the answer is, Look at Virginia, especially the schools of Richmond, Petersburg, Lynchburg, Staunton and Norfolk. Public sentiment there has been revolutionized. The common schools are growing in favor. Prejudice, opposition and penuriousness of course still exist, but are evidently waning. I inspected most of the schools of Richmond with as much delight as surprise, alike in view of the interest of the pupils, the culture of the teachers and the excellence of the schools. Private schools have greatly diminished and the children of the rich generally attend the public schools. Considered as the growth of eight years, the Virginia system is a most gratifying work. In the light of such facts, and in view of the rapid working of intellectual forces in this age and country, and the growing power of public sentiment, shall the most illiterate portions of our land be reached by National Schools supported by National aid and in any way controlled by a National Department? Shall the National Bureau of Education become a Federal Department, enlarged and authorized to organize and maintain a National University-or, with still greater expansion, empowered to establish schools and distribute the income from the sale of public lands, whether in proportion to existing illiteracy, school attendance, or the length and grade of the schools maintained?

Hitherto the National Bureau of Education has been simply advisory. It has, and it was intended to have, no authority. As an agency for collecting and disseminating needful information, it has already done great good, and promises to be still. more useful in the future. But the attempt to organize a National University, support and direct local schools, or in any way interfere with State systems, would end its usefulness, if not end itself. Every true friend of this Bureau should protest against any such "enlargement of the field of its operations." The principle of State independence is too firmly fixed in the faith of all classes to brook any federal interference in school matters, even in the States or Territories most destitute and backward in education. In an illconditioned community like that in New Mexico for example, still Mexican in their traditions, sentiments and peoples, juxtaposed, but not blended with the heterogeneous elements of a

swarming immigration from all parts of the country, not to say of the world, American ideas and institutions are yet in their rudimentary forms and earlier stages of development. Shall a Federal Bureau, at once in European style, enforce there its best plans of public schools, or leave them by a slower, surer, and more healthful process, to work out their own salvation? As the schools of every community answer to local public opinion, their success must depend on the sympathy and appreciation of the people. Public sentiment is a growth, not the creature of power made to order of any sort or size, as some have talked of "fiat money."

SCHOOLS AND COMMUNISM.

In 1868 a prominent plea against Free Schools was the argument that "the system is communistic in its principle and tendency. Establish free schools and you encourage a demand for free food, free clothes, free shoes, and free homes." Professor Faucett, liberal, fair and progressive as he is, urged the same objection in Parliament, saying, during the discussion of the new "Elementary Education Act," which was passed in 1870, "If the demand for free schools were not resisted, encouragement would be given to Socialism in its most baneful form.”

Time tests all theories better than arguments. In Connecticut a decade of free schools has witnessed no new tendencies to Communism. The general intelligence of New England was one obvious cause of its exemption from the communistic railway conflicts in the summer of 1877. The sober second thought prevailed here, while madness ruled the hour elsewhere. The last election in Connecticut showed plainly the popular dread of the socialistic tendencies and dogmas, which were repudiated by both the leading political parties. In Massachusetts, where free schools have been maintained for more than two hundred years, there is as little Socialism as in any land in the world. Indeed, throughout New England, there is no tendency to Communism among the descendants of the genuine New England stock. The minimum that exists is limited to a small portion of the foreign element. Though curiosity attracted crowds to hear Dennis Kearney last autumn, it is due

to free schools and the consequent intelligence of the people, that his communistic tirades disgusted all classes and prompted the candidate who first sought his alliance to disown his dogmas and disfellowship him.

I find among all classes, employers and employés, in the factories and on the farms, a growing distrust, not to say detestation, of Communism. The mad outcry of the Internationals, "Equality of conditions," "Capital is the enemy of labor," finds no response from the intelligent laborers of Connecticut. Thanks to our schools, they know that the condition of the operative improves with the increase of industrial capital, which always befriends labor, when it multiplies the opportunities of education and profitable employment. Nothing helps the laborer more than that education which gives him both the desire and the power to better his condition, to improve first himself and then his home and household.

