Apkil 20, 18S3.] 



SCIENCE. 



295 



FEIDAT, APRIL 20, 1883. 



SCIENCE FOR WORKING-MEN. 



A CODESE of four lectures, delivered by 

 members of Johns Hopkins university to the 

 emploj^ees of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, 

 has recentlj' been published for free distribu- 

 tion to the auditors. 



As these lectures are simple demonstrations 

 of elementary facts, they have, despite the 

 admirable method that characterizes them, and 

 the excellent illustrations of the text, onl}- an 

 occasional interest to the general public. But 

 thej- have a very real value in that they mark 

 an effort to accomplish a work of genuine 

 instruction among a class of our people where 

 there is the sorest need of all intellectual 

 help. 



These lectures originated, as it were, acci- 

 dentally, as is the case, indeed, with most good 

 enterprises. This railway companj- had tried 

 to do something for its people bj- founding a 

 little librarj', and starting reading-rooms ; with 

 the usual result, — that few of its wearj^, slow- 

 brained servants could or did make any use of 

 them. Then some one suggested that men too 

 unaccustomed to mental work after dailj' labor, 

 or too wearj' for it, might find a lift in lectures 

 such as have long been given in England to 

 workmen of their class : so Professor Martin, 

 >vith the cordial assistance of Mr. Garratt, the 

 president of the road, devised, with his col- 

 leagues, a course of four lectures on subjects 

 which admit of clear demonstration, and which 

 are well within the field of ordinary human 

 experience. How skulls and backbones are 

 made, How we move. On fermentation. Some 

 curious kinds of locomotion, — are all topics 

 which admit of popular treatment, moral- 

 pointing wit, and clever ad hominem appeals 

 to awaken the toil-deadened mind. On read- 

 ing them over, we are not surprised that there 

 were six hundred of the ser-\'ants of this rail- 

 waj', men and theii' families, that found pleasure 

 in their hearing. 



This good work will, we maj' hope, give a 

 fresh start to the system of lecturing in this 

 country. We all have seen the rapid decline 



No. 11. —1883. 



of the American lyceum lecture, once the most 

 powerful agent of general culture in modern 

 or j)erhaps all times. Those who have watched 

 the debasements that have attended its decay 

 — the parade of unsavory parsons, vaporing 

 quacks, and offensive rhetoricians — have been 

 driven to wish that this decay might speedily 

 end in death. That part of the American 

 world that profited bj' the old Ij'ceum system 

 has found its waj' beyond the stage in its 

 development where such teaching could be of 

 much value. So the platform had to merge 

 itself in the stage, and become a place of ex- 

 hibition, and not of instruction. Books in the 

 old daj' were few and dear ; libraries did not 

 exist ; but now, where any village that of old 

 supported a 13'ceum has a public library, men 

 and women do better to read a book by a 

 master, rather than hear an hour's talk bj' any 

 man, however masterful ; for the chance is a 

 thousand to one that the essence of any teacher 

 cannot be had in an hour's talk. 



But since those primeval da_ys, when a New- 

 England village filled a lecture-room with a 

 keen-witted set of farmers and shopkeepers, 

 the complexion of our American societ}' has 

 changed for the worse. A distinct class of 

 laboring men — men who are ground in the 

 mills and mines until thej^ tend to become 

 mere machines — has grown up in this countiy, 

 and is increasing at the expense of the farmer 

 and mechanic class. If our sj'stem of govern- 

 ment has one danger greater than all others, 

 it is to be found in the fact that culture slips 

 by this class. Their habits of life fit them to 

 be the prej' of the demagogue ; and in such 

 wild outbreaks as the Pittsburg riots we see 

 the natural results of their conditions. 



The most important educational problem of 

 our day comes to us from these people ; and 

 such essays towards its solution as these Bal- 

 timore lectures give us are very welcome, not 

 for what they have reall}' accomplished, but as 

 a possible indication of other and better rela- 

 tions between great corporations and their 

 people. 



Gloze it as we maj', it is clear that within 

 our modern Commonwealths there has grown 



