Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/255

Rh acquiring theory and practice in the same place and at the same time. The chasm between our schools and our workshops is not bridged, and consequently manual skill and intelligence remain divorced. All our higher schools, and even our technological schools, turn out students who are well up in theory, but deficient in practice. It is at the same time difficult to procure at any price men who combine superior skill, comprehensive mechanical knowledge, and general intelligence in such proportions as to make them valuable as foremen, managers, and specialists in mechanical pursuits or in the operating branches of railway service. Graduates of technological schools, when introduced into these positions, are apt to continue to show themselves more theoretical than practical. This constitutes an objection to depending on men of this class. The Pennsylvania Railroad pursues the plan of exacting of the graduates of technological institutions entering its service a novitiate in the construction and repair shops at Altoona before they are permitted to enter active service. Many young graduates of technical schools so highly value the opportunity of studying the scientific methods and enjoying the instruction of the Altoona shops—as it is said—to disregard pecuniary compensation, in a wise desire to avail of the fine training obtainable there. At the same time, this instruction is believed to be neither so specific nor so thorough as it should be.

"Many of the discoveries of the day are not used because workmen do not understand them, or are incompetent or unwilling to utilize them, and there is also an acknowledged deficiency in the ability of railroad employés to determine, with scientific accuracy, the shapes and dimensions which are best adapted to stand the strains of the various working parts of the locomotives and other machinery used by railroad companies. Though much has been done in this direction by specialists, it is more than probable, from their testimony and from the deficiencies of such machinery, that scarcely a tithe of the facts that may and ought to be known in this matter are yet discovered, or, where known, availed of. Such investigations, owing to the scarcity of men combining both practical and theoretical knowledge, are so costly and uncertain, and require so much skill and technical training to conduct them, that manufacturing companies can not often afford to hire specialists or bear the expense of experimenting; but in a school connected with railway-shops, under competent guidance and instructors of ability, much may be done, as a part of the school and shop-work instruction, that will, at the same time, accomplish desirable results in other fields. It is the testimony of many of our best educated engineers that the engineering profession in all its departments is continually hampered by the want of more extensive and more accurate experiments. They say that 'in far too many matters they have nothing to rely on but the imperfect or imperfectly reported results of antiquated experiments.' The difficulty is, that most of their