Culture...is a grand thing for the workingman. ...There is often a vast difference, however, between theory and practice; between the ideal and the real....He has to work ten hours a day; sometimes he walks a mile or two before and after work, and saws wood when he comes home. In that case he has not much energy left for culture and education, especially if the children have the whooping cough, and his wife is worn out working. As far as culture is concerned, mental labor, if severe, is worse than bodily labor, as it leaves the mind so exhausted as to be incapable of further effort after the day's work is done. So you can see in the case of severe labor, either bodily or mental for small wages a man's whole existence is necessarily a sacrifice for the means of sustaining mere animal life. All culture or improvement of mind is out of the question .... The object of a labor union is to remove the cause and the necessity for such cases, and to make it possible for a man to live by his labour independently as a man ought to live.51

Hamilton's Palladium of Labour asserted that shorter hours give:

Opportunities for study and reflection, and mental improvement. They elevate the social and intellectual standing of the laborer. They prevent his being so enervated and depressed by ceaseless toil that all the spirit and manhood is worked out of him and he is ready to submit to anything..52

Moreover, mechanization was attacked:

The continual drive and hurry--the monotonous routine incessant application to tasks which frequently do not of themselves stimulate the faculties or sharpen the intellect if too long continued tends to reduce the modern laborer to the level of the machines among which he works.53

Agitate

In view of the harsh conditions of factory labour, it is not surprising that in answer to the demand for loyal, punctual and non-disruptive workers on the part of industrial capitalists, and to the promise to provide them made by Ryerson and his fellow common school promoters, the Palladium of Labor urged workers to:

Educate first, agitate afterwards. Ignorance, superstition and timerity are the weapons which our oppressors have used more effectively against us in the past. Secure an education at any cost, put the ballot to its proper use, and then the ... venerable structure of legal robbery, alias monopoly, will shake to its centre .... 54

The Palladium found the curriculum of the common schools to be class-biased (e.g. "schools love to dwell too much on the achievements of professional men")55 and workers must not be seduced by "class" education of this kind. 56 Phillips Thompson, a Toronto radical journalist, observed that the common. schools taught reading, but then gave students "dime novels for perusal, having previously given them a taste for such reading". 57 In Thompson's view, as characterized by Graff, "Such an education--and use of literacy--was hardly desirable; it would not benefit the working class". 58 The Palladium called for a worker who was both a "Reader and a Thinker".59

In summary, various spokesmen for the working class in the 19th century in Canada rejected the theme of domestication and control propounded by Ryerson and other middle class school reformers. They sought an education, and a kind of literacy, which would develop their powers of critical thought and contribute to their independence and power as a class.