EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.
TO THE EDITOR or THE SPECTATOR.
MalielleSler,:::i October leee.
SIR—In your reference to the letter with which I troubled you last week, you have fallen into a misstatement of my argument, which, as it was uninten- tional, I am sure you will freely correct. You say I "controvert the opinion expressed by the witnesses before Mr. SLANEr's Committee, as regards the poverty of the Lancashire weavers," and that I " calculate that a man with a wife and six children may earn 2/. a week by the help of two of the children." You add, that I " afterward ii admit," that many Lancashire weavers are starving on their 4s. or Gs. a week, and these, you say, " cannot beexpected to pay any thing for education." You err in saying that I controvert the statements regarding the poverty of the weavers : their destitution is past contradiction. The people of whom I speak as earning 10s. each weekly, are the factory operatives, not hand loom weavers, many of whom earn 20s. and 30s. weekly ; whilst the average wages of the whole body are 108. These are the people of whom, I centend, that, earning so much, they can, if they value it, pay for the education of their chil- dren. On the other hand, I admit most freely, that numbers of weavers are "starving on their 4s. or 5s. a week." I say with you, that they cannot be expected to pay any thing for education :" but I contend, at the same time, that whether. they can be "expected" to pay for it or not, the class thus crippled pecuniarily are one of the best-informed among the productive orders ; thus shownig, as I submit, that the volunteer sympathy of the education-mongers
is entirely uncalled-for, inasmuch as it is seen that those olio have an appre. ciation of its value will secure education for themselves, whilst with those is ho have it not, compulsion is not the stimulus proper to be applied.
The ground taken by you that "it is not the money payment at the school, so much as the need of help at home, when both parents are out all day at work, and the expenses and trouble of providing clean and decent clothing, which deters parents from sending their children to school," is an entirely new ground, cutting up by the roots the arguments of Dr. KAY and Mr. W000, but at the same time having little truth ; as, if you had a practical knowledge of our social condition, I think you would discover.
Yours obediently, in haste, JAMES WHEELER.
[If Mr. WHEELER will only read the article on which he comments, he will find that the statement quoted in the last paragraph of his letter, rests upon, and is nearly in the same words as a portion of Mr. Iliimett. Woon's evidence, given in the Spectator. Mr. Woon appears to have had more practical experience than any other witness examined by the Committee. Time explanation respecting the different classes of operatives was necessary to the right understanding of Mr. WHEELER'S letter.—Eo.:1
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