56 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 261 



time to time show it to be a moderate one. The tax would enable 

 us to begin, and every year it would prove more nearly adequate : 

 every few years we should be enabled to take in children of a more 

 advanced age. The AVw K<??-/C' TiVw,;;^ of Jan. 13 gives a summary 

 of the comptroller's report of the State finances for 1887. The 

 collateral inheritance law yielded for the year $561,716.23. The 

 comptroller says it might easily in some years produce a million, 

 and yet under that law no lineal inheritance is taxable. The 

 greater part of the money came from eight estates : estate of 

 Henrietta A. Lenox, New York, $76,534.27 ; estate of Mary J. Mor- 

 gan, New York, $64,201.64; estate of Cornelia M.Stewart, New 

 York, $61,232.03; estate of Calvin Burr, New York, $39,711.46; 

 estate of Hannah Enston, Kings County, $40,068.20 ; estate of 

 Sarah Marrow, New York, $14,077.35 ; estate of Mary E. Miller, 

 Orange County, $15,796.65 ; estate of B. F. Bancroft, Washington, 

 $10,419.60. This tax, being on collateral inheritances only, reaches 

 only a small number of successions. 



I speak of the apparent absurdity of subsidizing parents to keep 

 their children at school. Several of my friends are at the present 

 time supporting boys in manual-training schools. These friends of 

 mine are not doing any thing absurd, are they? No, they are doing 

 an e,xcellent thing for the boys. Many colleges give aid and assist- 

 ance to students. To do what I propose would be only doing what 

 the colleges have always done, and are now doing, to the best of 

 their ability, — helping indigent students to get an education. 

 There is nothing absurd about that, is there ? Why should it be 

 absurd to do for all what it is wise to do for the few ? Besides, 

 the education itself would immensely accelerate the acquisition of 

 wealth, just as the small beginnings of railroad-building from the 

 thirties to si.xties helped to accelerate the increase of wealth suffi- 

 ciently to give us the railroad mileage of 1888. What the world has 

 acquired in the way of knowledge would be known to all, instead 

 of being known only to the few : all, instead of only the few, would 

 have access to, and would utilize, the world's stock of knowledge, 

 and the difference this would make in the production of wealth 

 cannot be estimated. Where there is now one millionnaire, there 

 would be a thousand of them under the new state of things, and 

 all the people would be in comfortable circumstances. That in- 

 crease of knowledge brings increase of wealth must be clear to 

 every one. If, instead of our present population, we had a land 

 full of Russian Moujiks, or of people born in Spain or in Arkansas, 

 we should not be troubled with a surplus. 



The education which I propose means that no child shall go 

 through life in the raw state ; that every child shall be a finished 

 product ; and that society shall get upon every human being born 

 the profit of the finished product, instead of such profit as there is 

 in letting humanity go through life in the raw state, as it were. 



The world is wasting its knowledge by confining it to so few. 

 It is as if a man were to leave his family a million, and provide that 

 only a hundredth part of it should be put out at interest to produce 

 iacome. We should call such a man foolish. Well, in like man- 

 ner the world is stupid in confining knowledge to the few, and de- 

 priving itself of reaping the benefit of the service of the many in 

 their best estate. Say that a man has five children and $100,000. 

 He can educate his children well, and leave them $80,000 ; or he 

 can let them go to school till they are twelve years old, and then 

 leave them $100,000. Can any sane person doubt which would be 

 the better course for the children ? Can kny one doubt which 

 course would be the more likely to preserve the estate ? Can any 

 one doubt which would be the more likely to increase it ? 



But the children whose education I advocate have not the money 

 to enable them to be educated, and their parents have not the 

 money wherewith to educate them. Must the rich educate the 

 poor ? I say yes ; if the rich wish to live in comfort in a country 

 governed by universal suffrage, they must do their share, and more 

 than their share, to educate everybody. As I believe, the people 

 who would pay the money would get a handsome return upon their 

 investment, even those who should pay at the highest rate. 



