Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/31

 engage the attention of the legislator, is the only true object of education, free or otherwise. When politicians have talked of the necessity of national education, the argument they have used was that Germans are better chemists than we are. When they praised the usefulness of modern languages it was in terms of commercial utility. "Modern languages, in fact" (a recent critic remarked), "make a good bagman." It is inept to despair of free education because free education has produced no very satisfactory results while conceived of as a process of shoving undesired knowledge into the children of the poor. Looking, as everyone not hidebound by pessimism must look, for a great enlightenment of the law-giving class when the system of party politics, already beginning to show signs of decay, has ceased to hold all legislation in its blighting hand, we have every reason to expect that the true uses of education will be perceived and attained long before the end of the period contemplated when we speak of the new age. And then, one very great factor in the servant question will have been satisfactorily solved, even if other conditions have not conducted us nearly all the way to the solution beforehand.

For, while making every allowance for the evil effects of education, wrongly conceived and improperly administered, on the character of women destined to become servants, it must