654 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



these records the most practical testimony available of the actual re- 

 sults of manual training. Dr. Woodward, the director of the St. 

 Louis school, and one of the fathers of manual training in America, 

 has given many individual records in his two books, The Manual 

 Training School and Manual Training, especially in the former. The 

 results quoted are mainly industrial, but they are nevertheless of 

 high interest from an educational point of view. Some of the schools 

 publish records of their graduates in their current yearbooks. I 

 found, for example, in my own school that one third of the graduates 

 were in universities and other institutions of higher learning; that 

 one third were engaged in technical work opened to them by the 

 special training of the school ; and that the remaining third had gone 

 into trade, had taken miscellaneous posts, or were still unsettled as to 

 a career. The latter number was always small, and there were par- 

 ticular moments when less than one per cent of them were unoccu- 

 pied. The records made by the graduates at college have been excel- 

 lent. Three of the Philadelphia boys have held fellowsliips at Har- 

 vard, one in philosophy and two on the Hector Tyndale foundation in 

 physics. It was noticeable, as I mentioned before, that the colored 

 boys seldom graduated. They worked under many disadvantages 

 of poverty, and later of race prejudice outside the school, and I 

 should therefore not wish to draw any unfavorable conclusions from 

 their failures. Those of mixed blood, especially Indian or West In- 

 dian, were sometimes very clever, and became quite skillful ; but the 

 full-blooded Africans were less successful, and I have come to think 

 that they ought to be taught apart and at less speed. 



It was also noticeable that the Jewish children were quite clumsy 

 with their hands. So much was this the case that the instructors in 

 the manual departments came to make allowance and to set a different 

 standard for their work. It is quite explainable, I think, since the 

 Jews as a people have been forced by circumstances into commerce 

 and banking, and have been for centuries practically excluded from 

 manual occupations. I mention it as an interesting racial result, and 

 not at all by way of discouragement. I feel that the Jewish people 

 would be very wase to persevere in their present brave attempt at 

 manual development. ISTor was the best manual work always done by 

 the children of mechanics. Often it was done by the sons of musi- 

 cians and other professional people, and even by the sons of business 

 men. It would, I think, be more to the point to inquire into heredity 

 on the mother's side, since boys more frequently resemble their 

 mothers, but this is less practicable. 



The Chicago Manual Training School, the oldest independent 

 manual training school in America, publishes an interesting sum- 

 mary of the occupations of its graduates. Out of a total of 56S, 158 



