Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/367

Rh evenly-trained boys; I now wish to add that the article is a new one. You can not determine its value by invoicing the boys who, in the past, have drifted without proper education and without intelligent choice into shops and offices. I do not claim that manual training will change a dull boy into a bright one, or a bad boy into a good one. It is by no means a sovereign remedy for all the evils that boys are heir to; but it will give the dull boy a chance to become less dull, and the bright one a chance to retain his brilliancy. We have had some bad boys, but I honestly think their badness was less alluring and corrupting and hopeless than it would have been among boys less absorbed in their work. We have had some plain cases of failure, but they had failed everywhere else. It is not safe to reason that, because a boy can not succeed anywhere else, he must succeed in the shop. Brains are as essential to a good mechanic as to a good soldier or a good orator. Undoubtedly, more than half of our boys will find uses for their manual training, and they will have an immense advantage over the untrained boys. They are all fair draughtsmen. They have a wide acquaintance with hand and machine tools, and considerable skill in their use. They have an experimental knowledge of the properties of common materials; of the effects of heat, and the nature of friction. They have analyzed mechanical processes and been taught to adapt means to ends. Such boys will never become mere machine-men. They will never be content to put their brains away like a piece of ornamental toggery for which they have no daily use. If you wish boys to become narrow, unreflecting, bigoted, and helpless, when their machines break down and when they are thrown upon their own resources, don't send them to a manual-training school, for you will surely be disappointed.

Our graduates have been out of school less than a year, but I have seen enough to justify me in saying that their chances of material success are unusually good. As workmen, they will soon step to the front; as employers and manufacturers, they will be self-directing and efficient inspectors. They will be little exposed to the wiles of incompetent workmen.

On the other hand, communities will prosper when their young men prosper. This is the dynamic age; the great forces of Nature are being harnessed to do our work, and we are just beginning to learn how to drive. Invention is in its youth, and manual training is the very breath of its nostrils.

7. —A brute can exert brute strength; to man alone is it given to invent and use tools. Man subdues Nature and develops art through the instrumentality of tools. Says Carlyle: "Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing; with tools he is all." To turn a crank, or to carry a hod, one needs