186 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



You will there see that Prussia alone gives industrial education in 

 various branches to over 11,000 men. If you wish to see how public- 

 spirited individuals have done this, visit the draughting-rooms of the 

 Cooper Institute, and Worcester Institute, and Lafayette College. 



Already the value of this is known to our manufacturers. Mr. 

 Stebbins tells us that one silver-ware establishment in the city of New 

 York pays a graduate of one of these foreign schools, for making de- 

 signs and patterns, as high a salary as our Empire State gives its 

 Governor. 



But it may be said, "The French are naturally artistic; our people 

 are not." But, look at history; see how it disposes of these short and 

 easy excuses for doing nothing. The French are descended, on one 

 side, from the most unartistic nation of antiquity, and on the other 

 from painted barbarians. As to the former, one of their greatest poets 

 boasted that his fellow-Romans could tyrannize over the world, but 

 had no capacity for art. As to the latter, Guizot, one of the greatest 

 of statesmen and historians, shows that the barbarian ancestors of the 

 French had the same fundamental ideas as American savages. 



When our ancestors were savages, their ancestors were savages. 

 It is only a few generations since, if they wished for good artistic 

 work, they had to send to Italy for it. The French are " naturally 

 artistic " because Liancourt, and other patriots like him, began, a hun- 

 dred years ago, to create those great systems of education — scientific, 

 industrial, and artistic — which have given the French almost the mo- 

 nopoly in supplying products of skill and beauty to the markets of 

 the whole world. 



To complete the system provided by the great congressional act 

 of 1862, it was declared that instruction in Military Tactics shall also 

 be included. 



Xot least among the evidences of statesmanship in that bill was 

 this last clause. The idea it embodies has been too long neglected. 

 Of all fatal things for a republic, the most fatal is to have its educated 

 men in various professions so educated that, in any civil commotion, 

 they must cower in corners, and relinquish the control of armed force 

 to communists and demagogues. The national colleges have carried 

 out this part of the act, sometimes by giving advanced military in- 

 struction, but generally by careful drilling of the whole body of stu- 

 dents. The system has becTi found to give health and manly dignity 

 to the student ; to the nation it is to give a great body of well-trained 

 men, ready to organize and control the best elements of society against 

 any outbreak of anarchy or treason. 



And now a few words regarding the general education which goes 

 with these various branches of industrial and scientific education. 

 The student must be not only trained as a specialist, he must also be 

 educated as a man and a citizen. Hence the necessity of blending 

 into the various special courses certain e^eneral studies calculated to 



