KINDERGARTENS AND MANUAL TRAINING. 375 



KINDERGARTENS MANUAL TRAINING INDUSTRIAL 



SCHOOLS. 



By Mks. II. M. PLUNKETT. 



IN 1877 a prominent Chicago law firm advertised for an office- 

 messenger. In response, more than six hundred college-bred 

 and academy-taught boys applied for the position. In the same 

 year, in the same city, a man engaged in trade put a very incon- 

 spicuous advertisement with no indication that his was a large 

 and old-established house into an inconspicuous column of a 

 daily paper, calling for the services of an office-boy and messen- 

 ger. More than three hundred answers were received many of 

 them from grown men, some of them coming into the category 

 "educated" as commonly understood. Much later than the 

 above date, the position of book-keeper and confidential clerk to 

 a down-town merchant in New York suddenly became vacant. 

 He advertised ; more than two hundred applicants responded. 

 " Which one did you take ? " queried the person to whom he was 

 relating the incident. " Not any of them ; for the fact was that, 

 on my way to my business, I learned of the sudden death of a 

 man in a business similar to my own. I knew that his affairs 

 would have to be closed up, and I knew that he had just the man 

 I wanted one who understood the ins and outs of the business to 

 perfection ; so I just stopped and told the clerk, who was at the 

 moment closing up and putting crape on the door, that when he 

 was at liberty I wished an interview with him, and I thought it 

 might result to his advantage. In a few days he came, and he 

 suits me to a dot." One of these cities it will be noticed was in 

 the young and growing West, the other was in the older and pre- 

 sumably more crowded East. 



No doubt these incidents can be matched in most of the large 

 cities of the country, and what is their moral ? What message 

 do they convey to the well-wisher of his country or his race ? 

 What was the matter with these so-called " educated " men that 

 they could find no place in one of the busiest spots on earth ; and 

 why did the merchant ignore his two hundred replies ? 



Perhaps we need to revise our ideas of what education con- 

 sists in, and certainly the merchant demanded trained faculty, and 

 instantly seized upon it because he knew that he was getting it. 



College education, simply of itself, no longer gives a man that 

 pre-eminently superior position that it once did ; in addition, he 

 must be able to bring his faculties to bear among the practical and 

 pushing men by whom he is surrounded, or he will be relegated 

 to the limbo of learned incapables, whose pathetic stories come to 

 the surface daily in the column " Situations wanted males." 



