^cn'%A-/t/vi^ 1.^ ^, d. H' MOTTO: "More for Schools, and Less for War." j ■ -Pagan vs. Christian M 3 o Civilizations M 2 O M 1-1 FREE UNIVERSAL INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION o THE PRICE OF NATIONAL PERMANENCE ail ^ P c ■•Progress Has iVo End." ■n ■•.All True Piogres.< is Towards Democracy." a cr ^ o By S. H. Comings FAIRBOPE, ALA. a 0) •3 Edited find Revised by Lydia J. Newcoinb-Comings -Introduction by Hon. C. C. Bonney 5-S r JO o PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR Price 25 Cents CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 56 Fifth Avenue,. Chicago ") Motto: 'More fob Schools, and Less for War. PAGAN VS. CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATIONS NATIONAL LIFE AND PERMANENCE DEPENDENT ON REFORM IN EDUCATION A PLEA FOR FREE UNIVERSAL INDUSTRIAL TRAINING ON A SELF- SUPPORTING BASIS By S. H. Comings FAIRHOPE, ALA. Edited and Revised by Lydia J. Newcomb-Comings Introduction by Hon. C. C. Bonney PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 56 Fifth Avenue, Chicago By TrftB«f«r AUG 28 1917 ^C / O A JOHN P. HiaaiNs^^Sa^l^j iss-iae olark (T. PRINTER, BINDER^^aS^S-' CHICAGO, ILLINOIS DEDICATED To all who would see the SUPREME AMBITION of our civiliza- tion TURNED from the effort to develop THINGS, to the develop- ment of the highest possible average type of MANHOOD and WOMANHOOD, and to all who would see LABOR spiritualized, and man's CREATIVE AT^BISUiS'i:- changed from the ideal of DEGRADATION, to that 'of COMMIirNlON with each other, and with the INFINITE. FOR THE CUTS IN THIS VOLUME WE ARE INDEBTED TO THE COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL CASH REGISTER CO., WHOSE PRESIDENT, J. H. PATTERSON, IS AN ABLE, ENTHUSIASTIC PIONEER IN INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. CONTENTS Frontispiece — Ideal Plot for Summer Garden School Introduction — By Hon. Chas. C. Bonney 9 Philosophy — Accelerated Evolutionary Progress 11 Foreword — Need of Radical Reform — Spencer's Arraignment — To Pre- pare for a Higher Social Order 13 PART I. Pagan vs. Christian Civilizations — National Growth or Decay Dependent on Educational Meth- ods — The Old Pagans — Christ's Social Order — Renewal of Pagan Ideals 19 Paganism Still Dominant — Crosby's Philosophy — Military Vanity — Disbanding Army and Navy 23 Froebel's Ideals and Philosophy — Man a Creator — Hughes' Analysis — Varying Types of Play — Froebel vs. Pestalozzi — A Seer of Collectivism 24 Froebel^s Plans for Small Schools — Handicraft Pract'-'s — Nature Studies-^Study of Mechanics Not a Waste of Time 28 Materials for Mechanical Study — Evolution of the School Seat 31 Methods With Feeble Minded — Learning From Touch — Stupid Colored Boy — Morals Im- proved by Mechanics 31 The Unfortunate Races — The Law of Imitation — St. Paul's Theological Seminary . . 34 Teachers' Responsibility — Violating Froebel's Philosophy — Conservatives of Conservatism 35 Examples and Precedents — Summer Garden Schools (Illustrated) — Village Boy "Toughs" — Sabbath Lessons — Science Teaching — Increased Price of Lots 2,1 6 CONTENTS. SeLF-GoVERNMENT — PAGE. Holland's Theory— Forward Movement 40 George Juniour Republic — . _ "Nothing Without Labor" — Truant Schools — A Teacher's Per- sonal Example 40 Primary Industrial Schools — Striking Effect of Industrial Lessons ........ 41 City, Suburban and Concentrated Country Schools — Taking City Children to Suburbs — Slum Conditions . . . 42 Agricultural Training — Prof. Hayes' Plans — Prof. Harvey's Report — Agricultural Schools in Europe — County Schools in Different States — Bellamy's Indictment, Lack of Science and System — The Old Feudalism — President Patterson's Ideal — Fifty Years of Agita- tion for the Common School — Effects of Agricultural Study — No Taint of a Labor Caste in Scientific Agriculture ... 43 Elevation of Races — Purely Literary Schools a Failure — Hampton and Tuskegee — Aspiration and Ambition a Hopeful Indication .... 47 Drifting Into Tv\^o Classes — Working to Merit Recognition vs. Demanding It — A Colored State or Republic — Prejudice Against Northern Supported Schools — Colored Preachers 50 Teaching by Example — Teachers Should Exemplify Pride in Skilled Labor .... 51 Prevention of Crime — Enormous Cost of Crime — Six Hundred Millions — In the North, Slums; in the South, Illiteracy 52 The Slow and Unprecocious — Many Geniuses Lost to the World — A Higher Average of Citizenship 53 Elevating Labor vs. Degrading Drudgery — "To Work or, to Be Worked" — William Morris' Ideal — Shorter Hours — Religion of Democracy 54 PART II. Equipments vs. Endowments — . : Seventy Millions for Higher Education of the Few — Need of More Democratic Education — Two Hundred Thousand Equipment Better Than a Million Endowment — Moral CONTENTS. / PAGE. Stigma — Union of Culture and Skill — Smaller- Colleges Strug- gle for Lack of Income — Americanism to Conquer the World — Ideas Penetrate Deeper Than Shot — "Triumphant Democ- racy"— Every Child a Ftrll College Course 57 The Prophetic Spirit Yet Lives— Men Simultaneonsly Whittling Models for Inventions— Col. Daniels' Work — Essentials in a Scientific Civilization ... 61 Can Colleges Be Made Self-Supporting— - Chimerical but Only Incidental— "Literary Aristocracy"— "En- tirely Practical"— Retail Prices vs. Labor Cost— Individual Examples— Enough Difficulties to Arouse Enthusiasm — Men- tal Concepts Precede Accomplishments— The Equipment- First Years vs. Later Years — Booker V/ashington's Doubts — His Work— Other Schools— The True System 62 Domestic Science and Service — Perplexing Problem — The American Spirit— Home Making an Art— "Born to Serve"— Lower Caste Degrading— Spirit of Slavery — Lady of Aristocratic Endowments 72 Self-Support the Best Educational System— The Creative Talent Best— Incentive to Best Efifort— Per- sonal Adaptations — Formative Relations — Scientific Christian Democracy^— Beginning Life in School — Col. Parker's Ideal — Dr. Smith's Plea— Froebel's Philosophy— Spencer's Indict- ment of Misuse of School — The Main Purpose to Make Superior People 75 Hand Training Aids Mental. Development — A Moral Advance— A Better Fitting for Professional Life- Educators With Mechanic Trades — The Early Common Schools— Preventing a "Labor Caste"— A Moral Taint— All Around Ability— Women's Needs— Creative Labor Man's Highest Attribute n Essentials of an Educational System — Complete Outfit for Production— Teachers With Pride in Handicraft Skill— Free to All 81 Summary — Condensed Recapitulation • 82 Philistinia — Pungent Paragraphs— Race of Pigmies— Pupils of Over Fifteen Self Supporting— John Ruskin's Words— Wm. Morris— Cur- riculum of Doing— Education Never Complete— Walls of Old- Time Colleges Crumbling . .......•••• 84 APPENDIX Paper Before Minnesota Educational Association — Prelude by Editor Herbert — Mental Gymnastics — Going Back to Three R's — "Dwarfing, Soul-benumbing, Body-enfeebling Process" — Time and Vital- ity Wasted — World Cannot Be Turned Backwards— Better Day Coming 87 Free System of Industrial Colleges — The, Hope of the Republic — Isaiah the Sociologist — Man More Precious Than Gold — No Morality Without Labor — A New Order of People — Any Truth-seeking Committee Can Be Satisfied — No Bread-and- Butter Question in School — Col. Parker's Ideal — Man's Endowment — Moses the First Labor Leader — Forty Years' Preparation as Farmer — Exemplar of Divine Human Life a Carpenter — -This Republic to Be Destroyed by Vandals From Within — Bishop Potter's Deduction — Mental Culture Valuable for Wealth Production — Schools Great Industrial Centers — Every County Have an Industrial College — A Higher Civil- ization Coming 89 Address of Col. Edward Daniels Before Nebraska Legislature — Most Trades Crowded With Botches — Technical Ignorance Assaults Life — Submit the Plans to the People — Sciences That Relate to Life— Skilful Labor a Play — Love of Work Natural — Returns a Thousand Fold 97 Text of Bills in Congress — Endorsements of Eminent Men ........... 100 Plea for National League — Action Only Waiting Organized Effort — Twice as Much Government Aid as for War — Teachers Who Wish to Dis- tinguish Their Career 103 Will You Help? Those Willing to Help the Movement 107 Advertisement — Teachers Wanted for Industrial School South 108 8— a ADDENDA. CONTENTS. "The Gospel of Labor" — PAGE. Civilization in Hayti — Mistaken Idea of Facts in the Case — Wrong Methods of Edu- cation — No Knowledge of Industry The Pitiful Phillipeno Farce — Government Teachers Improperly Taught — Not Posted in First Steps in Civilization — Imparting False Pride Contrast in Jamaica — Freedmen Taught Principles of Agriculture — A Steady Progress — No Infamous Crimes Anglo-Saxon Race Pride — We Need Not Be Too Arrogant — Our Way Has Been a Slow and Cruel Way Upward — Not Too Good Yet — English Pa- ganism — Our Own The Great Oberlins Example — Established an Agricultural School as First Step to Reform Robber People — Greatest Success in History "The Law of Human Progress" — Warring Classes and National Decay — Working Together for Common Good, Progress Swift and Sure — -The Teachings of the Nazarine in Economic Phrase An Irrigation City — Suggestions of Able Secretary of Irrigation League — Labor and Capital May Find Peace The World Wide Folly^ All the Nations Squandering Effort on War, Enough to Make the People All Well Off What Wasted Labor Could Do — The Worst Waste-Labor Power — Chicago Built by Surplus Labor — The Fair City ADDENDA — Index Continued. The Army of Discharged Labor — Cut Off From Any Chance to Earn an Honest Living — Desper- ate and Dangerous — Could Build Several Cities Like Chicago — Army of Destruction 8 The Remedy for Child Slavery — No State Can Afford to Destroy Its Children lo Nervous Americans — Appalling Increase in Nervous .Diseases — President Roosevelt — Schools Should Strengthen Nevrous Children . . . ii An Insane Civilization — Abnormal Development an Equivalent to Insanity .... 12 Mrs. Lew Wallace's Indictment — Severe Reflections on Our Educators — Must Not Be Pushed Aside — Charge Reaffirmed — Great School at Haubinda . . 13 Teacher's Responsibility — The Sweeping Charge of Mrs. Lew Wallace — Educators Guilty — This Nation Too Precious to be Injured by Wrong Methods of Education 13 Normal Schools — Superintendent Washburn Home — Teachers Cannot Change System — Too Conservative 14 Teachers Prematurely Break Down — Fault of the System— Will N. E. A. Meet the Issue? ... 15 People Must Make the Change — All Reforms Must Come Up from the People 15 Initiating Self-Supporting Schools — How Can It Be Done? — Differing Ways — Dr. Trigg's Sugges- tion — Great Many Who Want the Chance 16 Primary Industrial Lessons in Every School — Make the Determination First 18 "More for Schools and Less for War" — War Spirit Sign of Decadent Morals — All Battleships Can Easily Be Destroyed — Better Educate the People — Every Child an All-Round Training iq INTRODUCTION. I approve in the strongest terms your proposal to add to the American system of education a department of Industrial Schools, and I would extend this department to the entire system. The hand and brain should be educated in close companionship, and no class of the students should be denied the inspiring luxury and benefit of appropriate tool using. I have no doubt that a well conducted department, of Industrial Education would prove MORE THAN SELF SUPPORTING, but if otherwise, the needful expense should be cheerfully provided as demanded by every just consideration. The marvelous success of the early public school system of the Eastern and Middle states was largely due to the fact that the learners' time was fairly well divided between the SCHOOL, the SHOP, and the FARM. The concurrent education of the hand does not hinder, but greatly HELPS THE CULTURE OF THE BRAIN. I believe we are on the eve of great improvements in the whole system of education, and that one of the foremost of these improve- ments wUl be FREE INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. Sincerely yours, Ohas. C. Bonney. We extract the above, a most fitting introduction, from the last kindly letter, received a few months before the death of the great souled man, whom we dare presume to call one of the pleasantest and most profitable friends of a lifetime ; a man who had attained to the highest aristocracy of character while retaining the most democratic sympathy and deepest interest in all that tended to uplift humanity. A former educator himself, he was keenly alive to plans for progress along all lines that shall prepare the people for a higher social order. His last great work was originating, presiding over and being the moving spirit of the famed World's Congress in '93, at the great Exposi- tion in Chicago, a work that set a new pace for the growth of the ideals of human unity, and his elaborate history of that wonderful school of progress is a gospel of highest interest to the race. S. H. C. PHILOSOPHY. "The man is tho't a knave or fool, Or bigot, plotting crime Who for advancement of his race , Is wiser than his time. " The old idea of human progress was that only by slow and almost imperceptible steps can civilization evolve to its highest forms, or the inherent evils of human nature be overcome and a highly civilized society be developed from the rudeness of barbaric ages. Today science has so revolutionized most of our early concepts that we find many of the things we have known for a long time are not so. The science of society and of human progress are now well enough known — though only very imperfectly as yet — to warrant us in the statement that the evolutionary progress in social growth can be, and has been most tremendously accelerated by well known means. It has been so visibly hastened through the influence of the common school system — aided by the mechanical and industrial training of frontier necessities — that greater progress was made in two generations after its adoption than for ten centuries before. The times demanded the common school ! Today the times demand another equally important step, to accelerate the evolu- tion of social progress, to prevent decadence, and keep up with mechanical progress, — the people need a deeper, broader, more complete education, made universal. To decree today that every child shall go through college — an industrial college — and as much "more as they may choose, is not as radical or difficult a step as was the decree of the common school by our fathers, and it will accelerate social advance and the development of character fully as much as that did, and, relatively, will not cost as much effort. 12 PHILOSOPHY. From the data we now have, there can be no question but the dominant race can be, by well known means, so elevated, so freed from, tendency to crime and degeneracy, so exalted morally, so increased in industrial efficiency, so raised in average intelli- gence, as within a very few generations for all to be fully equal to the very best of the present citizens that could be selected, while the geniuses and superiors would tower to unheard-of heights of moral and intellectual worth, a progress that is now only thought of as the product of centuries of slow, continuous growth. While the unfortunate colored race can under proper condi- tions, which have now been well tested and have led a portion to such striking and marked advance in the forty years of freedom, be raised to a very fair degree of civiHzation, with their superiors attaining to high positions in social growth in a comparatively short period. This is the somewhat ambitious "Philosophy" of this little volume. FOREWORD, Industrial Education for All. "The glory of thinking is in work, and the dignity of work is in thinking." —Ferguson. No proposition will meet with more general approval than that our whole educational system needs a radical reform or total revolution. Herbert Spencer wrote his noted essay on "Education" mainly for the purpose of giving- the English system a scathing con- demnation. Our system has been copied from the English with but trifling, if any, improvement. Spencer declares that in accord with biological science each individual should be educated and developed along the same lines that the race has been developed, and we know in the evolution of the race that the hands have always been trained before the head. The prophet Froebel, who saw more perfectly than any other the whole philosophy of mental development, would begin with the hands in the Kindergarten, and continue this hand training through the entire course of study, teaching the hands the use of tools, and the head mechanic arts in advance of literary training. We have only touched the first step in his scientific plan in adopting the Kindergarten, totally neglecting the last and best of his full ideal. The pagan ideal was to despise labor: the Christian civiliza- tion professes to exalt creative labor; but so tainted are our social standards that we only partially accept this ideal, and our schools, from the highest to the lowest, tend, as Spencer said of the English system, away from labor, and to produce the mental concept of a labor caste, as immoral as it is unscientific. 