ost of machinery there, also, is about half as much as the
cost of the same articles with us; while our capital, when loaned,
produces nearly double the rate of English interest; yet against these
grand adverse circumstances our manufacturers, with a small per centage
of tariff, successfully compete with English capitalists in many
branches of manufacturing business. No explanation can be given of this
extraordinary fact which does not take into the account the difference
of education between the operatives in the two countries.

One of our most careful and successful manufacturers remarks that, on
substituting in one of his cotton-mills a better for a poorer educated
class of operatives, he was enabled to add twelve or fifteen per cent.
to the speed of his machinery, without any increase of damage or danger
from the acceleration. How direct and demonstrative the bearing which
facts like this have upon the wisdom of our laws respecting the
education of children in manufacturing establishments.[41]

[41] In Connecticut the statutes provide "that no child under the age
of fifteen years shall be employed to labor in any manufacturing
establishment, or in any other business in the state, unless such child
shall have attended some public or private day school where instruction
is given by a teacher qualified to instruct in orthography, reading,
writing, English grammar, geography, and arithmetic, at least three
months of the twelve months next preceding any and every year in which
such child shall be so employed. And the owner, agent, or superintendent
of any manufacturing establishment who shall employ any child in such
establishment contrary to the provisions of this act, shall forfeit and
pay for each offense a penalty of twenty-five dollars to the treasurer
of the state." In Massachusetts the forfeiture is fifty dollars. Similar
provisions exist in other American, and in several European states.

The number of females in the State of Massachusetts engaged in the
various manufactures of cotton, straw-platting, etc., has been estimated
at forty thousand, and the annual value of their labor at one hundred
dollars each on an average, or four millions of dollars for the whole.
From the facts stated in the letters of Messrs. Mills and Clark above
cited, it appears there is a difference of not less than fifty per cent.
between the earnings of the least educated and of the best educated
operatives-