that the law was imperative and its officers in earnest, the law was complied with. Many evasions of this law no doubt occur, but, as a general rule, the people of Connecticut approve its provisions and mean that they shall be observed.

The more thoroughly this law is executed, the less of course will be the average attendance. The greater the number who attend school only the time required by law, the less will be the average for the whole year. Three months' schooling a year is not enough, but it is a good beginning. “Half a loaf is better than no bread." It is hoped that such interest in school and fondness for books will be awakened as to induce many to attend longer than the time required by law.

Our aggregate attendance last year was 95.65 per cent. of the whole number enumerated, the highest figures ever reached in this State. The whole number enumerated in 1-74 was 133,528; the whole number in schools of all kinds was 127,720; since 1869 the increase in enumeration is 9,878; since 1869 the increase in number registered at school is 19,908. The increase of attendance above the increase in enumeration is 10,030.

This result has cost work. We have not leaned upon the law alone, but it surely has been of great service. It has awakened no opposition. Both political parties equally favor it. No suggestion for its repeal has been made in the legislature, nor, so far as I know, in any Connecticut paper. The people of Connecticut plainly sanction the legal prevention of illiteracy.

EDUCATION OF PUBLIC SENTIMENT.

Instead of falling back upon the law to do the whole work, we have made argument, persuasion, and conciliation our main reliance. Any statute which should lessen these primal forces I should deprecate. But, with growing faith in moral suasion, I prize the sterner sanctions of the law as a dernier ressort only in cases otherwise incorrigible. When paternal pride, interest, or authority fails, and parental indifference or intemperance bars the way to school, legal coercion may be wisely employed.

Whatever may be true in monarchical governments, in our country there is every motive to kindness and conciliation in the execution of such a law. The plan is truly democratic, for its entire management is by the people and for the people, through school-officers chosen by the people and responsible to the people. Such a law, in our country, should command popular sympathy more than in any monarchy, for it is not pressed upon the people by some outside agency or higher power, but is their own work, embodying their judgment and preferences. The form of compulsory education which existed in Connecticut for more than a hundred and fifty years was not forced upon the people as "subjects." It was rather a living organism, of which they as "sovereigns" proudly claimed the paternity, growing up with their growth and recognized as the source of their strength and prosperity. After the utmost use of kindness, tact, and persuasion, and every effort to awaken a dormant parental pride, if not a sense of duty, and showing that education will promote their children's thrift and happiness through life, we find that such persuasions are the more effective when it is understood that the sanctions of the law might be employed. We have used the right to enforce mainly as an argument to persuade an authoritative appeal to good sense and parental pride. As thus used, we know in Connecticut that our law has been a moral force. It is itself an effective advocate of education to the very class who need it most. The people of Connecticut plainly approve this law, stringent as are its provisions. It has already accomplished great good and brought into the schools many children who would otherwise have been absentees. Since its enactment no objection has been made to it in the legislature, and no article, editorial, or contribution in any Connectient paper has expressed disapproval of it, so far as I know.

Individual instances of neglect or evasion still occur, occasioned by poverty or indifference of parents, or by the oversight or selfishness of employers, who do not, however, deny the justice and necessity of the law.

HISTORICAL STATEMENT.

It is objected that compulsory education is monarchical in its origin and character. This is erroneous. Massachusetts and Connecticut may justly claim to be the first States in the world to establish the principle of compulsory education. Before the peace of Westphalia, before Prussia existed as a kingdom, and while Frederick William was only elector of Brandenburg, in 1650-two hundred and twenty-five years ago-Massachusetts and Connecticut adopted most rigid laws for coercive education. The selectmen in every town were then required to see that so much "barbarism" was not permitted in any family as that their children should not be able perfectly to read the English tongue, upon penalty of twenty shillings for each neglect therein. Repetition of the offense was punished with still higher fines or by taking children away from their parents and apprenticing them where they would be sure to be educated. In the early history of Massachusetts and Connecticut this law was strictly executed. It was so heartily approved by the people and the education of all children was so generally desired and secured, that attendance lost its involuntary character. Created by public opinion, it tended to deepen that sentiment. The demand that the barbarism of ignorance should not be tolerated helped to make it disgraceful to keep even an apprentice from school. To bring up a child or ward in ignorance was shameful and barbarous in the eyes of the fathers of New England. This is still the sentiment of their genuine descendants. High appreciation of education is one of the most precious traditions of New England. This old law greatly aided, both in awakening and perpetuating this public interest and in fixing the habits, associations, and traditions of the people. For one hundred and seventy years after the adoption of this law an adult native of Connecticut, of sound mind, unable to read the English language, would have been looked upon as a prodigy. Such a citizen of the old New England stock I have never met in Connecticut, though I have mingled freely with the people and visited every township of the State.

