July 27, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



Ill 



Mental power to see beyond the task which oc- 

 cupies the hands for the moment to the operations 

 which have preceded and to those which will 

 follow it — power to take in the whole process, 

 knowledge of materials, ideas of cost, ideas of 

 organization, business sense, and a conscience 

 which recognizes obligations. 



This need the committee believes should 

 be met by industrial education in the public 

 schools and through independent industrial 

 schools; such instruction is, of course, de- 

 signed for students younger than those with 

 whom we have to deal here, and is of an 

 entirely different grade and character, but, 

 nevertheless, is of very great importance. 

 In this report the Massachusetts Institute 

 and the Worcester Polytechnic are spoken 

 of as institutions which train mechanical 

 and electrical engineers, manufacturing 

 chemists and architects — men in the highest 

 ranks of productive industrial life ; institu- 

 tions which have fully justified all that 

 they have cost and of world-wide fame. 



If I may borrow further from this inter- 

 esting report, I will add that the system of 

 industrial and technical education in the 

 German empire is held up as an example, 

 and a comparison is made which shows that 

 if Massachusetts were to maintain a system 

 of industrial schools of proportionate de- 

 velopment with that of the kingdom of 

 Prussia, we should need three hundred 

 such schools with a total enrollment of 

 twenty thousand. 



It would be idle to assert, that the indus- 

 trial supremacy of the United States is due 

 primarily to our system of industrial edu- 

 cation, because, as a matter of fact, we are 

 inferior in this respect at least to Germany, 

 France and Switzerland. But the time is 

 certainly fast approaching when we must 

 take heed of the industrial competition 

 from other countries which are adopting 

 our machinery and methods, stimulated by 

 what they learn at the great expositions. 

 It is certain that without great effort we 



can not retain our supremacy undisputed; 

 and for this reason it behooves us to pay 

 particular attention to the industrial edu- 

 cation of our people. 



Just as in agriculture, after the virgin 

 soil begins to be exhausted by wasteful 

 methods of cultivation, scientific methods 

 must be employed if the quantity and qual- 

 ity of crops are to be maintained; so in 

 other industrial pursuits — as competition 

 forces prices down, the labor must be more 

 intelligent, the scientific knowledge more 

 exact, if satisfactory results are to be se- 

 cured. 



It is a mistake to think, as is often said 

 in this country, that the 'pauper labor' of 

 Europe is a menace to us. It is rather the 

 educated labor of European competitors of 

 which we should stand in fear. 



I believe it to be true to-day that in a 

 large number of our industries in which 

 labor-saving machinery is used to any con- 

 siderable extent, the cost of labor per unit 

 is less than in any country in the world, 

 and for the reason that our labor is so much 

 more efficient. 



As men with a technical education are 

 the ones who will manage our railways and 

 great manufacturing plants, they naturally 

 have a deep interest in, and should have an 

 intelligent knowledge of, the changing con- 

 ditions under which business is being done, 

 information which our own students ac- 

 quire in the department of political science. 



The factory system was a product of the 

 close of the eighteenth century— the trust, 

 so-called, of the close of the nineteenth; 

 and great abuses have attended each 

 change, which are quite independent and 

 separable from the system which they ac- 

 companied. 



The great cruelties attendant upon the 

 labor of women and children were a blot 

 upon the former. These have happily 

 largely disappeared before the corrective 



