79 
 'Pa 
 

 New York State Education Department 
 
 OUR CHILDREN, OUR SCHOOLS, AND OUR 
 
 INDUSTRIES 
 
 COMMISSIONER S SPECIAL THEME 
 ANNUAL REPORT I908 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREW S. DRAPER, LL.B. LL.D. 
 
 Commissioner of Education 
 
 ALBANY, N. Y. 
 
 D4o4r-D7-35oo 
 
^<^ 
 ^ 
 
 £3 2Q 1910 
 
 'WA 
 
OUR CHILDREN, OUR SCHOOLS, AND OUR 
 '^ INDUSTRIES 
 
 ^ It is putting it not a whit too strongly to say that it is quite 
 
 apparent to all who think about it that we must have much more 
 accurate and up-to-date vital statistics ; that we must have public 
 records of what children there are among us, and their ages; that 
 all children of school age must be more completely accounted for 
 in the schools; that the compulsory school age must at least be 
 extended to the completion of the elementary schools ; that provision 
 must be made for public vocation or trades schools, and also for 
 schools of a general character which meet the continuing needs of 
 young people in the stores and shops and factories ; that these 
 schools for the industrial masses must operate at times which will 
 allow pupils to engage in regular employment, but employers must 
 plan for the regular attendance of young employees upon the schools 
 at certain hours ; that the schools must keep hold of all pupils until 
 they have received a training which will fit them for some definite 
 employment ; and that the different parts of a more extended school 
 system must balance each other more exactly and support the 
 industrial as well as the professional activities of the country. 
 
 The recognition of the need of all this grows out of manifest 
 moral, industrial, and economic conditions that are widely prevalent 
 among us, and out of a growing knowledge of what other peoples, 
 harder pressed and more painstaking than we, have done to meet 
 the conditions which are now asserting themselves here. It grows 
 out of our clearing vision that simple and balanced justice, as well 
 as the progress and happiness of the people, and the strength and 
 poise of the nation, alike make it necessary to give to the wage 
 earning masses, and to the common industries, such equivalent as 
 we can for what the present schools are doing for the wealthier 
 classes and for the professional and managing vocations. 
 
 The recognition of the need is opening the door to a decisive 
 educational advance in America ; and the time seems ripe for a 
 review of the reasons for it and for a serious discussion of the 
 plans and arrangements for it. 
 
 Looking backward 
 
 In the beginning there was no thought that the common schools 
 should do more than teach the " three R's," the mere elements, 
 which would enable one to gain the knowledge vital to citizenship. 
 Farming was the very general employment. Many of the trades 
 
were followed on the farm. There was no thought of leaving the 
 farm. Boys were happy in the thought of having a farm and fol- 
 lowing their fathers from whom they learned the business of farm- 
 ing. In the towns there was a system of apprenticeship by which 
 boys were bound out to tradesmen and artisans for a term of years 
 to give service in return for instruction in a trade. There was no 
 employment, and little schooling, for girls outside of the home. The 
 girls in every home were made expert in the household arts by their 
 mothers and by the ordinary needs of the home, and they were not 
 unhappy about it. Few boys and no girls went to college. The 
 college was the instrument of the relatively rich, and provided 
 rather exclusive instruction in the higher classical and culturing 
 studies. It can hardly be said to have prepared for the professions 
 and certainly it did not train in professional knowledge and skill. 
 There was no connecting link between the college and the common 
 school, which stood for the masses. The early English system per- 
 sisted as it persists in England still. They are having a row about 
 it over there now, and seem likely to have a yet larger one. A 
 system of academies which was really a system of fitting schools 
 for the colleges, developed in the better towns. Even the academies 
 connected but very little with the elementary schools. They were 
 half elementary schools themselves ; the other half managed to con- 
 nect with colleges and had to condescend to them. They lived on 
 tuition fees and were patronized by the well-to-do who could afford 
 it and were ambitious to have their children go beyond the ele- 
 mentary branches. They participated in the exclusiveness of the 
 colleges, but the stern need of support obliged them to adjust their 
 work to the needs of all who would send pupils to them. This is 
 not saying that they lacked in excellence. They did not. But they 
 were essentially private institutions and they had an individuality 
 of their own. They were not only wholly apart from the common 
 schools ; there was much aloofness. It was an exceptional and a 
 most progressive community that associated an academy with the 
 common or elementary schools. Accordingly there was no educa- 
 tional outlet for the children who completed the elementary schools. 
 If a son of the poor got into an academy there was some shock about 
 it; and if he broke into a profession it was because the fence was 
 low and he had some unusual qualities in his outfit. 
 
 This could not long be, and the public high school system came. 
 It came very near supplanting the academies in the older states; 
 and it kept them from ever being in the newer states. It took their 
 place as colkge feeders ; the colleges came to be glad to condescend 
 
to the high schools also ; indeed, their work of itself developed 
 many colleges. With it all, the colleges have multiplied and the 
 best of them have become great universities. The public high 
 school system became the strong connecting link between the ele- 
 mentary schools and the colleges. Every effort was made to have 
 the connections close and smooth. The road from " the kindergar- 
 ten to the university " was made continuous and easy. The colleges 
 and universities were broadened in their work and liberalized and 
 popularized in their character. The scientific interests made a great 
 fight against classical exclusiveness, and slowly got the better of the 
 old Romanlike resistance. At all events, science broke in. Pro- 
 fessional expertness came to have a scientific basis and came to 
 require a higher scientific training. The universities came to have 
 professional schools, and got the laws changed so that students 
 headed for the professions found it to their advantage, or were 
 absolutely required, to go to them. Mechanical and agricultural 
 schools and colleges grew up, and often in association with the older 
 literary colleges and universities. The ideal of a university came 
 to be one that could supply the best instruction in any study. There 
 was economy in producing stronger all-around scholars, and in 
 training for the professions, for managerial capacity in business, 
 and for leadership in public life, through grouping all manner of 
 schools about the same campus. The aggregations developed mar- 
 velous spirit and attractiveness. Then came the days of competi- 
 tion and imitation; of fraternities, and debates; of athletics, of 
 gymnasiums, and tracks, and games, and intercollegiate contests ; 
 of ribbons, and songs, and bands, and mascots, and awful yelling. 
 It pretty nearly set states aflame. It would be unfair to imply that 
 the rivalry and the noise were all that attracted youth to high school 
 and college. Far from it. They not only taught more things, and 
 more things in which there was human interest, but they taught 
 them in infinitely better ways. Moreover, they taught them to 
 both sexes. x\ll in all, the multiplicity of actual work, and the glow 
 and enthusiasm of the environment, certainly attracted the ambi- 
 tious youth. There are very considerable areas in the country now, 
 where every boy and every girl in the elementary schools thinks 
 of the high school, and every one in the high school debates the 
 matter of going to college. The stronger of both sexes feel injured 
 if denied the advanced learning. 
 
 That is not all. The influence of the teachers of all grades is 
 exerted to send all of the children to the grade above, along the 
 road that leads to the university. They are told of the equal rights 
 
of every one and of the increased resourcefulness and efficiency, 
 and therefore of the better chance, which is provided by the higher 
 training. Acting upon the American spirit and temperament, the 
 result is quick and strong. On the whole it is well. Sometimes it is 
 pathetic, for it often leads parents to sacrifice more than they ought, 
 and sometimes it directs youth into places already well occupied 
 and for which they have no special adaptation. It is saying noth- 
 ing against the students most concerned, and nothing against the 
 claims of the universities, to say that there can be no doubt about 
 the fact that many get into them who would be better off in the 
 end if they would put the qualities they have into other work,, when 
 they are without the factors which are requisite to success in un- 
 dertakings which practically exact university training. There is 
 serious question about many going to college who do go. 
 
 It ought to be seen that, in view of the spirit, the democracy, 
 the political philosophy, and the temperament of the people of the 
 United States, this is much more likely to be so here than in coun- 
 tries where there is distinct cleavage between industrial and social 
 classes, where families live in the same way for generations, and 
 where all of the political philosophy, and all of the government plans 
 and policies are set against one's getting above the class and the 
 kind of work in which he was born. It is saying nothing against 
 our temperament, and spirit, and political philosophy, to say that 
 it leads a great many youth into places or kinds of work for which 
 they are not best adapted. In American schools, particularly the 
 secondary schools and above, every one is told that he is lacking in 
 every desirable quality if he is not hitching his wagon to a star. 
 That is all right enough if there could be some discrimination about 
 the kind of star that it would be well for the particular individual 
 to try to harness up with. The true standards of value concerning 
 positions and fitness for positions are often but poorly understood. 
 There are many failures through misfits. In the indiscriminate 
 scramble for places which will enable one to wear fine clothes and 
 live in a great house or at the clubs, some get into places they can 
 not fill, many who manage to make a living in such places would 
 be far happier and make a better living in other places, and many 
 more lose their best chances in life by a mistaken race after a fleet- 
 ing vision when substantial opportunities are actually and easily 
 within their reach. 
 
 There would be quite as much of this as we can well afford if 
 the educational system did not lead so exclusively to professional 
 employments and to the quasi professional positions and the man- 
 
aging positions in the business and industrial vocations. As it is, 
 there is so much of it that it is actually making us poor. 
 
 Nothing leads to craftsmanship 
 
 But that is not all. Any hand work that is found in the ele- 
 mentary school — and on the whole it is very little — is sustained 
 on the theory that it is a desirable accomplishment, an intellectual 
 quickener, rather than that all the world must work, and that work 
 with the hands must be much more common and quite as reputable 
 as work with the head. Instead of leading to a trade it prepares 
 for the manual training high school, if there is one, and that leads 
 to the technological college, if it leads anywhere, and that to one 
 of the engineering professions. Nothing in the common schools 
 leads to a trade. 
 
 The manual training high schools are too elaborate, too expen- 
 sive, in a way too dilettante, to lead to anything other than one 
 of the industrial professions ; often they do not even prepare for 
 training in one of these. They are much more like schools than 
 shops, whereas they should be more like shops than schools. In 
 buildings that have nothing of the appearance of a shop, they have 
 machinery, tools, equipment, atmosphere, theory, and practice, 
 which differentiate them widely from the shop. They are managed 
 by men who are more teachers than workmen, when they should 
 be managed by men who are at least quite as much workmen as 
 teachers. Often the machinery and tools make an interesting show 
 without being needed or effectually used, because there is not a 
 skilled workm.an to use them. Many a time a principal or teacher 
 pleads for an appropriation with which to buy machinery, tools, 
 and other equipment, without any definite theory, or plan, or end, 
 in view. If refused, he would feel outraged and become a martyr. 
 If given, he studies the catalogues and sees the agents for the pur- 
 pose of spending the money in ways that will look well and make 
 an impression upon the people, who always love an object lesson 
 and are often susceptible and superficial about industrial training. 
 Real tradesmen and workmen discriminate ; and they are amused 
 by what they see. There is not enough substantial result to it. I 
 know very well that this is not always true, but quite as well that it 
 is often true. 
 
 It is true also that the overwhelming influence of American 
 technical schools, from lowest to highest, is quite as much in 
 the direction of turning out men for professional and managing 
 employments as is the influence of the purely literary and sci- 
 
8 
 
 entific schools. Of course it is for professional employment in one 
 of the industrial professions and for managing positions in one 
 of 'the leading manufacturing industries, but it is none the less 
 for a professional and managing vocation. It does not train work- 
 men. It is saying little against the system to say that it is one- 
 sided, in the effort to bring up the other side and develop a system 
 that is better balanced. 
 
 The unskilled labor in American cities is trained but very little 
 in the American schools. It is now derived very largely from the 
 less favored countries of the old world. American children are 
 taught that they must hold themselves above unskilled labor. It is, 
 however, no uncommon thing to find young men and women in 
 industrial and domestic service in this country, who were better 
 trained in elementary knowledge of reading, writing, and mathe- 
 matics, as well as in the simple arts which make for ordinary effi- 
 ciency, before they came to this country, than the young people 
 of similar age and social plane are who have always lived here. 
 They are happier and of more value to the country for it. It is 
 due to the fact that the elementary schools of the lands from which 
 they came had much less to do than our elementary schools have, 
 and were required to do it more exactly; and to the further fact 
 that those schools had in mind the training of youth for work, 
 rather than for professional or managing employments, or for mere 
 accomplishments. It is the fact that our unskilled labor does not 
 come out of our own schools, joined to the fact that the skilled labor 
 that we have is so largely trained not in the schools but in a very 
 haphazard way in the shops, that is disturbing the equilibrium of 
 our factories, impeding our industrial productivity, and raising so 
 much criticism upon the unbalanced curriculum of the schools. 
 