Judge Daggett, long professor of law in Yale College, on finding any witness on the stand or criminal in the dock who could not read and write, used always to ask "where were you born?" and with only three exceptions, during his long judicial service, did he receive the answer "In Connecticut." But recently immigration has caused startling figures of illiteracy, especially in our manufacturing-centers. With this ignorance comes indifference to education, and hence the new need of coercion.

ARGUMENT FOR THE LAW.

The right of the State to enforce attendance will hardly be questioned by any in this body. It is a corollary from the compulsory school-tax. The power that claims public money to educate all classes may justly provide that such expenditure should not fail of its end through the vice, intemperance, or perverseness of parents. The State has the same right to compel the ignorant to learn that it has to compel the penurious to pay for that learning. Tax-payers pertinently say, "If you compel us, who have no children, to support schools for the good of the State, you must provide that the children fail not to share the advantages thus furnished." The question really is one not of right, but of expediency. "The people will not bear compulsion" is the main objection. In some States this may yet be true, and there coercion would be unwise. On this subject public sentiment is often misunderstood and the discernment of the masses is underrated. It is a significant fact that the labor-unions, both in this country and in Europe, favor obligatory education. Mixing much with the laboring classes for the purpose of promoting school-attendance, I have the best means of knowing their sentiments, and have been greatly encouraged by their appreciation of education, whether Americans, Germans, Swedes, or Irish.

FOREIGN INDORSEMENT OF THE LAW.

The workingmen of Europe, in their various organizations, show their approval of compulsory education. At the International Workingmen's Congress, held at Lau

sanne, in Switzerland, the sentiment cordially adopted after full discussion was, “that education should be universal, compulsory, and national, but not denominational." In England they are earnestly advocating this measure. The opposition comes from the large farmers and property-holders. Attending the National Trades-Union Congress, held for five days at Nottingham, I found that body strongly favoring such a law. One of the members, a leader in the labor-league-movement, habitually addressing large assemblies of workingmen in all parts of the country, said he everywhere found among them great unanimity on this subject and never heard the objection that obligatory education would be a usurpation of parental or popular rights. No man in England so fully represents the sentiments of that most oppressed and depressed class, the farmlaborers of England, as Joseph Arch. He is a most earnest advocate of universal and compulsory education. Denied all early school-advantages, his own bitter experience has taught him to condemn the virtual exclusion of children from school by their constant employment on farms or in factories. His motto is, "Child-labor means pauperism, crime, ignorance, immorality, and every evil." The latest reports from England show that school-attendance has increased most in those towns which adopted the compulsory system. The absence of opposition from the lower classes and the good effects already witnessed are commending this measure to general favor.

The motto of the National Educational League, supported largely by the common people, is, "Education must be universal, unsectarian, and compulsory." This was the unanimous sentiment expressed at the great annual meeting of this association held in Birmingham two months ago. The compulsory plan is now in operation for about 78 per cent. of the borough-population of England, and, as the last number of the National Educational League says, it is working with great success and growing in public favor. After many inquiries among the laboring classes in Germany, I could nowhere get from them any objection to compulsory education. They evidently favor it, and so generally regard the school as a privilege that attendance is voluntary, in fact, and few think of coercion. Said a resident of Dresden: "Were the question of compulsory attendance to be decided by a plebiscitum to-morrow, it would be sustained by an almost unanimous verdict."

It is a significant fact that Guizot during the last three years of his life stoutly advocated that compulsory system which he successfully opposed when minister of public instruction in 1833. The logic of events had refuted his old theory, that such "coercion was the creature of centralization and bore the marks of the convent and the barrack." A similar conversion occurred in the case of Canon Kingsley, just deceased. He long took a lively interest in the improvement of the working classes, an interest deepened by his service as government-inspector of schools. On finding that the working-people favored compulsory attendance, all his objections vanished.

Switzerland, the country most jealous of liberty and averse to any form of usurpation, has long maintained compulsory attendance in all of her twenty-two cantons, except in four of the smallest. In the recent revision of her constitution this law was made universal in its application. This country-proud of being so long the home of freedom in Europe, glorying in free schools, free speech, free press, free trade, freedom of traveling, and freedom of religion-has now chosen anew for all its people the system of compulsory attendance. No further facts are needed to show that the prepos sessions of intelligent workingmen are not against obligatory education.

At the conclusion of the reading, Mr. Northrop said:

I have some circulars such as we have sent to every town in the State in large numbers and I have copies of a notice such as we have had posted in the factories of Connecticut. These have been put forth in English and in French, as the French Canadians are the persons whom we wish especially to inform on the subject. These papers, or sample copies, are here for distribution, if any of the members care to see them.

