SCIENCE 



FRIDAY, APRIL 13, iJ 



Despite the sneers in some quarters, and vacillation in others, 

 where neither sneers nor vacillation are becoming, the movement 

 in favor of manual training is proceeding with remarkable vigor 

 and rapidity. Ex-Pres. Rutherford B. Hayes recently delivered an 

 •excellent address on the subject before the Ohio Legislature, and in 

 the cities of St. Paul and Detroit the school boards are now con- 

 sidering favorable reports presented by special committees on the 

 subject. The Detroit report is so thoroughly representative of the 

 way in which competent school boards are proceeding, that we 

 quote a portion of it. It contains the following passage : " The 

 bulk of our children cannot make a living except through hand- 

 work : intellectual training alone is therefore an insufficient prep- 

 aration for life, so far as they are concerned. Man is by nature a 

 tool-user. As much of his superiority comes from his skilful hands 

 as from his brain. Neglect to educate his hand, and you deprive 

 him of a large portion of his power. The hand is the peer of the 

 intellect : it executes what the mind conceives. The most brilliant 

 ideas are shorn of their splendor if the hand is without the neces- 

 sary skill to express them. The hand and the mind should receive 

 equal culture. True education looks after the whole man : any edu- 

 cation short of this is a failure. To make man a harmonious being, 

 such as he was intended to be by his Creator, all his powers must be 

 equally developed. Such development, according to Everett, was 

 found in Washington, of whom he said that he reminded him of a 

 circle, every point in whose circumference is equally distant from 

 the centre. The present system of education is strongly biassed in 

 favor of professional and literary pursuits, to which there would be 

 no objection were every man's vocation in life, law, medicine, the- 

 ology, or kindred avocations. But these are not the callings for 

 which the majority are intended. The average man must earn his 

 bread by the sweat of his brow, and must be a producer, in order 

 to obtain support. Manual labor has fallen into disrepute among 

 us, and the result is that the great majority of our young men go into 

 the professions, while we have to go abroad for skilled mechanics. 

 The professions are overstocked, and two-thirds of their members 

 earn precarious livings. Those who do not seek the professions join 

 the huge army of poorly paid clerks and book-keepers, or become 

 Micawbers, dawdling away life ' waiting for something to turn up.' 

 The condition of our girls is still worse. They, too, have been 

 taught to look down upon labor, and their only hope of support is 

 inherited wealth or fortunate marriage. The poor have no for- 

 tunes to leave behind them, and the divorce courts tell us that mar- 

 riage is, alas ! too seldom ' love in a cottage.' How shall all this 

 be remedied .' By the manual-training school. Educate the hand 

 side by side with the head, and you will dignify labor. The prin- 

 cipal reason why the professional man is treated with respect, while 

 the mechanic is regarded as a mere drudge, is because the one is 

 something outside of his pursuit, while the other is practically noth- 

 ing. There is as much nobility in a piece of fine cabinet work as 

 in a bill in chancery, and yet the world does not think so. Why ? 

 Because the lawyer is a man of general intellectual culture, while 

 the mechanic is the contrary. Mix brain with any thing, and you 

 ennoble it. Make a man the victim of mere routine, and you degrade 

 him. No matter how skilful he may be, he will rank no higher than a 

 mere automaton. In fact, the automatic machine which he tends 

 in the shop is considered his superior. All through the centuries, 

 intellectual pursuits have been favored, while manual labor has been 

 treated with disrespect, if not scorn. Plato tells us, in his ' Repub- 



lic,' that God made men of gold, of silver, and of iron ; that those 

 made of the first-named material were intended to be our rulers, 

 those made of the second were to be their assistants, while those 

 made of the third were placed on earth to be hewers of wood and 

 drawers of water. Plato could not see any dignity in mere manhood. 

 Were he alive to-day, however, he would have a higher appreciation 

 of the man of toil. He would learn that this era of the world is 

 termed the reign of the people, and that in the future their pursuits 

 are to be esteemed as highly as the pursuits of those who win bread 

 and fame by the tongue and the pen. This esteem will be accorded to 

 them, not because the achievements of the tongue and the pen are 

 unworthy of the honor which they have heretofore received, but 

 because they will be brought into the service of the workshop. 

 In this glorious future the tools of the artisan, and the books of the 

 scholar, will be regarded as equal members of a happy brotherhood 

 working together in beautiful harmony. As has been said, the son 

 of Vanderbilt's brakeman will then have the same chance for suc- 

 cess in life as the son of Vanderbilt. And when that blessed day 

 comes, discontent among the laboring-classes will largely disappear, 

 for no one will then be obliged to run the race of life handicapped 

 with its present inequalities. Give us the manual-training school, 

 and there will be less occasion for strikes, lock-outs, and anti- 

 poverty societies." Whether all the beneficent economic and 

 social effects that the report predicts will follow the introduction of 

 manual training, is at best doubtful ; but that the tenor of the re- 

 port is sound is unquestionable. 



Capt. C. E. Dutton, of the United States Geological Survey, 

 is now engaged in writing his monograph on the Charleston earth- 

 quake. The reports upon which this will be based are complete, 

 and in shape for the public printer. No earthquake of ancient or 

 modern times has ever been observed with so great care and ful- 

 ness of detail as has that of which the city of Charleston was so near 

 the centre of disturbance. Almost nothing remains to be desired 

 in this report. Besides the observations made by professors in 

 several colleges, by hundreds of railroad officials, and at signal 

 stations, hundreds of intelligent private citizens have reported their 

 own experiences, giving to Captain Dutton a mass of data such as 

 has not before been collected in regard to a dozen earthquakes. 

 This material has, of course, all been carefully digested ; and the 

 conclusions which Captain Dutton will present in his monograph 

 will constitute one of the most valuable additions to scientific 

 knowledge yet made through the United States Geological Survey. 

 The same volume will also contain a report on the Sonora earth- 

 quake, very abundant material for which has been collected in those 

 portions of the United States to which the teinblor extended. Mr. 

 Goodfellow's report upon the phenomena of the epicentral region of 

 the disturbance in Sonora was all that was needed to complete the 

 desirable data. Both of these monographs will be ready for the 

 printer by June i, and an effort will be made to hasten their publi- 

 cation. 



An experiment is being tried in Chicago which deserves suc- 

 cess. A series of economic conferences between busmess-men and 

 working-men has been arranged with the purpose of making busi- 

 ness-men and working-men acquainted with each other's views. 

 Business-men do not attend working-men's meetings, and only know 

 of their proceedings and debates at second-hand. Similarly work- 

 ing-men have no appreciation of the magnitude and complexity of 

 the problems with which business-men are daily confronted. The 



