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 York City alone there were
24,200 children between the ages of five and fifteen years not attending
any school whatever.

To meet these conditions the workingmen outlined a comprehensive
educational program. It was not merely a literary education that the
workingmen desired. The idea of industrial education, or training for a
vocation, which is even now young in this country, was undoubtedly first