30 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



outlaws from real labor by no fault of their own, come naturally to the 

 end of their school course with one fear before them that of being 

 forced to become workmen and workwomen ; but Avith one wish also, 

 the boys to become clerks, the girls shopwomen. And hence this un- 

 defined, uncertain, overstocked class of book-kee2:)ers, cashiers, sales- 

 men, clerks, agents with a thousalid qualifications, scorning the cap 

 and blouse for the sake of broadcloth and silk hat ; and the correspond- 

 ing class, still more to be pitied, of young ladies, of no shop, perhaps, 

 and some with the coveted bonnet, but, alas ! how pi'ocured ? " 



Obviously, with such facts as these staring us in the face, we must 

 admit a flaAv in the training given in our primary schools if its result 

 is in so large a number of cases to destroy the natural capacity for 

 manual labor. The fault is not so much in the amount of education 

 as in the nature of the studies. For many trades the training of the 

 hand to work may, and in some must, begin at an earlier age than that 

 at which many children leave the elementary school. In some trades, 

 indeed, the masters definitely refuse to take apprentices above a cer- 

 tain age ; if they did take them the union would interfere. The taste 

 for manual work is imbibed at a very early age, and there is not want- 

 ing evidence to prove most distinctly that even a veiy sm'^11 amount 

 of manual labor introduced into the elementary school serves to keep 

 alive the capacity for active employment, and the manipulative skill of 

 the fingers. 



The first and most obvious step to be taken to bring about the 

 iirgently needed remedy is to render at least permissive, if not authori- 

 tative, a reform more or less sweeping in character in the instruction 

 given in our elementary schools to boys and girls between the ages of 

 ten and fourteen. For this class of children the provisions of our ex- 

 isting educational code could not possibly be more imsatisfactory than 

 they are, when regarded from the point of view that these children 

 will in a few months have to work for a part at least of their own 

 living. The crumbling edifice of apprenticeship is made to repose 

 upon a basis of literary studies which positively unfit the young ap- 

 prentice to enjoy the few benefits which that obsolete institution can 

 still offer. 



The case is beset, then, with a double difficulty : that while the old 

 system of apprenticeship is less and less able to afford a training wor- 

 thy the name to the child of the artisan, the character of the educa- 

 tion given him not only does not make up for that which apprentice- 

 ship can not now give him, but even predisposes him against the 

 career of manual toil to which apprenticeship is the necessary and only 

 adequate introduction. The reform needed, then, as a first step, is the 

 substitution of certain technical and scientific studies for some of the 

 literary studies at present prescribed. Not that these literary studies 

 are not in themselves good quite the reverse ; only, they must be de- 

 ferred till a little later in the educational course. Among the subjects 



