TECHNICAL SCHOOLS 257 



have cheapened products everywhere, while increasing the rewards of 

 labor; the beef of our southwest and. the wheat of the northwest can 

 be sold in London at profit to the producer, and famine in any part 

 of the civilized world is almost impossible; the coal of southwestern 

 Virginia has been sold in Boston at profit for less than the freight to 

 tidewater, thirty years ago, when the transporting companies were 

 losing money; improved methods of refining petroleum have reduced 

 the cost of illuminating oil to a small part of the price of thirty-five 

 years ago, have carried light literally into the dark places of earth, 

 have lengthened man's day by three hours and have given to agricul- 

 tural communities a social and intellectual life previously impossible; 

 mechanical and sanitary engineers have made possible the compulsory 

 introduction into tenements of comforts and conveniences which, half 

 a century ago, were considered luxuries even in the homes of the 

 wealthy. These and a multitude of other changes for the better, due 

 to men trained in applied science, for the most part in schools of 

 applied science, have in very truth brought the ends of the world to- 

 gether and given us a better sense of the brotherhood of man. One 

 may look forward confidently to the time when bricklaying will be as 

 dependent on scientific principles as brickmaking now is, when the 

 laborer will be a skilled workman and the mechanic a graduate of the 

 schools; when in all our literary institutions training in every depart- 

 ment will be supplemented by drill in the scientific mode of thought, 

 that men may be taught how to make inductions safely. 



That no young man was found anxious or even desirous of spending 

 his life as teacher of engineering at meager salary amid undesirable 

 surroundings, practically without any reward except that of a good 

 conscience, is not surprising. There would have been ground for sur- 

 prise if one had been found. No doubt similar success would have 

 attended a hunt among law schools. It is probable that not more than 

 a few score of persons had ever heard that teaching of engineering is 

 a part of missionary work, and it is equally probable that no one, aside 

 from the few score, had ever thought of it as a possibility any more 

 than that of teaching American law. It might have been equally diffi- 

 cult, prior to the establishment of medical missions, to find volunteers 

 in a medical school. 



Men, desirous of spending their life in work merely for the good 

 they may do or who are willing to devote themselves to their work for 

 the work's sake, without reference to their own future or to that of 

 their families, be they geologists, ethnologists or missionaries, are very 

 few — and one may say, that, all in all, it is well for the race that the 

 number of such self-sacrificing men and women is small. Persons of 

 that type choose some course which will lead to the attainment of their 

 object. Those desiring to be missionaries take either medical or theo- 



VOL. LXXII. — 17. 



