INDUSTRIAL TRAINING FOR BOYS AND GIRLS, 479' 



What are some of our schools now? Places where the cramming process- 

 begins early and continues without intermission, through school life, with no 

 thought or attention to any physical development. ^Tis no wonder that the 

 end of school life finds so many enervated young men and women. We hear 

 of innumerable wonderfully bright boys and girls, but how many of them 

 become exceptionally bright men and women. Somewhere they have been 

 stranded. I would that our public schools taught practical things. That 

 school or education is a failure that leaves a person, at the end of school life, 

 in a condition unfitted to maintain himself. 



Theoretically, our public schools are for the poor. We say education is nec- 

 essary to prevent pauperism; to prepare the poor to become useful citizens; 

 we must have men and women who are to be self-supporting. But practically, 

 our high schools are for the rich. They are maintained at an enormous 

 expense ; let us see in what respect they benefit the poor. The washerwoman's 

 and the day laborer's homes are taxed equally with those of the banker's and 

 merchant's, to maintain a higher education which is simply a luxury, or to 

 gratify a peculiar taste which only persons of leisure and wealth can indulge 

 in, for it is an undeniable fact that the vast majority of the poorer class of 

 children are obliged to leave the school to maintain themselves or help in the 

 support of others, before reaching the higher grades. 



Of what practical use is Latin, German, speculative astronomy, the name 

 and reign of the Csesars, if the actual necessities of life are to be earned by^ 

 days and years of manual labor? 



Of what use to a girl of fifteen years who must needs earn her living, is 

 this example: '' At thirty cents a square yard, what will be the cost of plas- 

 tering a cubical cistern which contains three hundred barrels?" 



I think you will agree with me in saying that for the class of people for- 

 whom the public schools were established, a school should teach household 

 economy, the chemistry of cooking, how to cut and make garments and needle- 

 work. Such knowledge, combined with her books, would be a revelation to a 

 girl's life hitherto unknown. 



Two years ago I visited one of these industrial schools in Philadelphia. 

 The girls were making garments. The boys were designing, doing metal 

 work, wood-carving and using various tools in quite an astonishing manner. 

 The school was maintained the same as the public school, being, in fact, a 

 part of it, the pupils meeting two days in each week at the industrial school 

 and giving four days in each week to their books; and so successful was their 

 work and so well had the pupils acquitted themselves that one of the teachers 

 told me there was a far greater demand for help from these schools than 

 could possibly be supplied. Why? Because these boys and girls had been 

 started on the right road. They were taught industry and proficiency, and 

 there is never a time when skilled labor is not in demand. 



It should be every woman's pride to know how to work. Some will do 

 much, some less. I have frequently met young ladies who boast that they do 

 nothing. One lovely young girl said to me once: " I don't know how to do 

 a thing. I can't sew and I don't know how to cook; and I never make my 

 bed, we keep a girl and I don't have to." 



To such I can only say, we should have had a school that at least taught 

 you that it was an accomplishment to work. There have been many culti- 

 vated women who have considered the management of their own home their 

 rarest gift. Even Mrs. Somerville, who was famous for her mathematical 