 The lines in all the schools above the elementary schools, are set 
 hard and fast for professional employments and for managing posi- 
 tions in industrial employments, not only through the continual 
 stirring of the ambitions which are buoyant in American youth, but 
 also through the large provision for the literary and scientific train- 
 ing which is naturally incident thereto, or is actually required by 
 such employments. In the high schools, the colleges, the profes- 
 sional schools that are independent as well as those related to the 
 universities, in the business and commercial schools or independent 
 schools of every kind, in the universities, and even in the technical 
 schools of every grade, the whole scheme is set to turn out profes- 
 sional men, and managers, and captains of something or other, 
 rather than skilled workmen. It is so, too, in the elementary schools 
 
where the Hnes are set at all. From the bottom to the top of the 
 school system the eye is on the school above, and the school above 
 leads to a professional or a managing employment rather than to 
 a trade vocation. 
 
 If the manual training in the high schools or the separate manual 
 training schools of secondary grade, or the little industrial drawing 
 or other simple industrial work in the elementary schools, be ad- 
 vanced in refutation of this statement, it is insisted that they do not 
 refute it. The little industrial work in the elementary schools has 
 been looked upon as a diversion, or as a preparation for the man- 
 ual training in the high schools, and the enthusiastic advocates of 
 manual training in the high schools have been content to rest their 
 interest in it upon its all-around culturing and educational value, 
 meaning thereby its value to intellectual virility and energy, rather 
 than upon the fact that it would make a more skilled craftsman and 
 therefore an individual of more character and a citizen of more 
 strength in the case of the man who works by himself alone and 
 not as one of an organized force, and with his hands alone and 
 not through the use of a complicated machine. The technical 
 schools are of course to be encouraged, but the very interests of 
 capital will encourage them, and, at the most, when we think of 
 their bearing upon men and women, they tend to make the human 
 a part of the machine, or they lead to one of the engineering pro- 
 fessions or to the captaining of workmen. From first to last, there 
 has been little about the American educational system, and there is 
 now little about the American industrial system to dignify and uplift 
 craftsmanship, or to multiply and train the physical qualities of the 
 individual man. 
 
 Wholly apart from the one-sided tendencies of our educational 
 system, the fact is that if any mechanical tendencies which a child 
 may have are neglected until he gets into the high school, they are 
 never likely to come to much anyway. And the further fact is that 
 so long as manual training has to be dominated by the method and 
 atmosphere of the school rather than of the shop, and managed by 
 one whom the capable workman regards as a sort of dilettante 
 theorist rather than by one who likes to wear a blouse and overalls and 
 actually does fine work with his hands, it is not likely to stimulate 
 the best character in workmanship nor to turn out any considerable 
 number of justly self-satisfied and abundantly desirable workmen. 
 It may in part fit men for the work of the engineering colleges, 
 which may make engineers of some of them. And in some of the 
 engineers there will develop the qualities which will make for leader- 
 
lO 
 
 ship in great constructive enterprises. But it all leads away from 
 independent craftsmanship. In a general way the same thing is 
 true — perhaps more is true — of the commercial courses and the com- 
 mercial schools. Doubtless they inspire some and aid a few to enlarge 
 their efficiency, but it is surely within the fact to say that the ratio 
 of captains, or even of finished business men, they produce is, from 
 an educational standpoint, discouragingly small. 
 
 In saying this it is not intended to urge that the literary, and 
 professional, and commercial, and technical schools of all grades are 
 worthless or not worth all they have cost. On the contrary, they 
 each minister to a class and are, generally speaking, invaluable. It 
 is only intended to urge that they are one-sided, that they meet 
 the needs of the situation only partially, and that their theories and 
 plans and methods are such that it is impossible for them to meet 
 it completely. They are so ample in numbers and good in character 
 that they are turning out quite all of the professionals and captains 
 that the country requires, and are beginning to do it quite as thor- 
 oughly as is being done anywhere in the world. Not much beyond 
 the natural growth of these institutions seems now to be necessary 
 to the professional life of the country. This can not be said as to the 
 factors which contribute to the industrial life of the nation. 
 
 Nor is it intended to imply that the public schools are not doing 
 the work they are arranged to do, in an efficient manner. On the 
 contrary, again, the buildings average far better, the equipment is 
 many times better, the courses are more complete and more logically 
 related, and the teachers much better prepared and certainly no less 
 conscientious, than ever before in the history of the country. It is 
 only suggesting that, in the interest of the common people and of 
 the country, the kinds of schools must be multiplied, that the educa- 
 tional schem.e must be broadened, that attendance upon schools 
 must be longer and more universal, and that the work of the lower 
 schools must have much more bearing upon the labor of the masses. 
 
 Reflections upon this subject have led me to seek exact informa- 
 tion, and I confess, with some humiliation, that it surprises me. The 
 situation is even worse than I supposed. I have assumed that 
 practically all of the children who do not go to the high schools do 
 finish the elementary schools. That is not the fact. It is clear that 
 the larger number do not finish the elementary schools by the time 
 they are fourteen, the age at which the law says they may leave 
 school to go to work, and that this provision of the law very com- 
 monly leads parents to think that the time has come for them to go 
 to work, notwithstanding the fact that they have not finished the 
 
II 
 
 lower schools, and notwithstanding the other fact that there is little 
 renumerative v/ork which they can do. There is often more of a 
 break in attendance between the fifth and sixth grades of the 
 elementary schools than there is between the elementary schools and 
 the secondary schools. 
 
 The following table will show the attendance in the elementary- 
 schools, by grades, in the cities named, commencing in 1899 with 
 the class that finished the course in 1907. The cities are not se- 
 lected. The list includes all cities of the State from which the data 
 could be obtained without labor which was not insisted upon. There 
 is no reason to suppose that the omitted cities would materially 
 change the deductions. 
 
12 
 
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13 
 
 The totals and percentages are as follows : 
 
 GRADE ' NUMBER OF PUPILS PER CENT 
 
 First 21 410 100 
 
 Second 17 524 82 
 
 Third 17 028 79 
 
 Fourth 15 918 74 
 
 Fifth 14 395 • • 67 
 
 Sixth 12 464 58 
 
 Seventh 10 152 , 47 
 
 Eighth 8517 40 
 
 The attendance by years in New York State high schools has some 
 bearing upon our discussion. In the present year it is as follows : 
 
 PER CENT OF ALL 
 
 First year pupils 39 122 45 
 
 Second year pupils 25 145 29 
 
 Third year pupils 14 474 16 
 
 Fourth year pupils 8 560 10 
 
 Unclassified pupils i 769 
 
 Total 89 070 
 
 Boys, 37,429; girls, 51,641; graduates in 1907, boys 2424, girls 
 6793- 
 
 It is interesting to know what the corresponding figures are for 
 the United States. For the year 1904-5, the last at hand, the total 
 attendance upon high schools in the United States was 876,050. The 
 percentage by years was, first year 43^ ; second year 2(iio ; third year 
 18^; and fourth year 13;^. 
 
 I confess that it startles me to find that certainly not more than 
 two fifths and undoubtedly not more than one third of the children 
 who enter our elementary schools ever finish them, and that not 
 one half of them go beyond the fifth or sixth grade. 
 
 It is hardly less surprising to find that only about one third of 
 the pupils who go to the high schools remain beyond the second 
 year, and that only about one sixth of those who enter remain to 
 graduate. 
 
 It all indicates that the lives of children are being wasted, that 
 there is a sad lack of definite aim and purpose about it all, and that 
 our educational plans do not rationally meet our conditions. 
 
14 
 
 Neither schools nor work for children 
 
 As the schools have developed on the literary, scientific, and pro- 
 fessional sides, the indenturing system has practically disappeared. 
 Few boys are now apprenticed to a trade. Indeed, many of the 
 trades have either disappeared, or so changed as to render the ap- 
 prenticeship system impracticable. The increase of machinery, 
 which does the work of many men, has led the older workmen who 
 work with their hands to resist the training of boys for their work 
 in order to avoid more competition in their work than is imperative. 
 It is even true that there are many less apprentices in the trades than 
 the rules of the labor organizations approve. This leads to a short- 
 age of skilled workmen, and to the complaint by manufacturers that 
 they can not get competent workmen. People also complain that 
 the schools do not fit children for any ordinary duties in the stores 
 and offices and factories. It also keeps children from getting work 
 of any kind when they leave the elementary schools. If they get 
 work it amounts to little, and too often leads to nothing. All of the 
 conditions taken together almost force children to keep on in the 
 school system and go on toward the professional and managing vo- 
 cations which are more than full, and for which they lack adapta- 
 tion; or else be out of any kind of work for several years. As a 
 fact, masses of them are out of school and also out of work for a 
 long time, if not for all time. 
 
 I shall not leave the entire responsibility for this either upon the 
 parents or the children. Some of it must fall upon the provisions of 
 the law ; some of it is chargeable to the inefficiency with which school 
 attendance and child labor laws are enforced; and some of it must 
 be attributed to the overloading and the slowness of the schools, and 
 in some measure to the want of alertness and energy in school ad- 
 ministration. Parents face hard problems concerning the family 
 support, and are much influenced by the fancies of the children. 
 The children can not know what leaving school means to them. 
 Neither the control of the home nor that of the school over chil- 
 dren is what it once was. Both homes and schools are awfully 
 profligate of boys and girls. The break comes at a critical time in 
 the physical life of the child; the time when he most needs con- 
 trol, restraint, guidance, and cheer; the time when he most needs 
 to be occupied, to be shown the need and the method of applica- 
 tion to serious work, and to be directed into some work, never mind 
 what it is, which he can do completely and be happy in the doing of 
 it. Instead of that he is often running wild at this time ; frequently 
 
15 
 
 impolite, mannerless, and sometimes impertinent; forgetting the 
 things of value he has learned, learning what he ought not to know 
 until he is older, if at all, and developing uncontrollable, unambi- 
 tious, and inefficient, if not vicious, qualities, which are more than 
 likely to preclude him from ever becoming very much of a man. 
 
 Does some one say that this is too highly colored, that it is not 
 true of many, and that it is pessimistic? Rational optimism never 
 shuts its eyes to the truth. What I have just said is literally and 
 completely true of more than half the children of our people. And 
 if true of only a much smaller number, it would be well worth 
 my attention and my protest. 
 
 There is fault in the law. It should require that children finish 
 the elementary schools, or at least remain in them or in a trades 
 school to the end of their sixteenth year, before they go to work. 
 It might well gather them into the schools before the eighth year, 
 and it might well require us to make attendance more regular and 
 more resultful. 
 
 There is fault, much fault, in the plan and in the work of the 
 schools. If they do not have too many studies — about which I am 
 not without skepticism — they certainly consume too m.uch time upon 
 some of the studies they do have. There are too many grades of 
 books in the same study. The thing is drawn out regardless of time 
 and, almost, of interest, and certainly of educational efficiency. The 
 day of reckoning is hardly anticipated at all. For example, there is 
 almost enough time of the child put upon such a study as geography 
 to enable him to learn a foreign language, when the fact is he will 
 learn all the geography it will ever be necessary for him to know 
 in a few minutes when it is desirable for him to know it. 
 
 But that is not all, and perhaps it is not the most. There is alto- 
 gether too much so called " psychological science," too much fanci- 
 ful exploitation and illustration, too much method and dress parade 
 in the teaching. The cold and sad fact is that men and women 
 whose knowledge of physiology is utterly repudiated by our experts 
 in physiology and whose reasoning is ridiculed by our leaders in 
 logic, are assuming with entire confidence to teach physiological psy- 
 chology in the schools. If the professors in the colleges enjoy it, 
 and their students will stand it, perhaps we can let it alone, for they 
 have the means of correcting it within their own number, but it 
 is high time to protest when primary teachers are led to believe that 
 they are bound to know all about this mass of superficial stuff and 
 that they must inflict it upon the children in the elementary schools. 
 