13 14 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FOR ALL. It is a radical charge for present-day educators to accept that their own education was wrong in method and defective in extent, and that their present work is really a failure and unworthy this scientific age, no matter how successful they may be in getting- pupils to recite lessons from text books. Yet there can be no question of the justice of this charge, and from many of our most progressive educators and thinkers come sweeping denunciations of the present system, but with no accord as to the remedy. It can be found only in a system of Industrial Schools, giving to every child in the nation a complete training. Memory -cramming and hand-neglecting has had its day; the teachers who have neither skill nor tact in handicraft, nor knowledge of mechanics, vvill be pushed aside by those who have developed a power and a pride in what they can do with their hands, as well as in purely mental achievements. An eminent educator has recentl}- declared that the training of the hands appears to have an almost miraculous power to bring out mental activity, develop character, and elevate the morals. Another admits that our universal education in the common schools has proven a partial failure — has not been the complete success expected (what wonder, when such paganish methods have been followed). And yet its inception was a wonderful upward step, and it set a new pace for the world's progress, and only needs to be made into a more correct system to be all and more than the most sanguine could expect. Another educator, equally prominent, declares that our whole school system "is top-heavy and impractical, not based upon proper foundations, and will soon topple over from its own weight."* A prominent literary lady declares that our common *When this severe arraignment of our educational system was first published in a popular Magazine, there was a very wide expression of indignant denial of its justice or truth, by a large class of the conservative teachers, who declared there was little or no ground for the accusation — that many, very many children were seriously harmed by the "forcing process," and the long confinement at memorizing study. In one school with which we were familiar, this denial was particularly -severe; yet in that very school were some most sad cases of entire nerve INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FOR ALL. 1 5 school system should be called "the modern method for tlic slaughter of the innocents ;" that it is a harmful, nerve-straining method, and does not prepare for active life as it should. "Pupils have to unlearn in life what they learn in school. They should be trained toward the activities of life, not away from them. ' ' —Wendell Phillips. There need be no argument over the necessity, the practical value and the moral uplift of general hand training in our schools ; the present trend is all in that direction. The rapid introduction of weaving, basket work, paper construction, raffia work, etc., in all the most progressive schools, is a marked advance over the average system for primary instruction, and is along the lines laid down by Froebel, whose inspired mind breakdown, some even among the colored children in the effort to "pass" to the high school. Yet so very conservative are most of the teachers, so sure are they that the present system is all it need be, so averse to any change or innova- tion, that no words of appreciation were given, no effort to improve was made in response to the words of warning from the eminent lady writer, who so truthfully told only the unvarnished truth of a method that should be changed, and have the hearty help of all educators to bring in a better condition. The Editors of the Magazine, in which the article was published; re- ported they had so many letters from parents and friends of the injured children from all sections of the country that it fully vindicated the indig- nant writer who only voiced the cry of suffering childhood. The general truth of the indictment has had a rather grotesque con- firmation in the advertising of a well known "Breakfast Food" maker, who refers to the well known fear of injury to school children and assures the anxious parents and friends, that their precious little ones will be safe from nerve breakdown — "if only they will feed them on his quack food stuff" — "ad absurdum." We fear the dear children will need a more complete remedy than the quackery of food that costs so much more money and talent to advertise, than to make. We are sure our suggestions for change in educational methods will not meet the approval of the con- servative class of teachers, but so widely and enthusiastically have the propositions of this little volume been endorsed by many eminent educa- tors, and able friends of education that we can with a fair degree of equanimity bear the gibes of the CONSERVATIVES. l6 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FOR ALL. best understood the whole philosophy of the mental and moral development of children. But in our colleges, seminaries and universities, where purest science should find its best expression, we find instead the most persistent adhesion to the old and proven unscientific methods of memory cramming, with total neglect of hand training, and also the taint of a mental labor caste. All this is in complete antagonism to the suggestions of Spencer that a more scientific and practical education not only better fits for complete living, but for higher attainments and enjoyment of all that is ethical and esthetic in life. To prepare for the higher civilization that is surely coming, one of the first and most important steps is to prepare a superior average order of people by the adoption of a universal syste^^i OF FREE industrial EDUCATION, which shall be obligatory upon all and that will develop handicraft training as of first importance, not because it is of greater material benefit, but because it is a higher moral and spiritual attainment and is along the natural line of man's growth in mental power. A noted manual training expert declares "It produces a nezv and sivperior order of people," which is the highest conceivable aim. Labor, being "a portion of God's ozvn creative attribute beneficently bestoived upon man," must be cultivated as one of His highest gifts, and only by so doing can he be raised to his best estate. The remark is often made that our social progress does not keep pace with our mechanical progress. The school should set the pace and prepare the way for all upward growth. And there is no reason why social reform should not lead and surpass all mechanical achievements. When all the people are exalted to a higher average of mental power, as they so easily can be, the geniuses of such an age will tower to undreamed-of heights. Froebel thought his philosophy so far in advance of his time that it would require a couple of centuries for the world to come to see the value of it ; but, owing to the acceleration in evolu- tionary progress caused by the world-wide adoption of the common school and the more universal intelligence of the people, we have INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FOR ALL. 17 in a few decades come to see and accept his teachings ; and now we only need to introduce the best methods for bringing to pass what he saw was so important, viz. : to train hands, head and heart at the same time. In the low estimate of human life and the willingness to sacrifice it for selfish aims do we see the most radical persistence of paganism; and the willingness of modern society to keep a large portion of our workers in ignorance and degradation — like our coal miners, factory slaves and slum dwellers — is a sure sign of the survival of pagan cruelty. The Christ-came to "set prisoners free," to "break the chains of those who are bound:' What prisoners need His freeing hand and chain-breaking love as do the prisoners of ignorance — ignorant of their own native powers? Until every child is set free to use with skill his creative power of hand and head, it has not had the benefit of any properly called Christian civilization. The most important work for any nation is the education of its own citizens. If only this idea could once permeate our civilization ; if we could only have the idea adopted that people ire worth more than things ; if we could only get away from the accursed paganism of treating men and women, boys and girls, as merely tools with which to make money, or as servants for the few; if only we could see the hideous wrong and sin of war, and see that, instead of lavishing millions on warships, Catling guns and riot arms, it would be infinitely better to spend it on education ; if only we could see that to develop a higher average of citizenship is the highest ambition for a nation, — then might we in truth conquer and lead the world to the highest ideal of democracy. "Americanism shall permeate the world." —Stead. "To be a true American, is to be a citizen of the World!" —Ferguson. PART 1 Pagan vs. Christian Civilization. NATIONAL GROWTH OR DECAY DEPENDENT ON PROGRESS IN EDUCATIONAL METHODS. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." —The Christ. I Pagan civilizations have been neither scientific nor democratic, but have instead been either transient or non-progressive. A true Christian civiHzation would be thoroughly scientific and democratic, progressive and permanent. The Anglo-Saxon civilization, professing to be Christian, is really so tainted with paganism that it cannot be permanent unless made more democratic and more scientific. Along no other line is the contrast more sharply defined between the unscientific nature of the old pagan civilizations and the practical nature of a real Christian civilization than in the almost infinitely differing concepts in regard to the dignity and honor of skilled creative labor and the merit of personal service. To the old-time pagan the honor and nobility of skill in labor that should serve his kind was an absolutely unthinkable propo- sition : he could not conceive it. Whether he belonged to the Greek or Roman cult or to the less cultured nations, his idea of honor and employment was war — to kill and destroy ; his needful labor and personal service must be done by a slave, a human beast of burden. This through long ages has been the only concept, and it has led to the neglect and degradation of the toilers, the real wealth producers and creators, and to the inevitable decay of national life and civilization. In the Gi'eek Republic, though they had high ideals of liberty 19 20 THE CHRIST IDEAL. for the favored classes, and the state cared for their education and training, they looked with contempt on labor, and the inevitable blight of luxurious profligacy came to hands untaught in useful service. The saving science of the union of skill in handicraft and m.ental culture was neglected ; and sure decay came to the Republic, in spite of its intellectual development, as it had to all previous civilizations, and will come to all, to the end of time, who neglect this science. There can be no exceptions to this unvarying rule. It is an inherent principle of human life. The Christ, the teacher of a divine social order, came as a toiler, a creator of homes among an industrious people. In Him was concentrated and exemplified all the democratic ideals of all the poets, prophets and sages from Moses' time down. He taught the essentials of a scientific social order ; He chose His teachers and preachers of the new social ideal from the laboring classes. He gave the keynote to his ideal in one terse sentence, ''My Father worketpi hitherto, and I work." At the tragic climax of His pathetic career, by a sacrament of ineffable tenderness He taught His followers for all time that in loving, useful, personal service to their kind there is no such thing as a menial ministry; but that the noblest and greatest, the highest and most honored, the really most aristocratic and exalted, are they who can serve most and best. A most difficult lesson for hum.anity to accept then and now, but a fact of most momentous importance in the science of social or national permanence. In His immortal parable of the "Good Samaritan" He showed beyond the possibility of cavil that the hand of him that serves in time of need is the hand of a brother indeed, worthy of all honor and love ; and that much-neglected lesson was renewed that we are our brothers' keepers, and that to neglect those who need our ministry or who do our work is a violation of the ethical laws of life. And according to the "Christ Ideal" we have in the modern industrial world a "Jericho Road'' of economic wrong which forces boys and girls to bread-winning before they have had proper or adequate training to develop their mental, THE CHRIST IDEAL. 21 moral or physical powers ; and along this road are thousands lying robbed, wounded and helpless, waiting the ministry of the coming "Good Samaritan" who will perforce give them the needed mental and handicraft training to make them citizens worthy of the coming age. The transforming power of this lofty ideal of the honor of service among the immediate followers of the Christ's new social order was strikingly exemplified in the remarkable change in St. Paul from the haughty, idle and supercilious Pharisee to the industrious tent-maker and preacher of the new social ideal of universal brotherhood, working with his hands for needful sup- port, that he tnight be independent of all men while preaching so radical a social change. It was a most impressive lesson for all people and all times. It was the highest and most scientific uplift of human ideals. It was the beginning of the end of the old false pagan ideal in regard to the serviUty or dishonor of labor and personal service. THE WIDE CONTRASTS IN IDEALS. Yet today, with all our supposed advance in science and our regard for Christian ideals, we may well be startled by the persistence and dominance of pagan social ideals among us in so many forms ; and our labor concepts are among the worst. With the persistence of chattel slavery until a very recent date, among all so-called "Christian nations" has persisted the base and pernicious idea of the lowly nature of personal service and creative labor, and the equally pernicious and purely pagan idea that there is honor or "style" in useless idleness, instead of actual disgrace and danger and ever increasing unhappiness, which is the scientific and unchanging fact, as true in the mansion as in the cabin. It is well-nigh impossible to appreciate at once the infinite gulf that separates the false pagan ideal in regard to labor from the lofty and scientific Christian ideal, as so impressively inter- preted by that great seer of education, the immortal Froebel, whose name shall stand in future ages beside those of Isaiah and St. Paul among the illumined souls inspired to point the upward 22 PAGAN IDEALS. path of humanity. "Labor," he tersely declared, "is a portion OF God's creative attribute beneficently bestowed upon MAN." If this profound and radically revolutionary philosophy is essentially correct, as we deem it to be, then how fundamentally important it is that this divine attribute be cultivated and developed to its utmost extent — how sacrilegious not to do so — how wicked to neglect the Godlike gift — and how vastly different this ideal on which to build a civilization from the pagan concept of the disgrace of labor; and how little wonder that pagan civilizations went down or failed to become progressive and democratic when demoralized by such an unscientific ideal. All history of all nations, ages and individuals proves that in the moral virtues of patriotism and altruism the Immortals whose examples and teachings have helped the race upward and forward have been those whose hands have been trained in creative labor and useful service; while everywhere and at all times, from Solomon's time down, the vices and follies and profligacies that have destroyed individuals and nations have come almost wholly from the idle and those whose hands have not been trained to labor. Will any candid mind dare deny that we have already again established the pagan ideal of a labor caste in our social stand- ards, or that in our institutions of higher education the tendency is away from labor and towards the pagan concept of a disgrace in labor, and to perpetuate this false standard, and that, as a natural consequence, most of our teachers, preachers and mission- aries go forth to still farther spread this baneful idea, this disintegrating heresy, this immoral, because unscientific, standard.