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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sort to violence or measures of intimidation to carry their points. So long as strikes are peaceable, they are legitimate means of advancing the interests of labor; to what extent they are wise, means, time, and experience, will demonstrate. Yet we do not believe that it is by assuming and fostering enmities and widening the gulf between these two great classes, that the interests of the more numerous party are to be permanently subserved. It is not by measures of coercion or by the fiat of law that there is to be brought about a more equitable distribution of the products of capital and labor than now exists. Only as the laboring-classes become better informed in regard to the conditions of the question they have undertaken to settle—the principles it involves and the laws which govern a healthy social advancement—will they be enabled to cope with capitalists and secure a fairer division of the profits of industry. They must, first of all, accept the spirit of civilization, which is pacific, constructive, controlled by reason, and slowly ameliorating and progressive. Coercive and violent measures, which aim at great and sudden advantages, are sure to prove illusory.

The industrial classes must learn to organize more perfectly, to rely upon moral considerations, to demand only justice, and to wait patiently until by these means their ends can be accomplished. For these ends the resources of education must be invoked. There is a stir throughout all civilization for increased technical education, by which labor shall be made more intelligent and efficient. This is certainly important, but it is not enough. The elements of political economy and of social science ought to be introduced into general education, and until this is effectually done we cannot hope to be exempt from the consequences of the present ignorance upon these subjects.

THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION.

We return to this subject because of its extreme importance, and because it is an essential part of our legitimate work. It is not only inevitable that a periodical devoted to the popular interests of science must treat the question of its place in education and the causes which hinder its admission to that place, but this duty is made the more imperative by the fact that the newspaper press is predominantly in the interest of existing usages, and gives wide dissemination to crude and erroneous views upon the question.

The Christian Union takes ground upon this subject which we cannot think well considered, and which is certainly out of harmony with its character as an able expositor of the principles of sound reform. It says:

By a singular confusion of ideas, the popular demand for "practical" education in colleges often specifies scientific studies as having peculiarly that character. In reality, while the natural sciences supply to certain classes of workers their main intellectual capital, to professional and business men they have no more of a "practical" value than Latin and Greek. We do not impugn their usefulness as part of a general education, but it does not lie in this direction. On the other hand, there is a class of studies of the highest practical utility to every American citizen, which have been greatly neglected in our higher education those, namely, which relate to political and social science. We notice with great satisfaction the steps just taken in this direction at Yale. That university has appointed to lectureships on these branches Mr. E. L. Godkin of the Nation, and Mr. David A. Wells—both of them eminent examples of the application of thorough intellectual training to practical politics. A new professorship of political and social science has been filled by the appointment of the Rev. W. G. Sumner, one of the ablest among the younger graduates of the college. We trust that these gentlemen will have a space in the curriculum assigned to their de-