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 http://www.archive.org/details/manualtraininginOOblak 
 
i 
 
Manual Training 
 m Kducation 
 
 BY 
 
 In the application of thy principles thou micst he like the 
 pancratiast, not like the gladiator; for iJie gladiator 
 lets fall the sword lohich lie uses, and is killed; but the 
 other always has his hand, and needs to do nothing else 
 than use it, 
 
 Marcus Aurelius. 
 
 l^;!AY'^yi886' 
 
 CHICAGO 
 CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 
 

 Copyright by 
 JAMES VILA BLAKE 
 
Manual Training in Education, 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Preface, by Prof, C. M. Woodward, Director of the 
 
 Manual Training School of St. Louis, - - v 
 
 AKGUMENT. 
 
 General education, . .... 1 
 
 Special education, - . . . 5 
 That both are needful ; that one must not interfere 
 with the other ; and that this leads to manual 
 
 training in education, - ■ - - 7 
 
 That this is specially needful to the handworker, 11 
 
 That the handworker needs it economically, - 13 
 
 That the handworker needs it socially, - - 15 
 
 That handworking is of great dignity, - - 17 
 That manual training in education is salutary for 
 personal character: — 
 In morals, - - - - =27 
 
 In mind, - - - 31 
 
 In body, - ■ •■ - - ■ 41 
 
iv ARGUMENT 
 
 That manual training in education is very beneficial 
 to the community: — 
 
 For the rich, - ... , 43 
 
 Foi the poor, - - - - 45 
 
 For girls, - - - • - 47 
 
 In production, - - - - 49 
 
 In invention, - - - - - 55 
 
 Eegarding immigration, - - - 57 
 
 Regarding the apprenticeship -problem, -. 61 
 
 Present condition of the subject: — 
 
 Facts as to the need of manual training in ed- 
 ucation, ----- 65 
 .Beginnings ; present schools, - - 69 
 Manual training in public schools, - 81 
 
PR.KKACE. 
 
 The educational forces are changing front. One 
 after another, the division commanders are discover- 
 ing that the most direct, and practicable route to the 
 citadel of strong, independent manhood and to the 
 high ground of good citizenship lies through the ter- 
 ritories of modern life, modern science, modern ac- 
 tivities and modem thought. The old route in- 
 volved a flank movement and a long detour into the 
 territory of the ancients, to the heights of classic 
 culture, from which, as a base, the whole modem 
 country was to be attacked. Educational critics for 
 many generations have agreed in the opinion that 
 the old plan of campaign was the only one that was 
 safe and sure. The undoubted success of many such 
 movements in the past gave color to such views, and 
 every suggestion of a better ahd more direct road 
 was met by the fact that nearly every successful 
 general in history had marched by the old path. To 
 be sure this was not strange, inasmuch as no 
 fairly equipped forces had ever attempted the direct 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 road. Nevertheless, the feeling in favor of a change 
 has been gaining ground. 
 
 On the one hand it has been urged that the ancient 
 road lay through a dreary country, abounding in 
 books and preserved symbols to be sure, but dry and 
 sadly deficient in living things and opportunities foi 
 showing one's parts. It is said that a great majority 
 of the troops on that long journey drop out of the 
 ranks and straggle into the modern country in a 
 very sorry condition, having never seen the heights 
 of classic culture, or only in the dim distance. On 
 the other hand, those who in defiance of all the tra- 
 ditions have dared to make the direct assault with 
 such irregulars as could be got together, have re- 
 ported the discovery of practicable routes, a most 
 genial climate, an abundant supply of fresh food, 
 and excellent opportunities for both deep strategy 
 and practice at arms. Moreover, it is claimed by 
 those who know something of both roads (and 
 hence are qualified to speak on the subject) that the 
 new road gives the best promise of gaining the high 
 ground of independence and citizenship; and that 
 from these points the capture of the heights of fine 
 arts and culture will be more certain than ever. 
 Hence the pulling down of old walls and the gradual 
 change of front. 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 This military figure could be pushed much farther. 
 I could have compared ancient and modern methods 
 of warfare, their arms, their armors, their means of 
 transportation, their camp equipage, and followers, 
 and the objects of conquest, — but I prefer to let the 
 reader carry out the figure for himself. 
 
 The tendency of thoughtful and observant people 
 is well shown in this modest little volume of Mr. 
 Blake's. He has here given the result of his own 
 vigorous thinking on what he has observed in him- 
 self and in others. We were students together at 
 Harvard, and through widely different personal ex- 
 periences we have reached the common ground of 
 a belief in the universal value of manual training as 
 an element in a truly liberal education. 
 
 It will be seen that Mr. Blake takes high ground. 
 He has no narrow motive, no mean estimate of the 
 value of objective training. He knows the stimulat- 
 ing effect of seeing for one's self ; he has felt the force 
 of things as compared with descriptions of things;' 
 and he has tested the value of primitive j adgment. 
 
 Mr. Blake does not agree, nor do I, with the 
 school superintendent who claims that the sole ob- 
 ject of school education is intellectual culture; that- 
 "to superadd a thorough preparation for the busi- 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 ness of life, is to cripple the school in its appropri- 
 ate sphere."* 
 
 As to the meaning of a manual training school it 
 is perhaps fitting for me to speak. I first suggested 
 the name in 1879, when the St. Louis school was 
 organized, having already had six years experience 
 with tool instruction in the higher department of 
 our polytechnic school. Our course of study and 
 daily programme remain substantially as adopted 
 in 1879. 
 
 I followed no model either in America or in 
 Europe. I profited by our own experience since 
 1873; by the reports of the Russian technical 
 schools as exhibited in Philadelphia in 1876 ; and 
 by the admirable efforts in a similar direction made 
 in Boston by President John D, Eunkle. I think I 
 can fairly claim that experience has justified the or- 
 ganization of this institution, under the name of 
 the "Manual Training School." 
 
 * 'The sphere of the school is intellectual training. To add to the 
 proper work of schools the whole of moral training, and then to 
 superadd a thorough preparation for the business of life, is to 
 cripple the school in its appropriate sphere, and to fail in the im- 
 possible labor thus to be assigned. That truth cannot be discov- 
 ered, nor benevolence and Christianity flourish, without manual 
 training, seems absurd. In the present advocacy of this training 
 intellectual power is denied, except as it is derived through mat- 
 ter. This is the grossest materialism. "—/SwiJi. J-. P. Marble, of 
 Worcester, Mass. 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 I will define a manual training school by first 
 telling what it is not. 
 
 1. It is not a "manual labor" school. A "manual 
 labor" school, as the term has been used for many 
 years in America, is a semi- charitable institution, 
 where a boy may in part pay his way by his labor, 
 while receiving an ordinary education. The labor 
 comes in chie'fly as a means of support, and only 
 remotely, if at all, as a means of education. In such 
 schools both the labor and the education are rela- 
 tively of a low order. 
 
 2. It is not an "industrial school." In America 
 an industrial school is generally a reform school. 
 In Europe it is an establishment intended to foster 
 a particular industry, and all the pupils are directly 
 trained to become workmen or workwomen in that 
 industry. In such a school, literary and scientific 
 training plays but a small part as compared with 
 the industrial features. 
 
 3. It is not a trade or an apprenticeship school. 
 Boys attend the last named school for the purpose 
 of learning a trade; the school may teach only one 
 trade, or it may have several departments, and so 
 teach several trades. In a trade school every boy 
 learns one trade and only one, and then follows it. 
 Instead pf a daily allowance of less than two hours 
 
X PBEFAGE 
 
 in a shop, and five or six hours in study, recitation 
 and drawing, it is generally just the other way. In- 
 stead of a broad training in the typical tools and 
 processes of all the practical arts, with a view to 
 general intelligence and the acquisition of power in 
 the social organism, the aim is to make a successful 
 artisan in a particular trade. 
 
 The object of a manual training school is to make 
 men, not mechanics. It inculcates the thoughtful 
 study and use of both books and tools. Its great 
 object is education, moral, intellectual and physical; 
 other objects are secondary. 
 
 That industrial results will surely follow its intro- 
 duction I have not the least doubt, but they will 
 take care of themselves. Just as a love for the 
 beautiful follows a love for the true ; and as the 
 high arts cannot thrive except on the firm founda- 
 tion of the low ones, so a higher and finer develop- 
 ment of all industrial standards is sure to follow a 
 rational study of the underlying principles and 
 methods. Every object of attention put into the 
 school room should be put there for two reasons, 
 one educational, the other economic. Training, cul- 
 ture, skill, comes first in importance; knowledge 
 about persons, things, places, customs, tools, meth- 
 ods, comes second. It is only by securing both 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 objects thattlie pupil gains the great prize, which 
 
 is, power to deal successfully mth the men, things 
 
 and activities which surround him. 
 
 CM. Woodward. 
 Manual TEArNma School, 
 
 St. Louis, April 24, 1886. 
 
General Education. 
 
 The first aim of education is to make noble human 
 beings; and this means complete persons, roundly 
 developed, with all their faculties as much exercised, 
 trained and enlarged as can be in their special 
 occupations. ' A certain wise and instructive phil- 
 osopher loves to dwell on the value of "whole 
 thinking," that is to say, the action of the mind on 
 all sides and aspects of a subject, walking all round 
 it, as it were, instead of looking on it only from one 
 view-point; for a one-point view of anything is the 
 same as to see it in a flat projection, and conse- 
 quently to some degree distorted or untrue. Now, 
 what wholeness is to thinking, wholeness also is to 
 the growth of mind, heart, soul and body; namely, 
 true beauty; for beauty is symmetry and correctness, 
 (which means holding true relations with all things 
 and being in one's proper place in nature), and 
 power (because whatever is in its own place and 
 truly related to other things will exercise all the 
 power that belongs to it). No matter how strong, 
 flourishing, exuberant, a development may be, if 
 all m one direction, the result is distortion, unsight- 
 liness, uselessness; as may be seen in trees on the 
 
3 MANUAL TMAININO 
 
 sea-coast whose branches all point and lean one way 
 by reason of the fierce blasts from the ocean, so that 
 they seem as if the limbs on one side had failed to 
 grow; and jbhe added verdure of the other side 
 makes not the trees less ugly or grotesque. The 
 half of a thing, whether it be of a man, of a thought, 
 of a line in a poem, of an engine, or of a principle, 
 is either delusive or worthless — unless it be that it 
 serve a purpose by its destruction, as the half of a 
 fruit or other edible which becomes useful by taking 
 its place in the wholeness of some organism. But 
 why add words and illustrations for so plain a thing 
 as that the end of education is to make whole, large, 
 noble men? Why, indeed, may not any one run 
 who reads a command or announcement of nature 
 written in letters so large before the mind? Yet 
 true it is that this plain, common sense has not 
 become the rule of institutions of learning, or of 
 systems of education, or even of individual men, 
 except a few of the wisest. 
 