 The reason why so many children leave the elementary schools 
 
i6 
 
 before finishing the course is not so much because their parents 
 need their labor, or because the law says they may, as because there 
 is too much wandering around in tall grass, too much time wasted 
 in the merely incidental accompaniments of schools and of teaching. 
 It is because the work of the schools is behind the ages of the chil- 
 dren. It is because the work which we set to be done by a woman 
 teacher in the fifth grade and the way we expect her to do it can no 
 longer be tolerated by a boy passing into his fifteenth year. 
 
 The hard fact is that we ought to get children well started earlier 
 and push them along from one grade to another more rapidly than 
 we do, and I entertain no doubt but that we ought to do the work 
 we do in the elementary grades, or such parts of it as are funda- 
 mental and potential, in at least one less year than we take for it. 
 In any event, if our elementary school system is to continue to do 
 about the work which is now assigned to it, it must make a point 
 of getting children to the end of it by the time they finish their four- 
 teenth year. It is monstrous that two thirds of the children of the 
 State do not go through the elementary schools. If great numbers 
 of them do it at all they will have to do it by the time they are fif- 
 teen. Long before that their minds should be directed toward 
 definite work which they may do, and may like to do ; and when that 
 time comes, they should be put to doing it and helped to do it ex- 
 actly and well, to the end that they may have some pleasure in it. 
 To that we will now direct our attention. 
 
 Good citizenship dependent upon workmen 
 
 I hesitate not a moment in saying that good citizenship and the 
 thrift and morals of the country are quite as dependent upon the 
 mass being trained to skilled work with their hands, as upon a class 
 being advanced in scientific knowledge or in professional accom- 
 plishments. The greatness of the nation is contingent upon bring- 
 ing the truths which science unlocks to the life, and particularly to 
 the vocations, of the people. But that can be done only where a 
 people is inured to work; where they have, and love, vocations. 
 
 The successful workman is a happier man and a more reliable 
 citizen, a much larger factor in giving strength and balance to his 
 country, than the unsuccessful or the only half successful profes- 
 sional man. It adds little to one's value as a civic unit that he be 
 elaborately trained in theory, or in science, or in skill, if his training 
 has been at the cost of his balance; if he knows one thing at the 
 expense of many other things which every good citizen is bound to 
 
17 
 
 know, and of that balance which every good citizen is bound to 
 have. And it makes little addition to the strength of a nation that 
 some of the people have the highest learning, even that the advanced 
 schools and the professional life are overcrowded, if the masses 
 have not love and capacity for growing things and for making 
 things. 
 
 The scientific habit and the zeal for exact knowledge and the 
 superior work of the gymnasia and of the universities, caused Ger- 
 many, thirty years ago, first to note the educational difficulty which 
 we are beginning to realize. It was this which led the young Em- 
 peror to say to the Berlin Conference on Secondary Education, in 
 1890, " The course of training in our schools is defective in many 
 ways. The chief reason is that since the year 1870 the classical 
 philologists have laid the chief emphasis on the subject-matter of 
 instruction, on learning and knowing, not on the formation of char- 
 acter and the actual needs of life. . . The demands made in the 
 examinations show that less stress is laid on practical ability than 
 on knowledge. The underlying principle of this is that the scholar 
 must, above all things, know as much as possible ; whether that 
 knowledge fits the actual needs of after life is a secondary considera- 
 tion. . . The chief defect in our schools is the lack of a na- 
 tional basis for the instruction. . . Our schools have undertaken a 
 task beyond human strength, and have, in my opinion, caused an 
 overproduction of highly educated people, — more than the nation 
 can hear.'' 
 
 There will be those in this country who will say that this was 
 the expression of royal exclusiveness, even of royal apprehension 
 lest the liberal education of the masses should make for demo- 
 cratic rather than monarchical reign. It is the fact, on the other 
 hand, that the Emperor was obliged to withstand that objection, 
 raised in the inner circles of his court, because no less an authority 
 than Prince Hohenlohe, the Imperial Chancellor, in the memoirs 
 just published to the annoyance of the Emperor, reveals opposition 
 by the nobility on the ground that to change the labor of the 
 German people, in whole or in part, from agrarian to manufacturing 
 industries was to promote democracy and endanger monarchism. 
 Of course the Emperor had no thought of inviting a tide which 
 would engulf his throne. He was not lessening liberal learning, 
 but he was trying to bring industrial power into vital relations, and 
 therefore into equilibrium, with it. He was enlarging the material, 
 and therefore the military, strength of an empire which is encom- 
 passed by rivals, if not foes, on every side. It is much to his 
 
i8 
 
 credit that he was doing it with discrimination and without fear; 
 that he could foresee the imperative basis of German power; and 
 that he was able to establish that balance between material and 
 intellectual wealth which would enlarge, and has enlarged, both in 
 the German Empire. 
 
 Lack of industrial training in American schools 
 
 There is nothing which now appeals to the popular fancy in 
 America so much as " industrial training." The newspapers are 
 full of it. Every public audience responds to it quickly. The 
 authorities of charitable and penal institutions are trying to install 
 it. The school boards are all in favor of it but hardly know how 
 to accomplish it. They do something about it because they dare 
 not do nothing. They do not do much because the pedagogical 
 mind is not very clear about policies and plans, because the pro- 
 fessional and capitalistic classes are too often uninformed, un- 
 interested, or selfish about it, and because the labor organizations 
 are skeptical about its ultimate effect upon the scale of wages. The 
 confusion and uncertainty are widespread. 
 
 Nor is this all. Up to this time the American spirit has made 
 " industrial training " a very different thing in the American mind 
 from what it is in the minds of other peoples. In our mind it is, 
 in part, culturing, an aid to industrial or engineering leadership, 
 something that will lift one to a place above that of the ordinary 
 workman. Accordingly, we have installed it at the top of the 
 educational system and left the bottom to take care of itself. In 
 the minds of other peoples it means craftsmanship, the training of 
 the masses in good workmanship. Accordingly, they have in- 
 trenched it at the bottom of their educational systems and left the 
 top to meet its own needs. The top is more able than the bottom 
 to get what it needs. Whatever the motive or the logic, Germany 
 is educationally more democratic than the United States. 
 
 We have never to any extent undertaken to provide vocational 
 training, or even any direct preparation for craftsmanship, in the 
 public elementary schools. Here and there in the cities, kinder- 
 gartens, or a mixture of kindergartens and the first primary grades, 
 have been established. It was done only after private kindergartens 
 had proved their worth. There have been movements for the ex- 
 tension of both free-hand and mechanical drawing, on the ground 
 that we must give art its opportunity and prepare for the manual 
 training work in the high schools. In very few places have we gone 
 farther in the lower schools. 
 
19 
 
 In the city of Cleveland, fifteen years ago, some phases of me- 
 chanical and domestic work were introduced into every grade of 
 all of the elementary schools, and I am informed that it still con- 
 tinues. In the four lower grades it consisted of sand molding, 
 clay modeling, paper folding, outlining with the needle, construc- 
 tion through the use of cardboard, and all phases of elementary 
 drawing. The aesthetic taste was incidentally commenced to be 
 developed by combining colors and arranging objects. In the fifth 
 and sixth grades simple geometrical forms, derived from the study 
 of paper and clay forms in the grades below, and cut in wood by 
 the use of the knife, rule, square, compass, and pencil, were given 
 the boys, and simple needle work, involving the principal stitches 
 in plain sewing, was given the girls. This was done by the class 
 at their desks, under the direction of the class teachers after they 
 had been instructed at grade meetings by the special supervisor. 
 In the seventh and eighth grades the boys were given light bench 
 work, and the girls plain cooking, arid for that purpose were sent 
 from each of several buildings at appointed times to central rooms 
 specially prepared, and to teachers specially trained for the purpose. 
 The system operated smoothly and was enthusiastically received in 
 the schools and in the city. There was nothing new about the work 
 itself, but the adaptation of it to all the grades in a large city 
 system was doubtless unprecedented in the country. It certainly 
 attracted much discussion and comment, and some official and peda- 
 gogical protest. At the National Meeting of Superintendents at 
 Richmond, Virginia in 1894, after a supervisor in the Cleveland 
 schools had presented a paper describing it, one of the most ex- 
 perienced and progressive school men of the country went directly 
 over to the apprehensive and subdued superintendent from Cleve- 
 land and asked " Is there anything you don't propose to do in the 
 primary schools ? " But the industrial conditions in Cleveland were 
 unusually favorable to it. Moreover, it taught no trade. It led 
 to no particular craft. It was more in the direction of general 
 accomplishments than of specific efficiency and skill. This much 
 was true of it, however; it formed some basis for the work of 
 trades schools, as well as of manual training schools and tech- 
 nological colleges. Yet the skepticism expressed at Richmond has 
 been widely and well intrenched. Even the very simple phases of 
 preparation for industrial vocations which aroused it have found 
 little more than theoretical and halting acceptance in American 
 elementary schools. 
 
20 
 
 If there is an apparent inconsistency between my demand that 
 the present work in the elementary schools shall be lessened by 
 elimination or concentration and my suggestion that the elements of 
 industrial training be added, let me say that the things of which 
 I complain are continuing, are present every day in the week and 
 in every hour of the day. They are not only not important; they 
 are a positive hindrance to the expeditious and exact training of 
 the powers of the child. The things that I propose would oc- 
 cupy at the most only a couple of hours in the week; they are 
 really diversions; they recognize the pedagogical principle that it 
 is quite as important for the child to do as to think; and they 
 lead toward efficiency in a condition which he is likely to occupy, 
 and will be an advantage to him no matter what his circumstances 
 in life. The taking out of what I propose to eliminate and the 
 putting in of what I propose to include will both be to the intel- 
 lectual and dexterous advantage of the child. There is no real 
 inconsistency. And if the one thing is done there will be abundant 
 room for the other. 
 
 Above the elementary schools, industrial and vocational work 
 has been given larger opportunity. In a great many of the high 
 schools there are courses in manual training, and in all of the larger 
 city systems there are manual training high schools. No one claims 
 that this has much bearing upon craftsmanship. At the most it 
 can relate to only a small part of the children who go to the public 
 schools, and as to them, it is for intellectual quickening or prepara- 
 tion for one of the engineering professions, or for the training of 
 men to direct other men who work with their hands. 
 
 In recent years some special vocations, like stenography and type- 
 writing, and other things relating to office work, have found their 
 way into the public secondary schools. Three or four public vo- 
 cational schools, of secondary grade, supported by a municipality 
 or partly by the municipality and partly by the state, like the Wash- 
 ington Irving High School of New York City, The Textile School of 
 Lowell, Mass., the Central High School of Commerce of Philadel- 
 phia, and some of the evening high schools of Buffalo and New 
 York City have been established. But their very names prove 
 how far they are from the training of the masses in workmanship. 
 
 Many of the universities, particularly the land grant and tax 
 supported universities, have great engineering schools, but their 
 work all leads essentially to the industrial professions rather than 
 to craftsmanship, although doubtless the sense which they drill 
 into the heads of their students concerning the honor which belongs 
 
21 
 
 to the man who can do fine work with his hands, and likes to work 
 in a blouse, is adding somewhat to the attractiveness of skilled labor. 
 
 Private business schools which, for profit, have undertaken to 
 train pupils in simpler mathematics, bookkeeping, stenography, 
 business forms, and the like, have been a great help to many for 
 a long time. Many of the Young Men's Christian Associations 
 have established schools of this kind, and some of them are be- 
 ginning to include trades schools in their scheme. Several cor- 
 respondence schools have attracted thousands of pupils and de- 
 veloped the existence of a widespread desire for self-improvement. 
 In New York City one company of financiers, merchants, and 
 real estate men, and another company interested in house furnish- 
 ing and decorating, and yet another interested in the building trades, 
 and still another interested in the automobile trade, and doubtless 
 many others, have set up schools or lecture courses for the special 
 training of competent assistants. Some of the great manufacturing 
 or construction companies, like the Westinghouse Electric Company 
 and the Baldwin Locomotive Works, have set up schools of their 
 own. They have prepared schoolrooms, employed efficient teachers,, 
 and laid out very considerable courses of work in order to train 
 men for their own service. They take young men on trial for 
 perhaps six months, and if they show some proficiency and aptitude, 
 and will bind themselves to remain and follow their work for a 
 term of three or four years, they enter into written agreement with 
 them to that effect, and during the period they work in the shop 
 they are under instruction and receive moderate pay upon a schedule, 
 which gradually advances as the apprentice may be assumed to 
 grow in competency. 
 
