THE TRUE "WORK OF NATIONAL, 

 INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 



[Read before the National Agricultural Con- 

 gress at the Centennial Exposition. September 

 2Gth, by A. 8. Welch, President Iowa Agricult- 

 ural College.] 



The national industrial coljege now estab- 

 lished in nearly every state of the Union is the 

 offspring of congressional enactment. It derives 

 its origin, plan and purpose from an organizing 

 act of the congressional grant, and this act gives 

 to the whole project a clear and definite outline 

 by declaring in precise terms that "the leading 

 object shall be, without excluding other scien- 

 tific and classical studies, and including military 

 tactics, to teach suoh branches of learning as are 

 related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in 

 such a manner as the legislatures of the states 

 may respectively prescribe, in order to promote 

 the liberal and practical education of the indus- 

 trial classes in the several pursuits and profes- 

 sions of life." 



Now it will be universally conceded at the out- 

 set that the entire spirit of the national school 

 so created, its central aims, its faculty, equip- 

 ment, courses of study and methods of instruc- 

 tion must all be made to conform to a just inter- 

 pretation of this langauge. And all conflicting 

 opinions as to its real mission, and all complaints 

 of its drifting therefrom which have beea vocif- 

 erated throughout the land must be settled by 

 the law that gave it birth as the supreme and 

 final arbiter. And this law, though liberal enough 

 in its wording to admit of variation in manner 

 to suit the varying soil and productions of differ- 

 ent states, is explicit beyond cavil as to its grand 

 intent and object. But manifest as is the mean- 

 ing of the congressional enactment from which 

 it sprang, no great educational scheme was ever 

 so buffeted by contradictory theories respecting 

 its actual purpose. From first to last it has been 

 found impossible to give to the general public a 

 correct conception of the real enterprise which 

 the law sets forth. Multitudes m their lack of 

 experience have evolved the new national school 

 out of their own fancies, and then demanded 

 that the actual one should realize the capricious 

 picture. Though embracing by the express 

 terms of the grant the entire circle of the indus- 

 trial sciences, the agricultural journals from 

 ocean to ocean have assumed it to be a school of 

 agriculture pure and simple. Thougn limited by 

 language without ambiguity to the teaching of 

 industrial science as its leading object, not a few 

 have claimed that it shall be made a school of 

 industrial art which shall unite in its curriculum 

 the smallest modicum of science with the largest 

 modicum of practice in the handicrafts. Some 

 have even developed the theory that the new 

 scheme was to be a mere model farm whereon 

 reluctant boys, untrammeled by the study of 

 science, should be drilled in the manual opera- 



tions of agriculture and made to earn their liv- 

 ing. On the other hand, many have distinctly 

 declared that the national school was to be a 

 grand depository of general learning unlimited 

 in quantity and kind where the industrial classes 

 might find any thing they wanted in the educa- 

 tional line without stint and without expense. 

 Meantime many a specialist in agriculture has 

 revealed the belief that the mere educational 

 work of the college was of minor moment that 

 it was rather a sort of agricultural station where 

 experiments in his particular branch should be 

 conducted and their results promulgated at the 

 public cost. Finally, amid all these conflicting 

 views, the comparatively few who had gained a 

 just conception of its leading object demanded, 

 nevertheless, that the whole enterprise should, 

 Minerva like, spring into life in full panoply and 

 enter at once upon those higher functions whien 

 are to be reached only after the successful pro- 

 gress of years. 



Assailed on all sides by such jarring opinions 

 and under the necessity of bringing at once a 

 host of complicated departments into running 

 order, the organizers of the national industrial 

 schools in every state had in hand a stupendous 

 task a task which they could carry to success- 

 ful completion only so far as they should be 

 guided by a calm and careful questioning of the 

 law. And so far as the courses of study are con- 

 cerned the law responds in la iguage sufficiently 

 explicit. "The leading object shall be to teach 

 such branches of learning as are related to agri- 

 culture and the mechanic arts." These branches 

 of learning are nearly all modern sciences that 

 may be indicated with the utmost precision. To 

 begin with them the law prescribes for the cur- 

 ricula of the national school, the industrial 

 sciences, and not the industrial arts. It does not 

 require the teaching of trades, handicrafts or 

 manual dexterities of whatever sort. Pruning 

 and grafting, plowing, planting, harvesting crops 

 and handling stock, though demanding skill, are 

 not branches of learning, and instruction in 

 these ought not therefore to burden the re- 

 sources of the national college. Only those 

 higher artistic processes wherein science is 

 taught in its application to practice should be 

 rigidly included in the training it gives. For ex- 

 ample civil engineering, surveying, economic 

 botany and stock breeding depend for their value 

 on the out door experience that renders the hand 

 skillful and the eye unerring. But the ordinary 

 manual operations in agriculture and mechanics 

 are taught elsewhere far more widely, more 

 economically and even more thoroughly perhaps 

 than in the nature of the case they possibly can 

 be under the organization of a college. A thou- 

 sand work-shops and a hundred thousand farms 

 scattered all over the land are the actual and 

 the adequate schools from which graduate in 

 untold numbers the experts and the artlzaus 

 that the progress of industry demands. What 



