356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



only muscular power. But to devise and build the light engine, which, 

 under the direction of a single intelligent master-spirit, shall lift the 

 burden of a hundred men, requires a high degree of intelligence and 

 manual skill. So the hewers of wood and the drawers of water are in 

 this age of invention replaced by saw and planing mills, and water- 

 works requiring some of the most elaborate embodiments of thought 

 and skill. Can any one stand beside the modern drawers of water, the 

 mighty engines that day and night draw from the Father of Waters 

 the abundant supply of a hundred thousand St. Louis homes, and not 

 bow before the evidence of " cultured minds and skillful hands," writ- 

 ten in unmistakable characters all over the vast machinery ? 



In like manner every occupation becomes ennobled by the trans- 

 forming influence of thought and skill. The farmer of old yoked his 

 wife with his cow, and together they dragged the clumsy plow or 

 transported the scanty harvest. Down to fifty years ago the life of 

 a farmer was associated with unceasing, stupefying toil. What will 

 it be when every farmer's boy is properly educated and trained ? 

 Farming is rapidly becoming a matter of horse-power, steam-power, 

 and machinery. Who, then, shall follow the farm with honor, pleasure, 

 and success ? Evidently only he whose cultivated mind and trained 

 hands make him a master of the tools he must use. With his bench 

 and sharp-edged tools, with his forge and his lathe, he will " direct " 

 and sustain his farm-machinery with unparalleled efficiency. 



Some appear to think that the continued invention of tools and 

 new machines will diminish the demand for men skilled in mechanical 

 matters ; but they are clearly wrong. True, they will diminish the 

 demand for unintelligent labor — and some prominent educators, who 

 take ground against manual training, have apparently no idea of labor 

 except unintelligent labor. If there are more machines, there must be 

 more makers, inventors, and directors. Not one useful invention in 

 ten is made by a man who is not a skilled mechanic. But, as I have 

 said, the mechanics have suffered from a one-sided education. They 

 have paid too little attention to science and the graphic arts. Hence 

 every manual pursuit will become elevated in the intellectual scale 

 when mechanics are broadly, liberally trained. 



Undoubtedly the common belief is, that it requires no great amount 

 of brains or intelligence to be a mechanic ; and those who go through 

 the schools are not expected by their teachers to be mechanics. Every 

 bright farmer's boy, every gifted son of a mechanic, if he but stay in 

 school, is sure to be stolen away from the occupation of his father and 

 led into the ranks of the " learned professions." 



Professor Magnus calls attention to the fact that the promising 

 pupils of the elementary public schools of London, who receive scholar- 

 ships on account of unusual abilities, are, from a lack of secondary 

 schools suited to improve directly the condition of the artisan classes, 

 always sent on through the classical schools to the Universities of Ox- 



