228 REPORT— 1871. 



obtain little attention from the general public to tbis demand for tlie workman. 

 Very few persons not being engineers know at all wliat mechanical drawing- is. I 

 am sorry to say that some examiners in high places, who direct the education of 

 the country, know very little more than the creneral public, and teachers wlio should 

 give bread give chaff. I have lived much abroad, and come into close contact both 

 with English and foreign workmen, and 1 unhesitatingly say that the chief, if not 

 the only inferiority of Englishmen has been in this one branch of knowledge. I 

 must explain to some of my hearers what meclianical drawing is. It is the art of 

 representing any object so accurately that a skilled workman, upon inspecting the 

 drawing, shall be able to make the object of exactly the materials and dimensions 

 shown without any further verbal or wiitten instruction from the designer. The 

 objects represented may be machines, implements, buildings, utensils, or ornaments. 

 They may be constructed of every material. The drawings miLj be linear, shaded 

 and colom-ed, or plain. They must necessarily be drawn to scale ; but various geo- 

 metrical methods may be employed. The uame of mechanical drawing is given to 

 one and all those representations the object of which is to enable the thing drawn 

 to be made by a workman. Artistic drawing aims at representing agreeably, and 

 for the sake of the representation something already in existence, or which might 

 exist. Mechanical drawing aims at representing the object, not for the sake 

 of tlio representation, but in order to facilitate the production of the thing repre- 

 sented. 



Now I say that it is this latter kind of drawing that is so vastly important to 

 our artisans, and hence to our wealth-produciug population. Very few workmen 

 or men of any class can hope to acquire such excellence in artistic drawing that 

 their productions will give pleasure to themselves and others ; but a great number 

 of workmen must acquire some kiiowledge of the drawings of those things 

 which they produce, and there is not one skilled workman who would not be 

 better qualified bj^ a knowledge of mechanical drawing to do his work with ease 

 to himself and benefit to the public. Mechanical drawing is a rudimentary acquire- 

 ment of the nature of reading, writing, and arithmetic. In order that a man mav 

 imderstaud the illustrated description of a machiue he must understand this kind 

 of drawing. To the general public an engineering drawing is as unintelligible as a 

 printed book is to a man who cannot read. The general public can no more put 

 their ideas into such a shape that workmen can carry them out than persons igno- 

 rant of writing can convey their meaning on paper. Reading and writing on me- 

 chanical or industrial subjects is impossible without some knowledge of the art I am 

 pressing on j-our attention. This art is taught abroad in every industrial school; 

 a great part of the school time is given up to it. In a Prussian industrial school 

 one third of tlie wliole time is given to it. A French commission on technical 

 education reported that drawing, with all its applications to tlie diflerent industrial 

 arts, should bs considered as the principal means to bj employed in technical 

 education. Now, I deliberately state that this subject is not taught at all in En- 

 gland, and that the ignorance of it is so givat that t can obtain no attention to niv 

 complaints. _ A hundred times more money is spent by Government to encourage 

 artistic drawing than is given to encourage mechanical drawing, and I say that 

 mechanical drawing is a hundred times more important to us as a nation. Moreover, 

 the little f/uasi mechanical drawing which is taught is mostly mere geometrical 

 projection, a subject of which real draughtsmen very frequently, and with little 

 loss to themselves, are profoundly ignorant. Descriptive geometrv and geometrical 

 projection are nearly useless branches of the art, and the little enco'uragement which 

 is given is almost nionopolized by these. Mechanical drawing proper is confined 

 to those who pick it up by practice in engineering oilices. These draughtsmen are 

 often excellent ; and on their behoof I claim no other teaching. I speak for the 

 artisan who makes and for him who uses machinery. 



There are two ways in which our shortcomings may be remedied: first, the 

 schools of art now established in this country should be enlarged so as to teach 

 real mechanical drawing, and the examinations conducted by tlie Science and Art 

 Department should be greatly modified ; secondly, the drawing which is to be 

 taught in the schools under the superintendence of the new school boards mav be, 

 and ought to be, mechanical drawing. Freehand drawing as a branch of primary 