 A wise man said: '* Every one must elect at some 
 time in his life — perhaps early — whether he will 
 educate himself to be a broad, expanded human 
 being, open on all sides to the countless winds of 
 affairs, interests, principles, sympathies, humanities, 
 or whether he will make of himself an acute special- 
 
m EDUCATION 3 
 
 ist — a marvelous development of a particular skill. 
 For myself," he added, " I cannot hesitate a 
 moment. I wish to be as much as possible of what 
 first and foremost I am, namely, a man." 
 
II. 
 
 Special Education. 
 
 Education has a secondary purpose, namely, to 
 make excellent, thorough, skilled and productiva 
 workmen in all branches of human service, whether 
 in mechanics, agriculture, philosophy, poetry or 
 arts. This special end of education has its special 
 means and training. The age of universal knowl- 
 edge, tritely to say, has passed; so completely, in- 
 deed, that it is difficult for imagination in the present 
 stress, whirl and complication of the arts and 
 sciences, the immense development, the daily strides 
 in all industries and philosophies, to conceive a 
 time when an industrious and able scholar could 
 know everything to be known, or, at least, worth 
 knowing. The only way to equip the mind for ser- 
 vice in any department at present, is voluntarily to 
 be ignorant of a thousand other things ; and this re- 
 quires so much resolution in large and gifted minds 
 that sometimes such persons pass through life 
 ineffective because they have not self-denial to 
 endure the general ignorance necessary for the 
 powerful exercise of a special function. To try to 
 master all is to master none. " Some books," says 
 Bacon, " are to be tasted, others are to be swallowed, 
 
6 MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 and some few are to be chewed and digested ; that 
 is, some books are only to be read in part, others to 
 be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read 
 wholly and with diligent attention." If the great 
 philosopher were living now he would add that there 
 are very many books and very many subjects not 
 even to be tasted. The difficulty in education is to 
 make a wise choice between hosts of ignorances, 
 most of which we must submit to. What not to 
 study or read is the decision that taxes wisdom and 
 forethought; and on this decision turns our supply 
 of great and finished workmen in all departments of 
 knowledge and of art. 
 
ITI. 
 
 That both General and Special Education are needful: 
 that one must not interfere with the other' and 
 that this leads to Manual Training in Education. 
 
 If it be plain that the first object of education is 
 to make complete men, and yet that there is a second 
 end, namely, ,to produce special laborers of partic- 
 ular skill and great power, though limited in scope, 
 it follows that we must think how to prevent the 
 second aim from interfering with the first. This 
 brings into view the subject of manual training in 
 education. Little as yet the training of the hand 
 has been given a place in the school-house; but it 
 belongs there; for the hand and the brain, the mus- 
 cular and the nervous systems, the physical and the 
 mental powers, stand so opposite to each other, 
 though not opposed, are so different, yet each neces- 
 sary, being the two great orders of faculty which 
 make up the whole man, that to education of the 
 hand, not indeed chiefly, yet fundamentally, we 
 must look to obtain in one a more nobly grown 
 human being and a skilled worker in a special art. 
 For one mental exercise has something in it of all- 
 others, and one manual activity of all bodily motion. 
 A poet will have something of the virtues of history, 
 
8 MANUAL TRAININO 
 
 philosophy, science, politics, economics even, per- 
 haps of mathematics ; a machinist will have ex arte 
 something of the benefits of the manual motions of 
 carpentry, cabinet-making, tin work, tanning, 
 plumbing and many other crafts. But the physical 
 powers of a poet may be a sheer waste, the delica- 
 cies of whose possible fruits he may not even dream 
 of; and the mind of the hand-worker may go 
 through life with hardly the experience of an abstract 
 thought or generalization, which, Emerson says, is 
 " the influx of divinity into the mind, hence the 
 thrill which attends it," 
 
 Therefore, if we aim to combine the two great 
 ends of education, namely, whole development and 
 special skill, we should begin with the broad dis- 
 tinction between body and mind; in other words, 
 let us head-train the hand-worker and hand-train 
 the head worker. Manual training and head-train- 
 ing together form the only whole education. 
 
 Edward Atkinson, in a report to a committee of 
 the Massachusetts legislature in 1879, thus defines 
 the end and purpose of school and shop conjoined, 
 that is, of a school of mechanical arts: 
 
 The work of the school is to develop the mind 
 and to give the skill and comprehension of a thor- 
 ough mechanic in connection with other studies 
 
IN EDUCATION 9 
 
 needed for a good common school education or in a 
 higher course of professional study. The work in 
 the shop is to teach the application of the theory 
 and to train the hand, eye, muscle, and intellect to 
 accuracy and readiness ; to make the eye and hand 
 competent instruments of the instructed mind ; to 
 aim to train mind and muscle together, so that in 
 after life the most work shall be done with the least 
 effort, the least waste, and in the most effective 
 way. 
 
IV. 
 
 That the two- fold Education is specially needful to the 
 Hand' worker. 
 
 It is noticeable that all the social privileges, re- 
 fined and agreeable conditions, very often ample re- 
 munerations, and many, if not most, of the greatest 
 pleasures of life, consort already with the head- 
 worker, whether eminent in literature or in com- 
 merce or in science. The hand has little to do in 
 it. Knowledge of manufacture, and especially any 
 manual capacity therein, may have little part in the 
 preparation of a commission-dealer in the product. 
 Good penmanship makes no poem. But the handi- 
 craftsman has vital need of the education of his 
 mind. For where there is no mind, hand-worker 
 and serf -worker mean the same. The handicrafts- 
 man must be a hand-worker and head-worker to- 
 gether to be better than a mimic of a few bodily 
 motions. Herein is there not a great badge of dis- 
 tinction and honor for handicraft, that while the 
 poet, the historian, the essayist, the orator may be 
 a sloven and Hottentot with his hands, intelligence 
 and effort of mind must go with a trained hand to 
 attain the highest result in hand-work? This is 
 plain enough in sculpture, painting, music. It is 
 
12 MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 the same in the building of an engine and in all 
 transformations of material. But no honor can be 
 worn without responsibility. As its peculiar demand 
 of accompanying mind is a glory of handicraft, so 
 the hand-worker ought specially to feel the call and 
 the need to be an educated man. Wanted more 
 and more every day are, not men who are "them- 
 selves almost a part of an automatic mechanism." 
 "ignorant practicers in a small department of 
 trade,*' as Edward Atkinson has it, but mechanics, 
 true mechanics — a term of large meaning and of 
 great dignity. 
 
 It is, perhaps, usual to lay stress on the value of 
 manual training to those who work in other ways. 
 This is true, and a point for stress ; but the other 
 side is equally important. Let the hand-workman 
 be collegized (to coin a term) as well as the college 
 man be hand-workmanized, that both may be 
 college-bred, thatis, trained in a collegium or collec- 
 tion of arts and of masters. 
 
V. 
 
 That the Hand-worker needs the twofold Education 
 Economically. 
 
 Manual training in education has a vast econom- 
 ical interest for the handicraftsman; for it -will in- 
 crease his power over his material and over himself. 
 A general education, and especially a broad mechan- 
 ical training ainiing to lay the same foundation for 
 a special trade that a general university course 
 gives preliminary to a law school, art school, or 
 scientific school — this will give an inestimable sense 
 of independence to a workman. Such is the exact 
 effect of joining manual training with education; for 
 this does not mean to join this or that trade with a 
 school, but general mechanical instruction. From 
 an English report, republished in this country by 
 our bureau of education, we take the following con- 
 cerning the apprenticeship schools of France. 
 
 The trade instruction in the workshops is subdi- 
 vided into two courses. In the first the pupils are 
 taught the nature and conversion of materials. In 
 the second they pass on to actual construction. The 
 first or preparatory course is the same for all the 
 pupils. They all go in rotation through the workshops 
 for both wood and iron. One of the reporters on the 
 schools says that " this is done in order to give suppleness 
 
14 . MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 and certainty to the hand, and to enable them, when they 
 have become workmen, to take up in case of need, at 
 any rate for a time, a trade different frorrh their ordi- 
 nary one, and thus to gain a living in bad times. " 
 The choice of a trade takes place only at the com- 
 mencement of the second course, which coincides 
 with that of the second year, and it is only then that 
 they begin to execute actual constructive work. No 
 apprentice is allowed to commence any work, 
 whether complete in itself or a part of a machine, 
 without having previously made a sketch or a draw- 
 ing of it to scale, so that the pupil must necessarily 
 acquaint himself with its proportions and connec- 
 tions and understand fully the nature of what he is 
 doing. 
 
VI. 
 
 That the Hand- worker needs the two-fold Education 
 Socially. 
 
 It is a common complaint that handicraftsmen 
 are not admitted into the same social relations as 
 men of letters, merchants, clerks or salesmen. 
 Sometimes this is said to be owing to contempt for 
 a laborious life ; but I hope not, and it is far from 
 proved. As a nation we are hard workers — too 
 hard — and the merchant, and even the scholar, often 
 toils more slavishly than any . one in his employ- 
 ment. Probably the social distinction is one of 
 education, nice perception and refinement in man- 
 ners. Many a hand-worker earns as much as a 
 clerk, or even a lawyer, and yet his home will not 
 have the same atmosphere, nor be the abode of the 
 same manners — a difference shown in the few books 
 at hand, the poor pictures, the coarse food and the 
 rude customs at table. This is not because the man 
 has been using a hand-tool all day ; but because, owing 
 to many causes dating far back, there has been an ob- 
 stinate lack of education, and, consequently, of out- 
 ward delicacy and refinement. As fast as we obtain 
 in the handicraftsman not only a handworker, but a 
 hand-and-head- worker — a scientific manual laborer 
 
i6 MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 -—we shall escape from this injurious social distinc- 
 tion. ^ But it will not be so much social feeling that 
 will rise above it as the handicraftsman himself; 
 for, after all, it is mind and refinement of soul that 
 make gentlehood here. Snobbery goes not far. 
 
VII. 
 
 That Hand-working is of great Dignity. 
 
