11 



marked. Austria has seven great technical schools and Prussia has 

 nine. The new home of the Polytechnic at Berlin, perhaps the fin- 

 est educational building in the world, has, it is said, accommodations 

 for no less than four thousand students. 



Moreover, besides these great centres of the higher grades of tech- 

 nical education, there is a vast number of schools of a more elemen- 

 tary grade. These are grouped about every industrial nucleus in the 

 country. In Hamburg alone nearly a hundred teachers are employed 

 to give instruction in technical and industrial subjects to the thou- 

 sands of pupils that* throng the rooms. At the little mountain city 

 of Chemnitz 'in Saxony there are five higher technical and trade 

 schools, and so successful have these schools been within the past 

 few years in producing skilled labor, that from the single county of 

 Nottingham, in England, it is said that more than half a score of 

 great manufacturing firms have transferred their machinery to Sax- 

 ony in order to avail themselves of the superior workmanship that is 

 there offered. And it is in this way that Germany, by means of 

 her technical schools, is taking from England her industrial suprem- 

 acy. 



At last England has come to see her danger. At Manchester, at 

 Sheffield, at Birmingham, and in London technical schools of some 

 merit have recently been established. At last the scholastic tran- 

 quility of Cambridge even has been disturbed by the noise of the 

 saws and the lathes and the planing machines of a technical school ; 

 and even old Eton, that has rested for centuries in its quiet beauty 

 under the shadows of Windsor Castle, and for centuries has been 

 the favorite school of the scions of nobility, has been obliged to yield 

 to the universal demand. By establishing a technical annex she, how- 

 ever unwillingly, has paid tribute to the inevitable. 



But this is only one phase of the general .movement. The other, 

 that which pertains to agriculture, is equally striking and equally im- 

 portant. 



Agricultural schools were established in Germany early in the pres- 

 ent century. But it was not till after Liebig in 1844 published his 

 famous work on "Chemistry as applied to Agriculture" that any real 

 impulse was given to agricultural schools. But Liebig proved be- 

 yond the possibility of doubt two things. The one was that however 

 great the draft upon the soil, the fertility may be fully maintained 

 and even increased by restoring to the soil the mineral and the organ- 

 ic matter taken from it at the harvest. The second truth, and. one 



