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,970 M^t M^AhSU -ISatuhday,
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ELLIS ON EDUCATION AND DESTITUTION. Educ...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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In Our Nummary Of The 27th Ultimo, W« Me...
him . We had not forgotten the eminent merits of the writer ; but we have now to add explicitly , that he iff a ¦ warm friend to the principle of Association , and a valuable coadjutor in making it universally known and understood ; as he has been enabled to do in the pages of a widely circulated and influential journal—Le National .
,970 M^T M^Ahsu -Isatuhday,
, 970 M ^ t M ^ AhSU -ISatuhday ,
Ellis On Education And Destitution. Educ...
ELLIS ON EDUCATION AND DESTITUTION . Education as a means of preventing Bettitution j with Exempli fications from the teaching of the Conditions of Wellbeing and the Principles and Applications of Economical Science at ihj Birkbeck Schools . By William Ellis . Author of the " Outlines of Social Economy . " Smith , Elder , and Co . Mr . Ellis is known as an active and benevolent philanthropist and an energetic worker in the great cause of Education . He is entitled to a hearing on this subject ; for he is not only practically acquainted with it , but has unusual powers of pleasant and popular exposition . We must allow him to ride his hobby ; we must allow him to recognize in Education the panacea for all social malady—an error we might almost call " respectable , " if error were not necessarily pernicious to the extent of its wanderings from the truth—and having made this allowance , we can listen to all he says with pleasure , if not always with assent .
In the highest and widest sense of the word , it may with truth be said that Education is the great remedy to which society must look ; but it is derisory to say that instruction in the elements of useful knowledge and moral wellbeing can lift the great burden from the People ' s back , unless concurrently with this mental improvement of the Workman there takes place a moral and intellectual revolution in the Employing Classes .
Educate Society ; teach it the true principles of Social wellbeing for masses in lieu of classes ., train it intellectually and morally to a more perfect fulfilment of the Social law ; supply the present anarchy of opinions by one dominant Faith—and then , indeed , the evil we complain of will disappear . But this is Socialism ? Alas , yes ! It has that ugly name labelled round its neck , and as the College of Physicians insist upon calling it Poison , a very explicable aversion to take it is the
consequence . Mr . Ellis is an Educationist . No Socialist he . He wants to have the People educated ; but he wants society to preserve all its present conditions except the evils—ivhich inevitably and irresistibly grow out of those conditions ! He believes sincerely that these evils are not necessary consequences of the conditions—he believes they arise from want of Education . We hold another opinion . If every man you met were a Pinnock or a Peter Parley ( other conditions remaining the same ) , society would . still present most of the sources of unhappiness which disquiet it . Mr . Ellis does not ^ eem to make sufficient allowance for the want of food .
which is the motor of bo much wrong ! Man does not live by bread alone—but he must , as a preliminary , have bread ; and it is the want thereof which makes the social problem so complex . Can that want be satisfied ? One set of Economists answers , " No ; there is over population ; at the Banquet of Nature no knife and fork is reserved for late coiners . " Another set of Economists answers , " Yes ; by concert in the division of eraployments , by men Working for each other in a friendly , instead of in a hostile , spirit , abundance for all might easily be obtained . " But they are " Socialists ' "—so we will not listen to their Utopian
schemes . lu a clear , excellently written essay , Mr . Ellis irivea uh his views on Competition ; it is one of the neatest little tracts we have read on that subject . Our disagreement is fundamental . Consider the present state of things as final—believe that Humanity has exhausted all its evolutions , and is now consolidating itself without fear of ulterior change ¦— -believe this and Mr . Ellis is unanswerable . But we do not believe it ; we believe the directly opposite of it ; and , therefore , his positions , instead of being impregnable , are erected in one of
the provincial towns , while we are attacking the very Capital itself . As , however , it is our pride to be impartial , as we wish our reiulei-H always to hear both sides of the question when practicable , we will . select the strongest passages from Mr . Ellis ' s defence of Competition : — " But what is this competition ?— what arc its attribute * and capabilities , either for good or lor evil ? We will set out on our travels for tho purpose of collecting nnflwern to them ) questions from men of practical experience , who , aa eye-witneancN , may bo BunnoHed bt : Ht qualified to gratify our cunobity and enlighten our ignorance . We will stop into an auction-room , and there wo shall be told that competition raiae » prices . Wo will attend at tho opening