^ No, doubt this false concept has also been strengthened by the false theological dogma that all labor is a curse, instead of an exalting, Godlike attribute ; and it has been most tremendously exaggerated of late by the false, shoddy ideals of a spurious aristocracy of money without culture ; and one of the most serious problems in the future of our civilization is how to remove this root of the upas tree of pagan folly and re-establish the true concept as the basis of our civilization. It is not a light task, PAGANISM DOMINANT. 23 but one that will tax to the uttermost the formative forces of a new educational system. And we believe it can only be done by beginning a new system in a new type of colleges and universities, working on a new basis, and with esseiatially new ideas. The older ones are too conservative, too set in conventional methods. It is too hard for educators to admit that their own education was incomplete in quantity or imperfect in method, or that their present methods can be radically improved upon. It is a common belief that of all conservatives the average educator is most conservative ; so, like all reforms, what we dare plead for must come from a demand of practical people, aided as it will be by many of the progressive teachers and prominent educators who have seen the wrong of the present system, even as the great philosopher Spencer saw it so long ago. PAGANISM STILL DOMINANT IN OUR CIVILIZATION. "More has been given to us than to any people heretofore, and THEREFORE more is required of us. Civilization as it progresses requires a higher conscience, a wider, loftier, truer public spirit. Failing these, civilization must pass into destruction." —Henry George. To many it will seem a startling and antagonistic proposition that our civilization is still largely tainted with pagan concepts and standards ; but remember it was the profound philosopher, Herbert Spencer, who made this indictment against the English system of education — and ours has been an essential copy of theirs — and if pagan ideals have been found in such high places as colleges and universities, how sure may we be to find them perm.eating all our civilization, as we do when we carefully analyze the lack of scientific basis for so many "long-established" social customs. For example, we have continued chattel slavery in most so-called Christian nations until a most recent date — a purely pagan custom. Our child wage slavery is but a slight modifi- cation of the sam.e. War, too, and all its accom.paniments, is purely pagan and barbaric in the extreme, utterly out of place 24 DISBANDING ARMY AND NAVY. in an age of scientific democracy. Ernest Crosby shows quite conclusively that the silly, childish vanity of the savage's love for the display of his war paint and feathers finds its persistent duplicate in the present-day arrogance of the soldier when ornamented with brass buttons, shoulder straps and the unspeak- ably silly pomp of military regalia ; and he shows that the Peace Society or the great Czar need only do away with this relic of pagan folly to stop at once all wars — that our hateful army and navy would vanish like morning dew, if just deprived of their showy dress, the remains of the weakest, silliest expression of a childish savage. We iind this strange, persistent love of gewgaws, war paint and feathers so adhering to all forms of military service that not even a Sunday school "Boy's Brigade" nor the military drill for exercise in our schools can be had without the brass buttons, shoulder straps and striking dress. But let us carry the Crosby philosophy one step farther and decree that those who study the art of human butchery shall wear the uniform of the butchers in our slaughter houses and abattoirs — the blue denim overalls and blouse — and we may be sure our paganish army and navy would not be held together a month. In the use of jewelry and glaring dress and oft-changing fashion we see again the strange persistence of paganism. In medicine and religion we dare not enumerate the evidences of pagan hoodoo and dogmatic superstition. We fear it taints these streams also and needs the light and help of a more scientific system of education. A system of education whose chief corner-stone shall be creative skilled labor. FROEBEL's ideals AND PHILOSOPHY. "Man must be doing something, for in him throbs the CREA- TIVE impulse." —Henry George. "No high degree of morals can be established or maintained without manual labor. " .„ , , — Froebel. It seems unaccountable that such deference has been paid to froebel's philosophy. 25 the great educator, Froebel, and yet so little known of the breadth of his philosophy of a complete educational system, of which the kindergarten, beneficent as it is, is only the A, B, C. In his ideal the carrying forward of a system of handicraft training through all the subsequent processes of education was fully as essential as the kindergarten for the first step. He looked upon man as essentially a creator, and the development of his creative faculties as a necessary part of his education. He declared that it was of but little use to develop the receptive powers of brain without, at the same time and as a necessary reflex action, developing the active and formative powers of the mind. He made skilled labor a part of morality and religion, the culture of the creative attribute a portion of spiritual growth. He would look with horror at attempts at race elevation by cultivating the memory with facts and literary concepts, while neglecting to develop the creative powers of brain and skill of hand. He would follow the pathway of all race progress with each individual of every race: first cultivating the hand to do; then the brain to remember how and why. To express one's self and to develop one's self by creative skill of the hands was with him a foundation principle; and we shall never develop the able, all-round faculties of our citizenship until we absorb and imitate his profound philosophy. The able educator, Hughes, justly declares that English and American educators have gone to the farthest possible distance frorn his theory, and are slowly and painfully coming to see the wisdom and necessity of more closely following his plans. The results have been pitiful enough with the white race, but most disastrous with the unfortunate races; and harm instead of benefit has been done to thousands of victims of ill-directed philanthropy by a false method of education. In his able analysis of Froebel's Laws of Education he de- votes a long and most interesting chapter to the value of play as an educational force, full of most practical suggestion. And we deem it but a portion of the philosophy of handicraft training in developing the all-around character and ability for complete living. It is a portion of Froebel's teaching that as yet has not 26 froebel's philosophy. had one-tenth the attention it deserves. And we arfe sure differing types of play are but the preparations for differing social ideals. There are plays that represent the Co-operative and Emulative idea, as well as those that belong to Competition and Destructive ideals of social life. In the emulative play, success is gained by skill, activity and alertness, which does not tend at all to harm those who do not win ; while in the competitive play, as in business, it is the idea to down the opponent, with cruel force if need be, to risk life and limb to wrest from him the prize at any cost; which correctly suggests the wide difference in morals between competition and emulation. In manual and industrial training, up to a certain point, are found many of the benefits Froebel saw in properly directed play. It is only a question of how much of each is best. In manual training schools it has been found that pupils will often volun- tarily leave play for practice in the workroom. The recent establishment of an organized systematic public playground in the city of Syracuse is but one of the steps along the development of this great ideal of progress. Children should be guided and directed in this as in school or work. If only we would come to see that the production and development of superior citizens is the grandest aim of civiliza- tion, how these different phases would be worked out, even as were the improvement of the Engine, Press and Auto, each having the intensest study of the ablest mechanical minds. We need a touch of Isaiah's prophetic conception of the time when "A man shall be more precious than fine gold." Froebel's great advance over the methods of Pestalozzi was in the discovery that the receptivity of the brain of a child must be followed or accompanied by a corresponding activity of the hand. When a nev/ idea is presented, it must do something with its hands or create something to correspond with the concept of the mind, to get its full or approximate value. It was a funda- mental discovery, and has a most tremendous practical bearing on race elevation as well as on individual training. Pestalozzi would teach "object lessons" by having the teacher FROEnEL's PHILOSOPHY. 27 bring the "object" in her hand, or, perchance, allow the pi^pils to take it or touch it ; while Froebel would have them "do something" or "make something" with or from the object. ' He would not teach even Geography by the use of the eye alone, but would take objects like an orange, a banana, a piece of ivory, tea or coffee,, and go with the class on imaginary voyages to all the countries where these things are obtained, pointing out the various routes on the m.ap with all possible of instructive detail to arouse an interest in the minds of the class through the pleasure and excitement of the trip. He would not teach Botany until the child had planted and grown flowers and had learned some lessons of the life and development of flowers, and then would connect the abstract science with the already aroused interest in plant life. He distinctly taught that those who train one part only of man's nature to the neglect of the others are producing abnormal beings out of harmony with God's laws. .What a reflection on present-day school methods! Froebei seems to have been the first to discover that not to develop handicraft is to actually weaken and decrease mental power, a most suggestive thought for those who speak of "wasting time from study to work with the hands" or who feel that time in school used in hand training is wasted. He saw, too, the high moral value of teaching the young the ideals of the true interdependence of "eaeh to all, and all to each" rather than the intensity of selfish individualism. What- ever strengthened the bond of human unity he saw was divine and religious in it's influence on character, and the wickedness of all caste divisions of society he clearly appreciated. He seemed to fully grasp the practical value of the Christ philosophy of the entire brotherhood of men, their perfect unity with each other and with their Creator, and in carrying this concept into effect in all one's life is the hope of the elevation of the race; and in no other way can this ideal be so perfectly developed as in schools where all work together for a common end. He was a seer of Collectivism ; he saw clearly and perfectly 28 A SEER OF COLLECTIVISM. how the highest possible development of the individual is perfectly compatible with the closest Mutualism of Co-operation. He was one of the early prophets of the coming Co-operative Age, and taught the path by which it can be best brought about, the possible preparation for a Millennial Epoch, through the more complete education of the producing classes and by ennobling labor for all classes. He clearly saw the immorality of the selfish spirit of Competi- tion as distinguished from the nobler one of Emulation. These sentiments were more recently affirmed by the late Colonel Parker, of the Chicago Norm.al School, who pubHcly declared "that . the greatest work to be accomplished by the comm.on school system is the cultivation of a spirit of mutualism, altruism and democracy among the people ; failing this," he emphatically declared, "the schools failed of their highest mission." In no other way can they so perfectly perform this work as when teachers and pupils work together a portion of the time for the common good, while teaching and learning the invaluable lessons of mechanics and of productive labor that shall provide for their mutual needs. "Civilization is Co-operation!" —Henry George. froebel's plans for small schools. The essentials of Froebel's plans for the smaller schools, where the teacher has no experience and no apparatus nor text books on handicraft training of a primary character, may be safely begun in the primary grade, whether the pupils have had kindergarten training or not, by beginning with cutting familiar objects from paper ; then folding papers into envelope forms, triangles, squares, etc., etc. ;* then, with heavier paper, making boxes, cornucopias and all possible things by folding and creasing, all the time cultivating exactness in corners and edges, and general neatness of work, and closeness in following copy. * Many varieties of this work are illustrated in a little text book of handicraft work for common schools by Professor Smith, of Chicago. PLANS FOR SMALL SCHOOLS. 29 A few hours of this each week will delight the children, and the work will be carried forward at home instead of the noisy, purposeless plays, and will vastly help in gaining the perfect control of hands and the culture of the eye so useful in all life's activities. From this the steps will be gradual along the varied forms of basket making, weaving in colors, braiding with three, then four or six, strands of strings, braiding corn husk mats, sewing from the simplest basting stitch to the most difficult blind darning and elaborate embroidery.* By the time the sixth grade is reached, the simpler forms of Sloyd may be taken up— the drawing of simple forms on wood, then whittling to the drawing, and in all cases the work finished with sandpaper to have the completed product look smooth and neat. The children from the Kindergarten up should be taught to plant seeds and care for plants, flowers, shrubs and vines, and the taste started for the future study of botany — a sure beginning for future home decoration with flowers and beautiful living things. From the seventh grade the more difficult steps in Sloyd should be introduced : first, drawing more useful things on wood (paper cutters, wood cake spoons, potato mashers, measuring rules, hammer or ax handles), then whittling or planing or shav- ing them to the forms drawn, or to samples, making useful or ornamental things, all the time striving to improve the technique of form and finish; clay modeling, v/ater color painting, with more or less of free-hand drawing or sketching from nature, according to the taste or ability of the pupils. In the same simple but eft'ective manner may "nature studies" be made most useful and intensely interesting, and a grand preparation for later studies in biology or zoology. If there are no text books in the school, or the teacher has had no training along this line, let the beginning be with the school, or a class, in *A11 this is artistically illustrated in a little book by Mrs. Blair, of the Minnesota State Agricultural College, making sewing an art indeed. 