 But it is to. be said and enforced that hand-work- 
 ing is very dignified in itself. It would seem as if 
 this need not be argued; and, indeed, it need not 
 to the thoughtful, the well instructed, the self-re- 
 spectful. Yet it is one point in which public opin- 
 ion and social feeling need to be educated, although 
 happily there are many and good signs that the tide 
 is setting the right way. More and more esteem 
 and valuation rise for skilled hand-workers over 
 counter-tenders and hangers-on of the professions. 
 More and more it will be held shameful and a con- 
 fession of ignorance or of incompetency in young 
 men to rush for clerkships and salesmen's places. 
 A judge eminent on the bench of Massachusetts told 
 me that if he were to begin life agam he would not 
 be a lawyer, but a mechanic, so high was his appre- 
 ciation of the dignity of a skilled hand's command 
 over material. We shall come by and by to the old 
 Rabbinical enthusiasm for the dignity of hand-work, 
 which these learned teachers enforced both by pre- 
 cept and example. They said: "Get your living 
 by even skinning carcasses in the street, and do not 
 
18 MANUAL TMAININO 
 
 say, 'I am a priest, I am a great man; this work 
 would not befit my dignity.' " "He who does not 
 teach his son a trade teaches him — robbery." Rabbi 
 Johannan (ben Zakkaj) usually went by the name 
 of his trade, the shoemaker; Rabbi Isaac was called 
 the blacksmith, Shammaj (contemporary of the great 
 Hillel) was a carpenter and architect. He never 
 disdained to carry with him his carpenter's rule, 
 even when teaching in the great synagogue. Other 
 rabbis were tailors, bakers, gritsmakers, leather 
 dressers, oven setters, sandalmakers, potters, dyers, 
 threadmakers, coopers; and indeed it was by these 
 manual labors that they lived, for there were no 
 paid teachers. "Famous teachers," says Delitsch, 
 "not only carried the chairs on their shoulders to 
 the college because all labor calling for physical ex- 
 ercise was held to be an honor, but a certain Pine- 
 has was cutting stone when he (the stone mason) 
 was informed of his election to the high priesthood. 
 Rabbi Joseph turned a mill, Rabbi Shesheth drag- 
 ged beams, highly praising this arduous exercise, 
 and moi-e than a hundred Rabbis, whom the Tal- 
 mud mentions, were artisans and bore artisan 
 names." 
 
 Deficient reverence for hand- work seems strange 
 when one looks with due wonder and awe on the 
 
IN EDUCATION 19 
 
 human nand. As an implement to deal with ma- 
 terials, the hand is a structure so extraordinary for 
 its flexihility, innumerable applications and count- 
 less varieties of motions, as to cause, if we look at 
 it well, a religious awe. "The ancient philosopher, 
 Anaxagoras," says Plutarch^ "assigned the hand 
 for the cause of all human knowledge and discre- 
 tion." That old philosopher lacks not modern fol- 
 lowers who say that whatever may be the delicacy, 
 complexity and convolutions of the human brain, 
 man, without his hand, would be but a brute. As 
 regards arts which confer on life comfort, abundance 
 and refinement, there is no doubt of the part the 
 hand plays. The arts useful and fine, as has been 
 said beautifully, " are literally handed down from 
 generation to generation." Analogously, whoever 
 considers the place, function and power of the 
 thumb in the human hand will not wonder that it 
 has given rise to the expression "to thumb," mean- 
 ing to use constantly and mdustriously. The pre- 
 sence of skill in the hand is a spiritual fact, an 
 amazing, inexplicable thing, an unseen presence 
 like what we call life or soul or spirit in the body, 
 and is something beyond all a poet's, saint's or pro- 
 phet's power to praise. A scientific musician told 
 me he had composed a piece of music which was re- 
 
20 MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 jected because he had written great spread chords 
 which could be performed only by an immense hand 
 like his own. A man with a large hand, he said, 
 particularly an organist, who by the. use of the pe- 
 dals has become used to the effect of wide chords, 
 has much difficulty in writing for a small hand; 
 but he added that some small hands make up by 
 amazing skill. He had heard a girl play large hand 
 chords by arpeggio so exquisitely and rapidly as to 
 have all but the effect of one simultaneous stroke of 
 the fingers, indeed, hardly distinguishable; and, 
 taking the little hand in his own afterward, it was 
 a marvel how it could be the tool that had done 
 such things. On the same score Huxley claims 
 proudly the right to be called a handicraftsman. He 
 writes : 
 
 Probably at this stage of our progress it may oc- 
 cur to many of you to think of the story of the cob- 
 bler and his last, and to say to yourselves, though 
 you may be too polite to put the question openly to 
 me : "What does the speaker know practically about 
 this matter? What is his handicraft?" I think 
 the question is a very proper one, and, unless I were 
 prepared to answer it, I hope satisfactorily, I should 
 have chosen some other theme. The fact is, I am, 
 and have been any time these thirty years, a man 
 who works with his hands — a handicraftsman. I 
 do not say this in the broadly metaphorical sense 
 
IN EDUCATION 21 
 
 in which fine gentlemen, with all the delicacy of 
 Agag about them, trip to the hustings about election 
 time and protest that they, too, are workingmen. I 
 really mean my words to be taken in their direct, 
 literal, and straightforward sense. In fact, if the 
 most nimble-fingered watchmaker among you will 
 come to my workshop he may set me to put a watch 
 together, and I will set him to dissect, say, a black 
 beetle's nerves. I do not wish to vaunt, but I am 
 inclined to think that I shall manage my job to his 
 satisfaction, sooner than he will do his piece of 
 work to mine. 
 
 A thorough mechanic, who is also an inventor 
 and an intelligent thinker in science, once stretched 
 out his right hand before me and said ; " Sir, that 
 hand is worth f 50, 000! I mean that the skill in 
 those fingers, invisible to you, will yield me as 
 much per annum as $50,000 excellently invested." 
 Could a greater and more admirable thing for inde- 
 pendence^ for manliness, for power over circum- 
 stances, be said by human being? One valuable qual- 
 ity, almost a touching fact, as if the kind Creator had 
 endowed with a democratic scope this wonderful 
 organ which relates man so intimately and so closely 
 with materials, is the exceeding educableness of 
 the hand, the certainty that almost any hand can 
 be trained to admirable degrees of skill. This 
 power, which has such dignity and utility, is open 
 
23 . MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 to all, wherein it is different from poetry, music, or 
 the like. Says Leland: "There is not one person 
 living having the usual amount of brains and hands 
 who cannot learn to design well in simple decora- 
 tive drawing in a few weeks, or, in extreme cases, 
 in a few months, if he or she will try to acquire it. 
 There is not one person who can execute a simple 
 design who cannot master one or more of the minor 
 arts." From statistics of apprenticeship schools in 
 Paris it appears "that the greater number of boys 
 become engine-builders or patternmakers, the two 
 trades which in Paris command the highest wages" 
 — thus showing the great educableness of the hand 
 and the unquestionable prevalence of the capacity 
 for its superior degrees of skill. Yet the highest de- 
 grees seldom can be attained in one man's life. It 
 is a striking tribute to the dignity of the hand, and 
 also to the subtile results of mechanical training, 
 that there is an inherited aptitude for manual work, 
 and that previous training seems to have gone into 
 the very fibers and blood of the body. Francis A. 
 Walker said before the New England Manufacturers 
 and Mechanic's Institute: 
 
 There is great virtue in the inherited industrial 
 aptitudes and instincts of a population, and those 
 apticudes and instincts may be wonderfully special 
 
m EDUCATION 83 
 
 and minute. You can no more make a nrst- class 
 dyer or a first-class machinist in one generation 
 than you can in one generation make a Cossack 
 horseman or Tartar herdsman. In the highest in- 
 dustrial sense artisans are born, not made. The 
 problem is not so much to train as to breed. Aside 
 from transmitted aptitudes and instincts there is 
 also great virtue in the inherited traditions and 
 prescriptions which pertain to the body of work- 
 men, where any occupation making large demands 
 for nicety of perception and nicety of manipulation 
 has been long pursued. Writers have been driven 
 to explain the unapproachable excellence of the 
 steel blades which have for centuries been made in 
 the city of Toledo, by assuming some mysterious 
 property in the water with which swords are tem- 
 pered. It is not the baptism of the blade, but the 
 baptism of the artisan, which works the miracle of 
 peerless edge and perfect elasticity. It is the tem- 
 per of the mind of the worker to which, in the first 
 instance, is due the temper of the weapon he forges. 
 
 When such skill is attained in the hand, accom- 
 panied, as it always will be in its highest exercise, 
 with judgment and knowledge, what end to its dig- 
 nity, power and command? While explaining the 
 forging of vast rotary shafts for steamships, then in 
 the making, the superintendent of a shop said: "A 
 single false blow might spoil the whole thing, a bii 
 of (Jirt might make a flaw which would cost us thou- 
 
24 . MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 sands of dollars for damages^ It takes a good me- 
 chanic to boss such a job, and we have to pay him 
 good wages,— f 12.00 a day. He is the most im- 
 portant man in the shop. " 
 
 Note is to be taken of the artistic value of hand- 
 work and the direct connection of the hand with 
 SBsthetic sensibility. There is now a revolution, or 
 perhaps an education coming to pass in the public 
 mind, which makes known and felt the distinction 
 between the merely beautiful and a quality in the 
 beauty which gives it also a title to be called artistic. 
 On this whole subject we cannot do better than to 
 refer to Mr. Leland's paper, published by the bureau 
 of education, and to quote from it briefly : 
 
 Great stress may be laid on the fact that as the 
 flower precedes the fruit, decorative art is developed 
 in the race before it *ittains proficiency in the prac- 
 tical. Before men had good axes or knives or plows 
 or saws they made jewelry and embroidery far su- 
 perior in many respects to anything now produced 
 anywhere. We can imitate the shield "described by 
 Homer, but the artist does not live who could design 
 anything so elegant and original. There is an enor- 
 mous and rapidly grov/ing demand for hand-made 
 objects. As education and culture progress people 
 begin to find out that in jewelry, as in pictures, or 
 even in fire-irons, a thing to be truly artistic must 
 be hand-made. It is not as yet generally under- 
 
IN EDUCATION 35 
 
 stood that machinery, though it may manufacture 
 pretty things, cannot make them artistic. There 
 are no suc-h things as artistic works made in any 
 way except by hand. Only the vulgar and ignorant 
 confuse or confound that which is beautiful with 
 what is artistic. Art does not consist entirely in 
 prettiness, its best characteristic is the impression 
 of individual character. This disappears in the 
 machine, in fact, the more perfect machine work is, 
 the less it is artistic. The faultlessly finished piece 
 of silver wor^, such as no mere smith could ever 
 rival, shows indeed the result of ingenuity, but not 
 art. A Soudan bracelet made with a stone and a 
 nail is far more artistic than a Connecticut mill 
 manufactured dollar bangle; yet the latter is in' 
 finitely the more * 'finished" of the two. 
 
