140 ADVENTURES IN IDEALISM 



only develop some mechanical attitude in the pupils 

 and reduce the number of drifters, their existence 

 would be justified. The length of the course is from 

 one to -three years. The Hebrew Technical School 

 for boys and the Baron de Hirsch Trade School fill 

 partly the demand for trade and technical education 

 for Jewish boys and young men. The Clara de Hirsch 

 Home for working girls and the Hebrew Technical 

 School for girls give industrial training to girls. The 

 Manhattan Trade School for girls was taken over by 

 the Board of Education of the City of New York. 



"By introducing industrial training as an educational 

 feature in the orphan asylums we should help the move- 

 ment toward trade education and send out boys and 

 girls with distinctly developed mechanical inclinations 

 and better prepared to take up trade as a life vocation. 



"As concerns farming, the general impression is that 

 it is no use training our children to take up farming, 

 as farming is not a Jewish occupation and that at- 

 tempts to make farmers out of Jews have universally 

 proven failures. We have heard a young minister 

 speak on the great possibilities of farming in general 

 in this country, and he proposes, by establishing test 

 farms, to make American farmers out of Jewish im- 

 migrants. At the same time he condemned all the 

 previous efforts at colonizing, particularly those in 

 the South and West. A gentleman from Memphis, 

 also a minister, I believe, tells us of the failure of 

 colonization in Texas. He did not tell us, however, 

 that the immigrants were sent to a fever-stricken dis- 

 trict. The fact is, however, that throughout the United 

 States there are thousands of prosperous Jewish farm- 

 ers. Within twelve miles of Hartford, Conn., for 

 instance, there is a settlement of from twenty-five to 



