EDUCATION-COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 309 



of the whole? That is exactly the difference between the free 

 public education of Europe and the public school system of 

 the United States. 



Two or three remarkable incidents illustrative of the point 

 in question have recently occurred. Some time ago the min- 

 ister of commerce and industry of France recommended the 

 establishment of a school of observation and drill on American 

 industrial methods to be founded at some of the great indus- 

 trial centers and to which French students might yearly be 

 sent. This most significant tribute to the superiority of our 

 methods on the part of the chief exponent of the contra system 

 received its full emphasis when the University of Chicago ac- 

 cepted the gift of $1,000,000 from M. Lebaudy, the French 

 capitalist, to found a department for exactly this purpose, to 

 accommodate 600 French students, 200 to be sent over yearly. 



At the close of the exposition of 1900, the director of ma- 

 chinery for the United States commission, a young man of 

 thirty five, was offered $10,000 to go to Berlin to introduce 

 American shop methods into a German factory. At the end of 

 the year he was given $8,000 more to stay on for six months. 



All of which means that the industrial supremacy of the 

 United States is feared and acknowledged and that every effort 

 will be made to keep even with our pace. These experiments 

 are interesting and will doubtless be of some value, but they 

 will fail to meet the expectations of their promoters. They 

 lack the vital spark. For how are they going to introduce 

 into European workshops the Yankee wit and cunning which 

 guide the hand and brain of every employee in our establish- 

 ments from errand boy to manager? It is not the superior 

 executive machinery which the superintendents of our indus- 

 tries have created which causes our supremacy, but the 

 superior average of intelligence which permeates every de- 

 partment and ramification of business — the intelligence which 

 is the result of our free and liberal system of schools, and the 

 other free educational agencies supplemental to them — the 

 libraries, museums, lectures, and extension courses. 



Such is the problem of the present day which is engrossing 

 the attention of the statesmen and scientists of Europe; such 

 the intense interest taken in the educational and industrial 



