Besides the monopoly of land, money and public conveniences, there is another kind of monopoly still, which may appear rather strange and new to be thus classed, but it is nevertheless a terrible tyrant. I refer to the monopoly of education. I hold that a just government is in duty bound to see to it that all its children of both sexes have the same and equal opportunities for acquiring education, and that every person of adult age shall have graduated in the highest departments of learning, as well as in the arts, sciences and practical mechanics. Every person should be compelled to acquire a practical knowledge of some productive branch of labor, because the time will come when all people will be obliged to produce at least as much as they consume, or earn what they consume, as the paid agents of producers. What a revolution would that accomplish? If every person in the world was to work at production two hours a day there would be a larger aggregate produced than there is now. Therefore every person must learn the art of production, and thus be equal in resources to any other person, and Government must undertake the compulsory industrial education of all its children.
Thus I could continue analysis upon analysis, until not a stone in the foundations of our social structure would be left unturned, and all would be found unworthy of our civilization—our boasted Christian civilization. I think Christianity has been preached at, long enough. I go for making a practical application of it at the very foundations of society. I believe in recognizing the broad principle of all religion—that we are all children of one great common parent, God, which, since it disproves the propositions of the Church, that at least a large portion of us are the children of the devil, and renders the services of the clergy to save us from that inheritance unnecessary, will abolish our present system of a licensed and paid ministry. Thirty-five thousand ministers are paid twenty-five millions dollars annually for preaching the gospel in cathedrals costing two hundred and fifty millions dollars; and how many of them ever teach any fact other than that Jesus was crucified, just as though that would save us from the sloughs of ignorance in which we are sunk? Which one of them dare tell his congregation the truth, as he, if he be not a blockhead, knows it? I here and now impeach the clergy of the United States as dishonest and hypocritical, since the best of them acknowledge that they do not dare to preach the whole truth, for, if they should, they would have to preach to empty seats—an admission sufficiently damnable to consign them to the contempt of the world and to the hell of which they prate so knowingly, but whose location they have not been able to determine, and to light the torch which shall fire the last one of these palatial mockeries of true religion.