16 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 



PRESIDENT J, L. SNYDER. 



Industrial education is a term used to designate a great many types of 

 instruction. It may mean anything from tlie simplest manual training 

 work in the elementary grades of our public schools to the highest form 

 of engineering work in our best technical schools. The term has been so 

 used and abused that many hear it with impatience, or regard it as a fad 

 of lay theorists, or very often as a cloak for educational shortcomings 

 in other directions. In this paper the term will be used with reference 

 particularly to that phase of work more commonly called technical educa- 

 tion. The prosperity of all the industrial interests of this nation is largely 

 due to technical training. In mining, agriculture, manufacturing, trained 

 minds and skilled hands are directing the efforts of the multitude of 

 workers. Where there is one man able to improve present systems and 

 methods, a thousand stand ready to carry out his plans. The discoveries 

 in science and the many inventions in labor-saving machinery, and in the 

 use of steam and electric power, have brought about a new condition of 

 affairs. Let us look first at some of the results of technical training in 

 the United States. 



This branch of industrial education has developed almost entirely dur- 

 ing the last half century. Only a few such schools were in existence in 

 this country at the close of the civil war, but in recent years they have 

 increased in numbers very rapidly. Not to enumerate private institu- 

 tions, each state has such a school established under the provision of the 

 Morril Land Grant Act of 1862. These colleges alone have an enrollment 

 of over 40,000 students and hold property valued at sixty million dollars, 

 with an annual income of about six million dollars. 



In recent years nearly all of our large universities have added depart- 

 ments of engineering, and a few have added departments in other techni- 

 cal subjects. There have also been a number of semi-technical schools 

 established in this country, of which Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, the Lewis 

 and Armor Institutes of Chicago, are fair types. IJelow these come the 

 manual training schools, secondary schools with manual training depart- 

 ments, and manual training as taught in our grammar and elementary 

 grades. 



All these schools have done and are doing much to make this country a 

 great commercial nation. A nation to be great must be thrifty, — all 

 classes must be employed and their labor must count for something. They 

 must produce more than they consume and this over production must be 

 such as other countries will call for. It must be the product of the highest 

 skill. No nation will import goods that its own artisans can readily pro- 

 duce. Fift}' years ago England had the finest workmen in the world; her 

 shops turned out the best machinery, her mills the best cloth, and just as 

 long as she was able to produce the best her commerce increased. When 

 she failed in this her commerce began to wane. 



Our engineering schools are young, yet their graduates are doing much 



