246 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



skilled and intelligent mechanics. While this first-class course would 

 naturally lead up to the second or cadet class, it should provide within 

 itself all the elements of technical instruction necessary to complete a 

 journeyman's education. 



2. A second or cadet course, which should also be complete within 

 itself, and should provide such technical instruction in all the depart- 

 ments of railway service as would fit its students for all subordinate 

 positions of responsibility and trust in the service, corresponding to 

 what is known in European schools as the foreman's course of study. 

 This course, while involving more thorough and wider theoretical in- 

 struction than the apprentice course, should, to the greatest extent 

 possible, be framed with reference to the practical mechanical opera- 

 tions of the shops and of the service generally. 



3. A third or cadet officers' course, the object of which will be to 

 give to those who graduate with honor from the second class (and who 

 have therein shown themselves possessed of ability and educational 

 qualifications above the average) further technical training, of a still 

 higher and more comprehensive type, which, when combined with 

 familiarity with the operations of the various departments of the serv- 

 ice, will go far toward qualifying the students of that course for the 

 highest positions in the company's gift. To this end, opportunity 

 should be afforded the pupils of this course, in its last year, to actively 

 participate in the production, care, repair, and improvement of railway 

 plant and in the practical operations of the service. This could readily 

 be done and with advantage to the service also by distributing these 

 students among the several departments as assistants, at the same time 

 maintaining their connection with the school for further educational 

 purposes. This course is not yet in operation. 



In the apprentice course, school-instruction should be made second- 

 ary to shop-work, while in the higher courses shop- work should always 

 be secondary to mental training. 



Although these provisions relate especially to instruction in Balti- 

 more, the plan has been drafted in a more general sense, and contem- 

 plates the gradual extension of this educational movement over the 

 entire system of the railroad. While Baltimore will always be the 

 center of such a movement, no great difficulty is apprehended in ex- 

 tending the apprentice course, at least, over the entire road, by estab- 

 lishing night-schools for drawing, mathematics, and elementary sci- 

 ence, or securing the introduction of the boys into such schools as are 

 already in operation, and the modification of their curriculum in the 

 manner indicated. 



Prior to the establishment of school-work at Mount Clare, the Bal- 

 timore and Ohio apprentices had neither incentive nor opportunity to 

 develop into intelligent workmen, so that on starting the classes it was 

 with great difficulty and only by absolute compulsion that the attend- 

 ance of about forty shop-boys was secured. They were, with few ex- 