VIII. 
 
 That Manual Training in Education is Salutary in 
 Morals, 
 
 The importance of the exercise and training of 
 the vjhole body as a factor in morality is very great. 
 This, indeed, is a subject too large for these pages. 
 Besides, it is collateral, for my subject is the train- 
 ing of the hand. Yet the nice points in which the 
 training of this one organ of the body affects moral- 
 ity are too many and too important for the limits 
 of this little essay. Let it be noted chiefly that 
 whatever benefits result morally from training and 
 developing the whole body, spring even more deli- 
 cately from the training of the hand; because not 
 only must many muscles be exercised, and, indeed, 
 the whole body be brought into play by manual 
 occupation, so that all the advantages of physical 
 activities are obtained, but the body is exerted in 
 the most interesting manner for results which are 
 useful in themselves beyond the exercise obtained 
 in producing them, and in a way which calls the 
 mental faculties into joint operation. Therefore, 
 after we have enumerated all the general good and 
 ethical results of bodily activity, such as the calming 
 of the passions, the moral benefits of industry, avoid- 
 
28 MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 ance of the ills of idleness, protection from many 
 forms of temptation and those often the worst, still 
 we are far from doing justice to the moral benefits of 
 a manual training which has produced a skillful, 
 mobilized, useful and strong hand. It is a worthy 
 and philosophic question how far and why hand 
 culture must be joined with head culture to attain 
 the highest moral condition and to erect the greatest 
 moral safeguards. A hint of one answer may be 
 found in Chap. I, where I have said that hand- 
 training and head-training together make the only 
 whole education. The ethical advantage of the 
 union may be assumed ; for no man can distort him- 
 self by exclusive attention to one order of faculties, 
 and especially by neglecting to keep good balance 
 between the two fundamental co-ordinates of his 
 being — body and mind — without finding the distor- 
 tion reporting itself in moral obtuseness and dis- 
 order. There are some classes of moral excellences 
 in which the connection is immediately obvious; for 
 example high ethical qualities difficult, perhaps 
 impossible, in a condition of servitude. In these, 
 everything that decreases a man's independence 
 and conscious self-reliance tends to diminish his 
 morality. Conversely, whatever increases a man's 
 power over circumstances and builds up his self- 
 
IN EDUCATION 29 
 
 reliance, nourishes many noble qualities that de- 
 pend thereon. Some of these are truthfulness, 
 courage, generosity, philanthropy, and common 
 honesty. The connection between independence 
 and self-respect is very close, and again between 
 self-respect and many moral qualities of great 
 value. Therefore, these orders of morality are 
 directly fortified by a training of the hand, which 
 makes a man at home and powerful on the earth 
 and amid materials, and lifts him above slavish 
 helplessness in exigencies. Can any one enlarge 
 the soul of his hand (bethinking ourselves of a 
 philosophical doctrine that the soul occupies the 
 whole body,— which at least has an important 
 thought underneath it) and crystallize intelligence 
 in that wondrous organ without becoming more of a 
 man; and what is that but to say, a better man 
 throughout? He may not be a good man then; but 
 still worse he would be if his hand were clumsy and 
 useless. 
 
IX. 
 
 That Manual Training in Education is Salutary for 
 the Mind. 
 
 Manual training in education is like a sponsor at 
 the baptism of intelligence, so much will it under- 
 take the good growth of mind. Ejiowledge is an 
 obvious point in which manual training serves in- 
 tellectual superiority. This needs but statement. 
 Plainly it is not only a useful thing, but an accom- 
 lishment, an admirable power, to know fine work 
 from sham, and hence to feel a thrill of admiration 
 when excellence comes before us. And when we 
 reflect on the many kinds of manual production, 
 how sad to be ignorant of them all — of woodworking 
 in all its departments, blacksmithing, metal work- 
 ing, the lathe, the plane, soldering, brazing, plumb- 
 ing, painting, engraving, stonecutting, casting, and 
 a hundred other notable activities of the hand. 
 Even the knowledge and judgment of materials 
 which hand-work gives is of itself a pleasure and a 
 dignity. 
 
 But knowledge is only the tool or the material for 
 the mind's work. Turn to the effects of manual 
 training on intelligence. It is not easy to set too 
 high the mental value of a trained hand (provided a 
 
32 . MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 sound education join witii manual training) or to do 
 justice to the many subtile ways in which skill of 
 hand ministers to acumen of mind. There is a cur- 
 ious ethnological argument on this point which I 
 will quote from a scientific journal: 
 
 It is well known that, in its development, each 
 new born being passes through very much the same 
 stages that his ancestors have been through before 
 him. Even after birth the growth of the child's in- 
 telligence simulates the progress of the human race 
 from the savage condition to that of civilization. It 
 has been shown by Preyer, and others, who have 
 studied infant develojDment, that a faculty which 
 has been acquired by the race at a late stage is late 
 in making its appearance in the child. Now, read- 
 ing and writing are arts of comparatively recent 
 achievement. Savage man could reap and sow, and 
 weave, and build houses long before he could com- 
 municate his thoughts to a person at a distance by 
 means of written speech. There is, then, reason to 
 believe that a child's general intelligence would be 
 best trained by making him skillful in many kinds 
 of manual labor before beginning to torture him 
 with letters; and the moral to be derived is, that 
 primary instruction should be instruction in manual 
 dexterity, and that reading and writing could be 
 learned with pleasure and with ease by a child who 
 had been fitted for taking them up by the right kind 
 of preparation. The argument is a novel one, and 
 it certainly seems plausible. 
 
IW EDUCATION 33 
 
 This argument is not to be passed by because 
 somewhat.it has the aspect of a curious speculation. 
 Marvelousness and fact go hand in hand in creation, 
 and in no subjects more plainly than in the, rela- 
 tions of mind to body. If we consider the vast in- 
 fluence on the mind of a quickened observation, and 
 how primary is observation in acquiring knov/ledge, 
 we shall be at no loss to reason that the development 
 of the senses, touch included, and the training of 
 the hand in artisanship, must be a root of the 
 growth of mind. This, plain in theory, is supported 
 by direct testimony. In a report by Professor Ord* 
 way to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
 on industrial education is the following relating to 
 hand-work schools in Sweden : 
 
 Many are united with the public schools, so that 
 hand-work and head-work are carried on under the 
 same management ; and it is generally found that 
 when four or six hours a week are devoted to hand- 
 work, the other studies suffer no detriment, but are 
 pursued with the greater zeal. 
 
 Another writer, speaking of a carpentry shop con- 
 nected with the Dv/ight School in Boston says : 
 
 It is said that boys who work in this shop a few 
 hours each week do not fall behind the others in 
 scholarship, and all that they learn in the trade is 
 clear gain. 
 
84 . MANUAL TRAINING . ' 
 
 In Leland's paper on "Industrial Art in Schools," 
 published by the bureau of education, I find: 
 
 It is gradually or rapidly being realized that 
 children can, while at school, profitably practice de- 
 corative arts. It is also quite as true that this prac- 
 tice, far from interfering with the regular studies, 
 actually aids and stimulates them. While the minor 
 arts, guided by a knowledge of decorative design, 
 are so easy as to be regarded by all children as a 
 recreation, they are at the same time of practical 
 value in training the eye and hand and awakening 
 quickness of perception. There have come under 
 my observation a great number of instances in 
 which children who have been regarded as dull in 
 everything have shown great aptness and ingenuity 
 in designing, modeling or carving. When this skill 
 is awakened there comes with it far greater clever- 
 ness in those studies or pursuits in which the pupil 
 was previously slow. I believe it to be a great 
 truth, as yet too little studied, that sluggish minds 
 may be made active, even by merely mechanical 
 exercises. This holds good as regards the practice 
 of the minor arts by children. It is somewhat re- 
 markable that, while every one is quick to observe 
 mental ability or activity when transmitted from 
 progenitors, very few notice the innumerable in- 
 stances in which it is developed by education or cir- 
 cumstances. It is not a matter of theory, but of 
 fact and observation, that all children who practice 
 decorative arts are thereby improved both mentally 
 and morally. The consciousness of being able to 
 
IJSl EDUCATION 35 
 
 make something well which will sell gives them pro- 
 per pride and confidence in their ability to master 
 other studies. It also conduces to quiet habits and 
 content. 
 
 Opportunity and incentive to join theory and 
 practice are important. We are not likely to wish, 
 or to strive at the expense of much labor, to under- 
 stand the explanation of things which we care 
 nothing about doing. This thirst for knowledge be- 
 longs only to scientific minds. !^ut who, if oppor- 
 tunity be at his door, will not wish and work to 
 understand the laws, the relations, the causes, in 
 short, the theory or science of arts which he is con- 
 tinually practicing? Even to one of pure scientific 
 impulse for theory, practice and observation inten- 
 sify, brighten, direct and regulate theoretical studies. 
 
 Therefore, in general education, theory should be 
 opened to the developing artisan, and manual prac- 
 tice to the rising student of science. But in this 
 connection it is to be said and enforced especially 
 that the manual training school, by reason of its 
 twin objects, intellectual and mechanical, is becom- 
 ing a necessity because of the minute and degrading 
 sub-division of manufacturing labor. Edward At- 
 kinson says: "I lately inspected a shop in which 
 sewing machines were being made, where one cam 
 was shown me which passed through sixty hands 
 
36 MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 before it was ready for its place in the sewing ma- 
 chine." On this point speaks another circular of 
 our bureau of education. 
 
 Machinery is making men into machines at such 
 a rate that humanity is becoming seriously alarmed 
 at the inevitable result. The old apprentice had ^ 
 chance to rise, since he learned a whole trade; the 
 modern workman, who is kept at making the six- 
 tieth part of a shoe, and at nothing else, by a master 
 whom he never sees, is becoming a mere serf to 
 capital. Even the industrial school, with its ''prac- 
 tical" work, can do nothing against this onward and 
 terrible march of utilitaria. It is in the teaching 
 of art and of the superiority of hand-work in all that 
 constitutes taste that the remedy will be found. By- 
 and-by, when culture shall have advanced — as it 
 will — there will be an adjustment of interests. Ma- 
 chinery will supply mere physical comforts. Man, 
 end not machinery, will minister to taste and refine- 
 ment. 
 
