I 
296 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
advocates, is free labor—the just and generous, and prosper¬ 
ous system, which opens the way for all—gives hope to all, and 
energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all. If 
any continue through life in the condition of the hired laborer, 
it is not the fault of the system, but because of either a de¬ 
pendent nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly, or sin¬ 
gular misfortune. I have said this much about the elements of 
labor generally; as introductory to the consideration of a new 
phase which that element is in process of assuming. The old 
general rule was that educated people did not perform manual 
labor. They managed to eat their bread, leaving the toil of 
producing it to the uneducated. This w~as not an insupporta¬ 
ble evil to the working bees, so long as the class of drones re¬ 
mained very small. But now , especially in these free States, 
nearly all are educated—quite too nearly all, to leave the labor 
of the uneducated, in any wise adequate to the support of the 
whole. It follows from this that henceforth educated people 
must labor. Otherwise, education itself would become a posi¬ 
tive and intolerable evil. No country can sustain, in idleness, 
more than a small per centage of its numbers. The great ma¬ 
jority must labor at something productive. From these premi¬ 
ses the problem springs—“ How can labor and education be 
the most satisfactorily combined ?” 
By the “ mudsill ” theory it is assumed that labor and educa¬ 
tion are incompatible; and any practical combination of them 
impossible. According to that theory, a blind horse upon a 
tread.mill, is a perfect illustration of what a laborer should be 
—all the better for being blind, that he could not kick under¬ 
standing^. According to that theory, the education of labor¬ 
ers, is not only useless, but pernicious and dangerous. In fact, 
it is, in some sort, deemed a misfortune that laborers should 
have heads at all. Those same heads are regarded as explosive 
materials, only to be safely kept in damp places, as far as pos¬ 
sible from that peculiar sort of fire which ignites them. A 
Yankee who could invent a strong handed man without a head 
would receive the everlasting gratitude of the “ mud-sill ” ad- 
advocates. 
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