These conclusions, together
with the recollections of his experience at Hofwyl, led him to advocate
a new system of education, which came to be called "state guardianship."
State guardianship was a demand for the establishment by the state of
boarding schools where children should receive, not only equal
instruction, general as well as industrial, but equal food and equal
clothing at the public expense. Under this system, it was asserted,
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.
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