INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION AND RAILWAY SERVICE. 243 



acquiring theory and practice in the same place and at the same time. 

 The chasm between our schools and our workshops is not bridged, 

 and consequently manual skill and intelligence remain divorced. All 

 our higher schools, and even our technological schools, turn out stu- 

 dents who are well up in theory, but deficient in practice. It is at 

 the same time difficult to procure at any price men who combine su- 

 perior skill, comprehensive mechanical knowledge, and general intelli- 

 gence in such proportions as to make them valuable as foremen, man- 

 agers, and specialists in mechanical pursuits or in the operating 

 branches of railway service. Graduates of technological schools, when 

 introduced into these positions, are apt to continue to show themselves 

 more theoretical than practical. This constitutes an objection to de- 

 pending on men of this class. The Pennsylvania Railroad pursues 

 the plan of exacting of the graduates of technological institutions 

 entering its service a novitiate in the construction and repair shops 

 at Altoona before they are permitted to enter active service. Many 

 young graduates of technical schools so highly value the opportunity 

 of studying the scientific methods and enjoying the instruction of the 

 Altoona shops as it is said to disregard pecuniary compensation, in 

 a wise desire to avail of the fine training obtainable there. At the same 

 time, this instruction is believed to be neither so specific nor so thor- 

 ough as it should be. 



" Many of the discoveries of the day are not used because workmen 

 do not understand them, or are incompetent or unwilling to utilize 

 them, and there is also an acknowledged deficiency in the ability of 

 railroad employes to determine, with scientific accuracy, the shapes 

 and dimensions which are best adapted to stand the strains of the 

 various working parts of the locomotives and other machinery used by 

 railroad companies. Though much has been done in this direction by 

 specialists, it is more than probable, from their testimony and from 

 the deficiencies of such machinery, that scarcely a tithe of the facts 

 that may and ought to be known in this matter are yet discovered, 

 or, where known, availed of. Such investigations, owing to the scar- 

 city of men combining both practical and theoretical knowledge, are 

 so costly and uncertain, and require so much skill and technical train- 

 ing to conduct them, that manufacturing companies can not often 

 afford to hire specialists or bear the expense of experimenting ; but in 

 a school connected with railway-shops, under competent guidance and 

 instructors of ability, much may be done, as a part of the school and 

 shop-work instruction, that will, at the same time, accomplish desirable 

 results in other fields. It is the testimony of many of our best edu- 

 cated engineers that the engineering profession in all its departments 

 is continually hampered by the want of more extensive and more ac- 

 curate experiments. They say that ' in far too many matters they 

 have nothing to rely on but the imperfect or imperfectly reported re- 

 sults of antiquated experiments.' The difficulty is, that most of their 



