Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/257

Rh the school-room to work in the shops having a commercial value, they would make their instruction practical in a high degree. They are also especially valuable for training the young of our industrial classes, because the pupils are thereby enabled to earn a livelihood while acquiring theoretical and practical knowledge as they go, each supplementing and assisting the other.

Whatever the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad has achieved in the way of commercial success has not resulted from superior skill or intelligence of its subordinate officers or of the rank and file in its several departments, but rather in spite of their deficiencies. The company has been fortunate in one sense, in that the geographical isolation of its main stem and branches has contributed to the gradual formation of a corps of operatives who, by descent, tradition, and personal attachments, may be said to belong to the road. From their earliest youth they have looked forward to an active participation in the operations of the line as a means of livelihood, and all their aspirations and ambitions are associated with its service. This condition has been fostered by the custom of regarding the children of meritorious operatives as entitled to prior consideration in making appointments. While this has resulted in creating and maintaining a corps of operatives of exceptional devotion and loyalty, and has in many other ways been advantageous to the service, it has also in some ways that were unforeseen proved prejudicial to the company's interests. Thus, the inhabitants along the main-stem divisions are destitute of educational facilities, and this, coupled with the sense of proprietorship in the positions and the idea that education beyond the bounds of his trade is of no practical use to a mechanical workman, has created indifference on the subject. This was one of the considerations which prompted the establishment of the school at Mount Clare. Of the first class of boys examined for admission to the school, only forty were found in such a condition of discipline and grounding in the common English branches as to justify the hope that they could enter upon the course for graduation as mechanics, and not one of them was capable of entering upon the higher studies necessary to qualify him for an officer's position in the service. It being thus manifested that there was no material from which to manufacture efficient officers, nor was any likely to be acquired under the then existing system, a general order was issued promulgating regulations for the future admission of apprentices, and prescribing the minimum qualifications of candidates, which, while neither onerous nor of a high grade, provided a sufficient foundation for the technical instruction necessary to make a fairly educated mechanic. In the same general order the lines upon which the educational work was to be conducted were defined in general terms. The plan outlined in that order contemplated.

1. Instruction (in the apprentice class of such boys as could pass the examination therein indicated) of a character that will make them