30 PLANS FOR SMALL SCHOOLS. the study of domestic animals, their habits, their varying instincts and intelhgence ; then with the wild birds and animals, learning all possible of their peculiar modes of living, their cunning and means of defense; then with the honey bees and insects, getting the pupils to learn from inquiry or study of their structure, their ways of life and means of defense, what species are related, their transformations from the egg and worm to the perfect insect on wings, and of any that do not pass through the chrysalis state, etc., etc. And it will surprise the teacher who has never tried it to see how much of most interesting lore can be gathered and combined by the efforts of a small school, and of what intense interest it will be, and how it will add to the value and depth of the text-book study to thus broaden the field of investigation, and how much it will help to create the love of observation, which is one of the highest aims of all school work. Let no teacher fear to begin some of this work because of lack of training or of text books that guide into any set method of procedure. In no way may a teacher come into more complete and desirable touch or sympathy with pupils than to experiment and learn with them to do the things that are out of the conven- tional rut of school work. To ask them for help and suggestions will be a favor unspeakable, and there is no better way to "draw out" their best thought or ingenuity, and thus double the value of the lessons learned. Often, too, it will be well tO' ask for answers to problems or explanations that will require time and study to solve, and thus encourage that reflection that is the highest form of study. And in all this work outside of text-book study let there be no suspicion that the time is at all wasted or misused ; instead it is likely to be the most valuable and profitable of any in the whole school work ; it will rest and refresh, and renew the power and interest in regular study, and of itself it will "draw out" observation, comparison and analysis ; it will strengthen logic, or the power to reason from cause to effect ; it will develop the control of the hand and eye, and the taste for observing things, the best method of effort and execution. And one of the best results will be the improved moral tone METHODS FOR FEEBLE MINDED. 3I of the discipline of the school room, for nothing is worse than the dull, uninterested effort to memorize simply because one must ; and to be fairly decorous from fear only, is far from developing nobility of character or high morality as when done from the pride in doing well, and an inte/est in the work of the school, which these methods will inspire. The pupil who reluctantly and perforce memorizes dry facts and abstract statements of principles is touched on an entirely lower moral plane, if not absolutely injured morally; while if the active, intense interest and joy of learning things for their own sake is aroused and sustained, the moral tone of the pupil is exalted and his higher character developed. MATERIALS FOR MECHANICAL STUDY ALL ABOUT. In every school room are materials for study of mechanics and the achievements of skilled labor ; the very seats and desks are most prolific texts for interesting studies on the mechanics of their construction — the pitch of backs and seats, the hinge and action of the seat, the beautifully joined strips of v^^ood and the methods of union of wood and metal, and, above all, the history of the evolution of the school seat, from the old-time slabs, set on rude legs put in auger holes, with no table in front to rest the books upon, to the present scientific perfected school seat, worthy of extreme admiration as a work of real art. So can the teacher develop a wealth of material of study in all things about the school and homes of the pupils — the farm ' wagon vs. the buggy, the wheelbarrow and the bicycle, the sewing machine and the reaper or seed planter, all will afford lessons of most fascinating interest to both pupils and teachers who are looking for progress in the art of teaching. METHODS with THE FEEBLE-MINDED. "Education is leading human souls to what is best, and getting what is hest out of them. Wholesome human employment is the first and best method in all education, mental as well as bodily." _ , t. i • —John Kuskm. 32 THE FEEBLE MINDED, We find that the unfortunate child of feeble mind, or no apparent mind at all, who cannot possibly mentally grasp the abstract idea of the difference between one and two, can be led along by first taking one apple in his hand, tasting its goodness to arouse an interest, then, taking two apples in his hands, taste of each to see that both are good; and -slowly but surely there comes to the glimmering mind the fact and the difference between only one apple in one hand or an apple in each hand ; and so on, gradually, the dull mentality comes to know two and, finally, three apples in his hands, when he could not possibly by seeing them with his eyes. After the awakened mind has learned by the touch of the hands of the one apple and of two, three or more apples, he is given a knife to handle ; he is pricked with its sharp point and slightly cut with its keen edge ; he learns to respect and fear these qualities. Then he learns to cut his apple and eats the pieces, and he has gained a power to do. Then slowly he uses the knife to cut a piece of wood. A pencil mark is made on the thin piece of wood, and he is helped to cut the end rounding, to follow the pencil mark. He is delighted with the, to him, great feat. So, slowly but surely, he is led along in the development of creative power till, perchance, he can make a rude but fairly correct foot rule and mark with a pencil the inches on it in imitation of a foot rule taken as a sample to work from. This is an achievement to him quite equal to Watts' first successful movement of a piston in the cylinder by the power of steam. He enjoys doing and making, and a new interest is aroused. Slowly and gradually the growing power is led along till he is shown a box with his apples in it, but no cover to enclose them. The box is just as long as his rude rule, cut out with such labor and joy. He is shown a saw, and his fingers feel the sharp teeth. He is led to saw off a piece of the board, and after a few trials his foot rule is laid upon the board and he is helped to saw off a piece just long enough to cover his box and hide the apples. It is lifted and replaced, till he sees the difference between them covered and uncovered. Then some nails are shown and felt, and a hammer is put in his hands and he is allowed to pound. After THE FEEBLE MINDED. 33 a little he is helped to- drive some nails and his box is closed. He cannot now touch nor take his prized apples — a new and startling conception. Then he is helped to draw the nails, but made to do it mainly with his own hands, and then take the uncovered apples in his hands, and again cover and nail the lid down. Then the cover is fastened on with screws and a screw driver — all done by his own hands. Then a longer box is brought, and the cover already cut is shown to be too short ; then the box measured by his own rule and found to be twice the length of the rule, and the rule used all the time in his own hands to mark off the cover two rule lengths. It is sawed off and found to cover the box and enclose his apples. Then a knife and sandpaper are used to smooth the rough board so it will feel different to the touch of the hand. And so, on and on, the hand leading to the concept of the mind in nature's own way, till the seemingly utterly vacant mind is educated, drawn out to greater and greater activity, and the power of doing things leads on to usefulness of greater or less degree, till often the use -of simple tools is acquired ; and finally the lawn mower and the bicycle are mastered, the hoe and spade in the garden, or the broom and ouster in the house; and usefulness and enjoyment takes the place of painful vacuity. Along essentially the same line have we seen the stupid, listless colored boy, who had with difficulty been taught to lead the mule to water, to tie him securely in the stall, and, as a tremendous achievement, to harness and hitch him to the cotton cultivator, but who could no more take a monkey wrench and take off the nut and washer from the plow bolt than he could run an engine or a Hoe's printing press. Later the same boy, as seemingly vacant of mechanical brain as the vacant-minded child who could not learn "tivo" was of mathematics, became enthused to own a second-hand wheel ; and, under the magic power of its touch in his own hands, he gradually came to have a glimmering sense of its intricate mechanism ; and the mystery of the monkey wrench and the nut and washer on the bolt became plain and simple to the drazun-out faculty. The same boy engaged to assist the village blacksmith, and, 34 UNFORTUNATE RACES. feeling a sense of already having had a mechanical experience of no mean value on his wheel, would soon be able to take to pieces the broken plow or cultivator and put it together correctly when mended; would place the bit in a brace and bore a correct hole through the broken plow beam and select and insert the correct sized bolt and draw it to place with the wrench; would soon do quite intricate jobs of taking down or putting up wagons and buggies, and in time be quite an accomplished helper in this difficult art of handicraft ; and in all such cases, with this added mental power, gained mainly through the discipline of the hand, there comes an elevation of morals ; and the lazy, thriftless, ''frivolous," loafing fellow becomes possessed of pride and self- respect and industrious largely in proportion to the extent of his training in handicraft skill — thus in a very practical and forceful manner confirming Froebel's theory that through creative labor there is moral and spiritual uplift ; and only with this type of education is there any hope of race elevation.* THE UNFORTUNATE RACES. For the unfortunate races to fill their minds with literary culture, while neglecting to- develop their creative power of hands, is much more disastrous than an attempt to build the school house by rearing the bell tower and roof before any structure is begun below. The wreck of the tower may possibly be saved and properly elevated after the lower structure is erected ; but those who think they have attained the pinnacle by a college diploma, with no discipline of hand, are above and beyond any hope of being taught any new lessons. They have been taught by that strongest of all tea<:hers, imitation, to do as their teachers do, *How few of the conventional teachers realize, that essentially the same principles should maintain for the bright and precocious pupil, as for the mentally vacant, differing in degree only, but following the same essential steps of progress from hand to brain. While the bright and precocious child may be trained to learn from the study of the abstract, it will much sooner and better grasp and retain by following nature's plan of the hand first, next the brain, in acquiring the knowledge of how to use zvisdom. UNFORTUNATE RACES. 35 who, according to Froebel, Herbert Spencer and thousands of others, have been educated to paganish ideals, not to the true science of correct development, which always trains the hands first. "No law of human nature is more dominant than our tendency to imitate those we consider above us. ' ' In the race problem this is one of the fundamentals that must be reckoned with. We do most heartily wish that all the colored theological seminaries of the present system could be peremptorily wiped out or changed to such as the grand old apostle, St. Paul, would approve. His methods were to set up first his tent maker's shop, and then teach his preachers and teachers of a higher social and religious ideal, viz., that in self-reliant, self-respecting, self- supporting labor of skilled hands is the first elementary and fundamental lesson in a Christian life or civilization. If this type could become the established order, we should not so often hear the merited severe criticism of thoughtful Southern people of the colored preachers of the South ; and there is no question but that our Northern brethren of the cloth would gain a Pauline power along the same line. "To work was from the beginning, and is today the joy, the pride and the honor of life." .„. , .^ —Bishop Doane. "If any will not work, neither shall he eat." —Saint Paul, A teacher's respqnsibility. In view of Spencer's indictment of present methods of education in his widely read essay, we have never been able to understand how the progressive, earnest, conscientious teachers have been willing to go on without protest, continuing a system so tainted with paganish ideals, and how so many are even adverse to any effort towards change or improvement. BuL we do know that in- general the educators are the very Conservatives of Conservatism, and some are so rooted in egotism as to be vmwilling to admit that any possible advance can be made on 36 teacher's responsibility. their own methods, and even so blinded as to boast of their adhesion to the false ideal of lookmg with contempt on labor. We cannot understand how true, earnest, present-day teachers can be willing to go on and lead their unwilling young students through all the "flounderings, mental gymnastics" and mind- dwarfing processes of the present courses in our high schools, seminaries and colleges, in view of these lessons from Spencer and his lucid proof that the scientific nature methods would so much better fit for actual life — so much better prepare for home and citizenship — and last, but not least, fit for the esthetic culture of exalted attainments in the highest realms of art and music and for the moral and religious development of our strangely complex being ; or when they consider the teachings of Froebel, the modern Socrates, who saw so clearly how Nature's way of education is always from the concrete to the abstract — from the hand to the brain — from action to reason. Yet in spite of it all, in spite of the long and loud mutterings of discontent at the present system, our teachers stand in the way and continue to teach as they were taught, instead of being, as they ought to be, the radical leaders along the path of mental evolution and progress. Yet no one has ever dared to oppose Spencer's logic, that to cram memory with what will be quickly forgotten is not developing, but that it is practically starvation to deny the mind the quality of food it has a longing for and that will give it strength, along the lines that will be continually added to by life's activities, which is the true ideal for educational efforts. His philosophy stands all unchallenged and unanswered, though a m.ost severe and sweeping denunciation of present methods. We are sure this wrong method of mental development has had a most unsa:lutary effect on our national character and made us as a people so weak in logic that we endure with strange apathy and stupid submission the many illogical enslavements and taxa- tions of a corrupt and foolish political and economic system; and we believe we have never attained to our proper place as an entirely free and progressive people, as we should do under a truer educational svstem. GARDEN SCHOOLS. 