AN AMERICAN MANUAL TRAINING-SCHOOL. 633 



are practical men and women, and you wish now to sit down and 

 count the cost. 



We set out in St. Louis to have the best of everything. We 

 bought the best tools and put in the best furniture. We have plenty 

 of room and light and pure air. We aim to have good teachers and 

 all necessary appliances. Our capacity is about two hundred and 

 forty boys, in three classes of one hundred, eighty, and sixty, in the 

 first-year, second-year, and third-year class respectively. 



Our building, complete, cost about $33,000 



Our tools and school-furniture 16,000 



If we add the cost of the lot (150 x 106| feet) 14,400 



"We have, as the total cost of our plant $63,400 



Where land is cheap, and less or lighter machinery is used, less 

 money would suffice, but let no one deceive himself by supposing that 

 the reform proposed is to be at once a money-saving one. Such a 

 school costs money, but it is a grand investment. Said one of our 

 benefactors to me not ten days ago, "I feel better satisfied with 

 the money I have put into the Manual Training-School than with any 

 other money I have invested in St. Louis." 



As to the cost of construction, the shop is about as expensive per 

 hour as the recitation and drawing rooms. Good mechanics, fairly 

 educated, who are at the same time endowed with the divine gift of 

 teaching, are rare. We have a first-class machinist and an expert 

 blacksmith, and pay each twelve hundred dollars per year. The size 

 of our divisions is generally limited to twenty members in drawing 

 we shall occasionally " double up." 



Incidentals wood, iron, paper, etc. and the wear and tear of 

 tools amounted last year to about ten dollars per head. The total 

 cost of supplies and instructions and all incidentals, next year, is esti- 

 mated to be seventy-five dollars per pupil. 



How then, say you, can this costly reform be accomplished ? The 

 public schools have no funds to spare ; salaries are still too low, and 

 the demand for extensions outruns the supply. As Colonel Jacobson, 

 of Chicago, has said : " The alternative before you is more and better 

 education, at great expense, or a still greater amount of money wasted 

 on soldiers and policemen, destruction of property, and stoppage of 

 social machinery. The money which the training would cost will be 

 spent in any event. It would have been money in the pocket of Pitts- 

 burg if she could have caught her rioters of July, 1877, at an early 

 period of their career, and trained them, at any expense, just a little 

 beyond the point at which men are likely to burn things promiscuously. 

 It is wiser and better and cheaper to spend our money in training good 

 citizens than in shooting bad ones." 



How to go to* Work. There are two ways of going to work : 



1. Cut down somewhat, if necessary, the curriculum of higher 