of the sealed tenders " whicfr are sent in for the supply of a workhouse or of some branch of the public service , and there we shall be told that competition lowers prices . When we hear of a number of displaced or unplaced labourers striving to insinuate themselves among others " who are employed , we hear at the same lime that competition lowers wages . When Ve hear of mamtfiictories starting into existence under the auspices Of enterprising capitalists , we hear at the same time that competition raises wages . In Kite manner we are told that competition lowers rents , profits , and interest ; and also that it raises them . Ought -me to believe all that we hear ? Are all these wonders that are attributed to the influence of competition possible and credible r Or are they contradictory and impossible , and therefore incredible . 1
" Again , we ask « What is competition rOur inquiries abroad having led to nothing conclusive , let us now inquire at home , and marshal our own thoughts and subject them to a course of strict examination . Whence are oar notions of competition derived ? Whence , but from our observation of the thoughts and wishes and conduct of those whom we consider competing men ? What we know of competing men may be narrated in Very few words . As buyers in an auction-room , they wish to buy at the lowest possible price ; as prospective tenants of a farm , they wish to obtain possession at the lowest possible rent ; as borrowers of capital , they wish to pay the lowest possible rate of interest for the loan ;
as hirers of labour , they wish , to pay the lowest possible wages . Yet those very persons , whose wishes are all in one direction—that of obtaining what they want on the lowest terms , are the persons whose acts are said to lead to results directly the reverse of What they wish , viz ., to . raising the terms . On the other hand , competing tradesmen , privately pondering upon the prices at which they Avill tender to provide supplies ; competing larttnords , on the look-out for tenants ; competing workmen , seeking for employment ; competing lenders of capital , longing to be put in communication with substantial borrowerswishing , as they all do , to obtain the highest termsare the persons whose acts are said to lead to the lowering of whatthey wish to be high .
• • One would fancy it must sound a little strange to those who have habituated themselves to the notion that competition is largely instrumental in producing misery , to hear that competing men are not only acting in different directions , but that they aie always acting in a direction opposite to that of their own wishes . But something yet stranger remains to be presented to them . Amidst what is called the strife of competition , a ^ good harvest causes the price of corn to fall , as a bad harvest causes it to rise ;
a population rapidly increasing in civilization and numbers causes rents to rise , as a population retrograding in civilization and numbers would cause them to fall ; cap ital increasing more rapidly than the numbers of a people will make wages rise ; while an increase of the numbers of a people , moie rapid than the increase of capital , will make wages fall ; where capital earns large profits the rate of- interest is high , and where capital earns but small profits the rate oi interest is low .
• ' Man , in whatever part of the world we find him , is as much a competing imimal as we know him to be at home . But his competition seems to be exercised in the midst of very different results . If , lor example , we compare the United States and Australia with the United Kingdom , wo observe competition , in the two first , accompanied by low rents and low prices of raw produce , and by high wages , high rates of profit and interest , and high prices of manufactured articles ; while in the United Kingdom , competition is accompanied by high rents and high prices of ruw produce , and by low wages , low rates of profit and interest , and low prices of manufactured articles . " Mr . Ellis thinks that all the miseries attributable to Competition should be rather credited to incapacity or misconduct : —
" A working-man , unpossessed of capital , or whose capabilities can be turned to the best account in ulliance with the capital of others , Iiuh , through a long course of active service , established a character for usefuliichb among the employers in hia department of industry - They compete lor the purchase of hia labour . Ho obtains comparatively high , wages . The employer who obtains hi . s preference , either through mismanagement or some vicissitude of trade that he had been unequal to struggle against , ia obliged to HUHpend hia work , and to discharge hi « workmen . Other employers are eager to secure the services of so valuable a man . Surely it i . s a more truthful expression to say that this workman ' s success ia owing to his own merit rather than to the competition of employora .