 This minute specialization has become nearly as 
 great a difficulty in science as in mechanics, and 
 the intellectual result is the same. A writer says : 
 
 Among scientific men themselves the increasing 
 specialization of their employments — inevitable, as 
 far as we see, for the present — has produced, and is 
 likely to produce, most serious disadvantages. It 
 is Mill, we think, and before him Comte, the French 
 philosopher, who deplores the moral and social ef- 
 fect of this dispersion of effort, and the concentra- 
 
IN EDUCATION 37 
 
 tion of it on only minute fragments of the business 
 of life. The interests of the whole, says the former, 
 the bearings of things on the ends of the social un- 
 ion, are less and less present to the minds of men 
 who have so contracted a sphere of activity. The 
 insignificant details which form their whole occupa- 
 tion, the infinitely minute wheel they help to turn 
 in the machinery of society, does not arouse or 
 gratify any feeling of public spirit or unity with 
 their fellow men. A man's mind is as fatally nar- 
 rowed, and his feelings toward the great ends of 
 humanity as miserably stunted, by giving all his 
 thoughts to the classification of a few insects or the 
 resolution of a few equations as to sharpening the 
 points and putting on the heads of pins. 
 
 If we suppose a naturalist, not only drifting, af- 
 ter his general education, into such minute special* 
 ized labor, but trained just for that from the begin- 
 ing and for no other, it is plain he would be 
 unutterably narrow, mentally worthless, and but a 
 shred or shadow of a man. Yet just so is the hand- 
 workman made at present. 
 
 There is another effect of manual occupation on 
 mental habit, which perhaps is first in importance, 
 namely, the constant and unavoidable demands 
 which manual training makes on accuracy, and the 
 consequent habit of minute, painstaking application, 
 patience and exactness which is developed. The 
 
38 MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 man who will labor for weeks or months to make 
 surface plates that fit the one on the other like a 
 film of oil to either, or who must work a fitting true 
 to the thousandth of an inch, or make an edge 
 which is as near the materia] realization of a mathe- 
 matical line as mortals can come, will not be likely, 
 if his mind be directed to reasonings in economy, 
 philosophy, morals or statecraft, to dismiss the 
 points with carelessness, or satisfy himself with 
 tricks of logic or with off-hand argument. He will 
 run his thought as close logically on the subject as 
 he runs his tool on material. Nature looks after the 
 mechanic's thoroughness and takes him in hand to 
 produce a splendid instance of that half mental, half 
 moral excellence called precision; for by no other 
 way will nature let any result come forth from the 
 work. Examine the striking difference in this re- 
 spect between an argument before a jury, an oration 
 before the Senate, a sermon before a congregation, 
 and a piece of finished mechanism. A forensic 
 speech or a religious discussion may be a glaring 
 outrage on facts of history and of science and on 
 the principles of reasoning ; yet they will serve their 
 close-at-hand purpose just as well — that is to say, 
 they will suit all the requirements of the client, the 
 jury, the Senate, the church, which are the masters 
 
IN EDUCATION 39 
 
 in the worJ£, and seldom ask exactness, either in 
 thought or in fact. But what if a mechanic build 
 a machine similarly, and for chiefly its effect on 
 the ear or eye or fancy? Nature is a different mis- 
 tress; she accepts no botchery of that sort. The 
 machine refuses to work, which is the vengeance of 
 Nature indignant with inaccuracy and bad mental 
 habits. Accordingly, a hand-workman is driven to 
 precision by the very nature of his occupation. A 
 good workman is he who obeys that requirement 
 and labors patiently, and at last successfully, for 
 the attainment of an ideal precision. And this 
 manual necessity has incalculable effect (especially 
 if any superjacent education be added) to make good 
 habits of thought. After conversing much, as my 
 position and occupation have required me to do, with 
 men of all classes ana grades, I must own I have 
 found no class, not scientific or college-bred men 
 themselves, who have been more stimulating, help- 
 ful, and valuable in conversation than fine mechan- 
 ics, because the exactitude and patience of their 
 manual work has created in them a "habit of excel- 
 lence" in all operations, whether reflective or exe- 
 cutive. 
 
X. 
 
 That Manual Training in Education is Salutary fot 
 the Body. 
 
 Health is an advantage accruing from manual 
 training. This point needs no more than statement, 
 since it is obvious that bodily exercise is in itself 
 conducive to bodily vitality, and especially so when 
 united with mental exercise. There is a peculiar 
 healthfulness in mental and physical work con- 
 joined, as a physician (Elam, in "A Physician's 
 Problems") has taken pains to testify, averring that, 
 when he wishes to strengthen a feeble child, he pro- 
 vides for due mental exercise as carefully as for phy- 
 sical. A striking testimony is found in a circular 
 of the bureau of education, which gives an account 
 of apprenticeship schools in France. In one of these 
 the school hours are twelve in number, from 7 in 
 the morning to 7 in the evening, with an intermis- 
 sion of two hours only for meals. The report says : 
 
 During the first two years six hours daily are 
 spent in the workshop and four in the school. In 
 the third year eight hours are spent in the workshop 
 and two in the school, leaving in each case two hours 
 for meals and recreations, the latter including three 
 hours of gymnastic exercise per week. When we 
 visited the school, unannounced, we found the lads 
 
43 MANUAL TBAININO 
 
 working steadily and looking strong and healthy. 
 M. Greard, in his report of 1878, says that during 
 the five preceding years not one of the boys had 
 died. 
 
XI. 
 
 That Manual Training is Beneficial to the Fdch. 
 
 I come to the benefits to the community from 
 manual training as a part of education. One advan- 
 tage has opened which is to be hailed gladly. It is 
 perhaps as important as any, and yet has taken ob- 
 servers so by surprise as even to create adverse crit- 
 icism. I mean what I may call in general the 
 elevation of the ric/t— that is, the lifting up of them 
 from their adulation of mere possessions to appre- 
 ciation of the greater dignity of skill and workman- 
 ship. There is a deep and serious import in 
 George Eliot's phrase, "the perishing upper classes." 
 Now, it is found happily that not only the poor, but 
 the sons of rich men take eagerly to manual train- 
 ing schools. This has been criticised, as if these 
 schools ought to be the special advantage of the 
 needy. But this is to misunderstand their nature, 
 and to overlook one of their greatest benefits to the 
 community. Just so far as boys from the wealthier 
 classes throng them will they be fulfilling one of the 
 most important of their natural functions — namely, 
 to glorify and dignify fine grades of hand-work. 
 When I saw in a Pennsylvania steel foundry a 
 
44 . MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 young man coarsely clad in overalls, smutty as to 
 hands and face with a highly ethical (as I will call 
 it) grime, and afterward met that same young fellow 
 in a parlor, taking his place easily, with beautiful 
 manners, in the circle to which ancestral wealth in- 
 troduced him, I thought both ends of the spectacle 
 honorable and delightful. There can be no health- 
 ier facts for this, or indeed any, country, than such ; 
 and whatever manual training school helps or re- 
 veals such a tendency, is an encouragement for the 
 present and a boon for the future. 
 
XII. 
 
 That Manual Training is Beneficial to the Poor. 
 
 A benefit to the commuuity is the elevation of the 
 poor, a different uplifting, but no less real, though 
 less ethical and noble, than that which manual 
 training confers on the rich. I mean their eleva- 
 tion to the ilnion of theory with practice, and also 
 to a greater command of themselves and of their 
 conditions. It is one of the great facts of this age 
 that more than ever before the poor go to school. 
 It is a grand fact that the classes are steadily dimin- 
 ishing or disappearing which have no ambition or 
 no way to obtain more than a bare subsistence. 
 But now that education is not merely for the 
 socially elevated, but is charged with elevating 
 socially all persons who will, we must fit the educa- 
 tion to such condition as many classes now are in, 
 that is, join manual training with theoretical studies 
 and with literature, and thereby so educate as to 
 show the inherent dignity of hand-work, while at the 
 same time we improve it; for most of the pupils 
 from these classes must get their bread with the 
 things that can be seen and handled ; and well is • it 
 for the world that it is so. A writer says happily 
 
46 -MANUAL TJRAimNO 
 
 and wittily: "The old-fashioned system seems to 
 have been meant to send its graduates straight to 
 heaven, for it utterly ignored the possibility of their 
 ever having to use their hands or feet," 
 
XIII. 
 
 That Manual Training is Imi^ortant for Girls, 
 
 An economic benefit, which also has much to do 
 with moral interests, is the immense value thai 
 manual training, once thoroughly organized in edu- 
 cation, will have for girls. Is it true that we are 
 behind other nations in this particular? There are 
 those who assert that "we have not yet given the 
 American girl as good a chance to learn how to earn 
 her living or to take care of a family as is enjoyed 
 by her sisters in France or Sweden, or even Mexico.'' 
 If this be true, the dangerous omission should re- 
 ceive instantly our attention, and reason enough 
 there is to deem it of vital importance. Eeform in 
 this point will increase not only the mechanical and 
 artistic productions of the community, but also its 
 elevation in morals. "There is a class of young 
 people," says a circular of the bureau of education, 
 mostly females, who, having taken the first step in 
 vice, linger awhile before taking the second, and 
 then are rapidly and utterly degraded" — a solemn 
 fact. Beyond its moral import, it affects profound- 
 ly the economic and physical interests of society. 
 Think of the terrible risks and woes a community 
 
48 ' MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 undergoes, as well as economic loss, from "the ranks 
 of the uneducated, or even so-called educated young 
 women when by circumstances these are called to 
 earn their own way in the world, and find their 
 hands no equipment and no implements for the 
 emergency. " 
 
XIV. 
 
 That Manual Training is Beneficial to Production, 
 
 Manual training in education surely will enhance 
 the sum and quality of the manufactured products 
 of the community. More and more this is seen. 
 I quote an instructive passage from a "Circular of 
 Information" of the bureau of education at Wash- 
 ington : 
 
 Education makes labor more skillful and more 
 productive. This proposition is based on a wide 
 comparison of intelligent and ignorant labor, and is 
 sustained by such a multitude of observations that 
 it is no longer questioned by any one familiar with 
 the facts. In 1846, Horace Mann, then secretary 
 of the board of education of Massachusetts, opened 
 a correspondence with business men to ascertain the 
 comparative productive value of educated and un- 
 educated labor. The men addressed included manu- 
 facturers of all kinds — machinists, engineers, rail- 
 road contractors, officers in the army, etc. — men 
 who had the means of determining the productive- 
 ness of labor by observing hundreds of persons 
 working side by side, using the same tools and 
 machinery, and working on the same material, and 
 making the same fabrics. In many instances the 
 productiveness of each operative could be weighed 
 by the pound or measured by the yard. The in- 
 
50 MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 vestigation disclosed an astonishing superiority in 
 productive power of the educated laborer as compared 
 with the uneducated. "The hand," wrote Mr. 
 Mann, "is found to be another hand when guided 
 by an intelligent mind. Processes are performed 
 not only more rapidly, but better, when faculties 
 which have been exercised in early life furnish their 
 assistance. In great establishments and among 
 large bodies of laborers, where men pass by each 
 other ascending or descending in their grades of 
 labor just as easily and certainly as particles of 
 water of different degrees of temperature glide by 
 each other, there it is found to be an almost invar- 
 iable rule that the educated laborer rises to a higher 
 and higher point in the kinds of labor performed, 
 and also in the wages received, while the ignorant 
 sinks like dregs and is always found at the bottom." 
 