37 "The knowledge obtained from books is but the tool to develop the true wisdom for life." But we are glad to welcome the signs of an awakened consciousness of a better order and all the wide-awake and pro- gressive spirits among our educators and, better still, among those who are outside the profession but earnestly watching its work- ings and effects, all alive to the benefit of going at once to Nature's. own method of "feeling after knowledge" first by the hand, then learning of the abstract later ; and the rapidly advancing demand for teachers who can teach the hands to do, as well as the head to think, proves that the new order is at hand. "Industrial training of the rural population is one of the most important problems before the American people." —Ex-Mayor Abram S. Hewitt. EXAIMPLES AND PRECEDENTS. Some very successful experiments have been made where industrial features were given due prominence with most gratify- ing results. GARDEN SCHOOLS. One of the mO'St practical in the line of this new system of education was established by the Cash Register Company of Dayton, Ohio, at the suggestion of its able president. Nearly one hundred boys were gathered off the streets and each one given a garden plat of about six rods, where he was taught gardening and floriculture by an expert. The boys were given all the products of their work, and prizes for attention and superior skill. Their work continued only four hours per day — two in the morning and two in the afternoon — so as not to become monotonous ; and it has been found to be not only a most charming study, that the boys look forward to with eager- ness and enthusiasm, but it has had a most wonderful moral influence. The rowdy, hoodlum boys — the so-called "toughs" of the street, who were the terror of the neighborhood — have become gentlemanly and polite, and find their work more attractive than their old sports ; and a striking proof of this change is found Receiving Instructions from Head Gardener. Midsummer Work. The Flower Path. 38 GARDEN SCHOOLS. 39 in the fact that lots in that neighborhood have more than trebled %xi value. The success was beyond the promoter's highest anticipations, 'he boys becoming so changed under the charm of being workers iyith God in Nature's magic wonderland of growing things. These boys from the garden schools have changed the whole tenor of their lives. Their homes will have flowers, trees and vines; their leisure will be likely to be spent in a garden rather than in a saloon. They have tasted one of the highest joys of life at Nature's ov/n fountain. Can there be a possible doubt that these factory boys will be more likely to be law-abiding, home-loving citizens for these hours of teaching and work in the first and highest place of man's labor? This love of caring for living, growing things, this communion with Nature's most wonderful and charming ways, is one of the greatest safeguards for all young people — girls as well as boys ; and no industrial school will be complete without its farm and garden. In other garden schools or children's farms one-half the product of the plat was sold to pay for seed and teachers' salaries, and in this way were nearly self-supporting; and, no doubt, in the saving of crime alone these schools paid a thousand per cent on their cost, and should be established in every city in the country. It may be a question for serious consideration how much our Sunday school workers ma}' learn from, the moralizing influence of these garden schools. It is certainly an inspiring fact that village boys and girls who have won the name of "toughs" can be brought to comparative good order, and the value of lots largely increased, by the elevating influence of g'arden work ; and we believe these children could be touched by a Sabbath lesson freed from all theological dogma, but full of the spirit of reverent love for the great All Father — the source of all life and law — and some of the simple, tender and direct teachings of the carpenter of Galilee on our mutual relations and the oneness of man and his Creator. And we are equally sure that primary lessons in botany and 40 GEORGE JUNIOR REPUBLIC. the varied sciences connected with soil, seed, cHmate, fertilizers, etc., could be imparted in the garden schools that would be of deepest interest and begin that taste for study and for knowing things that would make the later study in school a matter of delight and interest, instead of the dull burden of abstract study of the conventional school text books. SELF-GOVERNMENT. More than half a century ago J. G. Holland wrote out the theory of self-government for pupils in school in his charming story of "Arthur Bonicastle:" The idea was too great and good to be adopted at once, but, like all advanced ideas, had to wait a generation before its worth was fully appreciated and the needs of a more democratic ideal called it into use ; but now the world is ripe for it, and we find many schools adopting this method of discipline, as well as some philanthropic works like the Forward Movement of Chicago, which has for several years taken a large crowd of young children for a summer outing and adopted this method of maintaining discipline, with most satisfactory results. GEORGE JUNIOR REPUBLIC. The George Junior Republic was started in this way, and Las grown into a permanent institution. This is exactly what its name indicates, a republic of minors who are self-governing, and whose motto is "Nothing without Labor." It is made up largely of homeless or worse than homeless boys and girls from the cities. They have the usual amount of school work, and must work out of school hours for all their needs. They are paid in the coin of the Republic for their work, and, as there is no provision for those who are lazy, those who do not work soon suffer for the necessities of life, and so learn to have a wholesome respect for labor as well as for law. The results so far have been surprisingly satisfactory. How much better this than taking single boys or girls to lonely country homes, where everything is so utterly out of sym.pathy with their former environment. In our truant schools it has been found necessary to introduce hand work, and so interesting does this become that we often PRIMARY INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 4I find good boys playing truant that they may be sent there, where they "learn to make things with their hands." In schools for feeble-minded children it is often found that mental activity can only be aroused through the physical. So in our prisons frequently the first signs of an awakening of the mental and moral faculties come through some training of the physical. In a small denominational school a plant was put in a few years ago for industrial training ; but no teacher could be found who could or would teach the ideals of labor by example, and the plan was approaching failure, when a principal took charge from one of the agricultural colleges. He came prepared with overalls and blouse, and, with the genuine enthusiasm of a trained horticulturist and botanist, at once called for volunteers to work in the garden with him as a daily task. Very soon the labor caste which had been established was all swept away, and the pupils vied with each other for the privilege of working in the garden and shops with their favorite teacher, who had found the charm of skillful labor and the pride of accomplishment with his hands, and who had the winning spirit which comes from high mental culture and a love for Nature's ways, and whose hands had the cunning and skill with tools that made his work like the magic touch of the artist's pencil, a charm that is always attractive and always wins. In this school, as in all manual training schools, it was found that the work settled all problems of discipline. "Education should fit for completest living, not to create a Literary Aristocracy. ' ' -Herbert Spencer. PRIMARY INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. In one of our Southern cities a Primary Industrial School for the neglected children of the factories was started as a philanthropy, and has proven such a success that it has been made a part of the public school system. These children would not attend the schools devoted wholly to memory cramming, but when the industrial training was introduced were eager to take part. 42 CITY AND COUNTRY SCHOOLS. SUBURBAN CITY AND CONCENTRATED COUNTRY SCHOOLS. It has been sugg'ested that one much-needed change in city schools would be to take all the schools away from the congested districts into the suburbs, where every school building coidd be surrounded by green grass, with fresh air and ample playgrounds among flowers, trees and gardens ; and this would stop the growth of slums and slum elements, as children once used to such environments would never again desire or be willing to go to slum conditions. We deem this thoroughly practical, and not so radical a change as the rapidly extending system of concentrating the country schools in one central school, carrying the children to and from school at public expense, and the advantages immensely more. In both cases there would be plenty of room to introduce complete manual training. The street cars can carry pupils at a cent each at a profit ; and children so educated would surely become a "new and superior order of people," and by adding such a system of "Summer Garden Schools" as we have described, would be one of the most valuable and important features and beneficial portions of our regular common school course. AGRICULTURAL TRAINING. "Our agricultural interests, either in view of their domestic value, or as exports, are the most important interests of the nation, yet they are least perfectly developed of any," — Prest. Geo. T. Powell. "No nation will long survive the decay of its Agriculture." — Thos. Jefferson. "The strength and glory of a nation depends on its tillers of the soil" —Thos. Jefferson. Not only is Agriculture one of the most important, but its study and practice is one of the most inspiring and elevating to man's moral nature, and the great and historic characters, from Moses' time till today, have come from the discipline and spiritual uplift of some type of agricultural pursuit. One of the most interesting studies and movements along the line of progress in advancing industrial culture and agricultural science has been started in the States of Minnesota and Wisconsin. In the formicr State primary and some advanced study of scientific agriculture is being started for all the common schools, the effort having been initiated by the able head of the agricultural depart- ment of the State University, Professor Hayes, who has also presented a most practical plan for concentrating from ten to fifteen adjacent school districts into one high school of agriculture and allied sciences. And as up-to-date farming requires a general knowledge and ability in several of the handicraft trades, such schools will naturally need to teach a variety of mechanic arts for complete work for their agricultural pupils, and they will soon see the need of making provision for the boys and girls from the villages and towns, who will also need a wide variety of industrial education, with the fundamental training in some phases of agricultural science. And the natural evolution of the best methods will naturally bring more or less of the self- 43 44 AGIIICL'LTU]IAL TllAINING. supporting principle into use, if, as we are fully persuaded, it is the best and most scientific method for gaining an industrial training. BUSY HAPPY BOYS OF THE "SUMMER GARDEN SCHOOL." The suggestion is one of great promise for the future, and is in effect being adopted in several States, and will no doubt become as universal as any branch of the public system of instruction in the age of the new democracy that is to be. AGEICULTUEAL TRAINING. 45 This is but the first step in the upward way to equip the youth of the coming age more completely for higher and yet higher attainments in "complete living." President Patterson of the Cash Register Company makes the very pertinent suggestion that at present there are about 98 per . cent of the pupils leave the schools with no training at all in any branch of agriculture, when the percentage should be reversed, or, better still, that no pupils should be allowed to leave without thorough knowledge in some branch of agricultural lore — the working together with God in nature to produce the needs of life. In Wisconsin the Superintendent of Schools, Professor Harvey, was sent to Europe to study particularly what could be learned of their methods for agricultural education. He came home with startling reports of the much larger number of agricultural colleges, in proportion to the inhabitants, than in this country ; and the State, at his suggestion, has started a move to have an agricultural school for every county, the plan being to have the State bear one-half the expense and the county the other half. Professor Harvey's bulletin containing his report of agricul- tural and industrial education in Europe, and outlining his plans for progress here, is very inspiring reading for any one who hopes for highest progress in the fundamental art of rearing a high grade of citizenship. Alaibama, New York and some other States are already moving in the same direction, and a bill has been presented in Congress for the government aid in furthering the work so hopeful for the future. Not only is agriculture the most important industry in a material sense for the nation, but the effects of its study and practice on the moral and spiritual nature are the most elevating and inspiring, and have always developed the greatest and strongest characters in the world's history, and therefore should be considered the most important science in an educational curriculum. And whenever the educational system of the nation is reformed to the degree of having for its main purpose, its sole aim, the developm.ent of the highest average of citizenship in mental and ij.6 AGEICULTURAL TEAINIKG. spiritual attainments, then will the teaching of some phase of agricultural lore be considered as fundamental as the mutiplica- tion table. And for this we plead with every organized agricultural mterest or labor union ; it is the one thing that each and every child should be taught of necessity as a portion of the A, B, C in his training for the duties of citizenship. The least that any one should be at all satisfied with for any child of city or slum would be a course in the Summer Garden Schools or the Agricultural High School, as suggested by the practical Professor Hayes. In this age of research, if agriculture is to retain its proper place as the most exalted and exalting vocation, most attractive to brightest minds, it must be made scientific and the charms of all technical knowledge brought to bear to make it the choice of the liberally educated. It must be so changed that not a suspicion of labor caste taint can attach to the educated farmer. Edward Bellamy once truly said that in no other line of large staple production is there such a lack of system and science, nor such a waste of efifort. If there were no other reason for the change to a free universal system of Industrial Education, this alone would be sufficient. In the new and better social order which is surely coming, the new "Triumph of Democracy," of which the demand for imiversal free industrial training is but one of the many indications, there will be new and dominating social and educational standards, as far above the present as the present is above those of the past feudal times, when the men and women of the estate were con- sidered as only a portion of the appurtenances of the barons' estab- lishment — handy things to have for use or for defense, but with scant rights to be respected, and no mental culture to be thought of as belonging to their caste. And only when, as suggested by President Patterson, ninety- eight per cent of all the children have a fairly full course in some line of agricultural study, some taste of skillful gardening or floriculture, some technical knowledge of animal life, a botanic study of food plants, a course in the wonders of bacteria, both useful and destructive, of the chemistry of soils, foods, fertilizers. THE ELEVATION OF THE RACES. 