John Bellers (1654 – 8 February 1725) was an English educational theorist and Quaker, author of Proposals for Raising a College of Industry of All Useful Trades and Husbandry (1695).
[1] He rapidly became active in meetings and in the Quaker community as a whole, purchasing 10,000 acres (40 km2) of land in Pennsylvania in 1685 for Huguenot refugees and for many other purposes [citation needed].
The first edition of the tract ends with an appeal for funding – "An Epistle to Friends Concerning the education of Children" – in favour of the college, signed by about forty-five leading Quakers.
They included William Penn, Robert Barclay, Thomas Ellwood, John Hodgskin, Leonard Fell and Charles Marshall.
Bellers argued that if all "the present idle hands of the poor of this nation" were put to work, it would bring England "as much treasure as the mines give to Spain".
[8] In About the Improvement of Physick, published in 1714, Bellers advocated a national system of hospitals, which were to treat the poor and act as training schools for new doctors.