 In 1870 the National Commissioner of Education 
 widened Mr. Mann's investigations, addressing his 
 inquiries to business men in all parts of the country 
 and to a few large employers in G-reat Britain. The 
 result was a complete confirmation of Mr. Mann's 
 conclusions. 
 
 The same lesson has been taught and enforced by 
 the world's expositions. In 1851 the Queen of 
 England sent forth a gracious invitation to the 
 nations to send to her proud capital the best pro- 
 ducts of human skill. The world responded grandly, 
 and the World's Fair at London was the greatest 
 and richest collection of the works of art and arti- 
 sanship on which the sun had ever shone. The 
 
IN EDUCATION 51 
 
 exhibition was divided into nearly one hundred 
 departments, the jurors were appointed, the articles 
 were patiently examined, and at last the verdict was 
 given. Great Britain was awarded the palm of 
 excell-ence in nearly all the grand departments of 
 the exhibition. The announcement of this result lit 
 up Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, and otli^r 
 manufacturing towns with bonfires, and filled Eng- 
 land with general joy. She rejoiced in the belief 
 that she was mistress of the industrial world. She 
 saw her sails whitening every sea and heard the 
 increasing hum of her factories and mills. 
 
 Sixteen years passed over Europe. Napoleon 
 III., in imitation of Queen Victoria's example, in- 
 vited the nations to send up to his imperial capital 
 the choicest products of human industry. The 
 world responded even more grandly than before. 
 The Paris Exposition was divided, like its predeces- 
 sor, into over ninety departments ; the jurors were 
 appointed, the articles examined and the verdict 
 reached. Great Britain had excelled her competi- 
 tors in but ten of all the departments. The an- 
 nouncement of the verdict produced consternation 
 among the representatives of British industry. They 
 met at the Hotel de Louvre, and the one absorbing 
 inquiry was, "Why this defeat." The unexpected 
 news crossed the channel, causing greater alarm 
 than the threatened invasion by Napoleon I. This 
 defeat awakened England to the startling fact that 
 the mdustrial scepter was slipping from her hands; 
 and, as a result, she saw her ships rotting in her 
 
52 , MANUAL TMAININQ 
 
 harbors and the hammer falling from the hand of 
 her starving workmen. The disaster arrested public 
 attention, and a searching and thorough investiga- 
 tion for its cause was made by a Parliamentary 
 commission. The report made to Parliament in 
 1868 contains the testimony and the conclusion. 
 Education had won the palm of excellence for her 
 competitors. The conclusion is forcibly stated in 
 the testimony of Mr. Edward Huth. "The work- 
 men of other countries," he said, "have a far super- 
 ior education to ours, many of whom have none 
 whatever. Their productions show clearly that 
 there is not a machine working a machine, but that 
 brains sit at the loom, and intelligence stands at the 
 spinning wheel." 
 
 The discovered cause indicated the remedy, and 
 the report to Parliament was soon followed by the 
 great education bill, which established a general 
 system of elementary education throughout Great 
 Britain. Technical schools have been multiplied, 
 and science has claimed a larger place in the higher 
 schools and universities- Great Britain has appealed 
 to the schoolmaster to win back her pre-eminence 
 in industry. 
 
 The extraordinary development in the present 
 age of the means of communication and transporta- 
 tion makes plainer still the need of a wider spread of 
 mechanical knowledge and power. The oper- 
 ation of steam and of the telegraph, well has it 
 been said, means simply that competition has now 
 
IN EDUCATION 53 
 
 become world-wide, and that the day of local isola- 
 tion of trades and industries is passed. Even now 
 whatever is made well in California affects similar 
 industry in St. Petersburg or Melbourne. So it will 
 be more and more. To meet these conditions, any 
 community that values industrial eminence, or even 
 wealth and power, must spread wider and establish 
 more deeply the knowledge of mechanics. 
 
XV. 
 
 That Manual Training is Beneficial to Inventionc 
 
 Scientific artisan training is important to inven- 
 tion. The most valuable inventions must come 
 from the educated hand-worker. Why so noticeable 
 heretofore that great and important inventions have 
 sprung almost never from artisans in the trade, 
 whose processes they improved? Plainly because 
 the uneducated workman operates like a machine 
 performing certain habitual motions or functions 
 which, even if exhibiting peculiar skill, are not in 
 spired by knowledge of the theory of his work 
 This will be changed by scientific and manual train 
 ing joined in one education. 
 
 Says a circular of our bureau: "Industries made 
 but comparatively slow progress while they were 
 carried on by persons whose instruction was limited 
 to apprenticeship. Gradually, and in more recent 
 times, the idea has made its way that the progress 
 of an industry depends especially upon the degree 
 of instruction of those who exercise it." A trained 
 mechanic, now a large dealer in machinery, said to 
 me that one great benefit of the manual training 
 school is to be that the skillful mechanic will be- 
 
56 MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 eome able to tell what he knows, by which capacity, 
 now often entirely absent, experience can be com- 
 municated and progress quickened. 
 
XVI. 
 
 That Manual Training is Important in Relation to 
 Immigration. 
 
 A problem with which we have to deal is the 
 enormous immigration which presents in this 
 country one of the most astonishing spectacles in 
 history. An eminent scholar said to me recently 
 that any community left to itself to increase accord- 
 ing to the natural multiplication of the species, will 
 be found generally able to solve its own problems 
 with happy results ; but when these problems are 
 affected by immense hordes of foreign and unedu- 
 cated, unskilled and sometimes half -pauperized im- 
 migrants, the problem becomes not only distressing 
 but difficult and dangerous. Meantime, it seems 
 certain that steadiness of character, independence, 
 political power and mental worth will go with man- 
 ual capacity and ^with genuine respect for hand- 
 work. Now, shall this great advantage be surren- 
 dered wholly to the foreign element? I heard a 
 preacher say that we stood in no danger from our 
 immigrants. "If," he said, "a lion eat an ox, the 
 lion is in no danger of becoming an ox, but the ox 
 becomes lion." True; but we cannot pulverize and 
 
58 . MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 masticate our immigrants to that degree, or, too, 
 with that rapidity. I wish not to keep foreign men 
 underlings or leave them undeveloped; but I plead 
 for the equal development, side by side with them, 
 of American stock, by those qualities and kinds of 
 education which confer independence of circum- 
 stances and a skillful control over matter. How 
 can this be done but by the training of the hand as 
 a part of education? And how can this be done but 
 by manual training schools ? For the disagreeable- 
 ness of practical work in a manufacturing shop by 
 reason of the inroads of our untutored foreign resi- 
 dents, and the consequent, albeit temporary, vulgari- 
 zation of mechanical surroundings, has attracted fore- 
 boding attention. A very eminent physician said to 
 me lately that he thought it one of the most dis- 
 tressing problems of the country, and saw no light 
 in it and no way out of it. A document of oui 
 bureau of education remarks on this fact: "Immi- 
 gration has filled nearly every department of com- 
 mon labor with workmen long subject to caste ideas 
 and resulting social customs. The unpleasant 
 conditions thus resulting have crowded out intelli- 
 gent American labor. " Here it is that the institution 
 which is both a shop and a school comes to supply 
 the pressing need ; for here mind-training and hand- 
 
IN EDUCATION 59 
 
 training go on together, making elevating and 
 beautiful influences. 
 
XVII, 
 
 That Manual Training affects heneficially the prob- 
 lem of Apprenticeship, 
 
 A point of economic value whicli is of incal- 
 culable importance, is tlie power of the manual 
 training school to cope with the present problem of 
 trades' exclusiveness as to apprentices, and indeed 
 with the general decay of the apprenticeship system 
 from whatever causes. This decline would be 
 serious enongh in itself in any community and at 
 any time ; but it is rendered more serious here by 
 the problems connected with our immigration, by 
 the present facilities of communication the world 
 over, and by the immense labor necessary to turn 
 to account our advantages of soil, climate and 
 mineral wealth . This especial need for well ordered 
 and skillful mechanical labor, says a circular of the 
 bureau of education, "has been attended by a 
 steady decline of the apprenticeship system which 
 heretofore formed our trained artisans. It has be- 
 come more and more evident that if this decline of 
 apprentices is not made good by effective training, 
 the American manufacturer will be at the mercy of 
 the trained laborer of Europe." But, indeed, the 
 
62 ' MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 old world communities are feeling the same strain. 
 Our bureau refers to a French official report as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 In consequence of the virtual abolition of appren- 
 ticeship in most trades, and owing to the specializa- 
 tion and subdivision of manufactures resulting 
 from the introduction of machinery, the number of 
 skillful and intelligent workmen in all branches of 
 industry and art manufacture has decreased, and the 
 standard of technical knowledge has been lowered. 
 This, the French author considers, has been spe- 
 cially prejudicial to French manufactures, the dis- 
 tinguishing merit of which he believes to have 
 consisted in originality of design. The vulgariza- 
 tion of manufactures has, in his opinion, given great 
 facilities for piracy, especially on the part of 
 foreigners. He believes that a remedy for these 
 evils will be found in the establishment of appren- 
 ticeship schools, the object of which should be 
 mainly not the creation of foremen, but the theo- 
 retical and practical education of workmen proper. 
 In determining what should be the trades taught in 
 schools founded and carried on at the cost of the 
 municipality, he would confine them to what he calls 
 "parent industries" — ^that is to say, those in which 
 the processes to be taught are applicable to a large 
 number of allied trades. 
 