47 grains and vegetable growths, skill along some lines of horticul- ture, and a general knowledge of the varied fruits and how to improve and propagate them and adapt them to various localities of markets and demands, of preserving and selecting, shipping and selling — only when all these widely varied branches of these most interesting and charming fields of intellectual growth are fully taught in schools open and free as air to every boy and girl of this Republic, only then may we claim, that necessary progress along this line has come to an approximate end, or even to a fairly well developed system. And as we learn that it took nearly fifty years of persistent agitation in the days of our fathers to fully establish the idea that the common school was a necessity, so may we be willing to work as long as needful for this next great step upward and forward along the same general pathway. THE ELEVATION OF THE RACES. For the elevation of the races nothing has proven so valuable as agricultural training, and, radical as the proposition may seem, it is our conviction, after much study and many visits to different schools, continuing for weeks in several cases, that it would be better for both races if every school for both Indian and colored pupils were closed where no industrial training is combined with literary studies, and ten times as much aid should be given to industrial schools, and that in the South only those schools con- ducted in this way are of any value in solving the race problem. All others lead away from the ideal of the dignity of labor, and in quite too many cases create a useless, idle and often a vicious class, who have learned to imitate the vices of the dominant race, but do not emulate their virtues, the uplift of skilled labor is wanting, and education only creates wants that the hands have not acquired the skill to provide. At Hampton, Tuskegee and many other like places we get the true spirit that uplifts and prepares foe the active duties of life and the higher enjoyments of an advanced civilization. The very fact that the colored race have social, economic and political aspirations and ambition, whatever of ridiculous and 4S THE ELEVATIOK OF THE RACES. vexing embarrassments it may bring temporarily, should after all be cause for hope and congratulation for the future. For any country to have a large element with no hopes, no aims, no ambitions for progress and betterment and no ambition for a share in governmental functions, would mean a mass of inertia most dangerous and detrimental. Professor DuBoies, and Colonel Graves, and all who would defend the purely hterary type of schools for race elevation, will do well to ponder carefully our main proposition that one of the essential contrasts betvv^een a true Christian or scientific civilization and the pagan type is largely in the widely varying concepts in regard to labor and its sacred office in race development. If the great Froebel's concept was correct, and man is a creative being, that this is his highest attribute, that all civilization is but the creative labor of man, then when this fundamental proposition is properly apprehended, the best method for all school systems will settle itself, and men will needs be educated to bring this attribute to highest perfection. Professor DuBoies, while ably accentuating the importance of a high degree of training for teachers, entirely begs the question as to which type of school is best for race development, in his claim that all the industrial schools have some teachers from the literary institutions. He cannot but be aware of the patent fact that the superior industrial schools have been vastly fewer than the others, and also of the other equally plain proposition that, according to the universal and dominant law of humanity, to try to imitate those who are supposed to be above in social standing has naturally led the bright and ambitious young colored people to the schools mostly patronized by the white people, and both have drifted into the idea that an education means mainly memorizing from text books, and a college education means escape from the drudgery of labor, as it has come to be understood. And there can be no question but in spite of the lack of the best methods, these bright and ambitious young people, when trans- planted to the more correct atmosphere of Hampton, Tuskegee et al., will soon catch the spirit of the place and become valuable teachers, but that is no proof whatever that they would not have THE ELEVATION OF THE RACES. 49 been better if trained more correctly from the first ; and if labor had been made scientific, and skill in it taught as an accomplisl ment instead of a drudgery, they and all the teachers an preachers of the race would have exerted a much higher an more beneficial influence on their struggling people. The able and a.ccomplished chancellor of a great university, who declared he had learned three trades since he was a college educator, and found in the shop w^ork his best mental recupera- tion, and a stronger executive power for his daily work in class room, is a far stronger proof of all we plead for as the most powerful aid in race progress and the only hope of the colored races coming to any self-reliant, self-respecting position in CIVILIZATION. No doubt Professor DuBoies will repel our suggestion of the best type of theological seminary being founded on the model set by St. Paul as the kind essentially needed for race uplift; it was rejected by the arrogant Roman aristocracy of the time, to whom it was so repugnant that they took o& his head to stop the heresy, and degraded the ministry into an alms-taking, non- working class, from which it has never fully recovered. If the in many respects able pleader for the good of "black men's souls" will carefully study the matter out, he will come to the same conclusion as the great, if not the greatest, friend of his race, "that a lot of the facts we learn in school are not so," and must be "unlearned in life," and much that he has learned in the so-called "best white schools" is not the best for the white race, and utterly fatal to the elevation of his own race ; who no doubt must travel the same or a similar pathway as all other races, and let the hand lead the brain in the upward pathway, as Nature decrees. We will dare suggest that very likely it may yet prove best for his race to grow into a high social state, to follow the essential rule for the boy in learning to swim, to go by themselves and WORK out the problem unaided by the dominant race, who will no doubt always hold them to a lower caste socially and politically, and will always exploit them economically. Of one thing we may be certain : that to teach the head the desire for better style 50 DRIFTING INTO TWO CLASSES. in living and more ambition along- any line, and not teach the hands how to satisfy the aroused ambition, is of all things most cruel. And the preachers or teachers of the weaker race, whose example or teaching is tainted with the ideals of a labor caste, are surely doing them an injury; while those who teach a self- reliant, self-respecting, self-supporting, industrial independense are but following the lessons of the great social reformer, St. Paul, whose efforts were along very similar lines. Professor DuBoies speaks of "Industrial Education" as "adapted to needs of artisans," and of the "long-established and approved methods for the education of the white race," apparently oblivious of the fact that in the minds of a vast and constantly increasing number of people a handicraft education is best for all learned professions, and the '^long-established methods of education" have been heartily condemned by many most scien- tific minds, and are like most all systems and customs "long established," away behind the progress of a scientific age, and only held in place by tlic law of inertia. DRIFTING INTO TWO CLASSES. The colored people of the South seem to be drifting into "wo sharply defined classes. One class, represented by the graduates of such schools as Hampton and Tuskegce, proud of the skill of their hands and what they can do that is useful, are at work trying to win respect and consideration by their merits and progress ; while another class, led by the graduates of purely literary schools and represented by the mob spirit shown at Tloston, where earnest, candid argument was met by noise, con- fusion and some still more disreputable methods, is aggressively, and sometimes insolently, demanding social and political recog- nition. And from this, class, quite as much to be pitied as blamed for a false ideal gained by imitating a false standard, comes the class that are the clog and hindrance to their normal progress. If they ever get a colored republic or separate state by themselves, it is the former class alone who will make its success possible, while one of the heaviest burdens will be the latter class — from those who know more of Greek than of the laws of DKIFTIKG INTO TWO CLASSES. 5 1 mechanics, more of Latin than of Uie science of agriculture, and who, through unfortunate imitation of the dominant race, have imbibed the ideal suggested by Herbert Spencer, that the object of an education is to produce a "literary aristocracy" rather than to fit for "'complete living." If, instead of all this, the colored preachers and teachers will but study and imitate the example of the great preacher and social reformer, St. Paul, who knew and taught the essential nobility of skilled labor as the foundation of a Christian civilization, the woist phases of the race problem will soon be solved. In most all the Southern towns is to be found the worst menace to law and progress in the large class of fairly educated young colored men, who can write a good hand and have a fair education from text books, but who have imbibed the ideal of the disgrace of labor, and, having no trade, can only work at the commonest and least paid industries ; and, as they have also imbibed the idea that they must gain their living by their wits, they drift into crime as naturally as ducks intO' water ; and from this class comes much if not all of the active prejudice against Northern-supported colored schools, while the universal testimony is that those who have trades are the thrifty, law-abiding class, whose progress is a hope for the race. The many colored preachers who have thus imitated the unscientific and un-Christian aversion to skilled labor from the type of schools they have attended, are powerless to come into any helpful touch with the unfortunate loafing class, and thus their influence is neutralized where most needed. "These hands ministered to my necessities, and to those with me." —Saint Paul. TEACHING BY EXAMPLE. The greatest criticism we would make upon our agricultural colleges and schools, where wide industrial training has been introduced, is that the teachers who are in the literary department do not teach labor, and vice versa, and thus exemplify to their ]iu])ils the proper relation between mental culture and pride in skilled labor. 52 PREVENTION OF CRIME. At the great industrial center and school at East Aurora the Greek professor is the blacksmith, and has the same prido. in his work at the forge that he has in his translations. In one school with which we are familiar the professor of agriculture not only superintends the raising of the products, but also teaches the pupils the chemistry o-f the same, and then insists that the pupils shall know how to cook them. But we know of but few such instances. That such a revolutionary change in our whole educational system must be a matter of growth will be admitted ; but that it need be a, matter of slow growth we emphatically deny. The need and demand for it is too great and immediate, and the first steps have already been taken to such an extent as to assure its future. PREVENTION OF CRIME. "Universal Industrial training will be self sustaining to the state in the prevention of crime." ., , -n. , . —John Ruskm. The civilization of the North stands aghast at the vast waste of child life in our cities and the enormous cost of crime that comes from neglected children whom we know could be educated into good and profitable citizens ; and this alone is sufficient motive for the change that will save this vast outlay for crime and its results by guiding the hands of the young towards useful, skilled, creative labor that will aid in both mental and moral uplift. The case here is urgent. It brooks no delay. One eminent writer sets the cost of preventable crime and accessories in one city at forty million dollars per year, and fully six hundred millions for the whole country. What would not this vast sum do in reasonable, scientific educational prevention, in making of the street waifs skilled, intelligent, thrifty citizens? A hundred George Junior Republic schools filled with the neglected children of the slums would be as economical as patriotic in educating, the waifs toward useful citizens. The Minnesota Reform School believes that an average of over eighty per cent of its graduates become good citizens. And these, it THE SLOW AND UNPEECOCIOUS. 53 will be remembered, are of the bad boys sent to be reclaimed, and industry is one of the main dependences to reform them, while it is claimed that from sixty to seventy per cent of the average village and city boys who have no industrial training go to the bad. The civilization of the Southland has an equally or still more ominous question in the race problem, with a vast illiterate contingent of poor whites, all of whom stand as a portentous menace to the future, but who may all be turned into useful, thrifty and law-abiding citizens, if only we v/ill begin their uplift in the v/ay God and Nature intended, by developing their hands in useful skill and letting the mental growth follow, as it naturally will, if we will but reverse our present "rude and undeveloped" system and give that the first place which Nature gives to every child born into this world — the desire and ability to learn its first lessons through its hands, THE SLOW AND UNPRECOCIOUS, "The strength of a chain is measured by its weakest link." Under the present system it is usual at an early age to condemn to bread winning and factory slavery those pupils who seem in any way slow or deficient in power or inclination to acquire through the memory -cramming process the conventional type of education. This is a particularly great wrong both to society and the individual ; for, if it be admitted that in the development of a higher form of average democracy is the pathway of true progress, then should the slow and less ably endowed, the weak and simple, have extra pains taken to develop what intellectual faculties they have to the highest possible point — not only to enhance their value to the state and to society, their productive abilities, but also that their children may have the heredity of a better parentage ; and we dare claim that, among any given one thousand of the so-called "poor scholars" who are prematurely ' doomed to an early slavery at bread winning, with the minimum of mental training and with no hand training at all, in any thousand of such will be found many capable of becoming men and women of mark, of genius, if thev could be led alone: to a 54 THE SLOW AND UN PRECOCIOUS. few years later age and have the advantages of hand culture and a chance to study mechanic arts or industrial training in some of its branches which are adapted to their peculiar mental drift. It is a well attested fact that many men and women of exceptional ability are late and slow in giving any evidence of strong mental power, and may never do so until some mechanical or technical study, some form of handicraft training, brings to the surface unexpected talents of a high order. In this manner Vv^ill colleges and universities based on the plan of alternate study and work, and that shall hold pupils until years of maturity, be of most inestimable value, both in creating a higher average of intelligence among all, but also (and of greatest importance) in finding and bringing out many men and women of rare merit and usefulness, who, under the present system, are almost totally lost to the world and doomed, like the flowers of the desert, to bloom unseen and unknown. We are fully persuaded, if there were no other reason for the demand for a self-supporting system of schools for higher education, that this alone would be ample for a most comprehensive efifort to establish such in every county in the whole land, to promote the higher average of the citizenship by cultivating the slow and unprecocious and by developing the latent geniuses from those who only come to their full powers at a later age. "Had Caesar, Napoleon, Columbus, Shakespeare, Sir Isaac New- ton, Adam Smith, or Herbert Spencer been assigned by fate the lack of an education, or the dreary toil of an Irish bog laborer, what would their native talents availed?" —Henry G-eorge. ELEVATING LABOR VS. DEGRADING DRUDGERY. "What thy hands find to do, do it with thy might." —The Bible. Convinced as we are that true labor is a God-like attribute, exalting and ennobling when normally exercised, we are also aware that it can be so imposed upon men as to become ELEVATING LABOR VS. DEGEADING DRUDGERY. 