340 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



into aristocracy and commonalty, and as a result education was planned to 

 develop the learned few who were to spend their lives in literary ease, while 

 the toilers were left; to themselves. We have been like the man who is said 

 to have begun his chimney at the top. 



We have framed our systems as if our young people were to be principally 

 public speakers, instead of filling the many different places in life. 



The theory of industrial education is that it shall be so planned as to best 

 prepare the pupil to follow those pursuits which he will afterwards choose. 

 The object of education is said to be two-fold: 1st, to bring out or develop 

 power; 2d, to produce skill. These objects are quite different. A person 

 may have powerful muscles but be without skill to use them. If he should 

 try to row a boat or to swing a scythe he would fail. 



Now some adherents of the old school say we must have one kind of school 

 to give power and apother to give skill. While we say that the training for 

 skill will develop power; we believe it is not necessary to learn one thing for 

 discipline and another for skill. Many people are very fearful of the phrase 

 utilitarian. What is its meaning? Something that is useful. A philosopher 

 of ancient times defined a philosopher as one who scorned to do or learn any- 

 thing useful. 



I heard a few years ago an eloquent appeal against utilitarianism. The 

 speaker was a bishop, and he was born to wealth and ease. He could not 

 understand the hard struggle of life. I believe that education to be best 

 which is most truly utilitarian. 



I advocate industrial education for many reasons. We need in this country 

 skilled hand workers. I traveled over Michigan last year and was astonished 

 to find that not one in ten of the foremen in our shops are Americans. They 

 are nearly all foreigners whom we have had to import to carry on our indus- 

 trial enterprises, because in Europe they have long had this industrial train- 

 ing. If we had more of it we should have fewer tramps and fewer anarchists. 

 We need this industrial education to teach the dignity of labor — to teach that 

 labor should be intelligent and held in honor. There is no dignity in mere 

 brute labor ; it is only as it is directed by intelligence and skill that it 

 becomes worthy of honor. 



This will result in making labor more congenial and agreeable, so that we 

 will be less troubled with our sons hankering to measure tape or run into 

 some town office. 



One more point. Thus far we have tried industrial training for our boys 

 only. Just in the same way a couple of centuries ago all education was con- 

 fined to men, and it is only comparatively lately that it got thro' the thick 

 skull of the race that education was a good thing for women, and it seems to me 

 that every argument that applies to industrial training for young men applies 

 with equal force to extending the same advantages to women. 



What is there now open for a young woman to do ? She may teach. True, 

 but that one profession is so crowded by young women that wages for them 

 have sunk to starvation rates. 



Or they may marry for a living. Now, I have three girls, and I hope that 

 I may be able so to educate them that they shall not be comjjelled to marry 

 for a living. 



Recently I visited some institutions where this work is being done, 

 and will mention one — the Kansas Agricultural College — an offshoot, we 

 may almost say, of our own Agricultural College. 



