EDUCATION AS A HINDRANCE. 29 



sary for the purpose of acquiring a practical knowledge of a trade ; 

 without this there can be no guarantee for good and efficient work- 

 manship." Such is the dictum of one who speaks with authority from 

 the point of view of labor, and the sentiment is the expression of that 

 which all admit. Better education of the children such, in fact, as 

 is contemplated by the provisions 'of the Elementary Education Act 

 of 1870 may, it is hoped, quicken the intelligence ere the a^e is 

 reached at which apprenticeship begins : but will it do more '? Nay, 

 have we not indeed some reason rather to look askance at the work of 

 the school boards, and the scheme of education which they offer to 

 our juvenile artisan population ? Coiteris paribus, the better educated 

 our artisans are, the better workmen will they make ; but we must 

 take care that the education is of the right sort. Now, what will be 

 the verdict of future generations on learning that the education which 

 this great and powerful nation offers to the children of its artisans, to 

 the class that will form the artisans of the next generation, was of a 

 character purely literary, in no sense technical or even scientific ? It 

 is an education which, so far as it goes beyond the three elements of 

 reading, writing, and arithmetic, is framed in all its essential featm-es 

 upon an exclusively collegiate type of studies ; grammar, history, 

 geograi^hy, foreign languages, and the like, being introduced, to the 

 utter exclusion in all the most important of the successive "Stand- 

 ards " of any teaching of drawing, of mechanics, of the simplest facts 

 of science or of natural history of all, in fact, that most nearly con- 

 cerns the workman throughout his entire career. In all the construc- 

 tive trades the greater part of a workman's instructions are given to 

 him in the form of working drawings. Yet we suffer the budding 

 artisan to pass through the schools ignorant of the first rudiments of a 

 science that is as essential to his work as are the four rules of arith- 

 metic. And ought we, then, to be surprised if, in pursuance of the 

 system we have deliberately marked out for the rising generation, we 

 keep our future artisans, till they are fifteen or sixteen, employed in 

 no other work than sitting at a desk to follow, pen in hand, the literary 

 course of studies of our educational code, we discover that on arriving 

 at that age they have lost the taste for manual work, and prefer to 

 starve on a threadbare pittance as clerks or book-keepers rather than 

 by the less exacting and more remunerative labor of their hands ? At 

 the present moment, this tendency to despise a life of honorable man- 

 ual toil in straining after a supposed gentility would be truly pitiable, 

 if the proportions it has attained did not awaken more serious appre- 

 hensions. It is an evil not confined to this country alone, but it is 

 known, too, in the great cities of the States, of Germany, and of France. 

 In a recent most able work upon primary education and apprenticeship 

 in France, M. Salicis, a naval officer and cantonal delegate, speaks in 

 forcible terms of the distaste for work of the children who leave the 

 elementary schools of Paris : " These little bureaucrats, boys and girls, 