55 drudgery, enslaving and demoralizing in the extreme. Booker Washington tersely express'ed this when he said, "To work, to ivcrk, TO WORK (for one's ovv^n) is the height of Christian civilization ; but to be worked, to be worked, to be worked ( for another's profit) is the barbarism of slavery." William Morris says it is to put into all labor the ideals of the artist, to have all possible skill, knowledge and intelligence in regard to the correlated sciences, and to feel the joy of working, to contribute to the needs of the world ; in the effort done in this spirit, even the digg'ing of a sewer may become a joyful service and a means of spiritual growth to the worker. To know how to excel and to take pride in superior accomplishments makes the whole difference between drudgery and art. We see this difference between scientific agriculture and the drudgery of ignorant farming; and this wide contrast may be seen in every vocation and in every form of labor ; and for this quality of mental uplift of the workers there is no other way but to develop the mental powers, cultivate the artist spirit, and at the same time make skillful the hands that do the world's work. The result will be such an average of high moral purpose, joy and efficiency as the world has never yet seen. "To mix brains with our hand work" is but a homely expression for this wide contrast between the labor that blesses and the drudgery that degrades ; and the man or woman who knows all the scientific relations of the material manipulated by his or her hands has a joy in work to be had in no other way. And if to this be added the joy of serving a person or a cause, then the highest joy of earth may come from labor, which otherwise might be drudgery of basest deg^ree. ^ With modern forces for production, it is unquestionable that four to six hours of labor each day would supply the world with a plenitude of luxuries such as princes now might envy ; and this amount of labor would be only what is needful for healthful exercise, and, when done with proper aim and method, would give a moral and spiritual uplift unequaled by any other means. All men do not now have the opportunity to work. With shorter hours and the worker receiving his due proportion of 56 ELEVATING LABOR VS. DEGRADING DRUDGERY. product, all could be employed. All this should be included in a new system of education that shall propose the training of head, hands and heart as a trinity of equal importance in the building of character and in soul grov/th. With this as the motive for reorganizing our whole educational system, we may confidently look forward to such an evolution of the "religion of democracy," to the development of such a high average of citizenship as the world has never seen, with the growth of all the grandest ideals of an international unity of spirit and interest among men as shall make the hideousness of war a thing unthinkable and unheard of again. With such an average citizenship as we shall have when a full industrial college and university course is given freely to every child, we may be sure such a social order will be developed as will make the adoption of a short working day imperative, and the people, cultured in art and science, will develop a perfection of human society such as has only been dreamed of by the poets of past ages. The millennium epoch may be surely looked for with unquestioning faith. This will be the age spoken of by Ferguson when "the university will come to all free as air and glorious as sunshine," and the religion of democracy have its most holy accomplishment; and all this may begin its coming tomorrow, if we will. "It is unspeakably pernicious to think or speak of the develop- ment of humanity, as stationary or completed. ' ' Troebel. PART 11. That with student labor alone, an industrial education plant has been built worth over half a million dollars, and at the same time the students have acquired a much better education than if the plant had been previously prepared, and they had come with money to pay their way thro a conventional course, is the second greatest achieve- ment in importance in the educational history of America. Equipment vs. Endowment. "Education is the most essential interest of the State." —Wendell Phillips. The time has come v/hen seminaries, colleges and universities should no longer depend upon endowments for support, but rather upon industrial equipment. During the past year the enormous sum of fifty to seventy millions of dollars has been put into endowment funds for facilities for higher education for the comparatively few ; and, vast as is the purchasing power of this great sum, it will scarcely produce a ripple in the educational history or progress of the nation, and will have no appreciable effect on the democratic progress of education for the masses, where help and progress are most needed ; while, if even one- quarter of this had been put into the equipment of self-supporting industrial schools for all, it would have marked a new and distinct epoch in educational advance and set a new pace for the world's progress as noteworthy and as grand as did the great step of the heroic fathers of the Republic when they established the collective ideal of the common school for the benefit of every boy and girl in the nation — a movem^ent that required fifty years of vigorous agitation to establish. This greatest achievement of our democratic fathers helped forward the evolution of the race more than it had moved in centuries. The establishment of a system of free industrial 57 58 EQUIPMENT VS. ENDOWMENT. self-supporting schools and colleges for all will be a step of equal if not greater importance in accelerating race progress and the advance of democratic civilization. There are many grave objections to the whole plan of endow- ments : the system has had its day. It is time for something more democratic and not so tainted with pagan abuses. The whole system of endowed educational institutions is a relic of the age and concept that a few only should be provided with educational facilities, and that the vast majority must toil in ignorance to produce the wealth needed for the favored few. It is an utterly paganish concept and system, out of date and place in a democratic and progressive age. An equipment of two hundred thousand dollars in farm, shop, factory and working material for a self-supporting school will care for more pupils than a conventional college having a full million-dollar endowment. The system of education under an industrially equipped school will be a correct one, not a concession to false ideals, but dominated by the true democratic spirit of self-help and perfectly adapted to cultivating the creative attributes of the pupil. Then, too, a school depending upon endowments must always be more or less handicapped by the moral taints attaching to the moneys received, as were the schools founded by Captain Kidd from the proceeds of his peculiar economic system, even as later methods have tainted and compromised the schools dependent upon them for support. Again, the endowment system locks up enormous amounts of money in bonds, mortgages, etc., away from active creative channels in commerce and industry, and places the influence of the school on the undemocratic and unscientific side of continuing high interest rates — always an undesirable condition and adverse to democratic progress. One noted school, which was founded on most radical ideals, has been so tainted with this spirit as to have won a most unenviable reputation as a stickler for high rates of interest and a merciless forecloser of farm mortgages — a most unworthy reputation for the moral influence of a great educational institu- EQUITMENT VS. ENDOWMENT. 59 tion, which should be a radical leader along the line of true democracy ; for along' that line is the only true ideal of social progress. In well equipped industrial schools the strength and virility of teachers will be best conserved. Teachers who devote them- selves to mental training only, have a very severe tax upon nerve force and personal magnetism, and vast numbers have broken down before their best years of matured service came, under this strain of nerve effort ; while in an industrial school they v/ould often have the restful change from brain to hand work, which is a natural recuperation, and in this manner retain for a much longer period the powers of nerve and magnetic forces so necessary for best success in leading and molding young lives. And last, but really most important of all, by working a portion of the time each day v>^ith pupils, they are setting the example and social standard of the union of culture with skill in creative labor or useful service, which is one of the essentials in a scientific civilization, and without which no social state can be made progressive or permanent. Were there no other reasons, the latter alone would justify the change ; and we feel sure the coming reform and the highest ideals of progress are coming from and through the change from Endowments to that of Equipments. The one who demonstrates the practicability of a well equipped industrial school to be self-supporting will do a grand work for humanity and write his name large as a benefactor of his kind. And philanthropists who will equip such schools, or help to do so, will win renown as helpers of their race, and erect a monument of more lasting material and greater glory than any marble or bronze placed for mere show. We are sure there are many of the smaller colleges, now struggling with inadequate endowments or income, whose useful- ness would be enhanced a hundredfold if they could and would change all or a portion of their endowments into an industrial equipment for self-support from their own productive labor. And they would then be in line with the rapidly advancing demands of the people, who wish for the best type of a liberal or complete 6o EQUIPMENT VS. ENDOWMENT. education, and in line with the ideals suggested by Herbert Spencer's able address, and more fully defined in the philosophy of the seer^ Froebel. We also know that many philanthropists and prominent business men, when, their attention is called to these ideas, are much more ready to help such schools, for any race or any section than the schools for mental training alone. We deem, it patent to all why our government should aid in establishing such practical schools at this time, and why oiu' motto, "More for Schools and Less for War," should become a national watchword for all who have an ambition to hope for the time suggested by the eloquent Englishman, "when American- ism shall conquer the whole world ;" for we can sooner conquer the world with the school than with the battleship; ideas will penetrate deeper than rifle shot. Tremendously as the world has been taught to fear our "armor-clads" and the range of our artillery, they may yet stand in greater awe of the moral and mental achievements of a nation of college-trained people. A perfected democracy will much sooner subdue the world than the best armaments ; exalted ideas will win and hold the allegiance of the coming peoples of all lands longer and better than the most perfect examples of brute force. When we decree that every child of this Republic shall have a full college course, and a college course far more complete and thorough than any heretofore given, it will thrill the world with a new expectancy of lofty achievement, as yet unknown in the history of the race. It will, indeed, be an example of "Trium- phant Democracy" that will set a new pace for the highest ideals of an ambitious generation. THE UNIVERSITY AN INTELLECTUAL AND INDUSTRL\L CENTER. When in all modern process, from making a garden to a locomotive, there is a continual demand for the highest and most scientific study and skill, what could be more appropriate than that the University should be a great center of industrial activity where the students can work their way through the course of mental and hand culture — each a corrollary of the other — and then if they wish to remain in the atmosphere of learning, or to carry forward some post-graduate course of investigation, can still work on in their chosen vocation and enjoy the social privi- leges of the place, with the possibilities of self-supporting labor and mental ripening all provided for and open for their main- tenance? Is not this whole ideal intensely practical and possible of attainment? THE PROPHETIC SPIRIT YET LIVES. When the world is ready for any great advance in achievement in any line, the prophecy of the coming change will be felt in many and far separate places, at about the same time. When the world was ready to cast off the curse of human slavery the impulse was felt from Russia to San Domingo, from England and France to the United States, at about the same moment of historic time. When the world was ready for a great advance in labor-saving machinery, men of all sorts were found whittling from wood, models of sewing machines and reapers in man^ places in many countries at about the same time, with no previous knowledge of each other's efforts, or why the inspiration came to them at the time. So has it been in this matter of a revolutionary change in the methods of our educational system. We ourselves thought when in 1868 we penned our first cnnception of an industrial college, 61 62 THE UNIVERSITY. with its own plant, to be partially or quite self-supporting, and that should convey a better quality of mental discipline than the conventional college, some of whose graduates had deeply im- pressed us with the fact of their unpreparedness for life, that we could flatter our egotism on being the first, or one of the very first, Vi'ho had conceived the progressive plan ; but we have since learned of many others who had come to essentially the same thought and had seen the need and value of training the hands and brain at the same time, and that each was a necessary portion of the needful training for life ; and all this with no knowledge of each other, nor any knowledge of the writings of the great men who had been moved by the same prophetic spirit. And today there are hundreds who deeply feel that the change is now imminent and must come as soon as the needful men and methods can be evolved. The great -souded man* who has already taken the first practical steps to introduce to Congress and to Legislatures bills for putting the movement into legal form, was at work preaching" the gospel and stirring the thoughts of many in his wide acquaintance to see the great need of the movement, and now it is only waiting the power of combined numbers to become enacted into laws in the nation and in the several States that shall make it as w^ell an established custom as the common school has become, which in its inception took a full generation of most energetic agitation before it was adopted by the several States of the then small and struggling beginnings of this now mighty nation, which can waste more each year in tawdry ornamentations than the whole thing will cost, and where the cost of preventable crime is more than the total assessed value of the property of the fathers at the time they took this great step. CAN COLLEGES BE MADE SELE-SUPPORTING ? "The grandest achievements of the race are those that have been proved impossible." — Jas. L. Hughes. * See Appendix. COLLEGES SELF-SUPPORTING. 