PREJUDICE AGAINST INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. £19 



workmen, representing many industries, to France. But one 

 answer came back from every quarter, — tliat the i-apid progress 

 of manufactures on the continent is to be " ascribed, especially, 

 to the scientific training of the proprietors and managers of France, 

 Switzerland, Germany and Belgium, and to the elementary instruc- 

 tion which is universal among the working population of Germany 

 and Switzerland." England is already reaping the results of the 

 education of her artisans, which this investigation prompted. 



It might at first view seem hopeless to attempt the improvement 

 of great masses of workmen by means of schools, inasmuch as com- 

 paratively few can attend. But experience proves it feasible, as 

 I have just shown. Knowledge is like light, and diffuses itself on 

 every side. 



The profound thinkers that are essential to the highest progress 

 of any science are rare, but they appear oftenest in those callings 

 that have a large body of educated men, and this body of educated 

 men require the existence of industrial schools, where the teach- 

 ing of the sciences shall not be put on a footing inferior to the 

 practical training. It has not been my purpose to mark out the 

 organization of industrial schools, but simply to discuss the esti- 

 mation in which they are held. As in the first part of the address, 

 I showed the feeling that has existed against them partly with 

 and partly without reason, on the part of classically educated 

 men, so now I have attempted to deal with the feeling, that merely 

 practical men have against them from the prominence they give 

 to pure science. Those who ask these schools, agricultural, pro- 

 fessional, or technological, to teach only practice, and applications 

 of science, ask them to fly in the face of the experience of all indus- 

 trial schools and to deny the large faith they have in science. 



