He was followed by another workman, who spoke upon the advantages of co-operation between the employers and the employed. His remarks were moderate and sensible. He was, however, answered by another workman, who read statistics to show that, after a hundred years of trial, the co-operative system had not extended beyond a narrow circle. "There were too many greedy employers and too many helpless workmen. Competition narrowed the margin of profit and hardened the heart of the master, while it increased the number of the wretchedly poor, who must work at any price that would maintain life." [Applause.] "The cure must be more radical than that." [Great applause.]
He was followed by a school teacher, who thought that the true remedy for the evils of society was universal education. "If all men were educated they could better defend their rights. Education meant intelligence, and intelligence meant prosperity. It was the ignorant hordes from Europe who were crowding out the American workingmen and reducing them to pauperism." [Applause. I
Here a rough-looking man, who, I inferred, was an English miner, said he begged leave to differ from the gentleman who had last spoken. (I noticed that these workingmen, unless very angry, used in their discussions the courteous forms of speech common in all parliamentary bodies.)
"A man who knew how to read and write," he continued, "did not command any better wages for the work of his hands than the man who could not." [Applause.] "His increased knowledge tended to make him more miserable." [Applause.] "Education was so universal that the educated man, without a trade, had to take the most inadequate pittance of compensation, and was not so well off, many times, as the mechanic." [Applause.] "The prisons and alms-houses were full of educated men; and three-fourths of the criminal class could read and write. Neither was the gentleman right when he spoke of the European immigrants as 'ignorant hordes.' The truth was, the proportion of the illiterate was much less in some European despotisms than it was in the American Republic." [Applause from the foreigners present.] "Neither did it follow that because a man was educated he was intelligent. There was a vast population of the middle class, who had received good educations, but who did not have any opinion upon any subject, except as they derived it from their daily newspapers." [Applause.] "The rich men owned the newspapers and the newspapers owned their readers; so that, practically, the rich men cast all those hundreds of thousands of votes. If these men had not been able to read and write they would have talked with one another upon public affairs, and have formed some correct ideas; their education simply facilitated their mental subjugation; they were chained to the chariots of the Oligarchy; and they would never know the truth until they woke up some bright morning and found it was the Day of Judgment." [Sensation and great applause.]