the few, but the chil- 

 dren of all the people. And whatever particular sections, communities or 

 individuals may think or do, it is undoubtedly the settled policy of the United 

 States to furnish a common school education to all of its citizens. Our sys- 

 tem of government, in fact, is founded upon the presumption that every man 

 is possessed with some degree of education. Tiie ]n'ogress and perpetuity of 

 free institutions, like ours, imperatively demand that all citizens should be able 

 to avail themselves of the ordinary means of information on all questions per- 

 taining to the public weal. It is only upon the broad foundation of universal 

 education tliat our political fabric can be perpetuated. It is easier and cheap- 

 er to build school houses than prisons ; it is better to pay for the school-master 

 to freely educate the children of the poor and ignorant than for the police- 

 man to watch over and arrest them. In fact, that instead of allowing the 

 evils arising from ignorance to accumulate, and then to contend "with them as 

 they throng upon every side, it is better to dry up the sources from which they 

 emanate. 



The institution in which the interests of all people alike, in this country, 

 should center, is the common school. It surpasses all others in importance, 

 and is the one, which, before all others, we are the most deeply interested in 

 sustaining and promoting. General diffusion of knowledge is a primal neces- 

 sity in this country ; we cannot afford to have ignorance, republicanism is 

 opposed to it, and we must elevate and care for the education of those who are 

 likely to sink into it. Our interests are opposed to the policy which would in 

 any way encourage the formation of privileged classes that should engross all 

 the refinement and intelligence, and leave the poor to sink into that abject and 

 contented ignorance in which poverty is prone to grovel. But in the common 

 school the rich and the poor meet together; there their children should mingle, 

 the rich man's child by being placed on terms of equality and closer intimacy 

 with the children of the rougher members of society, to learn while his mind 

 and sympathies are most susceptible of generous influences, something of the 

 want and of the sufferings of poverty ; something of the hardships and dis- 

 couragements which he, in his fortunate circumstances, may never endure, but 

 through which the poor boy and girl must, purchance, struggle at every step of 

 their rough contest in life; and the poor man's child, by associating with the 

 children of the rich and more refined, to catch some of their embellishments, 

 some of the polish belonging to the higher stations of life. It is the mixture, 

 rather than the exclusiveness of classes and characters that improves our minds 

 and induces in this sometimes jarring world harmony of opinions and actions. 

 This commingling of classes is the essence of republicanism. The school house 

 and its surroundings are among the first objects, in the practical consideration, 

 of common school education, which must, necessarily, occupy the attention. 

 Although our cities and villages generally possess commodious and attractive 

 school edifices, which, unfortunately, not unfrequently indicate an amount of 

 extravagance that is the occasion of onerous municipal financial indebtedness, 

 and in which crude taste, love of display, sham and veneer manifest in the 

 building, are, perchance, but counterparts of the same ignorant qualities which, 

 alas, in too great degree, characterize the system of educational training pro- 

 vided for the children which gather within their walls. 



But in the rural districts is the want of enterprise, as manifested in school 

 buildings, and the lack of due appreciation of tiieir educational needs, chiefly 

 apparent. AVere it not for the frequency of their occurrence, rendering the 

 object too familiar to longer leave room for surprise, the ambiguous huts. 



