it; where, indeed, men pass by
each other, ascending or descending in their grades of labor just as
easily and certainly as particles of water of different degrees of
temperature glide by each other--under such circumstances it is found,
as an almost invariable fact, other things being equal, that those who
have been blessed with a good common school education rise to a higher
and a higher point in the kinds of labor performed, and also in the rate
of wages received, while the ignorant sink like dregs, and are always
found at the bottom.

James K. Mills, Esq., of Boston, who has been connected with a house
that has had for the last ten years the principal direction of
cotton-mills, machine shops, and calico-printing works, in which are
constantly employed about three thousand persons, and whose opinions of
the effects of a common school education upon a manufacturing population
are the result of personal observation and inquiries, and are confined
to the testimony of the overseers and agents who are brought into
immediate contact with the operatives, expresses the conviction that the
rudiments of a common school education are essential to the attainment
of skill and expertness as laborers, or to consideration and respect in
the civil and social relations of life; that very few who have not
enjoyed the advantages of a common school education ever rise above the
lowest class of operatives, and that the labor of this class, when it is
employed in manufacturing operations which require even a very moderate
degree of manual or mental dexterity, is unproductive; that a large
majority of the overseers and others employed in situations which
require a high degree of skill in particular branches--which oftentimes
require a good general knowledge of business, and _always_ an
unexceptionable moral character--have made their way up from the
condition of common laborers, with no other advantage over a large
proportion of those they have left behind than that derived from a
better education.

A statement made from the books of one of the manufacturing companies
will show the relative number of the two classes, and the earnings of
each; and this mill, we are assured, may be taken as a fair index of all
the others. The average number of operatives employed for the last three
years is twelve hundred. Of this number there are forty-five unable to
write their names, or about three and three fourths per cent. The
average of women's wages