104 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



eighteen hundred and sixty-seven proved tli.it Germany could make 

 better steel and France tetter locomotives; "that England was 

 beaten, not on some points, but by some nation, on nearly all the 

 points on which she had prided herself."' The English Government 

 then sent eighty skilled workmen over to the continent to find out 

 the causes of defeat. The unanimous reply was, "Their industrial 

 education lias caused it." 



Lord .Stanley addressed the most careful inquiries to all the foreign 

 Consuls in France. Prussia. Saxony. Switzerland. Belgium, and got 

 the same answer, "'industrial education." And lately there comes 

 from England a plan tor a national system of industrial instruction 

 for the whole people, beginning in primary schools and ending in a 

 great "central technical university,'' for training professors and 

 teachers of institutions of lower rank, devoted to raising the standard 

 of industrial well-being. Instead of believing that money is the root 

 of evil, the Englishman believes it to be the root of industry, and so 

 of all good, and this change in the direction of popular education is 

 due to the lesson the English nation received at Paris and Vienna. 



The greal natural advantages which we possess will not give us 

 industrial supremacy unless we follow these examples. The Interna- 

 tional Magazim emphasizes our duty and our opportunity in strong 

 language: "With an agricultural wealth to which no limit can be 

 assigned: with mineral riches everywhere bursting through the sur- 

 face ; with water power which no mills can exhaust; not to advance, 

 not to rival the skilled industry of Europe, is not a loss merely, it is 

 a crime." The California wheat-grower and wool-grower must com- 

 pete in the Liverpool market with the wheat and wool of the world. 

 Competition in every branch of industry has become world wide, and 

 unless the American farmer and manufacturer does his best, he is 

 sure to take the lower place in the world's market. 



With gold and silver mines that supply all nations ; with forests 

 shading our hillsides; with flocks, and vineyards, and great valleys 

 teeming with their abundant harvests; we cannot be rich or gnat, 

 unless we can compete in the enlightened employment of these nat- 

 ural means and forces. The experience of all Europe teaches, " In- 

 dustrial. supremacy is the prize of industrial education." 



Let us lay the foundation of this supremacy in our primary schools, 

 carry it forward by a well-devised system of secondary technical 

 schools, and complete it in a University where prominence is given to* 

 different branches of learning, according to the directness and value 

 of these as applied to the occupations and pursuits of our people. 



Perhaps there was never a time wnen the relations of the govern- 

 ment to education needs to be discussed so thoroughly, and yet so 

 temperately. That universal intelligence is the only guarantee of 

 universal liberty, is one of the fundamental ideas of the American's 

 political faith, but the right and duty of the State to educate has been 

 better stated in monarcnial Germany than in republican America. 

 The greal Fichte said: "The end of the State is not only to live, 

 but to live nobly." And the clearest of writers upon the philosophy 

 of education, Karl Rosencranz, said: "The idea that the govern- 

 ment has the right to oversee the school, lies in the very idea of the 

 State, which is authorized and under obligations to secure the edu- 

 cation of citizens, and cannot leave their fashioning to chance. The 

 separation of the school from the State would be the destruction of 

 the school." 