As a precaution against the communistic tendencies which now agitate and alarm Germany and other portions of Europe, and find here their fiercest advocates among the refugees thence escaped to our shores, the general principles underlying this subject should be studied by our teachers and presented in oral lessons in our schools. A few simple school talks on this theme might forestall much mischief in coming years. The intelligent workmen who by industry and economy are enabled · to own their homes, however humble, or indeed to own anything, cannot be fooled by that insane crusade against capital, which really means wages without work, or which lets the lazy and profligate share equally with the industrious and frugal. The equality of conditions of which they dream, would be the low level of a common barbarism. Even enforced equality of wages lessens the motives to industry, skill and fidelity, and restrains the freedom of competition. Once applied, these notions would destroy not only capital but the motives and means of its future increase and protection. Destroy capital, and labor would suffer first and most. Capital and labor, therefore, are not enemies. It is only ignorance and prejudice that find any necessary opposition between the two. There should be kindness and sympathy between the employer and the employed. There need be no alienation between the rich and

the poor. There should be no tyranny of capital over labor, nor hostility of labor to capital. The capitalist should fully understand the trials of the laborer's lot, and strive to ameliorate his condition, and the operative should know the risks, anxieties and conditions of success on the part of the manufacturer. There should be liberal pay on the one side, and fair profits on the other. The interests of both classes are bound together. If either one is harmed, the other must ultimately suffer. Certainly the laborer cannot long suffer in health, education or pay, without harm to the employer, and large losses to employers inevitably extend to the operatives. They are copartners, and cannot afford to be antagonists. Capital is as dependent on labor as labor is on capital, and only as both work in harmony, can the highest good of each be secured. Indeed, labor is both superior and prior to capital, and alone originally produces capital. Many a penniless laborer, because well educated, frugal and industrious, has become an independent capitalist. Our most successful manufacturers have toiled up from penury to affluence. This aspiration may stimulate every one who is educated enough to combine skill with labor.

Communism is an exotic in this land. It does not easily take root in our soil, and the climate is uncongenial. Its chief advocates are homeless foreigners, even the immigrants long resident here have become so schooled by public sentiment and by our free institutions, as to be well nigh assimilated and Americanized.

Schools and the diffusion of property are our safeguards against Socialistic extremes. John Adams well said, "The ownership of land is essential to industrial thrift and to national security and strength and prosperity." Switzerland, with institutions as free as ours, is safe from Communism, for two reasons-the maintenance of free schools, and the general ownership of land. The Internationals may meet in free Switzerland, and nobody is frightened or disturbed by their vagaries. Germany has education, but not an equal distribution of land. Her vast standing army, consuming without producing, with its enormous expenses and exactions, has created a great revulsion of feeling among the people. The glory of conquest and

the untold milliards of the French indemnity mainly expended on new fortifications and military equipments, do not atone for the mourning and bereavement brought to so many now desolate homes, the heavy burden of taxation, the dread of conscription, the fear of new complications and wars, and the inexorable demand that every boy shall spend three weary years of service in the camp. Myriads of families with boys approaching the military age, have emigrated to other lands to escape this dreaded conscription.

In France the home of Communism has always been in Paris. The horrors of the Commune in 1871 proved suicidal to the system. Even Paris learned then a lesson not likely to be forgotten. But the great body of the French people, even then, had little sympathy with communistic doctrines, and to-day the French nation, with her 5,000,000 of land-owners, is strongly the other way. Here lie her strength and security. To illustrate the happy influence of this wide diffusion of landed property, Michelet describes a French peasant walking out of a Sunday, in his clean linen and unsoiled blouse, surveying fondly his little farm. His face is illumined as he thinks these acres are his own, from the surface of the globe to its center, and that the air is his own from the surface up to the seventh heaven. He is there alone-not at work, not to keep off interlopers, but solely to enjoy the feeling of ownership, and to look upon himself as a member of responsible society. Thus in all lands and among all peoples, "the magic of property turns sand into gold."

In the United States there are nearly 3,000,000 farmers with farms, averaging 153 acres each, besides a large number who own their dwellings and house-lots. These form the grand army of the Republic-each a volunteer, equipped and ready to strike down Communism, wherever its hydra head may appear. Let even the Socialistic leaders, whom Bismarck has banished, once learn here to till their own acres, and they will be converted to the true faith-of the sacred rights of property.