 But all this, if it illustrates anything, shows the general lack of 
 preparation for vocational employments in the United States, and 
 the disconnected, very often unsubstantial, and ordinarily self- 
 interested and sporadic movements to overcome the difficulty, rather 
 than any general plan for meeting a very wide and very imperative 
 demand. 
 
 I have been speaking in a general way of vocations common to 
 boys, but the situation is no less urgent as to girls. While the old 
 apprenticeship system has been gradually disappearing, and boys 
 have been going from the country to the cities, and machinery has 
 wrought such changes in men's work, the old-fashioned kind of 
 housekeeping which trained girls to expertness in the household 
 arts, has been disappearing also. Vocations which were formerly 
 open only to boys are now open to girls, with the result that by the 
 
22 
 
 tens of thousands they know nothing of good home making, and, 
 worse than that, they are proud of it. It is bad enough for an 
 attractive young miss to be unable to make a loaf of bread, or 
 broil a steak, or use a needle; the limit is passed when a college 
 makes her such a little idiot as to think it is smart to boast of it. 
 The schools are not so responsible for this as the mothers are, 
 but perhaps the schools ought to join with the mothers in the effort 
 to cure it. And aside from the employments of women relating 
 to the household, the business employments which women are enter- 
 ing in such great numbers may well concern the schools. And 
 moreover, the principle that all educational opportunities, or their 
 unquestioned equivalents, are to be extended to girls and boys alike, 
 is to have acceptance and expression in all parts of this country. 
 
 Therefore, we may sum up this phase of our theme thus : The 
 public school system has had but little thought of craftsmanship, 
 by which the greater part of the people must live, and upon which 
 the moral and intellectual health of the people and the greatness 
 of the nation must depend; the work of the schools has led almost 
 exclusively to mere culture and to professional and managing em- 
 ployments ; the efficiency of the teachers has been measured by the 
 number and training of the pupils they sent to the grade above, and 
 thus the pupils have been led to think that the grade above was 
 th^ goal of life ; and the grade above has led to literature and the 
 sciences and to professional and managing vocations. This has 
 taken a great many into situations for which they were not adapted, 
 and has overstocked the professions ; has resulted in too many 
 partial or complete failures, and is operating both to the industrial 
 and intellectual disadvantage of the country. 
 
 American aims 
 
 It is clear enough that we will not only have to reckon with 
 German industrialism, but also that we may learn much to our 
 advantage from the German system of education, and I shall there- 
 fore not hesitate to draw as many comparisons with Germany as I 
 may. We must distinguish a difference in aim and purpose, how- 
 ever, and can do it none too clearly, nor too soon. It is a difference 
 which is of national concern to us. The German purpose seems 
 to be to train boys and girls so as to add to the physical and 
 therefore to the military strength of the empire. The American pur- 
 pose is to train boys and girls so as to enable them to make the 
 most of themselves. Our ideal seems the noblest, but as yet the 
 Germans are widely and more uniformly realizing their ideal better 
 
23 
 
 than we are ours. Of course, in the one case, the training for 
 national strength incidentally makes useful and potential men and 
 women; and of course, in the other case, training for the highest 
 possibilities of manhood and womanhood incidentally makes for the 
 greatness of the nation. But a national policy which gives every 
 man his opportunity ought to make a larger percentage of pro- 
 ductive, and therefore happier men, and in the end, an infinitely 
 more versatile and potential people, if it can be carried out in ways 
 which will not give youth a beclouded outlook and lead to too 
 many misfits between adaptation and opportunity. 
 
 It can not have escaped our observation, moreover, that one 
 who starts out for a professional or managing vocation and fails, 
 never takes up craftsmanship afterwards and succeeds ; while a 
 good craftsman sometimes develops into an excellent professional 
 man, and very often develops into the very best kind of a manager 
 of his craft. And it is worse than idle, because it is justly pro- 
 ductive of false standards and of ill-will, to put one to managing 
 any business or any work, who has not learned the business by 
 exploiting its processes from the bottom up to the place which he 
 has come to occupy. Right there is one of the essential weaknesses 
 of our American business life. Through our ambitions, through 
 a rather hazy notion that we can hold any place we can get into, 
 and do anything we can get a chance to do, through fortune or 
 favoritism coupled with a fallacious logic about preparation, men 
 get into positions where they exercise control over other men who 
 really understand the details of the craft or the business better 
 than their overseers do. It all illustrates the vital need of broader 
 training for craftsmanship at the foundations of the craft and in 
 the early years of the youth's life, if all are to have an equal 
 chance, and if boys are not to advance to pitfalls because handi- 
 capped with superficiality. 
 
 In this connection it may be truly said that in the State of New 
 York there is now less difficulty about the constitution of the pro- 
 fessions than about organized commercial or industrial effective- 
 ness. No one can get into the professions of law or medicine 
 without four years in the secondary school, four more in the pro- 
 fessional school, a professional degree from an institution author- 
 ized to confer it, and passing the State professional examination ; 
 while one can, and often does, get to a high position in a bank, or 
 a department store, or a factory, or a railroad, without any edu- 
 cational requirements or any practical experience; and if he has 
 dabbled in economics, the theory of accounts, and the like, in college. 
 
24 
 
 under a professor who never had any practical experience, and 
 never accomplished anything in business, he is deemed to be 
 specially prepared to manage the v^hole thing. It illustrates again 
 the fallacy of our standards and the readiness with which American 
 spirit and ambition is permitted to start at the top, when it should 
 be required to start at the bottom, of great businesses. It explains 
 also the cause of so many misfits, accidents and failures. 
 
 But on the other hand, it should not lead us to overlook the fact 
 that mere experience without the study of fundamental principles, 
 and a knowledge of the history of related subjects, is not so very 
 much better. One course makes for conceited superficiality, and 
 the other for conceited narrowness. There is small difference. 
 The true course, if we are to provide the best possible training, is 
 through practical experience associated with scholastic and scientific 
 training, through the association of real business with the work of 
 the schools. If we are to do it for some people, and would be just, 
 we must do it for all people. 
 
 What are we to do? 
 
 While the schools are providing every conceivable kind of in- 
 struction for the head workers, the hand workers leave instruction 
 altogether when they leave the elementary schools, and that is 
 commonly before they are prepared for work or are mature enough 
 to plan for themselves. What little has been done for these has been 
 isolated and unsystematic, and done by private enterprise. Thus 
 the public school system is one-sided, — unjust to the greater num- 
 ber and inefficient in meeting an overwhelming phase of the na- 
 tion's educational need. To be consistent we must do less for the 
 head workers, or more for the hand workers. We will not go back. 
 All, not some, education is a passion in America. We will go 
 forward. 
 
 But just how? It is a large matter. It means much more ex- 
 pense — but that is the least of it. It involves a large new chapter 
 in our educational theory, a serious study of other educational 
 systems, radical changes in schoolhouses and courses, the training 
 of a different class of teachers. Before that can be commenced, 
 or while it is being done, there will have to be much discussion, a 
 great deal of missionary work, a consolidation of sentiment, and 
 many new laws. The people of the schools may well have a plan, 
 and one that is well fortified by theory and by fact, if they can. 
 
 It is but just to ourselves to say that the problem seems less 
 difficult in other countries because the social cleavage is more dis- 
 
^5 
 
 tinct, children expect to continue upon the plane in which they 
 were born, and the masses expect to work with their hands. More- 
 over, the governments are beginning to see that the strength of 
 the nation depends upon training workmen, and the outlook of the 
 government settles things. We do not worry about the strength 
 of the United States. We take that for granted. We are for 
 giving every one his chance, and for helping every one to make the 
 most of himself. The course of other nations leaves out individual 
 possibilities. It cares little for the individual as such. It neither 
 reckons with nor promotes such an ambitious, buoyant, confident, 
 aggressive national temperament as is common in the United States. 
 Nevertheless, our course is producing a temperament which is 
 top-heavy with self-satisfaction, and doubtless needs more ballast 
 in the hold. We would not lose our optimistic temperament if 
 we could: we will restore the balance. 
 
 If we compare with Germany we shall do it with the best of them 
 so far as training for hand industry is concerned. There is no 
 other great nation where education is at once so scientific, so bal- 
 anced, so effective, and so free — scientific through research and 
 the habit of taking pains — balanced because the educational system 
 has come to be a pyramid with industrialism at its base — effective 
 because the habit of sending children to school with regularity is 
 universal — and free through the clear appreciation of the fact 
 that the arbitrary power of the state is entirely consistent with the 
 purest democracy in learning. 
 
 England has trades schools of all kinds and in great numbers. 
 But England has no continuing, consistent, and coherent system of 
 schools, beginning in the street and leading either to a profession 
 or to a trade, and offering the opportunity of selection at some 
 definite point upon the road. The aristocracy prepare for exclusive 
 and literary colleges in private and exclusive schools. The children 
 of the masses have to go to elementary schools which are not free 
 in the sense that our schools are free: they get a very excellent 
 training in elementary English : if they go farther they finish in 
 trades schools that are more shoppish than schoolish, and possibly 
 the better for it. But the lines are arbitrary and hard : there is 
 little individualism and no choice. English education has a hard 
 time getting over the idea that, without regard to the personal 
 equation, some men are to rule and others are to serve ; that the 
 English school above the elementary must train the English " gen- 
 tleman ;" and that the elementary school must train the child of 
 the masses in ways that will make it clear to him that his business 
 in life is to serve. 
 
26 
 
 One of the most illuminating members of the English Educational 
 Commission, which recently visited this country under the patronage 
 of Mr Alfred Mosely, said in his report that the difficulty with 
 the English elementary schools was that pupils left them without 
 any desire to learn anything more. The social cleavage takes hold 
 at the very beginning in the schools, there is no system of middle 
 schools and therefore no connection between the higher and the 
 lower schools, and the lines are so rigid that they hinder the best 
 results in both the upper and the nether classes. The English 
 nobleman has no thought of permitting his personal comfort and 
 his political control to be disturbed by allowing the " serving classes " 
 to know too much; and the English nobleman will come to be less 
 a nobleman, and the British nation will come to be, relatively speak- 
 ing, less a power, unless there is a radical change about it. 
 
 France began the systematic training of hand workers long years 
 ago, and the result is quickly apparent in the trades, industries, 
 and arts of the French people. There are hundreds of trades schools 
 in Paris and thousands throughout France. They are highly effi- 
 cient; they turn out artists and craftsmen of the very first order; 
 it is apparently very easy for France to make a most attractive 
 exhibit in the international expositions. But it does seem as though 
 the system is both arbitrary and narrow. It is so absolutely di- 
 rected from the center, so oppressed with ministerial regulation, 
 so oppressed with apprehension about a real democratic advance, 
 that it develops mere craftsmen and artists, rather than free, all- 
 around men and women. 
 
 Practically all of the children of Germany, boys and girls, rich 
 and poor, high and low, up to about their fourteenth year, go to 
 elementary schools, established, supported, and directed by the state. 
 The teacher is a professional, the course exact, the attendance uni- 
 versal, and the expectations of the state are very completely realized. 
 The idea does not yet prevail that girls should go beyond the 
 secondary schools. At about ten years of age the boys and their 
 parents are expected to determine whether they will fit for a trade 
 or a profession. If for a trade, they go at fourteen either to a 
 shop as an apprentice, or to a trades school. If for a profession, 
 they go to a " gymnasium," which is a school of two kinds, of which 
 one is more literary and classical and one more scientific than the 
 other, and the boy takes one or the other according to the profession 
 he has in mind. He enters the gymnasium at ten or eleven and 
 gets out at nineteen or twenty, and then has been carried to about 
 the middle of our college course. 
 