Mr. JOHN D. PHILBRICK, of Boston. I have listened with the greatest interest and pleasure to the paper which has been read and the accompanying remarks. It seems to me scarcely possible that any subject of greater importance in connection with the educational interests of the country can be presented for our consideration at this meeting; and I am especially glad that the matter has been brought before us in this practical way, in illustrating what has been so successfully done in the State of Connecticut. I rise more especially to make one inquiry of the honorable secretary. That inquiry is in regard to direct compulsion. If I have understood the remarks that have been made, they have reference mainly to what our English cousins call "indirect compulsion ;" that is, provision for compelling manufacturers to desist from the employment of children who have not had a certain prescribed amount of schooling. I should like to inquire, therefore, whether in Connecticut there is any provision of the school-law requiring children to attend a certain number of months; and, if so, whether there has been provision made for executing that law directly, bringing the children into school, compelling their attendance. I understand that the manufacturers are liable to fines or some other penalty for the employment of children who have not received during the year the prescribed amount of schooling. But is there no provision going directly to the child or to its parents, requiring attendance during the prescribed term in the public schools? Is there no provision for punishing the parent if the child does not attend the given number of months?

Mr. NORTHROP. I am much obliged for the inquiry. In the circular to which I have referred, you will find the law on the subject. I will read it:

All parents, and those who have the care of children, shall bring them up in some honest and lawful calling or employment and shall instruct them or cause them to be instructed in reading, writing, English grammar, geography, and arithmetic. And every parent, guardian, or other person having control and charge of any child between the ages of 8 and 14 years, shall cause such child to attend some public or private day-school at least three months in each year, six weeks at least of which attendance shall be consecutive, or to be instructed at home at least three months in each year in the branches of education required to be taught in the public schools, unless the physical or mental condition of the child is such as to render such attendance inexpedient or impracticable.

The penalty for the violation of the above provisions is a fine of five dollars "for every week, not exceeding thirteen weeks in any one year, during which any parent or guardian shall have failed to comply therewith."

At the outset we began with what may be properly called indirect legislation on the subject. We commenced with a stringent enforce ment of the law in regard to the employment of children who had not attended the public school for the proper period. I have spoken of our action under that law. When we had this law in our hands, and were able to specify a penalty for disobedience to its provisions, we went to the manufacturers, in a conciliatory way, and secured their voluntary

25

pledge of co-operation. And I was almost as much surprised as gratified to find the heartiness with which the manufacturers throughout the State came into the agreement; and I think it is really wonderful, as well as a theme for gratitude, to see how our manufacturers, as a rule, agreed to this pledge. We have an agent constantly employed in visiting the factories of the State. His aim is to get the name of every factoryIchild in Connecticut

Mr. PHILBRICK, (interrupting.) The gentleman does not understand my question. The point was, whether there was any provision of law, bearing directly on the children or on the parents, compelling school-attendance; and, if so, what is the method of executing that law? I am not inquiring as to whether there are any officers in the State deputized to prepare a list of the children employed in the factories. My question is, whether the children are themselves actually required to attend school during three months in the year? If that is so, what are the provisions of the law?

Mr. NORTHROP. Large numbers of the manufacturers have given their promise, also, that, one week before the time when children must be sent from the factories to the school, they will send such a list of names to the school visitors as is requisite, in order to facilitate and insure the execution of the law. This is a valuable co-operation. At the outset, before this compulsory law was passed, some parents and some manufacturers said that if children were not employed in the factories they would be idling in the streets. The law was then passed, or modified so as to provide for compulsory attendance of the children and that they should be sent to the schools as soon as they were discharged from the factories. This was the effect of it. The law was then made universal, making the duty of attendance obligatory upon the children and the parents, whether the child was sent from the factories or not. The law is now of universal application.

Professor M. A. NEWELL, of Maryland. I would like to ask the honorable secretary, in his estimate of the good results arising from these compulsory laws, as he ascribes them, how much he really thinks is due to the voluntary pledges taken by the manufacturers themselves. Judging from his argument, the good results appear to be due more to the pledges voluntarily taken by the manufacturers than to the laws themselves.

Mr. NORTHROP. I think we owe much to the co-operation of the manufacturers, but I think the pledge itself was due to the law. I have no certain idea that we could have obtained that voluntary pledge from the manufacturers if they had not known that the moment they refused we would have put on the screws.

Mr. NEWELL. Now, is not my friend from Connecticut well satisfied that if he, or his agent, had gone around among the manufacturers, as he describes, and asked for signatures to such a pledge, without any