HORTICULTURAL EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN. 163 



stricted and gigantic monopolies, furnish the conditions, if not the 

 inducements, to frauds such as are seen nowhere else. 



Unquestionably our system of education has been, primarily, a 

 scheme for making money without much work with the hands. 

 Hard-working parents make every effort to establish their children 

 in a pett}' gentility, such as they themselves have never enjoyed. 

 On all sides the demand has been for an education that will pay 

 in dollars and cents, whether it pays in body and soul or not ; good 

 pay and little work, and that of a genteel kind, is the leading 

 hope of such of our pupils as feel obliged to work ; making a good 

 trade, and getting something for nothing, animates the generality 

 of people ; and no talk about practical studies in our schools, has 

 been untinged with the sordid spirit inherent in this nation, and 

 inherent in its institutions; "Civilization is what education 

 makes it," and we may expect to see our civilization taking low 

 ground, when our education fosters, rather than seeks to obliter- 

 ate, the love of money, or getting money without earning it. All 

 over the land labor has been fighting against capital ; the rich are 

 growing richer on what they have not earned ; many work in 

 poverty that one may live in affluence ; our graduates are gam- 

 bling in stocks and bonds, and calling it business ; men and 

 women of excellent social standing are systematically investing 

 in State lotteries ; and all are imbued with that spirit which will be 

 its own avenger, — that spirit which, in charity, is called practical. 

 Even the text-books used in the common schools have a powerful 

 influence mainly in the direction of those unfortunate conditions 

 to which reference has been made. The gist of arithmetic is 

 profit and loss, incomes, and stocks, and bonds, which are on the 

 borders of margin and bucket shops, stock exchanges, and less 

 respectable exchanges. Geography is taking on the commercial 

 form more and more. Writing is extensively worked into commer- 

 cial forms, business letters, book-keeping, answering advertisements 

 for help, and applications for positions. All this swells the sur- 

 plus of middle'men, a large proportion of whom have no natural 

 aptitude for trade, but might become skilful producers, if properly 

 taught. 



Why have our educational authorities been so unmindful of this 

 trend of our narrow system of education? If the}" have lately 

 been aroused to their responsibilities, so far as to establish 

 schools in which the principles of mechanics may be learned, what 

 reason have they for stopping there? 