27 
 
 The secondary schools separate again into schools which train 
 for the literary and the scientific professions on one side, and for 
 the commercial and technological professions on the other, while 
 the lower trades schools lead straight to manual workmanship. 
 Following the secondary commercial and technical schools we find 
 them again branching into what may be called the industrial pro- 
 fessions, which involve a masterful knowledge of the finest ma- 
 terials, the finest workmanship, and the finest completed goods; the 
 commercial schools, which involve a like masterful knowledge of 
 the ways to develop and manage trade ; and the engineering schools, 
 which involve an equally masterful knowledge of the construction 
 of public works. And there is no difficulty in keeping along these 
 industrial lines until one finds himself in the universities or the 
 highest technical schools, where the world knowledge of the subject 
 is present, and one can get to the very mountain peaks if he has 
 strength, endurance, and persistence which are equal to the under- 
 taking. 
 
 Our concern just now is with the primary and trades schools. 
 There is some classification of pupils, even in the primary schools, 
 according to the means of the parents, for tuition is exacted and 
 it is larger for some studies than for others, and the instruction 
 from the beginning has some reference to the situation and purposes 
 in life of the pupils. There is little reason to doubt, however, 
 that the instruction for all pupils is equally exact and painstaking, 
 or that the spirit is exceedingly democratic, and that all pupils have 
 equal opportunities to perfect themselves in the business which they 
 elect to follow. 
 
 The children who have remained in the primary schools, thereby 
 practically signifying their purpose to become what, for clearness 
 and convenience, I designate by the term " wage earners " and who 
 finish at about fourteen, then go to " continuation schools," which 
 are of many kinds. The greater part teach the trades. These 
 schools do not take the whole time of the child, but perhaps eight 
 or ten hours each week, often in the evenings, and commonly so 
 distributed as not to interfere with other regular employment. At- 
 tendance at the continuation or trades schools is compulsory, and 
 employers are required to so arrange matters that employees may 
 attend them. 
 
 As I am not attempting a description of the German system of 
 schools I shall go no farther except as to trades schools, but it must 
 already be appreciated that German schools are provided for every 
 conceivable purpose in life, that nothing excuses from attendance, 
 
28 
 
 and that the schools keep possession of the child up to the sixteenth 
 or seventeenth year. Beyond this it must now be seen that the 
 overwhehning idea is that those who will make good craftsmen 
 shall not be encouraged to make poor professional men, or forced 
 to attempt to manage men before, through actual experience, they 
 show a capacity to do so. Or if this is not wholly so, it is essen- 
 tially so as to the poorer people who can not afford to be misled 
 or to indulge in a speculation which involves the hazard of useful 
 and therefore successful and happy lives. And it seems as though 
 it does not stand in the way of one's ultimately gaining any position 
 to which his capacity may be adapted. 
 
 One who would well understand the German trades schools will 
 not expect to get instruction from me, or in this way. The literature 
 of the subject is coming to be available, and it will have to be 
 studied by one who would be informed. A description here must 
 necessarily be very superficial. Yet, enough may be said to arouse 
 wider inquiry. The schools seem to extend to every possible vo- 
 cation. It is clear that there is much flexibility, which results in 
 the adaptation of schools to local industries. There may be scores 
 or hundreds of them in a city, and they will be doing the kind of 
 work demanded by the industries of the place and the thought of 
 the , people. They are essentially shops, but the book knowledge 
 needful to a general understanding of the work is not neglected. 
 Still they are essentially shops, the buildings constructed like shops, 
 and the equipment and atmosphere leaving no doubt about the 
 purpose to train youth to earn a living with their hands. They are 
 evidently sustained and guided by the allied trades, and do not 
 seem to incur opposition because they may multiply workmen. It 
 looks as though it is accepted that their number, extent, and output 
 will, like the trades themselves, respond to the economic laws of 
 demand and supply. Indeed, it is clear that while the town com- 
 monly meets the expense, it is sometimes done by commercial bodies 
 and trade organizations. Sometimes the state supplies the entire 
 expense, but oftener it provides a subsidy equal to one half or one 
 third of the cost. 
 
 We must distinguish between the " continuation schools " and the 
 "trades schools." The former do not confine their work to any 
 single branch of trade or industry. They attempt to provide in- 
 struction in fundamental industrial knowledge. Their main 
 branches are German, arithmetic and drawing. They are essentially 
 for youth who have been obliged to go to work, who have begun to 
 feel the need of more teaching, and who have a general rather than 
 
29 
 
 a specific aim in view. They are held largely in the evenings and 
 on Sundays. The reading, the arithmetic, and the drawing are 
 all adapted to industrial or commercial ends. In many cities con- 
 tinuation schools are being changed into trades schools. There are 
 continuation schools for girls as well as boys. These are necessarily 
 more specific in work; they teach sewing, darning, mending, knit- 
 ting, cooking, ironing, and other domestic arts. Religious instruc- 
 tion is often, if not commonly, associated with them. Continuation 
 schools seem very like the evening schools in our cities, with the 
 difference perhaps that they seek competent artisans, rather than 
 day school teachers, to instruct them, and this of course gives them 
 the atmosphere and purposes of industrial schools to a much 
 greater extent than is true of our evening schools. 
 
 Attendance is commonly compulsory. In 1902 Prussia had 1684 
 continuation schools with more than 200,000 pupils. Bavaria had 
 274 such schools. Saxony 44, Wurtemburg 251, and Baden 170. 
 It must be remembered that these are the lowest grade of schools 
 with very distinct industrial ends. They follow immediately after 
 the common and universal primary schools. But they do not 
 always teach a particular trade. 
 
 The trades schools are distinguished from the continuation schools 
 in that they do teach definite trades. They are of all grades and 
 kinds, from the school that teaches simple joinery to the one that 
 provides the most exact instruction in the making of china or the 
 weaving of fabrics. The curricula of these schools of course de- 
 pend upon the end in view. The Germans have much of what we 
 have but little, namely, the " capacity for taking pains." They train 
 for exact and definite workmanship in their trades schools. And 
 they do not neglect the bookish side of it either. They apparently 
 realize, as we do not, the need of keeping one's head and hands in 
 equipoise. One may be an ordinary workman in a simple trade, 
 with but a simple knowledge of what is in the books, but one can 
 not become an expert and reliable craftsman in an intricate trade 
 without a head which contains a very good understanding of the 
 history, philosophy, extent, accomplishments, and ambitions of the 
 trade. And one who has that is likely to have a great deal more, 
 and to be a balanced and influential citizen. 
 
 The relations between the separate trades and the corresponding 
 trades schools are close. That is important, indeed, it is imperative. 
 It may as well be said at once that organized labor in America must 
 aid in the upbuilding of trades schools in this country, or we can 
 not hope for very substantial results. We will recur to this sub- 
 
30 
 
 ject at a more appropriate place. It is sufficient just now to point 
 out that in Germany the trades schools draw upon the trades for 
 sympathy and direction, and they give back to the trades in fresh 
 and ambitious blood, in spirit and capacity, in the pleasure and 
 enthusiasm of superior ability to develop intricate and fascinating 
 work. // we can not do this, we may as well face the fact that 
 Germany will in the end outrun America in industrial prepotency, 
 and therefore in national productivity and power. 
 
 The German industrial schools are established under all manner 
 of auspices — by guilds, trade associations, towns, or individuals. 
 Tuition is ordinarily charged, but it is small, and smaller for Ger- 
 mans than for others. The state often encourages these schools 
 with money, and always with word of mouth and guidance. The 
 Emperor embraces frequent opportunities to stimulate them. The 
 Court has to follow the Emperor — the present Emperor anyway. 
 The nation is thoroughly convinced that money spent in trade in- 
 struction is well expended. As a result schools have sprung up in 
 great numbers everywhere, but they are flexible enough to adapt 
 themselves to the business interests of every locality. 
 
 Here is a partial list of the kinds of schools in operation : artistic 
 darners, artificial flower makers, toy makers, bakers, barbers, basket 
 makers, blacksmiths, braziers, bookbinders, cabinet makers, carvers, 
 cooks, carpenters, confectioners, dressmakers, dyers, embroiderers 
 (hand and machine), engravers, gardeners, glaziers, goldsmiths, 
 horseshoers, knitters, lace makers, leather workers, locksmiths, 
 masons, milliners, paper hangers, painters, photographers, potters, 
 printers, rug makers, saddlers, spinners, stonecutters, tinsmiths, 
 tailors, trunk makers, watch makers, wagon makers, wheelwrights. 
 
 In Germany the idea that woman's sphere is home-making has 
 not been much broken in upon, and accordingly the trades schools 
 for women, of which there are many, relate to the domestic arts 
 about which women are specially concerned. This has all developed 
 in the last thirty years, and largely in the last fifteen years. It 
 has grown out of the international expositions. It has proceeded 
 not only from the sagacity of German statesmanship, but from 
 the quick and decisive influence of imperial sagacity and power upon 
 German life. Doubtless there are some in America yet who are 
 opposed to it on that account ; who are opposed to everything, good 
 or bad, which flows from the doings of a monarchial government, 
 no matter how constitutional it may be ; but surely the time has 
 come when the controlling judgment of this country will not be so 
 foolish as to refuse to adopt or adapt whatever in foreign policy 
 may seem good for American life. 
 
31 
 
 There has been, and there is yet to some extent, a very unfortu- 
 nate sentiment in America that efficiency and aggressiveness in gov- 
 ernment is, of itself, monarchial, and therefore undemocratic and 
 Un-American; but the better thinking of the country is coming to 
 reahze that while the general opinion of the country must deter- 
 mine its policies, still an officer of the state may commend and 
 recommend policies ; and that when policies receive the sanction 
 of common sentiment, and then of law, an officer of our democratic 
 government is expected to carry them out just as forcefully and 
 completely as the officers of a monarchial government would do. 
 
 What the Germans say of us 
 
 Germany sent an educational commission to the St Louis Exposi- 
 tion in 1904 with instructions to study the school exhibits at the 
 exposition and quietly investigate the educational system of this 
 country, and then report with particular reference to the bearing 
 of the educational systems of their country and ours upon German 
 and American industry and trade. The commission pursued its 
 work very quietly. It did not seek the lime light; it did not pro- 
 claim its route of march by the use of a military band ; it circled the 
 educational conventions ; it did not have itself invited to dinners 
 and make speeches at us ; in some way it even escaped the alert and 
 aggressive attentions of the press. The commission's report may be 
 alike interesting to German and American readers, but it is not 
 altogether satisfactory to American complacency. 
 
 It declared that America is abundant in resources, filled with 
 energy, exceedingly quickwitted and resourceful ; that a vigorous 
 people is possessed of such mighty and largely undeveloped physi- 
 cal resources, and has such splendid advantage in coast lines and 
 commercial situation, that undoubtedly it will have to be reckoned 
 with in the trade and commerce of the somewhat distant future ; 
 but that the United States is so seriously handicapped with mani- 
 fest disadvantages, of which Americans are unconscious, that no 
 American industrial competition at any early day need be taken 
 seriously by the German nation. They said these disadvantages 
 make a buoyant confidence without sufficient underpinning for it, 
 a " feeling of complacent satisfaction with everything American," 
 an expectation that, without much planning, and without much 
 philosophical study, or concerted action, or definite plan, or co- 
 operative efficiency, everything will come out all right whenever the 
 need of it arises. They emphasized the entire absence of provision 
 for public schools supplying systematic instruction in craftsmanship. 
 
32 
 
 and asserted that this lack is sufficient to overcome any natural 
 advantage in resources or geographical situation. This commission 
 was not constituted exclusively of teachers, but of teachers, mer- 
 chants, manufacturers, economists, publicists, and constructionists. 
 They were thinking much of German trade and they advised their 
 people not to be disturbed about any American interference with 
 it at an early day. 
 
