erty: being a Proposition to make it Equal among
the Adults of the Present Generation: and to Provide for its Equal
Transmission to Every Individual of Each Succeeding Generation, on
Arriving at the Age of Maturity_," published in 1829. This Skidmorian
program was better known as "agrarianism," probably from the title of a
book by Thomas Paine, _Agrarian Justice, as Opposed to Agrarian Law and
to Agrarian Monopoly_, published in 1797 in London, which advocated
equal division by means of an inheritance tax. Its adoption by the New
York workingmen was little more than a stratagem, for their intention
was to forestall any attempts by employers to lengthen the working day
to eleven hours by raising the question of "the nature of the tenure by
which all men hold title to their property." Apparently the stratagem
worked, for the employers immediately dropped the eleven-hour issue.
But, although the workingmen quickly thereafter repudiated agrarianism,
they succeeded only too well in affixing to their movement the mark of
the beast in the eyes of their opponents and the general public.

Except during the brief but damaging "agrarian" episode, the demand for
free public education or "Republican" education occupied the foreground.
We, who live in an age when free education at the expense of the
community is considered practically an inalienable right of every child,
find it extremely difficult to understand the vehemence of the
opposition which the demand aroused on the part of the press and the
"conservative" classes, when first brought up by the workingmen. The
explanation lies partly in the political situation, partly in the moral
character of the "intellectual" spokesmen for the workingmen, and partly
in the inborn conservatism of the tax-paying classes upon whom the
financial burden would fall. That the educational situation was
deplorable much proof is unnecessary. Pennsylvania had some public
schools, but parents had to declare themselves too poor to send their
children to a private school before they were allowed the privilege of
sending them there. In fact so much odium attached to these schools that
they were practically useless and the State became distinguished for the
number of children not attending school. As late as 1837 a labor paper
estimated that 250,000 out of 400,000 children in Pennsylvania of school
age were not in any school. The Public School Society of New York
estimated in a report for 1829 that in New