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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 619. 



ness of purpose that it would seem to me 

 time well spent for each student, say, at 

 the end of the freshman year, to be handed 

 over by the university for a period of 

 six months to some commercial, engineering 

 or manufacturing establishment; there to 

 work as an employee at whatever job is 

 given him, either manual or other work. 

 He should have the same hours and be 

 under the same discipline as all other em- 

 ployees, and should receive no favors. 

 Moreover, he should be obliged to stay even 

 a longer time than six months unless he 

 has in the meantime given satisfaction to 

 his employers. 



I believe that there would be but little 

 difficulty in obtaining the cooperation of 

 our business and manufacturing establish- 

 ments in carrying out this plan, and the 

 University of Pennsylvania, situated as it 

 is in the foremost manufacturing city in 

 this country, would have an especially good 

 opportunity to inaugurate it. 



My belief in the benefits to be derived 

 from doing practical every-day work early 

 in the college course is not the result of a 

 theory. It is founded upon close observa- 

 tion and study of young men who have had 

 this experience, and also upon a vivid re- 

 membrance of breakfasting each morning 

 at five-thirty, and starting to sweep the 

 floor of a pattern shop as an apprentice 

 some thirty-two years ago, after having 

 spent several years in preparing for Har- 

 vard College. The contrast between the 

 two occupations was great, but I look back 

 upon the first six months of my apprentice- 

 ship as a patternmaker as, on the whole, 

 the most valuable part of my education. 

 Not that I gained much knowledge during 

 that time, nor did I ever become a very 

 good patternmaker; but the awakening as 

 to the reality and seriousness of life was 

 complete, and, I believe, of great value. 



Unfortunately, laboratory or even shop 

 work in the university, useful as they are. 



do not serve at all the same purpose, since 

 the young man is surrounded there by other 

 students and professors, and lacks the ac- 

 tual competition of men working for a 

 living. He does not learn at college that, 

 on the whole, the ordinary mechanics, and 

 even poorly educated workmen, are nat- 

 urally about as smart as he is, and that his 

 best way to rise above them lies in getting 

 his mind more thoroughly trained than 

 theirs, and in learning things they do not 

 know. All of this should be taught him 

 through six months' contact with working- 

 men. 



Let me repeat in conclusion that our 

 college graduates are the best picked body 

 of men in the community. Yet I believe 

 that it is possible to so train young men 

 that they will be useful to their employers 

 almost from the day that they leave col- 

 lege ; so that they will be reasonably satis- 

 fied with their new work instead of dis- 

 contented; and to place them upon gradu- 

 ating one or two years nearer success than 

 they now are; and that this can best be 

 accomplished by giving them an earnest 

 purpose through six months' contact early 

 in their college life with men working for 

 a living ; by rigidly prescribing a course of 

 studies carefully and logically selected, and 

 with some definite object in view, and by 

 subjecting them to a discipline comparable 

 with that adopted by the rest of the world. 



Philadelphia possesses and is proud of 

 the most notable group of medical schools 

 in this country, and among these that of 

 the University of Pennsylvania unquestion- 

 ably stands first. 



The Philadelphia lawyer has been pro- 

 verbial for his knowledge and shrewdness 

 for more than a century, and this reputa- 

 tion can be traced largely to the funda- 

 mental training given in the law school of 

 the University of Pennsylvania. 



Philadelphia is the center of the largest 

 and most diversified group of engineering 



