Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/28

22 wasted days and wasted lives for young men and indolence and frivolty for young women.

Over 2,500 boys are taking courses in manual training in the Portland public schools. Professor Stanley, the superintendent, lately said: "Some of these boys have recently made a weaving loom for the manufacture of rag carpet, and a potter's wheel for the manufacture of pottery. Others plan this winter to make an artistic piece of furniture, art metal work, tools, and other things." Sewing classes are organized and domestic science is under consideration for the girls.

A lecturer at the Educational Congress last summer said: "The rural schools of our country train nearly one half of the citizens and they should adopt manual training." Industry is the mother of invention; invention is the forerunner of art. France is first in art because the people are trained as to the hand. Germany is first in industry because the teaching is of the man, the citizen. The master of Germany is the schoolmaster. Nothing promotes honest labor more surely than power to labor effectively. Nothing promotes art more surely than power to labor constructively. Nothing promotes a home-building nation more surely than steady habits of self-reliance and self-support.

There is in our day an outcry against women as wage-earners; and let the cry go on. It is a healthful cry for women and more especially for men. The greatest danger growing out of the fact that women are crowding into the offices and professions is not that men are crowded out, but that too many men are growing indifferent, willing to be crowded out. As men grow indifferent to their responsibility and duty to care for the women of their households they lose fibre, initiative, stature, physical and mental. Stand on a busy street corner in one of our large eastern cities and note the great number of young