Years ago I said, and I quote it here from Prof. C. M. Wood- 

 ward's recent book, 'The Manual Training School,' published by 

 Heath & Co.,— 



" The alternative before you is more and better education at 

 greater expense ; or a still greater amount of money wasted on 



soldiers and policemen, destruction of property, and stoppage of 

 social machinerj'. The money which the training would cost will 

 be spent in any event. It would have been money in the pocket of 

 Pittsburg if she could have caught her rioters of July, 1877, at an 

 early period of their career, and trained them at any expense just a 

 little beyond the point at which men are likely to burn things pro- 

 miscuously. It is wiser and better and cheaper to spend our money 

 in training good citizens than in shooting bad ones." 



The first requisite is to convince the people that the thing itself 

 is worth doing. That done, the means to accomplish it will be 

 found. The thing proposed "is not a largess to the recipient, but 

 a natural measure of self-defence on the part of the government 

 which educates." 



I propose it as a measure for the welfare of the community, and 

 the welfare of the community is the supreme law. 



Once established that it is the height of wisdom at all hazards 

 and at any cost to bring the children into school and keep them 

 there till the twentieth year, if necessar)' other means besides the 

 succession-tax would be found to pay the expense. The S500 

 license-tax on saloons yields annually in Chicago nearly two mil- 

 lions. It is a new revenue never before counted upon for munici- 

 pal purposes. Before we had it we got along very well without it, 

 and we could again do so. To what better use could the license 

 money be put than to keep the children at school ? And the tax 

 might be doubled. Double our rate, and liquor-licenses would 

 annually yield in New York City something like ten milUons. Then 

 there is the internal revenue derived from tobacco and whiskey, 

 yielding annually over a hundred millions, which is every day in 

 danger of being abolished because we have no use for the revenue. 

 This tax, unless seized upon for education, is liable at any moment 

 to be repealed. Its appeal would be a calamity. The tax bears 

 heavily only upon vice and crime. No useful industry is hampered 

 by it. There is not one single good reason why it should be re- 

 pealed. To what better use could the proceeds of this tax be put 

 than to be paid out for keeping the children at school .' The 

 whiskey and tobacco tax might be doubled, and nobody be the 

 worse for it. It is low now in order that it may not produce too 

 much revenue. If the revenue were needed for a good purpose, 

 the tax might well be doubled and yield over two hundred mil- 

 lions. 



In the sense in which I speak of the settling of the labor- 

 troubles, they would be settled if we could get along without 

 periodically employing soldiers to use force. The graduates of the 

 manual-training school would be just that many people taken out 

 of the labor-problem ; and, if the number so taken out was suffi- 

 cient, there would be no labor-problem left. 



Each individual trained to a degree to find an independent way 

 for himself instead of relying merely upon the work of his hands 

 to be directed by the brains of some one else, is to the extent of 

 that individual a settling of the labor-troubles. The settling would 

 operate as things did in Germany in the time of the first Napoleon. 

 So long as German soldiers fired their guns at his command upon 

 his enemies, he maintained his supremacy in Germany ; but when 

 the Germans took to shooting at him and his, instead of for him 

 and against his enemies, there was end of Napoleon's supremacy. 

 Sufficient training, intelligence, and efficiency would make all our 

 people for peace, and there would therefore be peace. The law- 

 lessly disposed would be so few and lonesome that they would 

 cease to riot. If I maybe allowed an Irish bull, the lawless could 

 be made to shoot the other way by being made so intelligent and 

 efficient that they would refrain altogether from shooting. 



Augustus J.\bobson. 



Chicago, Jan, 24. 



Weather-Predictions. 



If Professor Hazen is willing to admit, as I infer from his letter 

 in Science of Jan. 27, p. 49, that the Blue Hill predictions for last 

 October give a higher per cent of success than his own when veri- 

 fied by the unmodified original rules he sent me, it seems to me 

 there is an end of the matter between us. I do not deny that 

 better methods of verification of weather-predictions are wanted. 

 All that I have ever claimed is, that the Blue Hill predictions, when 

 verified by the Signal Service rules, in accordance with which they 



