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industry, but I venture to say that its best furniture is designed by for- 

 eigners and is but a servile copy of the French and English furniture 

 of the last century. Why should not Michigan furniture be as renowned 

 for its genuine artistic merit as it is for its quantity and its cheapness? 

 If we had a technical school of furniture design we might make Michigan 

 furniture of the beginning of the twentieth century as intrinsically 

 valuable as the French furniture of the eighteenth century. Our design- 

 ers and artists are mostly foreigners, and the best designers and artists 

 «tay in Europe. If an artist is born here, whether a musician, a painter, 

 a sculptor or a worker in wood or metal or in textiles, he must go to 

 Europe to get his training. Such things ought not to be, and will not be 

 when this country is properly provided with schools of art and design. 



Another need of our times is for well skilled journeymen in the trades. 

 Common mechanics, able to earn |2 to |2.50 per day, are plenty enough, 

 but the highly skilled fine workman worth |4 and $5 a day is a scarce 

 article. Our shops as at present organized with their lack of apprentice- 

 ship system, and our trades unions with their methods of leveling all 

 members to one grade, are not calculated to make high-priced workmen. 

 A man who gets |2 a day in a shop is worth to his employer but little 

 more, for he can be easily replaced by as good a man at the same pay, but 

 the man who gets |4 is usually worth to his employer and the the com- 

 munity which receives the finished product of his skill, far more than 

 his wages, and if he dies or moves away his place is not easily filled. 

 If we get highlj^ skilled workmen from Europe they are not apt to be 

 the best. The best ones have good positions in Europe and are content 

 to stay there. The greater the number of highly skilled and high priced 

 workmen the state has, the more prosperous is the state. How are we to 

 get them? The shops do not make them, the trades unions do not, the 

 apprenticeship system by which they were once made is dead, and Europe 

 will send us only the second best.. If we wish the best, there seems to be 

 no way left in which to obtain them but the establishment of trade 

 schools. A beginning in such schools has been made in New York and 

 Philadelphia by private munificence, and no doubt they will be in time 

 established all over the country, but a public opinion in their favor must 

 ■first be created before they will multiply to any great extent. 



The State of Michigan has done a noble work in founding her Agri- 

 cultural College, she has done wisely in adding to it a mechanical depart- 

 ment. Let us hope she will soon continue the good work by founding a 

 school of industrial art and design and a system of trade schools for 

 the training of highly skilled workmen. She has a grand geographical 

 situation, surrounded by the great lakes, an ideal position for commerce, 

 a fine climate, a fertile soil, is wonderfully rich in resources of the forest 

 and the mine. What more does she need? A race of broad minded, well 

 educated and highly skilled men. Such men it is the province of the 

 schools to furnish. Let Michigan give a generous support to the tech- 

 nical and industrial schools she now has and provide liberally for those 

 trade schools and art schools she will need in the days to come. She 

 can make no better financial investment, and nothing else that she can 

 do will contribute so much to her development as a prosperous and 

 iiappy State. 

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