194 SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION OF MECHANICS AI^D ARTISANS. 



both; on the one band scanting the wages of prodnctive industry, on 

 the other hand cramping the consumers' purchasing power. 



That this is the condition of things in our country at the present time, 

 there can be no doubt. The reason, too, is obvious. Our schools edu- 

 cate our young men to a point at which they feel that they sacrifice 

 their self-respect and sink beneath their proper level by becoming mere 

 laborers, or mere routine-mechanics, especially when they are thus 

 placed by the side of, or brought into competition with, the hordes of 

 uneducated and rude immigrants that crowd our labor-market. Those 

 who v.ere themselves content with hand-labor are ambitious of a 

 higher destiny for their sons. Hence the rush into commerce. Hence 

 the scores of applicants for every vacant clerkship. Hence the spec- 

 tacle — equally ludicrous and sad — of hands that could wield the sledge- 

 hammer, measuring tape, drawing soda-water, and weighing sugar- 

 plums. Everything that can by the broadest construction call itself 

 trade or commerce deems itself respectable ; and therefore our towns 

 and cities are supporting twice the number of shopkeepers that they 

 need, and sustaining able-bodied men, too, in paltry commercial in- 

 dustries, which yet would give a competence to our thousands of starv- 

 ing women and girls. 



To restore tlie deranged balance of society, its old honor must be 

 rendered back to labor. Industrial pursuits must be raised in respecta- 

 bility and dignity above the lower walks of commerce, and fully to a 

 level with its higher departments and functions. Both agriculture and 

 handicraft must be made liberal professions. This can be efiected only 

 by stocking them with men of liberal culture ; for it is not the profes- 

 sion that gives character and standing to the man, but the man to the 

 profession. Our agricultural colleges and our industrial institutes are 

 supplying the needed culture, and are going to replenish the field and the 

 workshop with a new order of large and high-minded operatives, men 

 of liberal tastes, pursuits, and aims, who will do honor to their respect- 

 ive callings, and make them seem worthy the noblest ambition of the 

 aspiring youth of the coming generation. The successful impulse has 

 been already given. It is already no uncommon thing for the graduates 

 of our best colleges to pass at once into the machine-shop or the factory, 

 and to go through the entire novitiate as a raw api)reutice might. It 

 has, indeed, been demonstrated, and it will soon be made apparent to 

 the whole world, that there is no department of productive industry in 

 which genius, talent, science, and learning may not find fit investment, 

 ample room to grow, and adequate social position and honor. 



There are other points to which I would gladly ask your attention 

 had I not taxed it so long. But I cannot close without reminding the 

 students and graduates of this institute that education has, or ought to 

 have, a higher use than what we call its use. We are too apt to think 

 of the course of early study and discipline, chiefly as a specific prepara- 

 tion for one's business or calling in after-life, as the means of becoming 



