PROPOSED APPLICATIONS OF SMITHSON'S BEQUEST. 928 



tical science, compiled with ability, executed with elegance, 

 keeping up with the progress of discovery, adapted to popular 

 use, neither too desultory to instruct nor too voluminous to 

 be read, is still a great desideratum for the laboring classes. 

 A current political history, divested of party prejudice and 

 misrepresentation, is no less necessary for the voter and 

 statesman. Individual enterprise is little likely to supply 

 these wants, on terms suited to the straitened means of the 

 millions. But if they were furnished as here proposed, 

 their intrinsic value would make them desirable to the 

 wealthy, and their cheapness would bring them within the 

 reach of the poor. I am of opinion that one hundred 

 thousand copies would be sold annually ; and as the popu- 

 lation increased, even that amount might be doubled ; I 

 am tempted to say quadrupled. 



Gain to the Laborer. To the laboring classes, the vol- 

 ume of practical science would be valuable as a source of 

 pecuniary gain. It would bring to their aid the lights of 

 science, and the results of experience. It would point out 

 new and felicitous methods of operation in the shop and 

 the field. It would lighten the labor of the human muscle, 

 while it gave healthful occupation to the intellect. It would 

 show them what others have done, and provoke them to 

 noble emulation. It would suggest expedients to meet 

 emergencies ; and remedies for a thousand evils. It would 

 wake indolence from its sleep, and turn industry into new 

 channels. It would, in short, increase and diffuse practical 

 knowledge, and thus help the toiling man in numberless 

 ways ; and it would be his own fault if he did not reap from 

 each annual dollar the harvest of " thirty, sixty, or an hun- 

 dred fold." 



Mental Improvement. These volumes would serve a higher 

 purpose than to increase wealth, and improve the mind as 

 well as the condition. On two great branches of knowl- 

 edge, they would contain all that the masses have the leisure 

 to learn. The late act of Congress proposes to increase and 

 diffuse knowledge among men by establishing a museum, 

 laboratory, library, and gallery of art, in the city of Wash- 

 ington. The present plan proposes to put the museum, labora- 

 tory, library, and gallery of art, into one of these serials, and 

 send them broadcast through the country, and lay them upon the 

 tables of a million of families. More useful by the cottage 

 fireside than a lecturer from the university, they would 

 discourse daily to its inmates of things useful and pleasing, 

 without taxing their hospitality. They would be pored 



