630 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it ; if it is managed with a view to an income (and the school will be 

 counted a failure if its income is wanting), the boys will be kept at 

 what they can do best, and new lessons will be few and far between. 

 In such a shop the pupils will suffer too much the evils of a modern 

 apprenticeship. m 



" The common apprentice is a drudge set to execute all kinds of 

 miscellaneous jobs. There is no systematic gradation in the difficulty 

 of the exercises given him ; more than half his hours are purely wasted, 

 and the other half are spent on work unsuited to his capacity. What 

 wonder that four, five, or six years make of him a bad, unintelligent, 

 unskillful machine !" (Professor Silvanus Thompson). 



A very bright boy of seventeen years had expected last fall to en- 

 ter a pattern-shop in St. Louis as an apprentice, but was disappointed, 

 there being no vacancy in the number of apprentices allowed. He 

 therefore came to the Manual Training-School, and during the year 

 made excellent progress, not only in carpentry and wood-turning, but 

 in drawing, mathematics, and physics. When he showed me some of 

 his handiwork at the end of the year, I asked him if he would have 

 made equal progress as an apprentice. "No," said he, "I should 

 have spent most of the first year sweeping out offices and running 

 errands." 



(Since the above was written, a gentleman told me of his father's 

 experience when learning the trade of a tanner in Philadelphia, many 

 years ago. He lived in the family of his employer, and during the 

 first six months he tended the baby.) 



Self-supporting Schools. I fancy there is no more pernicious 

 fallacy than this of making a school self-supporting by manufacturing 

 for the market. Suppose you attempt to maintain one of these popu- 

 lar humbugs, a commercial college, on that theory, or to run a full 

 medical school without endowment on the self-supporting plan (the 

 students would probably write prescriptions cheap, and cut off legs for 

 half price) ; or to manage a public school of oratory and English com- 

 position on the strength of an income derived from contributions to 

 newspapers and magazines, and from orations made and delivered to 

 order. Nothing could be more absurd, and yet the cases are closely 

 parallel. No ; do not be beguiled by the seductive promise of an in- 

 come from the shop. Admit from the first the well-established fact 

 that a good school for thorough education on whatever subject costs 

 money, both for its foundation and its support. 



Closely connected is the matter of teaching particular trades, to 

 which the lads shall be strictly confined. Such a course may work well 

 in monarchies, where the groove in which one is to run is cut out for 

 him before he is born ; but it is unsuited to the soil and atmosphere of 

 America. A single trade is educationally very narrow, while their 

 number is legion. " The arts are few, the trades are many," says Mr. 

 Runkle. The arts underlie all trades; therefore let us teach them as 