 Here the real relief is indicated. No community 
 need be at the mercy of mechanics who will not 
 teach their art, for it can have a school which will 
 
IN EDUCATION 63 
 
 fceach it better. Speaking of the founding of a 
 school of mechanical arts in the Institute of Tech- 
 nology in Boston, Edward Atkinson says : 
 
 At the date of the Centennial Exhibition no such 
 school existed; and our late president, Mr. John D. 
 Eunkle, there found in the Russian department ex- 
 amples of work done, and a statement of the method 
 adopted in Russia, which seemed to meet a need that 
 we had long felt. With much effort he succeeded 
 in obtaining the requisite means, to which the Mas- 
 sachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association contri- 
 buted a considerable sum in consideration of two 
 scholarships, and established the school which I 
 have attempted to describe to you. From the time 
 he first described it to me, and before I had myself 
 examined the Russian work in Philadelphia, I have 
 never doubted for a moment that President Runkle 
 had brought from the Centennial one of its most val- 
 uable lessons, and that he had had the sagacity to 
 perceive that in this plan there was a substitute for 
 the old method of apprenticeship more effective and 
 better than that could ever have been. 
 
 Says another writer: 
 
 The apprentice in a shop is a hewer of wood and 
 a drawer of water, the last and least important indi- 
 vidual in the shop. In the manual training school 
 on the contrary, the boy is the most important in- 
 dividual. He is the object for which the school ex- 
 ists. He is the material that is to be finished. 
 Instead of being left to himself to pick up what 
 
64 - MANUAL TBAININO 
 
 he can, competent and intelligent instructors de- 
 vote themselves to his training. As an appren- 
 tice, the boy exists for the benefit of the shop. 
 As a scholar in a manual training school, the shop 
 exists for the benefit of the boy. 
 
XVIIIo 
 
 Facts as to the need of Manual Training. 
 
 As to the present condition of manual training in 
 education, it is plain that we have it not; and some 
 general facts, beside the foregoing statements, press 
 home sadly, not to say shamefully, our need of it. 
 The following anecdote from a scientific and me- 
 chanical journal may illustrate, and perhaps hardly 
 over-state, the present condition : 
 
 A young man stepped into the office of the In- 
 dianapolis Rolling Mill not long since and asked for 
 work. "What can you do?" asked the president. 
 "I don't know," said the young man. "Have you 
 a trade?" "No Sir." "Where did you come from?" 
 "From Pennsylvania." "Are you a German?" "No 
 sir; I am an American." "If you were a German, 
 or an Irishman, or a Frenchman, I could set you 
 to work, because you would know how to do some- 
 thing, but Americans don't know anything about 
 practical business." 
 
 The crowds of people who seek work willing to do 
 anything, jostling in a scramble to pick up any oc- 
 cupation, and the small number who have a digni- 
 fied skill in general mechanics or in some special 
 handicraft — these are the impressive, often distres? 
 sing, facts which prove the incapacity of our present 
 
66 ' MAI^UAL TBAININQ 
 
 education to cope with the needs of the time. An 
 editor advertised for a clerk and instantly had 
 500 applications; a mechanic advertised for a skilled 
 artisan, and had only five or six answers, and most 
 of those too old. This state of things influences 
 our public service disastrously, producing not only 
 a mean and demorahzing scramble for office, but 
 inefficiency and unfaithfulness in duty. Said a Col- 
 lector of the Port of New York : " You can possibly 
 appreciate my situation when you hear that I have 
 ■ received applications for the position of weigher 
 from 840 persons; and yet there are only fifteen 
 weighers to be appointed." Sometimes— so great 
 is popular thoughtlessness on this point— this evil 
 is ascribed to education itself. It is said we have 
 over-educated the youth of the country so that the 
 boy has become too fine for his father's trade, and 
 manual work is despised. This is not over-education, 
 but bad education. The foolish, unrepublican and 
 inhumane shows of wealth, the selfishness of the 
 cultivated classes, the influence of slavery in our 
 history, which perhaps will not be out-grown for 
 half a century yet; immigration, the disturbing in- 
 fluences of the rapid transportation by railroads, 
 which have not yet slipped into their normal and 
 necessary relations to the community; the magical 
 
IN EDUCATION 67 
 
 growth of great cities, especially in the west; 
 idleness, laziness, intemperance, the evil effects of 
 agitators either vicious or ignorant that affect idle 
 crowds, and the general atmosphere of alteration, 
 revolution and reconstruction filling the whole earth 
 at present with an uncertain groping, or often wild 
 clutching, after a new condition, which prove pecu- 
 liarly misleading to the indolent, — all these facts 
 sufficiently account for our uncomfortable situation 
 in respect to skilled artisanship, without resorting 
 to the foolish plea that we have over-educated our 
 young blood. The converse is true, if we take a 
 high view of education. We have under-educated 
 them by failing to add that manual training which 
 would confer on the community the economic ad- 
 vantage of high respect for hand-work, and on the 
 pupil the dignity of skill and of independence. Con- 
 sequently, we have made misshapen and distorted 
 men — too much grown in one part, too little in an- 
 other, mental hunchbaeks and clubfeet; and no 
 more than an army of deformed bodies could carry 
 a nation through a war, can communities of minds 
 misshapen by one-sided pressure, bring a country 
 to the level of the industrial requirements of peace. 
 
XIX. 
 
 Beginnings, — Present Schools, 
 
 Regarding attempts at manual training in educa- 
 tion, but slight information can be given, because 
 the subject is so new, the efforts so few, and the 
 accessible reports of them necessarily meager. Two 
 kinds of mechanical schools must be distinguished. 
 One is a school devoted to preparation for a special 
 trade; but this I pass by without notice, for though 
 many such exist, they do not come properly within 
 the scope of manual training as an instruction of 
 the hand in due course of general education. The 
 other kind is a school of manual operations of many 
 different sorts, preferring no one trade to another, 
 but seeking to develop skill of hand and knowledge 
 of materials, and to add to this a scientific and 
 literary education. These are the true manual train- 
 ing schools. Even in the old civilization of Europe 
 comparatively little has been attempted and little 
 progress made as yet in the creation of such schools. 
 France has some such in Paris, Eheims,Lyons, Rouen 
 and several other cities ; and there are two kinds — 
 a primary or elementary sort, giving quite general 
 instruction, and a peculiar system of "apprentice- 
 
70 ' MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 ship schools," which, while supplying technical, 
 scientific and literary instruction, aim "to form 
 workmen as distinguished from foremen." Some 
 such schools shape their manual training wholly 
 for particular trades ; others give a general training 
 before the trade is chosen, and after that a special 
 training for the trade. These apprenticeship schools 
 are few in number, but there are many of the ele- 
 mentary kind. A circular of our bureau of educa- 
 tion, quoting from an English report of 1882, says : 
 "There were when we visited Paris twenty-three 
 primary schools to which a workshop had been at- 
 tached. Ten others were on the point of being 
 opened, and preparations were being made for at- 
 taching workshops to twelve others." In another 
 circular of 1884, our bureau says: "The French 
 are now preparing for a great extent of hand-work 
 in the schools of Paris, both for boys and girls, but 
 it will take time to realize their ideas." From the 
 same document we may learn of hand-work schools 
 in Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Fin- 
 land. Sweden has shown much vitality on this 
 subject. The report says it has been found difficult 
 to "keep up with the demand for teachers in the 
 new system, and to provide for the rapidly spread- 
 ing introduction of the hand-work element in the 
 
IN EDUCATION 71 
 
 common schools. Teachers' institutes are held for 
 six weeks in the summer to give the ordinary teach- 
 ers a chance to learn the wood-work art, that they 
 may give instruction in hand- work in addition to 
 their other teaching." In England < 'hand- work in 
 schools and hand-work schools seem to have made 
 little progress," but "there has been much agita- 
 tion on the subject and some movement has begun." 
 The latest facts which I have been able to glean 
 ar6 in an excellent circular of information of our 
 bureau of education, under date of Sept. 5th, 1885, 
 being **a review of the reports of the British Eoyal 
 Commissioners on Technical Instruction." The 
 circular says: "It will be found that in every one 
 of the old polytechnics [that is, scientific polytech- 
 nic schools] the notion prevails that if the brain be 
 thoroughly trained, the hands will take care of 
 themselves. This is the old view of higher tech- 
 nology." As a consequence there is an excess of 
 polytechnic graduates over the demand. One mana- 
 ger of large engineering works put in his window 
 the notice, "No polytechnic student need apply." 
 The Austrian minister of instruction, says the cir- 
 cular, "told the writer that the most serious pro- 
 blem in education in that country is to reduce the 
 number of theoretical engineers who, after their 
 
72 ' MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 long course of study, found themselves not wanted, 
 and to increase the number of men in whose train- 
 ing theory and practice had been so combined that 
 they could meet the great demand for those who can 
 put theory and practice together. " This on the man- 
 ual side of the value of joint education. On the 
 other, or intellectual side, is the following from the 
 English report : *'Your commissioners cannot re- 
 peat too often that they have been impressed with 
 the general intelligence and technical knowledge of 
 the masters and managers of industrial establish- 
 ments on the continent. They have found that these 
 persons as a rule possess a sound knowledge of the 
 sciences upon which their industry depends. They 
 are familiar with every new scientific discovery of 
 importance and appreciate its applicability to their 
 special industry. They adopt not only the inven- 
 tions and improvements made in their own country, 
 but also those of the world at large, thanks to their 
 knowledge of foreign languages and of the condi- 
 tions of manufacture prevalent elsewhere." 
 
 Eussia has the honor of leading the world in 
 manual training as a part of education. The circu- 
 lar says : 
 
 "The new idea which appears here and there 
 among the technical schools is to incorporate shop- 
 
IN EDUCATION 73 
 
 work with the essential parts of the old courses. 
 This has been done in three ways: (1) by mixing 
 shopwork with the duties of each week, as at Mos- 
 cow; (2) by consolidating the shopwork in a year 
 following the school course, as at St. Petersburg; 
 (3) by requiring a certain amount of shopwork as a 
 condition of admission to the schoolwork, as at the 
 Eoyal Foreman School of Chemnitz. The Eussians 
 alone among European nations are entitled to the 
 credit of attempting to reform the technical training 
 of engineers and mechanics by mixing workshop 
 instruction with other elements of the polytechnic 
 course. Their success is remarkable. * * * * 
 Eussia is the lee shore upon which the choicest 
 educational pebbles may be gathered. In studying 
 Eussia one sees all European technological educa- 
 tion epitomized, and the whole plan of the new edu- 
 cation in Eussia may be seen in the two schools of 
 technology at St. Petersburg and Moscow. In each 
 school is an ample, well equipped manufacturing 
 machine shop where the students see good work done 
 by skilled mechanics and are taught to do such them- 
 selves ; the course of study is otherwise substantial- 
 ly the same as in the Grerman polytechnics. In 
 each shop a definite number of hours of work are 
 required of every student, with this difference in the 
 plan, that at Moscow the shopwork is mixed with 
 the duties of every week of the six-year course; at 
 St. Petersburg it is consolidated into a fifth year, 
 after all the school work of the four-year course 
 has been finished. At Moscow no week passes with- 
 
74 . MANUAL TliAININO 
 
 out shopwork ; at St. Petersburg no shop work is 
 done till the beginning of the fifth year, which year 
 is wholly devoted to drawing and shopwork. The 
 two schools differ also in this, that at St. Petersburg 
 all the students are externs, at Moscow about one- 
 third are boarders. * * -^ * To give zest to 
 the rather tedious work of the first three years the 
 boys hear lectures on practical topics, such as the 
 best cutting angle of files, the set of saw teeth, 
 etc., which may not make them any better mechan- 
 ics, yet tends to improve their general intelli- 
 gence." The Boyal Foremen's school at Chemnitz 
 requires shopwork as a "preliminary condition of 
 admission." It is designed to give mechinists, dy- 
 ers, tanners, millers, and other machanics, a theor- 
 etical and scientific knowledge of their arts, and 
 "the student must have worked at least two years 
 at his calling before entering." 
 
