THE FRUITS OF MANUAL TRAINING. 349 



of intelligence. Wage-workers we must have, and the graduates of 

 the higher grades are not expected to be wage-workers. According to 

 the report of the President of the Chicago School Board, about one 

 and one eighth per cent of the boys in the public schools are in the 

 high-schools. From his figures it appears that, if every boy in the 

 Chicago public schools should extend his schooling through a high- 

 school, the four classes of the high-schools would contain some nine 

 thousand boys ; in point of fact, they have about four hundred. 



Superintendent Hinsdale, of Cleveland, says, " Of one hundred and 

 eight pupils (boys and girls) entering the primary school, sixty com- 

 plete the primary, twenty finish the grammar, four are found in the 

 second class of the high, and one graduates from the high-school." In 

 St. Louis the average age at which pupils withdraw from the public 

 schools is thirteen and a half years. Now, I doubt if any reflecting 

 person would consider it an unmixed good if every boy in the city 

 should go through the high-school as it is at present conducted. Under 

 the circumstances supposed all would probably admit that some change 

 in the character of the instruction would be necessary. 



From the observed influence of manual training upon boys and in- 

 directly upon the parents, I am led to claim that when the last year of 

 the grammar and the high schools include manual training, they 

 will meet a much wider demand ; that the education they afford will 

 be really more valuable ; and, consequently, that the attendance of 

 boys will be more than doubled. Add the manual elements with their 

 freshness and variety, their delightful shop exercises, their healthy in- 

 tellectual and moral atmosphere, and the living reality of their work, 

 and the hoys loill stay in school. Such a result would be an unmixed 

 good. I have seen boys doing well in a manual-training school who 

 could not have been forced to attend an ordinary school. If the city 

 of Boston shall carry out this year, as I hope it will. Superintendent 

 Seaver's plan for a public manual-training school for three hundred 

 boys, there will be, in my judgment, one thousand applications for 

 admission during the first three years. 



2. Better Intellectual Development, — I am met here with the 

 objection that I am aiming at an impossibility ; that, if I attempt to 

 round out education by the introduction of manual training, to develop 

 the creative or executive side, I shall certainly curtail it of elements 

 more valuable still ; that the educational cup is now full ; and that, if 

 I pour in my gross material notions on one side, some of the most pre- 

 cious intellectual fluid will certainly flow out on the other. 



Kow, I deny that the introduction of manual training does of neces- 

 sity force out any essential feature of mental and moral culture. The 

 cup may be, and probably is, full to overflowing, biit it is a shriveled 

 and one-sided cup. It is as sensitive and active in its own defense as 

 are the walls of the stomach, which, when overfed with ill-assorted 

 food, contracts, rebels, and overflows, but which expands and readily 



