public schools would become "not schools of charity, but schools of the
nation, to the support of which all would contribute; and instead of
being almost a disgrace, it would become an honor to have been educated
there." It was urged as an especial advantage that, as children would be
clothed and cared for at all times, the fact that poor parents could not
afford to dress their children "as decently as their neighbors" would
not prevent their attendance.

State guardianship became the battle cry of an important faction in the
Workingmen's party in New York. Elsewhere a less radical program was
advocated. In Philadelphia the workingmen demanded only that high
schools be on the Hofwyl model, whereas in the smaller cities and towns
in both Pennsylvania and New York the demand was for "literary" day
schools. Yet the underlying principle was the same everywhere. A labor
candidate for Congress in the First Congressional District of
Philadelphia in 1830 expressed it succinctly during his campaign. He
made his plea on the ground that "he is the friend and indefatigable
defender of a system of general education, which will place the citizens
of this extensive Republic on an equality; a system that will fit the
children of the poor, as well as the rich, to become our future
legislators; a system that will bring the children of the poor and the
rich to mix together as a band of Republican brethren."

In New England the workingmen's movement for equal citizenship was
simultaneously a reaction against the factory system. To the cry for a
Republican system of education was added an anti-child labor crusade.
One who did more than any other to call attention to the evils of the
factory system of that day was a lawyer by the name of Seth Luther, who,
according to his own account, had "for years lived among cotton mills,
worked in them, travelled among them." His "_Address to the Working Men