iSjg.] 
Notices of Books. 
“5 
Report of the New Jersey State Commission appointed to devise 
a Plan for the Encouragement of Manufacturers of Orna- 
mental and Textile Fabrics. Trenton : Naar, Day, and 
Naar. 1878. 
We have here, within the compass of one hundred pages, a 
storehouse of useful facls and abundant food for serious reflec- 
tion. The State of New Jersey has issued a Commission to 
examine in what manner manufacturing industry may best be 
encouraged within its jurisdiction, and the Commissioners have 
evidently come to the only legimitate conclusion — that the pros- 
perity of manufacturers can only be permanently secured by 
raising the standard of intelligence and education both among 
employers and employed. If we ask what kind of education is 
needed, we must at once perceive that none of the three grades 
of mental training, as supplied respectively to the lower, the 
middle, and the upper class in England, — that is, the rudi- 
mentary, the commercial, and the classical, — can answer the 
purpose. How fully the Commissioners agree with us appears 
from the fact that they consider the position of the United 
States “ alarmingly unfavourable,” whilst they recognise that 
the American “ system of general primary education is more 
widely spread and more effective than in any country in the 
world ; and while we have a larger number of schools, in pro- 
portion to population, than perhaps any other country, we are 
destitute of trade schools, and have extremely inadequate provi- 
sion for industrial education of any kind and for any class of our 
people.” If, then, the educational position of America, from an 
industrial point of view, is — in spite of its elaborate and care- 
fully-worked “ common-school ” system — still to be regarded as 
alarmingly unfavourable, we must guard against expecting much 
from the recent steps taken in this country in the way of primary 
education. Setting on one side the palpable fad that all persons 
in England who really wished for elementary instruction could 
have acquired it even before the passing of the Education Ac 5 t, 
we cannot see that either our “Board ” or our “ Denominational” 
schools will greatly increase the industrial or the inventive capa- 
bilities of our population. What we want is a system of training 
which shall fix the attention of the student upon things rather 
than upon words. 
One point seems to us to require explanation. If, as the 
Commissioners expressly declare, “ all Europe is a generation in 
advance of us ” (America), — if in Germany “ the visitor from 
the United States is oppressed by the apprehension that his own 
country, unprovided with such efficient and essential means of 
giving to the people a good industrial education, is likely to 
suffer severely,” — how is it, we ask, that America is so fruitful 
in inventions, many of them of undeniable value ? Are we not 
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