gnorant farm laborer as much as he
is ready to pay for the services of an intelligent man? And if not, why
the distinction? And if an ignorant man is not the best man upon a farm,
is he likely to be so in a shop or mill? And if not, we see how the
proprietors of factories are interested in elevating the standard of
learning, in the mills and outside. But they are not singular in this.
All classes of employers are equally concerned in the education of the
laborer; for learning not only makes his labor more valuable to himself,
but the market price of the product is generally reduced, and the change
affects favorably all interests of society. This benefit is one of the
first in point of time, and the one, perhaps, most appreciable of all
which learning has conferred upon the laborer. As each laborer, with the
same expenditure of physical force, produces a greater result, of course
the aggregate products of the world are vastly increased, although they
represent only the same number of laborers that a less quantity would
have represented under an ignorant system.

The division of these products upon any principle conceivable leaves for
the laborer a larger quantity than he could have before commanded; for,
although the share of the wealthy may be disproportionate, their ability
to consume is limited; and, as poverty is the absence or want of things
necessary and convenient for the purposes of life, according to the
ideas at the time entertained, we see how a laboring population,
necessarily poor while ignorance prevails, is elevated to a position of
greater social and physical comfort, as mind takes the place of brute
force in the industries of the world. Learning, then, is not the result
of social comfort, but social comfort is the product of intelligence,
and increases or diminishes as intelligence is general or limited. It is
not, however, to be taken as granted that each laborer's position
corresponds or answers to the sum of his own knowledge. It might happen
that an ignorant laborer would enjoy the advantages of a general
culture, to which he contributed little or nothing; and it must of
necessity also happen that an intelligent laborer, in the midst of an
ignorant population, as in Ireland or India, for example, would be
compelled to accept, in the main, the condition of those around him. But
there is no evidence on the face of society now, or in its history, that
an ignorant population, whether a laboring population