INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION AND RAILWAY SERVICE. 239 



educational qualifications, is generally within the reach of the masses, 

 the subjects taught and, as a rule, the manner of teaching them, have 

 but little practical bearing on industrial pursuits. However, in the 

 last few years considerable progress has been made in introducing a 

 substantial help to industrial education that of manual training- 

 schools and already their feasibility and desirability as a feature of 

 popular education have been practically demonstrated. Well-equipped 

 schools of this character are to be found in St. Louis, Chicago, Toledo, 

 Philadelphia, and Boston. 



The secret of the popularity of this kind of education is to be found 

 in the natural and practical combination it makes of intellectual and 

 manual training. Both thought and action are developed equally, and 

 the skill acquired at school, together with the respect for industrial 

 pursuits there fostered, makes their pupils useful, wealth-producing 

 citizens. 



It is undeniable that our national prosperity has been greatly pro- 

 moted by the pre-eminence of certain of our manufactures in the 

 markets of the world ; but our success in this respect has been due 

 not to the superior intellectual cultivation or manual skill of our native 

 artisans, but to very different causes, which we may regard as, in com- 

 parison, accidental ; and it is sad to reflect what greater success might 

 have been achieved by combining with these causes that high degree 

 of intelligence and skill that European nations are cultivating in their 

 industrial classes. While the value of our great workshops as prac- 

 tical technical schools may be admitted, the ordinary workshop does 

 not yet combine mental instruction with manual training. At the same 

 time, our science-teaching is of too high a grade to be assimilable by 

 the ordinary mechanic and mechanical apprentice, and is too theoreti- 

 cal to be adaptable to the current work of the shops. There is too 

 little application of science to our handicraft, and a lack of intelligent 

 effort to teach apprentices in our workshops the mechanical dexterity 

 which they are supposed to acquire there. Now that the old system 

 of apprenticeship is becoming obsolete, the question of what shall take 

 its place in the way of educating and training the youth of our work- 

 ing-classes becomes an important consideration. 



Provision for teaching mechanic-trades was attempted in the organi- 

 zation of the agricultural colleges, but most of these institutions have 

 drifted away from the original intention of the authors of the act, and 

 there is in them, generally, little or no effort to combine theoretical 

 instruction with practical mechanical training in other than those 

 branches of knowledge closely related to agricultural pursuits ; and 

 much remains to be done before they can be of any material advan- 

 tage to manufacturers and others requiring skilled labor. Our pri- 

 vately endowed schools do this work more directly and efficiently, but 

 not as perfectly as they ought. Our university special departments, 

 and our technological schools, even aggregated, are insignificant in 



