_Education in Different Social Classes._--The education received by an individual is determined mainly by the class to which that individual belongs. In every industrial state, the degradation of the working-class families becomes apparent. The wages of the manual workers are very small; and owing to illness, strikes, lock-outs, and commercial crises, even this small income diminishes from time to time, or may entirely cease. Insecurity is the keynote of the working man’s economic existence. The consequences of this insecurity are ill-humour and embitterment, which find expression for the most part in domestic life. The place of work is often far removed from the dwelling-place. Husband, wife, and the elder children go to work; they have to get up very early in the morning, when the children are still asleep. Since the spells of rest for meals are very short, they have no time to go home; or if they do hurry home, they have to gulp down their food with lightning speed. Not until late in the evening, when the children have gone to sleep again, do the parents return home. Thousands of working men, owing to the distance of their homes from their work-places, remain a whole week away, and return home to their families only on Saturday. Even if the parents get home from work in the evenings before their children are asleep, the former are so worn out by long hours of exhausting toil that they can do nothing for their children. The housing conditions of the working classes are rarely satisfactory. In consequence of this, the children are often driven to live in the streets; and this, in turn, leads to immorality and to crime. Often the children of working-class families do not remain at home at all, but find their way to crèches, foundling hospitals, poorhouses, and other institutions. Proletarian parents have less knowledge and less capacity for the education of their children than parents belonging to other classes of the population. These latter, also, can more readily afford to entrust the education of their children to other persons.