 That is certainly enough to make the children of our "Uncle 
 Samuel " sit bolt upright and look all around the horizon. Our 
 ideals are not those of Germany. We are not primarily concerned 
 about breaking down German trade. We have nothing but good 
 will towards our flaxen-haired and interesting German cousins. We 
 are not apprehensive about the physical strength, or, in other words, 
 the war power, of our nation; and we are not going to bend our 
 educational and industrial policies very exclusively to that end. 
 All of that will take care of itself, notwithstanding the self-satis- 
 faction and complacency which the German commission saw clearly 
 and reported correctly. But we are concerned that every American 
 child shall have his or her chance ; that that chance shall be at least 
 as good and great as the chance of any child in any nation upon 
 the earth; and that there shall be nothing in the policies of the 
 country to mislead any child about his chance. We do believe that 
 the greatness of this nation, the political attributes of its citizen- 
 ship, and the measure of its influence upon the thought of other 
 nations and upon the good of mankind, depend upon making all 
 that can be made of every son and daughter of the Republic; and 
 we do know that the physical and moral strength of men and women 
 depend upon their having and loving work, and that their having 
 and loving work depend upon their being able to do it well, more 
 than upon any other factor in human life. 
 
 Resources and accomplishments 
 
 The President of the United States has just called a national 
 conference of the governors, members of Congress, and other pub- 
 lic men of all the states, to meet in Washington in May next to 
 initiate general measures for conserving the nation's resources. The 
 movement is none too early. A rational people may make much 
 of slender material resources. Doubtless the lack of territory, of 
 fertility, of woods, and mines, and animal life, are factors in the 
 intellectual development, the moral fiber, the balance and steadiness 
 of a people. Very likely the boundless material resources of the 
 United States have contributed to our self-complacency, to our in- 
 
33 
 
 difference, to the confidence that whatever situation we get into, 
 we will get out of it when we must. Of course, the very richness 
 of the land, in the hands of a people who lack nothing in physical 
 strength and whose wits seldom go limping, has made it quite pos- 
 sible for the nation to prosper and advance without exact indus- 
 trial training, and even without making the most of everything 
 we have. Certain it is that we have been almost as prodigal of 
 our resources as of the time and future of our children. It is a 
 strain upon the character of a nation, as of an individual, to have 
 a superabundance of the world's goods. We waste more than would 
 sustain the same number of people in any other country in the world. 
 It has already impressed its influence upon the qualities of the na- 
 tion, and one of its most decisive results appears in the fact that, 
 while we are trying to do more diff'erent things without definite 
 aims in education than other nations are doing, or than our own 
 fathers did, we are really doing much less than other nations are 
 doing, or than our fathers did, to make the most of our possessions 
 and of ourselves through the training of our children for care, skill, 
 and assiduity in the labor of the hand. And it goes without saying 
 that, as more and more people live in our territory, as the land 
 is more and more used and exhausted, and particularly as the more 
 general and exact industrial training in other lands turns, as it is 
 turning, the balance of trade against us, a decisive new departure 
 must be taken, both in the production and economic use of ma- 
 terials, and in the extent and competency of our labor, if we are not 
 to let the steadily growing rivalries in the commerce of the world 
 force us to a lower place in the world than the one which rightfully 
 belongs to us. 
 
 The United States Census Bureau has given me a statement of 
 the exports in domestic manufactures from Germany and from 
 this country in the same years, beginning with 1880. It is as 
 follows : 
 
 from the united states from germany 
 
 1880. .$102 856 000 Si 52 967 000 
 
 1890. .$151 102 000 $381 612 000 
 
 1897. .^^yy 285 000 $569 640 000 
 
 1900. .$433 852 000 $715 'j'jd 000 
 
 1906. .$686 023 000 .$1 079 520 000 
 
 The point of these figures is that the ratios of increase are not 
 so very far apart, notwithstanding the fact that Germany is an 
 old, densely populated country, whose economic conditions have not 
 
34 
 
 much changed in thirty years, while the United States has marvel- 
 ously expanded in all of the factors of industrial productivity, un- 
 less it be in craftsmanship, in that time. In other words, it looks 
 as though the Germans had completely met our natural advantages 
 in resources, machinery, and markets, by multiplying the number 
 of their skilled workmen, and adding to the kinds of manufactured 
 products which find world markets. This ought to be suggestive 
 to a people who are quite conscious of their industrial and business 
 wits. It is doubtless true that neither wits, abundance of materials, 
 machinery, waterpower, coal, artificial protection through tariffs, 
 nor engineering schools, without a schooling and a manner of life 
 which seeks to make every individual man or woman a producer of 
 something worth having, can long save us in competition with a 
 country which, regardless of its philosophy and aims, uses the com- 
 mon power to make the most of the labor of every child of the 
 Empire. 
 
 Shall we have public trades schools ? 
 
 The American public has really done nothing about training the 
 children of the wage earners in industrial vocations. We per- 
 mitted the very name " industrial school " to become used almost 
 exclusively by institutions of a penal or disciplinary character. The 
 manual training schools are not vocational schools. They relate to 
 general intelligence or culture, or else to the highly technical or 
 semiprofessional vocations, for which the children of the masses 
 are not fitted, as a rule, by inheritance, environment, or the influ- 
 ences of the home. A number of very excellent trades schools have 
 been established by benevolent citizens, but, while some of these 
 have been measurably successful, Americans do not take very enthu- 
 siastically to institutions which in whole or in part rest upon char- 
 ity. The people are too much accustomed to the sense of pro- 
 prietorship in the public school system to become very ardent over 
 an institution which is not public enough to be dedicated to the 
 common interests without conditions or reservations. To be ac- 
 ceptable to the public, it must in a sense belong to the public, and 
 be managed by public officers as a trust, for the advantage of all 
 alike. 
 
 Doubtless the American schools which come as near as any to the 
 trades schools of Europe, are those which have been established by 
 a few of the great manufacturing works to train workmen for their 
 shops. No one can justly criticize these from the standpoint of the 
 manufacturing employers. It is their own matter: they not only 
 
35 
 
 have the right, but are to be commended for doing it : people may 
 use what they offer, or let it alone. In the absence of some general 
 system of trades schools they are clearly warranted in doing, doubt- 
 less find it necessary to do, what they can to prepare boys for their 
 own service. The movement only exemplifies the dearth of indus- 
 trial training in the country, however, and relieves it only at a few 
 points and in an altogether inadequate measure. It is unacceptable 
 to the labor organizations, because they think that such schools are 
 created and operated in the particular interest of the employer, and 
 not in the general interest of the employee, and more particularly 
 because they think such schools provide ways for defeating the aims 
 and methods of organized labor. 
 
 From the viewpoint of general educational policy, the labor or- 
 ganizations have the better of the contention. Such schools are 
 unquestionably within the rights of the large employer. He can 
 not be expected to organize and operate a school upon a basis and 
 with the ends of a public school, or a school in which all, or all 
 of a general class, have equal rights. Certainly he does not, and 
 quite as certainly the school which he operates can not, meet the 
 educational and industrial, and therefore the moral and material, 
 needs of the country in any appreciable degree. We must find a 
 scheme which will involve public proprietorship, and be managed 
 in the interest of all the people, or at least all who may have com- 
 mon interests in any trade, before it will become an effective 
 American institution. 
 
 Can we develop such a plan of procedure which will meet with 
 the cooperation of employer and employee, of the capitalist and of 
 organized labor? It is a vital question. I have confidence that we 
 can. Capital may be expected to oppose in some measure any ex- 
 tension of the public school system involving a very substantial in- 
 crease in cost, but capital can not withstand the justice of the 
 demand that, if there is any way of doing it, the public shall supply 
 to the children of the wage earners something equivalent to the 
 literary and professional instruction provided for the children of the 
 better-to-do classes in the high schools and colleges. Nor can 
 capital withstand any movement looking to the training of work- 
 men, to the recognition of competency and industry, and to the 
 moral and material advantage of American workmen. 
 
 I have no right to speak for organized labor, but what I have 
 known of American workmen and what I have recently read from 
 many of their authorized leaders, combine to make me believe 
 that they would not be so fatuous as to deny the utmost of oppor- 
 
36 
 
 tunity to their own children only because there would be more and 
 better trained workmen, if they could have confidence that what 
 was to be done would be free from selfish exploitation, rest upon a 
 truly educational footing, and be guided by the common advantage 
 of all of the interests concerned. 
 
 And since writing the foregoing I have learned that the whole 
 subject is under careful consideration by the authorities of the 
 American Federation of Labor, with a manifest purpose to de- 
 termine the attitude which the labor organizations ought to take 
 concerning it. The labor leaders often speak of their apprehension 
 about schools assuming to turn out finished craftsmen and thereby 
 making a " short cut to workmanship," and place their skepticism 
 about industrial schools of all kinds upon that ground. There 
 ought to be no apprehension on that account. There is a universal 
 and imperative law which regulates the acquisitions and demands 
 of craftsmanship. The higher technical schools and trades schools 
 can not expect to turn out finished craftsmen any more than the 
 law schools and medical schools can expect to train finished lawyers 
 and physicians. But they can train boys and girls so that they 
 will have the possibility of becoming finished craftsmen, just as 
 the law schools train young men so that they may become strong 
 lawyers and the medical schools train boys up to the possibilities 
 of becoming scientific and skillful physicians and surgeons. And 
 it has come to be as apparent that craftsmanship is dependent upon 
 technical and trades schools as that learned professions are de- 
 pendent upon professional schools. And if craftsmanship is 
 dependent upon such schools, then the children of craftsmen 
 are dependent, and all of the higher interests of the country are 
 dependent upon the schools. 
 
 The American Federation of Labor, at the recent meeting in 
 November, refused to commit itself to an attitude of antagonism 
 to technical and trades schools, and directed its executive council 
 to examine "established and proposed industrial school systems so 
 that it may be in a position to inform the American Federation of 
 Labor what, in the council's opinion, would be the wisest course 
 for organized labor to pursue in connection therewith." 
 
 There can in the end be but one outcome, and I have entire 
 confidence that the wisdom of the labor organizations will lead 
 them to an attitude which is at once sane, patriotic, and promotive 
 of the best good to the children of the masses. 
 
 We have now seen how very slight are the relations of our 
 schools to our industries; we have looked into the relations which 
 
37 
 
 other peoples have estabHshed between their school? and their indus- 
 tries; and we are up to the question whether we shall train the 
 children of our wage earning masses for the crafts and other vo- 
 cational employments and for the household and womanly arts ; in 
 a word, whether we shall have trades schools, and if so, upon what 
 sort of a plan. 
 
 It seems to me that the moral argument for the advance is 
 irresistible. There can be no room for doubt about the moral obli- 
 gation of the people to do as much for the children who can best 
 work with their hands, as for those who go to the high schools and 
 engage in professional, commercial, and managing vocations. 
 
 The higher institutions have nothing to fear 
 
 The experience of Germany shows that the higher institutions 
 would have nothing to lose, but much to gain, from the development 
 of vocational schools. When the Emperor, notwithstanding all that 
 had then been done to develop mono-technic schools, admonished his 
 people that they were still turning out too many " intellectuals " 
 and too few " industrials," he was aiding the universities, and 
 particularly the higher technical schools, quite as much as the trades 
 schools. It is ordinarily so in education. An advance at any point 
 makes for an advance at all points where there ought to be an 
 advance. Thirty years ago there were only 17,500 university stud- 
 ents in Germany. Ten years ago the number had increased to 
 30,000, a growth of less than fifty per cent in twenty years. Now 
 there are 45,000, an advance of more than fifty per cent in ten years. 
 Naturally the largest increase is in the higher technical institutions. 
 The number of these was 4000 in 1891, 13,000 in 1903, and 20,000 
 now. But the higher literary, scientific, and technological institu- 
 tions, the institutions leading to professional and managing employ- 
 ments, are all overcrowded, though not more so than the professions 
 to which they lead. So, I repeat, we need have no fear of injuring 
 the higher schools or the higher institutions which train for pro- 
 fessionalism or for idle culture, by training our masses for indus- 
 trialism. 
 
 Have no fear for the future of the higher learning in the United 
 States. Its only danger is in the inadequacy of the elementary and 
 fundamental training. Our people of means and culture like the 
 higher things of life too well to leave any room for doubt. The 
 university, the college, the professional and technical school, are 
 as well established in America as the rock at Plymouth. They are 
 established in all parts of the country. The advance of the university 
 is quite as marked in the newer parts of the country as in the older. 
 Best of all, an American type of university is coming out of it all, 
 
38 
 
 and happily it is able to see that the application of scientific learning 
 to the vocations of living people means more to the world, and 
 does more for itself, than the exclusive study of the ages gone, 
 for the mere discipline and the culture there is in it. And happily 
 too, this is making for the kind of elementary training that is vital 
 to the progress of education and the unfolding of a nation's life 
 in necessary equilibrium. 
 
