234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



England and to some extent in the United States, a falling back in the 

 standard of manufactured products, and decline of trade in them, in 

 favor of those countries in which, as in Germany, excellence and at- 

 tractiveness in the executed work are recognized as entitled to equal 

 consideration with the capitalist's desire for immediate profits and the 

 workman's championship of " organized labor." 



This tendency for it is still, happily, in the United States a tend- 

 ency rather than an accomplished fact has been recognized most 

 quickly by others than the parties who should seem to be most directly 

 interested ; and the efforts to counteract it have led to the establish- 

 ment of several technical and art schools, either as university depart- 

 ments or on independent footings, some of which have proved them- 

 selves very efficient. 



It has also engaged the attention of a number of manufacturing 

 establishments and other corporations employing large bodies of work- 

 men, who have had the sagacity to perceive that their permanent 

 interests were identified with their turning out the best products. 

 Among these was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, which 

 in 1881 commended to Dr. W. T. Barnard, assistant to the president, 

 a proposition for the establishment of a technical school for scientific 

 and mechanical instruction, to examine into and report upon. Without 

 waiting for his full report, the company, under Dr. Barnard's manage- 

 ment, made a start of such a school in 1885, in connection with its 

 shops at Mount Clare. Dr. Barnard's report has just appeared, and 

 covers a wide ground, including a sketch of the effects of technical 

 education in Europe ; a review of its progress and present status in the 

 United States ; discussions of the need of more thorough and extended 

 technical instruction in Baltimore, and of the advantages which the 

 Baltimore and Ohio Company, together with other railway interests, 

 would derive from a thorough system of this character ; and a pro- 

 gramme for inaugurating systematic technical instruction in the service 

 of that company. 



To prepare himself more thoroughly for his work, Dr. Barnard, 

 besides studying the subject in books, made personal examinations of 

 the principal existing technical schools in the United States and Eu- 

 rope. The result of this investigation was so to impress him with the 

 vital importance of technical education to the industrial and commer- 

 cial interests of the United States in general as well as with the par- 

 ticular concerns he at first had in view ; and also with the almost 

 universal ignorance of its potency displayed by those whom it would 

 most beneficially affect, that he has deemed it a duty to make his report 

 one that would be generally useful. 



"In Europe," says the author, " the necessity of technical educa- 

 tion for industrial laborers, felt and freely acknowledged many years 

 ago, was forced into prominence through the increasing rivalry be- 

 tween manufacturers and other producers competing with like articles 



