METHODS IN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 207 



pupils have learned but one metier, and are in general better adapted 

 for small businesses than for large, their repute for steadiness, skill, 

 and general intelligence is such that the patrons have little difficulty 

 in placing their pupils when their term of apprenticeship is over, and 

 usually in circumstances where their earnings are about the average. 

 The same testimony is borne everywhere concerning the apprentices 

 of this establishment ; and the writer was informed by M, Vever, 

 President of the Syndical Chamber of Jewelers, of Paris, a gentleman 

 greatly interested in the question of technical education, and possess- 

 ing every opportunity of forming an accurate opinion, that the boys 

 of Saint Nicolas are so much more intelligent and steady than the 

 average of workmen that they are sought for by employers, and at 

 the age of thirty have usually risen to the position of foreman or 

 master. 



The third type of apprenticeship school is that of the Ecole Pro- 

 fessionelle attached to the large and flourishing printing establishment 

 of MM. Chaix et Cie. This school, founded in 1862 by M. Napoleon 

 Chaix, receives two groups of pupils, the apprenticed compositors and 

 the apprenticed printers of the house. The schoolroom and the ap- 

 prentices' composing-room, though contiguous to and overlooking the 

 great busy atelier of the firm, are distinctly separate from it. The ap- 

 prentices, of whom there are between thirty and forty, devote most of 

 their time to the practical work of composing, two hours a day only 

 being allotted to lessons in the schoolroom. Apprenticeship lasts four 

 years, during the whole of which time the apprentices receive wages 

 rising from fifty centimes to two francs fifty centimes for the composi- 

 tors ; and for the printers, who work at the machines in the great atelier 

 under the direction of a responsible master, from seventy-five centimes 

 to four francs fifty centimes a day. The teaching comprises a special 

 primary course for those whose previous schooling has been insuffi- 

 cient ; a technical course, including grammar and composition, reading 

 of proofs and correcting for the press, the study of different kinds of 

 types, engraving, and the reading and " composing " of English, Ger- 

 man, Latin, and Greek in the two latter cases from a purely typo- 

 graphical point of view, without any attempt to understand or to trans- 

 late ; lastly, a supplementary course which includes the history of 

 printing, simple notions of economics, a little mechanics and physics, 

 and a smattering of chemistry, dealing chiefly with the materials that 

 they will hereafter employ acids, oils, fats, carbon, soda, turpentine, 

 etc. Everything is done with the utmost system. Every line set up by 

 a pupil is, if possible, so much contributed to the current work of the 

 firm ; and, as time exercises are frequent, the value of rapidity in work 

 is learned. At the end of the apprenticeship the pupils elect almost 

 without exception to become emjjloyees of the firm, and enter at once 

 into the rank of participants in the yearly division of profits. Of 

 nearly seven hundred persons employed, two hundred apd fifty-eight 



