Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 13.djvu/82

72 decided vantage-ground who is at the same time familiar with the schools and at home in the workshop. For whatever department in the arts a youth may be designed, he must, to insure success in the future, be taught not "in either the school or the workshop," the alternative formerly offered him, but in the school and the workshop.

Here, then, arises the necessity for in which, if properly conducted, knowledge is imparted so as not only to train the mind to habits of thought and study, to give it capacity for logical deduction and the rapid acquirement of information, but in such manner as shall at the same time make the student familiar with the principles of the art which he is to practise, and shall prepare him to learn the lessons taught, in the workshop and in the manufactory, rapidly and well.

It is the tardy recognition of these facts, of this vital necessity, that has placed a great nation, formerly far in advance of all others in manufactures and the useful arts, in a position relatively to her neighbors that is causing the greatest uneasiness to the more intelligent of her people and to all her statesmen. They see other nations, who were formerly far behind, now rapidly overtaking her, if not already taking the lead, in consequence of their earlier adoption of a system of technical instruction for their people.

Two hundred years ago, Edward Somerset, the second Marquis of Worcester, the inventor, whose work has become familiar to us, admonished his fellow-countrymen of the growing necessity of such a system of education for the people, and urged the establishment of technical schools. For this he deserves higher honor than for his improvements in the steam-engine. But the system first took a definite shape, a century ago, upon the Continent of Europe; and, during the past half-century, it has grown with the growth and strengthened with the strength of the western European nations, until, to-day, it has become a most important element of their national power.

In our own country, this great need has long been recognized; but the policy of our Government has not permitted it to institute systems of teaching at the expense of the nation, as has been done in European countries, and it has remained to a great degree unprovided for. It is to our sad deficiency in this respect, and to the tardy and unconcerted action of our educators and our legislators—few of whom seem to have the calibre of the real statesman—that we are to-day so seriously behind Continental nations in the industrial education of youth, and are threatened with serious evils in the future. Without general and systematic technical and trade education, the most enterprising people on the globe, brought into competition in the markets of the world with better-educated people and with nations of trained artisans, must inevitably become a great nation of paupers.

Such education cannot be provided at the small cost that the working-man can afford to pay; and, even if that were possible, it is