 The spirit and enthusiasm of the American temperament are to 
 be reckoned with in the training of our youth. Yes, in the training 
 of our people from the beginning to the end. There need be no 
 fear of any lack of generals. If we train and guide the crowd, the 
 leadership will then take care of itself. If we undertake to favor, 
 only or mainly, the materials of which leaders are made, we are 
 likely to be fooled about it — for it is generally the unexpected that 
 happens in the matter of leadership; and we then surely withhold 
 from the masses what is their and the country's due. All experi- 
 ence shows that the real captains in all lines of human activity have 
 come out of the crowd that worked with their hands. The love and 
 the capacity for drudging work are the fundamental basis of leader- 
 ship in all employments, whether of the head or hand, and any 
 educational system which fails to recognize the fact, which does not 
 honor the blouse shirt and the clean smut of honest labor, is at 
 once misleading the innocents and moving directly towards the de- 
 feat of its own ends. 
 
 Two state movements 
 
 It would be unjust to make no reference to distinct efforts in two 
 states — Massachusetts and Wisconsin — to meet the situation. In 
 Massachusetts a commission appointed by the Governor, pursuant 
 to an act of the Legislature, in 1905 studied the matter and reported 
 in favor of the creation of a permanent commission whose duty 
 it should be to promote discussion of the matter and effect the 
 organization of trades schools in the towns of the state. Such 
 permanent commission was provided for and appointed in 1906. 
 Prof. Paul H. Hanus of the Education Department at Harvard 
 University is the president. The state provides rather liberal aid 
 for such industrial schools as may be established under the auspices 
 of the commission. The reports of the two Massachusetts com- 
 missions are substantial contributions to the literature of the subject. 
 The movement shows much careful thinking and some caution about 
 doing. It seems to me that a serious mistake is made in committing 
 the organization and administration of industrial schools to a special 
 commission and not to the public school authorities of the state and 
 the subdivisions thereof ; and it seems to me also that the commission 
 
39 
 
 falls into fundamental error in looking to the founding of higher 
 technical schools, teaching no one trade, to the exclusion of voca- 
 tional trades schools, if it is intended to meet the situation which 
 seems to me most urgent and most dependent upon public direction 
 and support. But that is obviously because of the prevalent indus- 
 trial situation in Massachusetts. 
 
 The Wisconsin movement is evidently intended to deal more 
 exactly with the situation we have been discussing. The last Legis- 
 lature in Wisconsin added nine sections to the school law authoriz- 
 ing cities, or school districts embracing a city, to establish and 
 maintain schools " for the purpose of giving practical instruction 
 in the useful trades to persons having attained the age of sixteen 
 years, as a part of the public school system of the city," placing 
 such trades schools under the supervision of the school boards, and 
 empowering the school boards to provide buildings and equipment, 
 and employ teachers, and " give practical instruction in one or more 
 of the common trades." Each trades school must have, however, 
 an enrollment of at least thirty pupils. An important, and un- 
 doubtedly a salutary provision of the law, is that the school board 
 shall appoint an advisory committee of practical craftsmen to co- 
 operate in laying out and carrying on the work of the trades schools. 
 The scheme is to be supported by levying a tax, not exceeding 
 one half of one mill, upon the assessed valuation of the city, the 
 proceeds of which can not be used for any other purpose. The 
 school board is authorized to act upon its own initiative unless 
 twenty per cent of the electors file a protest against the proposi- 
 tion after notice has been given, in which case the question must 
 be submitted to an election of all the voters, and the majority must 
 rule. Here, too, are some details which we would have to 
 debate, but on the whole, the plan seems to meet the situation very 
 well indeed. It is certainly filled with very great possibilities. 
 
 In each of these states the movement grew out of keen popular 
 interest in the subject. The manufacturing conditions in Massa- 
 chusetts make the training of operatives very urgent for both the 
 people and the industries of the state. In the Wisconsin cities, 
 particularly in Milwaukee, the teaching of particular trades has been 
 strongly urged. A " School of Trades " was opened under private 
 auspices in Milwaukee in January 1906. It seems to have met a 
 manifest need very successfully. The feeling grew quickly that it 
 should be a part of the public school system of the city, and there- 
 fore Milwaukee influences which were interested in this school pro- 
 cured the enactment of the law. Since then the " School of Trades " 
 has become a part of the Milwaukee public school system under this 
 
40 
 
 law. The one half mill tax authorized by the statute yields more 
 than $100,000 in Milwaukee. I am advised that as yet nothing more 
 has been done in the state, but that is not significant, for the time 
 has been short. It is also said that no schools have yet been organ- 
 ized under the Massachusetts law, but that something in this direc- 
 tion is under consideration in several cities. 
 
 Such enactments in a state extend discussion and give opportunity 
 to the thinking of the people. They are incapable of harm: if not 
 desired, nothing results : if they will not work, they are ignored or 
 modified : if they meet the needs of the situation, they break out the 
 roads of progress. 
 
 Something or nothing 
 
 If the time has corrie and the conditions are ripe for the move- 
 ment we have in mind, let us try to organize it upon a plan that 
 will work, and in the working will produce continually enlarging 
 results for all the children, all the schools, all of the industrial, and 
 therefore all of the moral and intellectual, activities of the country. 
 Nothing can come from a plan that fails to reckon with all of the 
 interests concerned, that does not call to its support the aid of both 
 employer and employee, or that is incapable of results amply com- 
 mensurate with the labor and the cost. If we should have to com- 
 promise logic, efficiency, coherency, and completeness out of it in 
 order to avoid issues, either with capital or organized labor, let us 
 assume that we are not yet ready, and, notwithstanding the con- 
 tinuing and increasing disadvantages, let us wait until we are. 
 
 To be successful, this movement must sustain organic relations 
 with the public school system. It can not succeed unless it is to 
 articulate with that system. To articulate with it, it must be under 
 the same management. It must rest upon just as substantial a 
 footing as the other parts of that system. It must appeal to the 
 civic pride, the pedagogical sense, the practical experience, the 
 democracy, and the enthusiasms of the country. Then it must have a 
 share in the passion of the country for education, and it must be part 
 and parcel of the system of common schools, which is enshrined in 
 the hearts and the usage, the constitutions and the laws, of the land. 
 It can not be shunted off to state commissions and local boards, 
 which are out of legal relations, and possibly out of sympathetic 
 relations, with the established educational organization of the people. 
 To be resultful it must get from, and it must give to, the public 
 schools. That, of course, means that there must be nothing about 
 the movement which does not accord with the fundamental basis 
 of the common schools, and it also means that there must be some 
 
41 
 
 modifications in the present plan of the schools in order to give it a 
 comfortable and useful place. I am not at all sure that that may 
 not be done with quite as much advantage to our common intel- 
 lectual education, as to our industries. 
 
 To be successful, it must not make the mistake of ministering 
 to the highly technical and highly organized industries, carried on in 
 great factories, so much as to the mechanical trades which may 
 appeal to the independence and satisfy the ambitions of the in- 
 dividual. It must, of course, do what it may for the employees of 
 the factories, but it must know that that will have to be very general, 
 and will have to apply to general intelligence rather than technical 
 efficiency, because the work which has to be done in a factory, which 
 relates to a single feature of a complicated process, will have to be 
 learned in the factory itself. The main point of the proposition 
 must be the development of workmen rather than of professionals 
 or managers, and the vital basis of it must be the inherent right of 
 every American child to his chance to make the most of himself 
 in the industrial, as well as the intellectual, life of the country. 
 
 Only harm and humiliation can come from dodging issues with 
 organized labor by declaring that we do not propose to teach any 
 trades. There is not much else that we are not trying to do. I am 
 for doing that ; or for making what little we can of our unsystematic 
 system of night schools, and not pretending that we are doing 
 anything very important. The better attitude is that our children 
 are not learning trades, that it is vital that they shall, that it is their 
 right, that it is necessary to the country, that the schools must teach 
 them if they are taught, that the schools may now teach them better 
 than the workmen, that the burden ought not to be left to the work- 
 men, that the schools can not assume to train all children to be 
 finished workmen any more than they can train all children to be 
 finished physicians or engineers, but that the schools can bring most 
 children up to the plane of trained beginners in all of the arts and 
 crafts, with entire confidence that in time the greater part of them 
 will be more efficient workmen and more intelligent, and therefore 
 better, men and women, and that this will not menace, but will 
 promote any legitimate or existent interest of organized labor. 
 With confidence in the intelligence which determines the ultimate 
 attitudes of the labor organizations, having entire sympathy with 
 their purposes if not with all of their acts, we may meet them upon 
 their own grounds and develop the details of a plan which ought to 
 gain wide, if not universal, approval, because there is no ultimate 
 and logical reason for dissent. But that can never come by avoid- 
 ance, or through makeshift or compromise. 
 
42 
 
 Recommendations 
 
 Then my suggestions and my tentative plan may perhaps be 
 stated as follows: 
 
 1 Insist upon more complete and always up-to-date vital statistics. 
 Know of the existence of every child, and when he is of school age 
 have him accounted for. 
 
 2 Require attendance at seven years of age, instead of eight, and 
 let it continue, in elementary school or trades school, to seventeen, 
 but excuse from attendance before eight, at the parents' request, on 
 the ground of immaturity, and also excuse from attendance when- 
 ever the work in the elementary school and trades school is com- 
 pleted, or after fifteen if the child is regularly at work. 
 
 3 Establish schools for teaching trade vocations, the work to 
 begin at the end of the elementary school course, and continue for 
 three years. 
 
 4 Let the trades schools be open both in the day time and evening. 
 
 5 Establish continuation schools, to be open mainly in the even- 
 ings, where the work shall be of a general character, suited to the 
 needs of youth who are employed through the day and are not 
 doing the work in the trades schools. In other words, make our 
 evening schools more general and better. Let the work in the con- 
 tinuation schools go perhaps half way or more through the high 
 school course, but with less formalism about it. 
 
 6 Shorten the time in the elementary, schools to seven years. 
 Take out what it is not vital for a child to know in order to learn 
 or to do other things for himself. Assume that he will learn and 
 do things on his own account if he has the power. Strive to give 
 him power, and expect that through it he will get knowledge. Stop 
 reasoning that mere information will give him power. Stop the 
 dress parade and pretence about teaching, which consume time un- 
 necessarily. Push the child along and aim to have him finish the 
 elementary school in his fourteenth year. When he is fifteen send 
 him to the trades school whether he has finished the elementary 
 school or not. 
 
 7 Assume that if the child does not go to the high school, his 
 school work may end with his seventeenth, and not in his four- 
 teenth, year. 
 
 8 Put into the elementary schools, from the very beginning, some 
 phase of industrial work. Up to the last year or two let it be work 
 that can be done in the schoolroom, at the desks, under the ordinary 
 teachers, and will occupy two or three hours a week. This might 
 proceed from folding paper, molding sand, modeling clay, outlin- 
 
43 
 
 ing with a needle, to the simple knife work in wood, plain sewing, 
 knitting, and the like. In the last year or two send the classes to 
 central rooms specially prepared, perhaps to the trades schools, for 
 more complex wood work, cooking, etc. Always emphasize the 
 drawing. 
 
 9 As the child comes to the end of the elementary schools, expect 
 him to elect whether he will go to the high school, to a trades school, 
 or to work. 
 
 10 Wherever he goes, expect that the schools will keep track of 
 him until he is at least seventeen. If he goes to the trades school, 
 expect him to get into the possession of the fundamental knowledge 
 and something of the skill of a trade by his seventeenth or eigh- 
 teenth year. If he goes to work in a store or factory, expect him 
 to come to the continuation school till his seventeenth year is com- 
 pleted. Have him and his parents understand that he is responsible 
 to the schools until he is perhaps eighteen years old. 
 
