It was easier for the reformers to secure a monopoly on the meaning and practice of Protestant and republican common schooling than it was to attract or compel attendance at their common schools. The reformers had formulated the solution to all social problems, or so they believed. They had designed the ultimate institution for the socialization of American youth. Their task was now to catalyze public opinion and raise public monies to pay for its operation. It has been assumed that the reformers were the primary agents in the establishment and selling of the common school movement. This may or may not be true. What is certainly the case, however, is that without the direct and continual assistance of their friends, allies, and supporters from the business world, the reformers would have accomplished very little indeed. Though the most effective of ideologists, they were incapable by themselves of bringing about substantive reforms, either in the schools or in any other social institution. As Alexander Field has suggested, “Perhaps it is not Mann, after all, who deserves the full-size statue in front of the Massachusetts State House, complete with the inscription, ‘Father of the American Public School.’ ” For Mann would never have become secretary to the board if not first nominated by Edmund Dwight, a wealthy cotton textile manufacturer who persuaded Mann to take the job and supplemented his salary by $500 a year. Dwight was not the only successful businessman to support the common school crusade. The state boards, in Massachusetts as elsewhere, were chosen from a relatively small group of wealthy merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, and clergy. The lawyers and clergy invariably catered to the manufacturers and merchants, making the occupational diversity on the boards much less significant than might appear. It is impossible to know who the primary agents of reform were—the businessmen behind the scenes or the reformers on the front lines. What is known, however, is that the two groups worked well together, the reformers supplying the theoretical arguments and propaganda, and the businessmen, the money and political clout.
