Exhibition—Annual Addresses. 
107 
GIVE NEW STIMULUS TO EDUCATION. 
Wherever the mechanical industries are extensively pursued 
under a free government, intellectual activity is fostered. Despo¬ 
tism imposes insupportable burdens upon the laborer, and monop¬ 
olists are ever ready to crush him beneath their iron heels, conse¬ 
quently the mechanic and the artizan may frequently be found in 
a state of degradation. Under such circumstances the farmer 
sinks much lower, for subsistance is secured by the agricultural¬ 
ist with less mental effort than by the artizan. 
Whatever the mental development prevalent in an agricultural 
community, the introduction of such mechanical arts as will meet 
the demands of that community, will quicken its thought and raise 
it to a higher plane of life. We should then bail with pleasure 
the opening of any new line of effort which demands clearer and 
more vigorous thinking. 
Mechanical industries, especially in a free country, are favor¬ 
able to the public schools, and their encouragement is desirable, 
therefore, as giving to the common people an essential element of 
power. Among the great forces controlling the people of the 
United States, wealth and learning are prominent. They make 
laws and expound them, they shape the school system, mould 
science and philosophy, and span the continents with railways, 
and the oceans with cables. 
At their shrines the millions bow, and the class or guild that 
has not its men of wealth or its thought-makers, must become the 
servants of the leaders, the hewers of wood and the drawers of 
water for the benefit of masters condescending to employ them. 
This result is inevitable. The clear , sharp alternative presented 
to fhe laborers of America to-day is education or vassalage. La¬ 
borers as a class cannot be wealthy, yet in a republican state 
where every one of them is born to the sceptre and the throne, 
they can be educated, and are at fault if they are not, for they 
have power to lay taxes for this purpose upon the wealthy. The 
treasures of the country are at their command, and they can hon¬ 
orably do much to restore the lost equilibrium in society, by giv¬ 
ing public education a wider range and greater thoroughness. 
They can speak the school into symmetry and efficiency, and 
