Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/338

322  and fifty vessels, valued at seventeen million dollars and carrying eighteen hundred persons, were held in port by the warnings. Every one remembers how the American liner St. Paul went ashore near Long Branch, February 2, 1896. A dispatch from the forecaster informed the captain that at such an hour the wind and tide would present the most favorable opportunity for getting the steamer off. At that time everything was in readiness, and a successful attempt was made. A ship and cargo valued at several millions of dollars were thus saved largely through the effort of the Weather Bureau.

By predictions of the heavy snows, many railroads are saved from complete and lasting blockade, and the immense cattle herds of Kansas, Nebraska, Indian Territory, and Texas are enabled to reach places of safety.

The Weather Bureau not only justifies its existence by its services, but it deserves sympathy rather than ridicule when in the face of such difficulties its forcastsforecasts [sic] are wrong. The investigations of its scientists are constantly improving its methods, and the error in its predictions is being reduced to very satisfactory proportions.



HE general project of manual training depends for its motive upon our scheme of ethics, and for its underlying principle and justification upon our philosophy of life. The methods of manual training depend no less completely upon our current psychology. But in this there are two distinct elements to be considered. One element, which I think we do not make enough of, is the psychology of the teacher; and the other element, which we are only coming slowly to make enough of, is the psychology of the child. By the psychology of the teacher I mean something extremely definite. I do not mean the general laws of mind as applied to the men and women who teach manual training. Their minds operate on much the same principle as do the children's, except that, being older, they are naturally less flexible and less open to outer influence. But I mean especially the hold which these teachers have upon the philosophy of manual training; the view which they entertain in regard to its function and its relative place in the general scheme of education; and, finally, their own intellectual and emotional and bodily culture.