Years ago the men of wealth were forced to contribute toward the education of the children of the poor. The support of schools by general taxation was defended on the ground that it was a means of providing for the public welfare, of perpetuating the institutions of a free country by making better men and women. This policy has been pursued until at last the schoolhouse is larger than the church, and the common people through education have become uncommon. They now know how little is really known by what are called the upper classes--how little after all is understood by kings, presidents, legislators, and men of culture. They are capable not only of understanding a few questions, but they have acquired the art of discussing those that no one understands. With the facility of politicians they can hide behind phrases, make barricades of statistics, and _chevaux-de-frise_ of inferences and assertions. They understand the sophistries of those who have governed. In some respects these common people are the superiors of the so-called aristocracy. While the educated have been turning their attention to the classics, to the dead languages, and the dead ideas and mistakes that they contain--while they have been giving their attention to ceramics, artistic decorations, and compulsory prayers, the common people have been compelled to learn the practical things--to become acquainted with facts--by doing the work of the world. The professor of a college is no longer a match for a master mechanic. The master mechanic not only understands principles, but their application. He knows things as they are. He has come in contact with the actual, with realities. He knows something of the adaptation of means to ends, and this is the highest and most valuable form of education. The men who make locomotives, who construct the vast engines that propel ships, necessarily know more than those who have spent their lives in conjugating Greek verbs, looking for Hebrew roots, and discussing the origin and destiny of the universe. Intelligence increases wants. By education the necessities of the people become increased. The old wages will not supply the new wants. Man longs for a harmony between the thought within and the things without. When the soul lives in a palace the body is not satisfied with rags and patches. The glaring inequalities among men, the differences in condition, the suffering and the poverty, have appealed to the good and great of every age, and there has been in the brain of the philanthropist a dream--a hope, a prophecy, of a better day. It was believed that tyranny was the foundation and cause of the differences between men--that the rich were all robbers and the poor all victims, and that if a society or government could be founded on equal rights and privileges, the inequalities would disappear, that all would have food and clothes and reasonable work and reasonable leisure, and that content would be found by every hearth.