 France continues her attention to the subject, 
 and has many schools of two different classes, 
 namely, the apprenticeship school in which particu- 
 lar trades are taught, and common schools, in which 
 manual training in general is carried on with liter- 
 ary and scientific education. These are often under 
 very rigorous discipline, the students sometimes 
 wearing uniform, and being very closely held to 
 work. The school day is sometimes twelve and 
 three quarters hours long, divided about equally be- 
 tween the school room and the shop. Some of these 
 
IJSr EDUCATION '^^ 
 
 schools take children even as young as six years old, 
 and give them three hours of instruction each week 
 in handicraft. After ten years of age they work 
 eighteen hours a week in the shop. The Eoyal com- 
 missioners say that "in affording an education m 
 which theory is not carried too far and is duly 
 combined with laboratory practice, and in some 
 cases with workshop instruction, and in which, 
 moreover, the scientific teaching is made to bear 
 upon the principal manufacturers of the districts, 
 these higher technical schools (a grade below the 
 German polytechnics and the Ecole Centrale of Paris) 
 provide the kind of education that is best adapted to 
 the various grades of managers of works." 
 
 As to English progress in this subject, the royal 
 report, after expressing the view on the intellectual 
 side, "that many workmen are disposed to attach too 
 little value to the importance of acquiring a know- 
 ledge of the principles of science because they do 
 not see their application," says on the practical or 
 manual side, "Your commissioners have had the 
 opportunity of inspecting the manual work of the 
 pupils, both at the Manchester board schools and at 
 the central school in Sheffield, and they are satis- 
 fied that such work is very beneficial as a part of 
 the preliminary education of boys in this country 
 
76 , MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 who are to be subsequently engaged in industrial 
 pursuits, even though it should not, as however it 
 probably will do, actually shorten the period of 
 their apprenticeship. " 
 
 As to Ireland, the commissioners say: "We need 
 scarcely point out that, if it be deemed desirable to 
 introduce manual instruction in the use of tools in 
 elementary schools at all, this would apply in an 
 eminent degree to the primary schools of Ireland. 
 It was stated in evidence before us, that in some 
 parts of Ireland ordinary handicrafts, like those of 
 the mason, have become absolutely extinct. 
 Whether the children remain in their own immed- 
 iate localities or migrate to other parts of the 
 country, or emigrate to our colonies or to foreign 
 countries, such instruction leading up to their 
 apprenticeship as skilled laborers, instead of their 
 fulfilling, as is now too much the case, the part of 
 mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, would 
 be of the greatest value to them. We are happy to 
 find that the authorities of the national board of 
 education in Ireland appreciate the importance of 
 introducing instruction in manual work into their 
 schools." 
 
 How meager are these facts for a review of the 
 condition of such a subject in the world; yet they 
 
IN EDUCATION 77 
 
 include all of mucli importance which our bureau of 
 education has collected from foreign reports. As 
 regards our own country, information at present is 
 equally meager. In the report of our commissioner 
 of education for 1882-83, filling over 1,000 pages, 
 but three or four are devoted to "progress of instruc- 
 tion in practical mechanics," and these pages men- 
 tion only a course of shop practice in the Colorado 
 Agricultural college, the Dlinois Industrial univer- 
 sity, Purdue university in Indiana, the College of 
 Mechanical Arts at Cornell university, the Agricul- 
 tural and Mechanical college of Texas, the Institute 
 of Technology at Boston, and the Manual Training 
 school of St. Louis. A circular of the bureau adds 
 a brief history of experiments in Peru, 111., Moline, 
 111., New Haven, Conn., the school in Chicago, two 
 experiments in Boston, a genuine apprenticeship 
 school in New York city and a school in Baltimore. 
 The latter has a special significance, for the circular 
 remarks: "Baltimore is the first municipality to 
 establish a manual training school as an integral 
 part of the public school system." 
 
 The report of our commissioner for 1883-84, just 
 at hand (March, 1886), of over 1,200 pages, has but 
 three pages devoted to manual training. These 
 mention a school in Brookline, Mass., and add: 
 
78 ' MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 "So far as reported to this office, the cities in which 
 provision for manual training has been made in 
 connection with the public schools, or under the 
 auspices of the public school boards are Boston, 
 New Haven, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, 
 Toledo, Chicago, Moline and Peru." I know not 
 why some of these cities should be credited thus. 
 The subject has been broached in the school board 
 of Chicago, but without action as yet. There is a 
 school at Cleveland, but not a public school; it has 
 the peculiarity of holding its sessions in the after- 
 noons from 2 : 30 to 5 : 30 o'clock, and on Saturday 
 mornings from 9 to 12 o'clock, so "that it may sup- 
 plement," says its circular, "the present method of 
 education," and "so arrange the exercises that the 
 pupils of many of the existing schools may avail 
 themselves of the instruction given in its classes." 
 To the cities which have taken a forward step in 
 providing for manual training in the public schools 
 must be added Omaha. 
 
 A course in mechanic arts has just been opened in 
 the State Agricultural school of Michigan, at Lan- 
 sing. There is a school of mechanics, long estab- 
 lished, at Worcester, Mass. Besides these I have 
 met a reference, how authoritative I cannot say, to 
 manual instruction at Girard college, in Philadel- 
 
IN EDUCATION 79 
 
 phia. A meager enumeration, not complete, no 
 doubt, but, even if much multiplied, still a meager 
 collection of facts on such a subject as the training 
 of the hand viewed as a department of education. 
 I have been able to visit no school but the one in 
 Chicago. In that, there are six hours of school 
 work daily except Saturday and Sunday. Of the six 
 hours, two are give to shop -work, one to drawing, 
 three to literary, mathematical and scientific studies, 
 for three years. The mechanical instruction for 
 the first year is in wood-working, the next year in- 
 cludes two months in foundry-work, and eight 
 months in blacksmithing; in the third year, which 
 completes the course, the mechanical work is in the 
 machine shop. 
 
 [Note. — I learn from Prof. C. M. Woodward, Director of the 
 Manual Training School at St. Louis, Mo., that in September, 1885, 
 the Technical School at Manchester, England, was changed to a 
 school of Manual Training, exactly on the plan of the St. Louis 
 School, under guidance of two addresses delivered there by him 
 in the previous spring : also that the St. Louis plan has been fol- 
 lowed directly in the school at Baltimore Cpublic), and in that at 
 Chicago (private), and partially in public schools at Boston, New 
 York, Philadelphia, Toledo, Eau Claire. Omaha, and in private 
 schools at Cleveland and Denver ] 
 
XX. 
 
 Manual Training in Public Schools, 
 
 Although some cities have entered actually on the 
 experiment, still among educators it is an important 
 question whether manual training should be intro 
 duced into our public schools. A discussion of this 
 point will ]be found in a circular of our bureau of 
 education, of 1881, entitled " The Eelation of Educa- 
 tion to Industrial and Technical Training in Ameri- 
 can Schools." The conclusions are adverse to 
 industrial departments in the public school system. 
 Another discussion, with similar conclusions, is to 
 be found in a circular of the bureau, dated January, 
 1885. On the other hand, an English commission, 
 after reviewing and citing French laws on the sub- 
 ject, thus sums up 
 
 It is clearly the aim of the government and of the 
 great cities that this superior instruction shall be 
 placed as fully as possible within the reach of the 
 workingmen. The instruction in the use of tools 
 during the elementary school age, besides being of 
 service to every child, whether destined to become a 
 mechanic or not, will tend, in the former case, to 
 facilitate the learning of a trade, though it may not 
 actually shorten the necessary period of apprentice- 
 
82 MANUAL TRAINING 
 
 ship. We should be glad to see this kind of manual 
 instruction introduced into some of our own elemen- 
 tary schools. The consideration of the expediency 
 of a grant from the education department for instruc- 
 tion of this kind may be well deferred for the 
 present. 
 
 The subject was discussed at the meeting of the 
 National Educational Association, at Madison, 
 Wis., in July, 1884. The need of special schools of 
 mechanic arts "was freely admitted;" but as to 
 whether manual training should become a part of 
 th^ public school system, views differed widely, but, 
 says the report of the commissioner, with "a general 
 agreement " against it. Prof. Woodward, director 
 of the manual training school at St. Louis, said, 
 "My advice is, go slowly. Do not mistake the 
 shadow for the substance. Treat manual training 
 with dignity and respect." 
 
 The following is a decided opinion from a special 
 point of view ; I take it from an article on the labor 
 question : 
 
 Industrial education in manual training schools 
 must be introduced into our system of public schools. 
 At present our young people have no chance to learn 
 a trade in a factory. They are employed at part 
 work, so that it takes a team of seven men to make 
 a boot and several hundred men to make a watch. 
 The principles of mechanical employments are few, 
 
IN EDUCATION 83 
 
 and could be taught,together with other intellectual 
 teaching, in the common schools. With a knowledge 
 of these principles individuals could shift from one 
 trade to another without being compelled to remain 
 idle on account of their inability to work outside o 
 their single trade. 
 
 Such divergent opinion, as well as the great im- 
 portance of the subject and the paramount interest 
 of all that touches education, show that the relation 
 of the state to this subject — the question of manual 
 training in our public schools — needs wide and care- 
 ful discussion, particularly by experienced, thought- 
 ful and learned educators. I will not offer a confident 
 opinion ; yet it is my conclusion that manual train- 
 ing ought to be incorporated radically with public 
 education, and go hand in hand with mental train- 
 ing froin the primary grades up to our high schools, 
 or even to our university doors. 
 
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