SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION OF MECHANICS AND ARTISANS. 189 



way of settling the coutlict between labor aud capital. Every skilled 

 laborer belongs to botb parties, aud in fighting against capital he is at 

 war with himself. If he begins life poor, his interest may, indeed, then 

 seem to be on the side of labor ; bnt with every year's savings it is 

 more and more for his interest that capital should yield a remunerative 

 income, aud the very measures which, if successful, would impoverish 

 the millionaire, would render his modest surplus earnings unproductive 

 and their investment insecure. The graduates of this institute may re- 

 gard themselves as capitalists in the near future ; for the brain-power 

 that is furnished here is the very material from which wealth is created. 

 Were I familiar with the names in Worcester, I know that I could point 

 out to you not a few of the proprietors of these great manufacturing 

 establishments, who came hither with no resource except hands and 

 brain, and have fairly earned, by industry aud skill, every dollar of the 

 tens aud hundreds of thousands which it may be literally said they are 

 worth ; for, though a man may not be worth all the money he has, he is 

 worth.all that he has honestly acquired. 



But there are higher grounds on which institutions like this should 

 be cherished. We are training in our schools of industrial science dis- 

 coverers and inventors in their several departments — men who will 

 shorten and cheapen the labor of production, introduce new ai)plications 

 of science to the useful arts, and add permanently to the wealth of 

 humanity by industrial improvements. 



There are some families in the vegetable creation — dioscious, so 

 called — in which the fructifying pollen and the fruit-producing blos- 

 some are elaborated on different plants. Similar has been the case, for 

 the most part, in the industrial world. Inventions have generally been 

 the joint product of two very different classes of minds, neither of which 

 could have effected anything without the other ; aud, not unfrequently, 

 between the two an important invention has been kept for many years 

 in abeyance, and, when finally perfected, has been of doubtful or dis- 

 puted iiarentage. The germinal idea or principle has been conceived 

 and suggested by a man of learning, science, and studious aud reflective 

 habits, but of no practical skill. He has tried in vain to embody it; 

 has encountered, it may be, ridicule, opposition, contempt. Perhaps, 

 after years of fruitless endeavor, he has lapsed into unhonored peuury or 

 death. His idea has been taken uj) by some man who had the skill to 

 actualize what he had not genius or knowledge enough to originate, 

 and he has reaped the honor and the profit of his predecessor's uncom- 

 pensated study and toil. As by the old slave-law the child follows the 

 fortunes of the mother, so the invention — the brain-child — is, by gen- 

 eueral consent, accredited, not to the fertilizing mind, but to the pro- 

 ducing hand. 



Au obvious instance may be found in the history of the api)lication 

 of ether as an anaesthetic agent. You know that Drs. Jackson and 

 Morton both claimed the invention, and both, I believe, with equal 