 11 Set up trades schools in spacious, but not necessarily ornate, 
 buildings. Start the particular kind of trades schools that the busi- 
 ness of the town and the interests of the trades call for. Let it be 
 understood that wherever there are a sufficient number of children 
 to learn a particular trade, there will be a school to teach it to them. 
 Let the trades school partake more of the character of the shop than 
 of the school. Hold to books, somewhat, particularly books which 
 the pupils will be glad to read by themselves, carry mathematics 
 a little farther, lay emphasis upon work with a pencil ; let the main 
 part of the work be with the hands ; and let the atmosphere of the 
 place be free and comfortable, so that young people will like it. Let 
 the teaching be done by real artisans, who are intellectually balanced 
 and can teach, rather than by teachers who can use tools only in- 
 differently. Above all, have teachers who are not afraid of youth, 
 and so are not under the necessity of brow-beating and badgering 
 them a great deal, but rather who command respect because of 
 what they are, and can lead the way to the pleasure of really doing 
 things. 
 
 12 Keep the trades schools open afternoons and evenings. Have 
 their pupils attend from four or five hours to as many hours a 
 week as the pupil can give. Let the training be individual and let 
 the progress of the pupil depend upon himself and upon the time he 
 can give ; but allow him to engage in other work for pay if he must. 
 
 13 Modify the child labor laws so they will articulate with the 
 plan, and enforce them. Require employers to regulate their affairs 
 so that employees may attend continuation schools or a trades school 
 at least four or five hours per week. 
 
44 
 
 14 Let the trades schools be supported by the town, but give 
 them sufficient state aid to encourage their organization and dis- 
 pose them to conform to the needs of the situation. 
 
 15 Meet any demand on behalf of girls as well as on behalf 
 of boys. 
 
 16 Make it quite possible for one in a trades school to go to a 
 manual training high school, and vice versa, but be careful to avoid 
 the inference that one is to prepare for another. Let it be under- 
 stood that each stands upon its own footing and leads to very 
 different ends. 
 
 Higher technical schools 
 
 Coming to a conclusion, it occurs to me that my desire to empha- 
 size the need of mono-technic or trades schools for boys and girls 
 who are not to work in stores, offices, or factories, but should be 
 prepared for independent work, dependent upon their individuality 
 and their own hands, may have led me to seem to be indifferent 
 to the interests of the higher technical schools and of the industries 
 which depend upon the cooperation of many workmen and the use 
 of machinery. 
 
 I would not have it so. Of course, much of our industrial pro- 
 ductiyity, and therefore much of our manhood and womanhood, 
 is to depend upon the conditions in the large factories ; or, in other 
 words, upon the relations of the man and the machine. The ten- 
 dency of the machine is to make one man's labor as good as another 
 man's. That tendency can be met and overcome only through 
 education and individuality. And it must be overcome or we shall 
 produce only vast quantities of coarse and low-priced goods, when 
 our commercial success depends upon our ability to turn out fine 
 and high-priced goods. We are not meeting the tendency as we 
 ought. Perhaps it is but just to ourselves to say that this is essen- 
 tially the land of invention and of machinery, and that we have 
 more to do to keep the operative ahead of the machine, than other 
 countries have. Then we must do more. Beautiful china and fine 
 fabrics are dependent upon it, and we are not abreast of Britain, 
 or France, or Germany, or even of China or Japan, in fine pottery 
 or fine weaving. And there is more than the fineness and the quality 
 of products at stake : the fineness, and the character, and the happi- 
 ness, of men and women are at stake. It all depends, in the last 
 analysis, upon the general education and the special training of 
 operators and operatives alike. And that must be done in the ele- 
 mentary and secondary schools, in special technical schools, and in 
 the factories themselves. It can not come through royal decree. 
 It must come through the favor and the pressure of the gradually 
 
45 
 
 unfolding public opinion of the country. But it can never come if 
 we persist in the hallucination that we are possessed of the world's 
 knowledge and proficiency already. Instead of being indifferent to 
 the manual training schools or the high-grade pluri-technic schools, 
 I think they are our main instrumentalities for making us aware of 
 our industrial deficiencies, and for pointing our industrial masses 
 to the marvelous value of art sense, of the natural sciences, of 
 economics, of manual skill, of ambition and assiduity, of intellectual 
 progress, and of character, in workmanship and in life. 
 
 But all said and done, the higher technical school is already upon 
 its feet at the points where most needed. The necessities of capital 
 promote it and the favor of fashion is lavished upon it. And the 
 need of the trades school, or the appreciation of the basis upon 
 which it can thrive, or the obligations of the common life to it, are 
 as yet nowhere accepted in America; and therefore it claims the 
 most emphasis. 
 
 Agricultural education 
 
 There is no less need of the applications of general knowledge 
 and special skill to the agricultural than to the mechanical indus- 
 tries. But agricultural training rests upon a wholly different footing 
 and must be promoted by wholly different methods from those 
 which must be used to extend and uplift industrial craftsmanship. 
 At an early day I hope to discuss the basis and the methods of a 
 definite training in the proficiency which will enable people who live 
 on the farms to get the most for rational life out of their lands. 
 It is spoken of now only to show that it is not forgotten. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 We have exploited the fundamental principles of our democracy 
 in our politics and in our religion much more completely and satis- 
 factorily than in our education or in our industries. The application 
 of those principles to our training and our work of hand is now to be 
 pressed to conclusions. 
 
 It is a matter of great moment to the country and to what the 
 country stands for in the world; and it is a matter of preeminent 
 concern to the State which has the largest population and is first in 
 finance and in publication, as well as first in the commercial and 
 manufacturing activities of the Union. 
 
 The people of the State have the power in their hands. They have 
 millions of boys and girls to raise aright. Nothing is clearer than 
 that results turn upon the training. They have business to promote. 
 The outcome is determined by the course that is taken. Our 
 children and our work are interdependent. One interest must help 
 
46 
 
 the other if we would grow in the elements which make a com- 
 monwealth great. It is becoming more and more obvious every 
 day that, whether we would wish it so or not, a steadily increasing 
 weight of responsibility must rest upon the schools. 
 
 The usefulness of our society to the individual depends upon the 
 character and the efficiency of the units who comprise the mass. 
 
 jThe worth of the individual to the state, on the other hand, de- 
 pends upon the common acceptance of the principles of the Golden 
 Rule, as well as upon the ambitions which are inspired by the com- 
 mon thinking and the prevalent anxiety and aptitude of the people 
 for work. 
 
 Whether the work be intellectual or manual has nothing to do 
 with the right of the toiler to respect and regard. 
 
 Individual success and the growing strength of a people must 
 come, if it comes at all, through steady application by growing 
 numbers, through increasing competency, through sound living, and 
 through the slow accretions of goods and of esteem. 
 
 It would be an appalling and pathetic mistake for a people to 
 think that subtlety and greed can become the basis of either per- 
 sonal or national prosperity. 
 
 If it seems an unnecessary and rather repellant preachment to 
 reiterate these truisms here, let me remind you that immoral ex- 
 ploitation, the illegitimate use of the common power, and the ab- 
 normal fortunes which have resulted from overreaching, which has 
 found its opportunity in the lack of legal restraint and the abund- 
 ance of abnormal conditions, have raised serious doubts in the 
 minds of multitudes as to whether they are truisms or not. 
 
 Economic conditions have forced combinations. The disappear- 
 ance of individual responsibility in the corporation and the labor 
 union, has wrought havoc with old-fashioned thinking and with 
 moral fiber. 
 
 The time must soon come when the man in the corporation shall 
 be stopped from using the common power of the people to oppress 
 rather than to aid the people, and when the man in the union shall 
 be stopped from using the organized strength of his fellows to do 
 the least he can for his wage, and from debasing himself through 
 subtle antagonism to the people for whom he works, or a heavy 
 shadow will rest upon the pathway of the Republic. 
 
 It is to be accomplished by the logical evolution and application 
 of law, and by a system of education which offers equivalent op- 
 portunities to all people and to all industries. 
 
 It is to come through the stern refusal of special privilege and 
 the ready recognition of the right of special profits for special 
 
47 
 
 assiduity, special thrift, special skill, special ingenuity, or special 
 risks, on equal terms to all. 
 
 It will come through the ample protection and encouragement 
 of the corporation or labor union in all legitimate operations, and 
 in the complete rejection of all propositions which impinge upon the 
 fundamental rights of men or are prejudicial to the interests w^hich 
 are common to us all. 
 
 The corporations are being taught rather strenuous lessons just 
 now. There is some danger that the new found fact that the process 
 is good politics may carry it too far. The officer who misbehaves 
 deserves the punishment more than the corporation. 
 
 The man in the union, and all the rest of us, both in this gen- 
 eration and the next, must be aided more completely by the schools, 
 and to do that some radical changes in the basis, the thought, and 
 the plan of the schools seems imperative. 
 
 The child must have his chance, — an equal, open, hopeful, chance. 
 But he must not be misled. His chance is in work. It is in his be- 
 coming accustomed to discipline, to direction, to industry, and to 
 persistence, before he is sixteen years of age. 
 
 The chance is lessening rather than enlarging through too much 
 sentimentality in the schools. I do not think our young people are 
 more immoral, — I think they are more moral, than the young people 
 of the last generation, or the one before that, were, but I think they 
 are distinctly more irresponsible, falsely polite on occasions, and dis- 
 tinctly impolite and often impertinent the rest of the time, than their 
 predecessors were ; that they have more information and less power ; 
 and that it is due to the weakening control of the home, and to 
 pedagogical philosophies which are either fallacious or are unwisely 
 applied, as well as to work which is undesirable or too much at- 
 tenuated, in the schools. Let us resume some old-fashioned notions 
 about work, about the child as well as the teacher doing his part of 
 the work, and about the direction and the control of children. 
 
 Even though we regret the fact, I am confident that the chance 
 of the American child depends upon the school supplying oppor- 
 tunities for his physical, as well as his intellectual, faculties, which 
 were formerly supplied outside of the schools. He must have a 
 wider range of things to do, he must be allowed to choose when 
 he can; and he must then be required to do what he undertakes. 
 
 His training must be more exact and definite. He must be 
 trained in a vocation and taught that he must uplift his craft and 
 help his craftsmen, while he allows no one less worthy than himself 
 to rob him of the benefits of his individual skill, or of his funda- 
 mental right to use it in the way which will bring him the most 
 
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 48 
 
 advantage. He must be distinctly told that he can not have the 
 profit which belongs to other men through their knowledge, skill, 
 and thrift; that shiftlessness can bear none but bitter fruit; and that 
 there is no probable chance and nothing in the thought of his 
 country which will make it otherwise. 
 
 Our schools can not long continue to give an advantage to a 
 minority, nor to give more aid to the intellectual than the industrial 
 interests in our life. 
 
 The schools will have to keep the teaching even with the child's 
 age; will have to adapt the teacher to the sex, circumstances, and 
 purposes of the child; will have to meet the demands of every 
 kind and grade of industry; and will have to continue their over- 
 sight and aid until habits are somewhat established, and the ability 
 to perform a definite work is reasonably assured. 
 
 If, coincident with all this, capital is encouraged to venture and 
 provide work for loyal and capable workers ; if the dividends be 
 but a just return for the investment and the risk, and the wage be 
 gauged by the character of the service, and the skill and reliability 
 of the worker; if employers will concern themselves about the 
 safety, comforts, and general welfare of employees, and if em- 
 ployees will appreciate the risks and responsibilities of management, 
 and study the interests of employers; if the work of the day is kept 
 within reasonable hours or specially compensated; if there are 
 public facilities for self -improvement when the work of the day is 
 over; if there is combined effort to make the homes as good as may 
 be; if children are not allowed to work when they should be in 
 school ; if women are not permitted to labor when and where they 
 should not; and if men who can work are made to work or allowed 
 to want; if amusements can be made decent, healthful, and at 
 moderate cost ; if drink can be held in check, and politics be told to 
 go hence; then wealth, and health, and happiness will abound in 
 the land. 
 
 Let us bring about as much of it as we can for our State. To 
 that end let us not be afraid of new plans. Let us not think that 
 the trend of events ought not to be. Even though we depart from 
 the thought and the practice of the past, let us work out the founda- 
 tion principles of our democracy in our education, and let us make 
 our knowledge and our training potent in our industries. And let 
 us make our industries contribute not only to our wealth and to our 
 strength but to our manhood as well. Then we shall assure the free 
 American chance to every one, and we shall give a new interpreta- 
 tion and a new power to the essential factors of our common life. 
 
Conservation Resources 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 029 965 169 1