November 9, 1907 



HORTICULTURE 



609 



custom the minds and the hands of 

 boys and girls to the use of tools, but 

 not to teach them any particular 

 trade. The graduates of manual train- 

 ing schools more easily adapt them- 

 selves to trades and semi-professions 

 belonging to the mechanic arts than 

 those who have not had manual train- 

 ing. Manual training does a vast deal 

 of good and little or no harm, but the 

 technical training which is illustrated 

 here in your own college is something 

 different. It is aimed to secure a defi- 

 nite purpose — to teach a man how to 

 conduct his brain and his hand to 

 those lines in mechanic arts which 

 will give him superiority over those 

 who have not had such ti'aining. 



When the exposition celebrating our 

 centennial was held at Philadelphia in 

 1876 there was brought together the 

 manufactures of the different produc- 

 ing countries of the world. Germany 

 then acquired an active interest in in- 

 dustrial and manual training; and so 

 did England. Bismarck inquired of 

 the officer in charge of the German ex- 

 hibit at Philadelphia as to the effect 

 of the comparison of German goods 

 with those of other countries. The re- 

 ply was: "Our goods are cheap and 

 wretched." Germany had become the 

 military equal of France, but she was 

 not her industrial equal. France for 

 years had been applying skill and the 

 results of technical training in trades 

 and in all industrial arts in her manu- 

 facturing establishments, through 

 schools first supported by private bene- 

 faction and then by the government. 

 France stood out at the centennial as 

 superior to all other countries in those 

 manufactured goods which displayed 

 skill and training. Germany took her 

 cue from this and immediately entered 

 upon a career which has brought her 

 to the front rank in the production of 

 goods both useful and artistic. Eng- 

 land took her cue also. She had been 

 fearing the competition of France. 

 She had sneered at the technical train- 

 ing which had been in vogue in France, 

 but she found out all at once that in 

 order to preserve her industrial su- 

 premacy she must not only be the 

 equal of France in artistic designing 

 and in the training in the application 

 of superior skill, but that she must 

 rise above France — that she must sur- 

 pass her in all things in which France 

 had gained her celebrity. Then began 

 the crusade for the establishment of 

 training schools, the inauguration of 

 manual training and industrial educa- 

 tion in every direction, and England 

 for a while held her supremacy. Other 

 countries — Italy, Austria, the Scanda- 

 navian countries, Switzerland — applied 

 skilled training in ordinary manufac- 

 tures. 



Then the United States began to see 

 the truth. Light was beginning to 

 dawn, and while for years after the 

 centennial our country was content to 

 take from English manufacturers, 

 from French establishments, from 

 German institutions, from the world of 

 skill and art. men who could conduct 

 our own industrial affairs along the 

 lines which have given them distinc- 

 tion, today you may take from a hard- 

 ware establishment or a manufactory 

 of machinery common tools and ma- 

 chines and send them to any exposi- 

 tion in Europe and win a prize in com- 

 petition with tools and machines 

 ■which have been especially manufac- 

 tured for exhibition. This application 



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of skill and art in the United States 

 has brought us to our position today 

 of industrial supremacy, and it has 

 now brought us within the last few 

 years, to the grand position of com- 

 mercial supremacy in the world. 



Everywhere now in the United 

 States we are seeing the effect of in- 

 dustrial training. This grows out of 

 the necessity as well as the desire to 

 secure wealth. 



All the grand movements of our 

 time, which are the movements of 

 great communities, are carried on by 

 inventive skill, by the application of 

 ingenuity, and these things teach us 

 the absolute necessity of knowing how 

 to do something and to do it well. 

 The grand summation of the value of 

 skilled training is therefore found in 

 our modern system of industry. I do 

 not care how well educated a man may 

 be, if he has not learned how to make 

 his education useful, if he has not 

 learned how to support himself and 

 his family as a result of his education, 

 he is an ignorant man. 



Do you wish to be dependent upon 

 foreign countries for the skill neces- 

 sary in the manipulation of all the.5e 

 great forces? Can you not train 

 among you the men who can build 

 your own railroads, locomotives, 

 steamships, and tunnels, develop iron 

 mines, and bring that alliance of in- 

 dustry, agricultural and mechanical, 

 out of which alone can come prosper- 

 ity? Develop your trade so that you 

 have at your doors the cash market for 

 your products. It is this that makes a 

 community wealthy; it is this alliance 

 that has made the per capita wealth 

 of some parts of our country greater 

 than that of other parts. 



In discussing these things the ques- 

 tion is usually asked. But what about 

 what may be called the spiritual 

 forces of life? I do not use the word 

 in any pietistic sense, but because I 

 have not a better one to illustrate 

 those things which do not belong to 

 the material utilities of our environ- 

 ment. The relation of what is called 

 the modern system of industry, which 

 is the industry that grows from tech- 

 nical knowledge, to intellectual stim- 

 ulation, and even to the force it ex- 

 ercises In developing our schools and 

 higher institutions of learning, is not 

 usually understood; in fact I believe 

 that by many the present order of 

 things growing out of industrial edu- 

 cation is supposed to have a dwarfing 

 influence upon intellectual and mental 

 attainments. I "think, however, that 



PHILADELPHIA. 



this supposition arises from a super- 

 ficial examination of modern establish- 

 ments of industry where a cheap and 

 often an ignorant body of laborers is 

 employed, the appearance being that 

 skilled and intelligent workmen are 

 constantly replaced by unskilled and 

 unintelligent workmen, this appear- 

 ance leading to the false conclusion 

 that the modern system of industry 

 brings the skilled and intelligent 

 workman down in the scale of civili- 

 zation. The student of sociology 

 reaches a directly opposite conclusion. 

 To him the modern system gives the 

 skilled and intelligent workman 

 an opportunity to rise in the 

 scale of employment, in intellectual 

 development, in educational acquire- 

 ments, and in the grade of services 

 rendered, while at the same time it 

 enables what was an unskilled and 

 unintelligent body of workers to be 

 employed in such ways, under such 

 conditions, and surrounded by such 

 stimulating influences that they in 

 turn become intelligent and skilled 

 and crowd upward in the scale into 

 the positions formerly occupied by 

 their predecessors. 



It is the very province of technical 

 skill, as illustrated in our modern 

 system, to reach down and lift up 

 those employed in the lowest occupa- 

 tions. This means mental activity, 

 and mental activity is the great ele- 

 ment of our own time. Formerly all 

 competition consisted of muscle 

 a.gainst muscle, or brain against mus- 

 cle. Today competition is between 

 brain and brain, skill and skill. There 

 are many who cannot withstand the 

 requirements of skill. They naturally 

 fall in the rear; they become what has 

 been called left-over men; they can- 

 not keep up in the race, largely be- 

 cause in their younger days they did 

 not have the advantage of the mental 

 training which is being given broad- 

 cast everywhere today, and mental 

 training allied to manual work has 

 been found the soundest method of 

 preserving a sound mind in a sound 

 body. 



Trade education, technical educa- 

 tion, manual training — every feature 

 of instruction in the mechanic and in- 

 dustrial arts — are efficient elements in 

 the reduction of crime, because they 

 all help to better and truer economic 

 conditions. I sometimes think that in 

 this lies the elements of solution of 

 some of our problems. Justice to la- 



{Conttnued on page b/4.) 



