HOW EDUCATION PROMOTES EQUALITY. 19 



have not always remembered that a large capital has the same 

 inviolable character as a small one; that the banker s millions 

 (if they are savings), are as sacred as the peasant s cow and 

 miner s pick. Edward About, in his admirable papers to work- 

 ingmen, says: &quot; To lay violent hands upon capital is to attack 

 the incarnation of labor, and it is as monstrous to strip a man 

 of his savings as to reduce him to slavery. Slavery is the con 

 fiscation of potential labor, the other crime would confiscate 

 labor performed.&quot; 



This whole subject may be put in a nutshell. All men set out 

 in life with more or less capital, the gift of nature. To that is 

 added, in proportions not more varied than are the natural 

 faculties of men, a share in the savings of those who have gone 

 before. Capital, therefore, as we stand related to it to-day, is 

 the saving of either the product of nature or of labor. 



Education, which adds so much to every man s natural capital 

 of intellectual faculty, and gives him the power to call it into 

 service at any time, also enables him to take a greater share 

 in the accumulation of others. It is the great equalizer of hu 

 man conditions. It is both a power and a preparation for the 

 exercise of power. The ignorance, the partial and defective 

 education of laboring men, whether farmers or mechanics, is 

 the most serious drawback to their progress; and from what 

 ever monopolies they suffer, that of education is the worst. 



Hitherto, the superior training and culture of the aristocratic 

 and professional classes have given them preponderance in gov 

 ernment; they have, naturally enough, made laws to suit their 

 own interests. 



It makes little difference whether we live under a tyranny 

 which denies us rights, or one which monopolizes privilege. 

 The division of men into classes has been maintained by the 

 inequalties of intellectual condition. They must necessarily 

 disappear; an equal and just distribution of the good things 

 created by labor, must necessarily arise whenever labor is in 

 telligent enough to create its own safeguards. 



Self-love is still so much stronger than social feeling in the 

 human breast, that no man can safely entrust the irresponsible 

 guardianship of his well-being to another. This is as true of 

 classes as of individuals. Social progress^ therefore, depends 

 upon a true equality; a true reciprocity. 



Said William H. Seward : &quot;Free labor has at last apprehended 