"Agpm , other working . men , either through indolence , ignorance , uiiftkillulnean , dishonesty , unpunctuality , drunkenness , or rcckliHsncsH , fail to inspire capitalists with a notion that their labour can be regularly turilcd to account . Homo of them , however , will obtain employment , but will Boon loat > it b y their ill conduct . When they lose it , tho cause of their bo losing it being no secret , other capitalists * are Blow
to purchase what has little or no value . ThewlTi class of such men become the casual labourers 1 society—the labourers who in the convulsive ma . ments of industrial employment are apt to be thro " aside unthought of , and uncared for . They co * pete among one another for the scanty and ca ^ i wages that are still hoped for , although difficult to h obtained . Their competition may assume a ta f hideous form—it may resemble the ferocious strueoi of a pack of wolves for the small scrap of a sinli carcass . The wages , when obtained , are miserabl loW j constant employment is obtainable by non / and , not even casual by all ; and . misery is general ' among them . Surely this misery is more correctlv attributable to the character than to the eommttaJ . of the workmen . " " ^ peutioa
We will endeavour to bring to light the fallacy that lies here . Because good workmen , by reason of their scarcity , are seldom out of employ , and because they are competed for , it is thought that Competition is a benefit . But we ask Mr . Ellis to consider the problem as it would present itself were his views realized : —An enormous population of excellent workmen , intelligent , sober , honest , are in receipt of good wages , a •* glut" comes , owing to the want of any " concert , " manufacturers are
forced to lower wages , and finally to shut up their Mills—all the men are thrown out of employ ; will their being intelligent , sober , and honest , keep them from starving ? Not under present conditions . Raising the population to Mr . Ellis ' s standard would not feed it ; and the primary question is how to get food . Moreover , when Mr . Ellis says that the misery is attributable to the character of the workmen , he should also ask what conditions have made
the workmen ignorant , improvident , intemperate , and he will find that here also the questions of Food and Competition meet him on the threshold . We do not , therefore , agree with Mr . Ellis in believing Education to be the means of preventing Destitution , nor do we believe in the finality of Competition ( though we admit the useful part it has played and continues to play ) , but we fully agree with him when he says : —
"It being once conceded that education , in some one of the ' many forms in which it is conceived , ought to be accessible to every individual ; no excuse can justify our tolerating a state of things where this education is practically inaccessible to large masses of the people . To grant that education is indispensable for all , is to grant that the withholding it from some is an act of revolting atrocity . If the question were not the educating , but the feeding , of the peop le ; and while it was admitted on all hands that the people ought to
be fed , some contended that the people must not eat fish , and others , that they must not eat meat , what would be thought of the sense or humanity of those who should be prepared to leave the people without bread , till it could'be agreed whether this bread should be combined with fish or flesh , or some dish made by an impossible compromise of the two ? Are there any ingrediente that can be considered as the farinaceous parts of education ? Doubtless there are ; and be ours the task to enumerate them . Once clearly seen and understood , he who could think of withholding them from the people would be a monster , —let us hope a fabulous monster .
"To drop metaphor-the mont cursory glanc what it is agreed ought to be taught everywhere will suffice to satisfy us that there is some unanimity * the midst of antagonism . For example , in all caucational schemes it is agreed that reading , ; "f >' arithmetic , geography , and elementary nwnsuratum and astronomy , ahould be taught ; and , despite _ tno contradictory views as to the means to be used ior it is lesHiuiam
accomplishment of what is desired , no mously admitted that attention ought to be uneoi to the formation of habits of industry , economy , » briety , trustworthiness , punctuality , and ord . ^ v t 0 duct . Basing the inquiry , in which I invite )« u accompany me , upon this unanimity unutn j existing to a certain extent , and desirable to a gr > I shall endeavour to draw forth a little more in at what , as I conceive , ought to be universally af , upon as essentials in education , turning a * " - those other portions of education , however linpi j they maybe , upon which differences of opinio : « ^ of such strength , and , perhaps , so dcep-seatcu
be ineradicable in our time . ( , When in Edinburgh we visited u Secular be 100 , the pupils of which were taken from the » ^ and were much struck by observing the intert intelligence excited in them by Mr . ^ ^ V ° inoral admirable exposition of physiological an . truths . From what we saw there we are F l to endorse the following passage : — ^ ^ Teaching ih tho means that inuat bo relie <> ^ giving tho knowledge , mid training for ion ^ diHpoaition . Tlieae two « e » t education hin ^ cannot be separated . They proceed " ^ omP * Hp us or 111 performed , for good or for evil . But t <> i ^ in to discriminate between whut may be gooa ui
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 11, 1851, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_11101851/page/14/
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