Note 105 — XII. SOME ENGLISH WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE.

Later in the century Locke recommended that “working schools should be set up in every parish,” (see Fox-Bourne’s Locke, or Cambridge edition of the Thoughts c. Ed., App. A, p. 189). The Quakers seem to have early taken up “industrious education.” John Bellers, whose Proposals for Raising a College of Industry (1696) was reprinted by Robt. Owen, has some very good notions. After advising that boys and girls be taught to knit, spin, &c., and the bigger boys turning, &c., he says, “Thus the Hand employed brings Profit, the Reason used in it makes wise, and the Will subdued makes them good” (Proposals, p. 18). Years afterwards in a Letter to the Yearly Meeting (dated 1723), he says, “It may be observed that some of the Boys in Friends’ Workhouse in Clerkenwell by their present employment of spinning are capable to earn their own living.”