63 To most of oiir readers the above question will immediately present itself, and in answering it the mental evolution will, no doubt, in most cases, follow about the same lines of those of an eminent and veteran educator when first presented with the proposition of free universal industrial training as the next step in educational progress and an essential in social evolution. He at once assented to the value and importance of the union of hand and head culture for all as vastly desirable, and to the idea tliat the time is ripe for the movement and that it .would pay in various ways. In prevention of crime, he admitted it would be most supremely efficient, and that it would produce a citizenship of remarkably increased power as wealth producers, and after careful thought he declared, "Whether it can be wholly self-sustainmg or not is unimportant, quite incidental. We need such a system of universal training for all the people, at any cost to the state, to keep up with the needs and demands of social growth ; but it seems chimerical to expect it can be made fully self-sustaining and not hinder its fullest usefulness as a general system for scientific and literary study." After a few weeks of study upon the plans and possibilities of a system of self-support, he declared his full conviction that not only could industrial schools for pupils of fifteen or over be made fully self-sustaining, but that they could be made to pay a fair dividend on the needed capital for equipment, and at the same time impart a quality of education far above that of the average college or university that adhered to the old process of mind discipline, to the total neglect of training the hands — now so popular among those who have indulgent friends to pay their bills ajid help them to attain that kind of education whose chief accomplishment is often, as Spencer declared, to create a type of "literary aristocracy," of but little use in preparation for the higher ideals of complete living. Another educator, of international reputation, declared the system could be made perfectly practical and in every way desirable, and added that in his own school many pupils now gain complete support by working three hours per day five days in the week, and eight hours on Saturday, and this with no 64 COLLEGES SELF-SUPPORTING. detriment, but rather a decided advantage to their progress and efficiency in the academic courses ; and all this with no organized system to assist the pupils to most effectual means of labor, and they obliged to pay retail prices for everything needed, or from four to six times as much as the actual labor cost if produced in a plant established as a working portion of the school. This is a most important factor, not usually understood by those who only think casually on the subject. According to the published reports of the United States Census Bureau, and confirmed by the Commissioner of Labor, the labor cost of the average products is only about sixteen per cent of the price at which they are sold at retail. As many of the products of the school plant would not be produced quite as cheaply as in commercial factories, although much better in quality, it may be safe to estimate a labor cost of one-fourth the prices usually paid by teachers and pupils. We see at once that if students can earn the minimum wage of only ten to twenty cents per hour, and only work twenty to twenty-four hours per week, they can earn a sum that will mean self-support, even though they pay retail prices for everything, and be more than self-supporting when the necessities of life can be obtained at the actual labor cost. In this way the cost of living for teachers will also be greatly reduced. We deem it only necessary to refer to the well known facts in regard to many of our agricultural colleges, our many trade and industrial schools of various kinds, and to the well known schools of Hampton and Tuskegee — in all of which no effort has been made or suggested to fully accomplish entire self-support, but where one-fourth to two-thirds of the running expenses have been equaled by the productive value of the work of the schools — to prove be}ond the possibility of question that when the effort is really and earnestly made to establish schools of entire self- support, it can be done by only carrying a little further along a system already an established success and of most uniform- beneficial results to the quality of mental equipment acquired in all these schools. In all our modern colleges are a few brave boys and girls COLLEGES SELF-SUPPORTING. 65 working their way through with no systematized method to reduce the labor to a minimum of time and effort, but, often under the greatest difficulties and disadvantages, these brave students work on and pay their own way, getting a minimum for their labor and paying a maximum of profit on all they have to buy ; and these self-supporting students average among the very highest, both in school and in after life. Had they the facilities for creating their own needs organized to make the labor both most productive and best adapted to teach mechanics and handi- craft skill and to save retail profits on all their needs, the labor hours could be greatly decreased and the menta.l benefits of the labor vastly increased. A volume could be filled with the heroic successes of those who have secured a full college and university education by all kinds of labor and under all varieties of adverse conditions ; and the higher general average of usefulness and ability of this class of graduates over those who have their bills paid for them will be generally admitted; and scarce any one will deny that, if a system of hand training and mechanical education had been an essential and systematized portion of their course, the average of mental power Vv'ould have been still higher yet. The almost universal consensus of opinion among all pro- r^ressive educators and thinkers, the general trend of progress in education, is wholly towards the combining of hand and bram culture. The only portion of the problem we need to elucidate i» how with the least possible financial difficulty to get the ne^^^ system established where it will take its proper and needful place as THE UNIVERSAL SYSTEM, and thus do away forever with the present paganish methods, mainly adapted, as Spencer declares, "to establish an aristocracy of letters," wholly out of place in this democratic country, where all the best thought of the age is to advance democratic ideals and to forever do away with all the false and shoddy ideals of an effete aristocracy. To carry out this full program is an effort of just enough difficulty to form a charm and to arouse the enthusiasm of progressive teachers and furnish a motive for heroic endeavor, we are sure; and that the completed result will make a great historic 66 COLLEGES SELF-SUPPORTING. evolutionary epoch there can be no question. Nor can there be any question that the time is fully ripe for the step as an important factor in the surging storm of social reform that is now sweeping the world and demanding attention from all patriotic minds. There has been enough accomplished in the past to prove that colleges and universities and other schools can be very success- ful!}' carried on, on an entirely self-supporting basis, as soon as competent, thorough-going efifort is made to develop the system by those who have an enthusiasm for the grand purpose of making a full college and university course open and free to every boy and girl of the land, and the added enthusiasm to make it a superior course to anything ever enjoyed heretofore. As an eminent writer says, all m.aterial advance must be preceded by higher intellectual and spiritual concepts and ideals. So does the social and economic advance, now so needful in the interests of peace and prosperity, wait upon this advance in educational matters. A school equipped with special facilities for best possible courses of both handicraft training and literary or scientific accomplishments v/ould have for main summer work and teaching the farm, with stock, dairy, gardens and all food-producing equip- ments possible, where the food of the school would be produced Jt ic^xest labor cost, and a surplus for sale at regular established >'^^J':= '"jl^" ""^f ,,is propo- g6 APPENDIX. had subscribed towards an endowment fund for a college who declared he would at once make his gift five times larger for an equipment fund when the plan was presented to his consideration, and others have given similar assurances of preference tor this system. To those who may question the ability of students to produce all their own living expenses, with no detriment to their mental progress, we need only refer to the well known facts in relation to the actual small labor cost of all the essentials of good living, but we forbear to use more time for details. We would not presume to come before this association with so radical a proposition without the approval of many practical men. If one such school can be established to lead the way, we may con- fidently look forward to the not far distant day when every county of our state shall have a school equal in social and economic value to our noted agricultural college near this city, and the South can have a hundred schools like Booker Washington's. And when the whole citizenship shall be thus elevated and cultured we may be sure the geniuses of such an age will tower to heights as yet undreamed of in exaltation of character and usefulness. If, then, our several contentions are essentially correct — that no educa- tion can properly be called liberal or complete without mechanical and general industrial training; if it be needful for all classes and professions for best mental equipment ; if it be true that a self-supporting system is the most natural and scientific method ; if the State cannot afford to have half-developed citizens; if the uplift and joy of skilled creative labor be the inalienable birthright of every citizen; if labor be an important part of ethical culture ; if this complete system of education for all be the surest and most economical prevention of destructive anarchy and crime — then surely there has come to this association and to this State, which has now a high reputation for progressive action, the great privilege of beginning a movement not second in importance to humanity to the great step of our pilgrim fathers, who set the pace for developing the highest type of people the world has ever yet seen. The world has recently been electrified by news of gifts of fifty million dollars for higher university educational purposes. Startling as is this colossal contribution for school purposes, and beneficial as it may be for higher attainments for the few, we are profoundly impressed with the conviction that to open the doors to a free and all around industrial and mental training to every boy and girl of the mass of people will be of vastly more importance to the State and nation than these monumental gifts. If then we shall set in motion this great movement, the future chron- iclers of this nation shall give as the history of our ttvo greatest steps forward and upward, towards the higher civilization that is surely coming, APPENDIX. 07 the first, when the pilgrim fathers decreed that every child should learn to read ; the second like unto the first, when we decree that every boy and girl shall be taught how to work. The glory and safety of a republic lies in the intelligence and inde- pendence of its toilers and wealth producers, for from them comes the tendency to growth or decay. A higher life for all the people is the need of the hour. S. H. Comings, 1272 County Road, St. Paul. NOTE. A committee in Minnesota acting on this plan, at a second meeting, after a full discussion, decided to call for bids, or offers of land and help from any of the towns of the state, for the first two or three experimental schools to demonstrate how far such schools can be made self-supporting. The chairman, Dr. Smith, suggested that it would be a much more desirable school to have in or near a town than any of the reform schools, for which there had been a lively competition from several towns. Extract From an Address Before the Nebraska Legislature by Col. Edward Dan- iels, of Washington, D. C. In regard to a pending bill on County Industrial Schools. A PLAN FOR SCHOOLS OF INDUSTRY OF EACH COUNTY. The mass of children in Nebraska, as in most states of the Union, leave school in the lower grades. Only one-twentieth reach the high school. They have no chance to get such complete training as each needs in actual life. Most of them must work with their hands. But there is no adequate provision to make them intelligent and skillful workmen. There are few skilled workmen among the native born. The natural right of each to the best means of unfolding all his power is abridged to his personal loss. The progress and prosperity of the state is arrested or delayed, and the future menaced by an appalling increase of the incap- able and discontented. Already every trade is crowded with botches and amateurs who sac- rifice the property, health, and lives of their patrons. From the careless milker in the country dairy, who fills the precious fluid on which babes and invalids must feed with poisonous filth, to the high priced plumber, who turns the sewer gas into the schoolroom or the chamber of sleeping in- nocence, technical ignorance assaults unceasingly the whole line of life ! This state of things results from a serious defect in our educational 98 APPENDIX, system. It has not brought its best ideas within reach of the great body of the people. To meet this neglected duty of the state to that large class of children now growing up, a bill (No. 143, Senate File) has been prepared. You are respectfully urged to examine it carefully, and, if approved, support it earnestly. It is a simple, inexpensive mode of starting a good work. This bill appropriates no money and creates no expensive offices or liabilities. It makes a part of the officers of each county,, ex officio, a body cor- porate for the purpose of establishing a school of applied science and in- dustry. They organize and submit to the people the proposition to have such a school. If the people approve, power is given to tax themselves two mills per dollar of valuation for five years. If the people refuse, the board still exists and can appeal for donations. There is thus always an author- ized responsible body that can execute the will of generous citizens. The good cause will grow with discussion and increasing knowledge. If the people tax themselves for founding the school, they elect a board of five trustees who thereafter manage it. They locate the site in the county with ample land for intensive farming. Temporary shelters may be erected and the students assembled. Workshops, with appliances for teaching the trades, are to be provided. Agriculture and horticulture, including fruit growing, dairying, forestry, irrigation, animal industry, will be taught, and elementary but thorough instruction in the sciences that relate to life, home building and home keeping, the art of making themselves and others comfortable, healthy and happy, should be taught to all — girls as well as boys. The permanent buildings of such a school, and all thai: they contain, should, as far as possible, be created by the pupils and their teachers. Such a school would be near all the people of each county. They could take their children there, erect some cheap shelters for temporary use, supply them with food cheaply, and visit them often. Similar to this, fifty years ago, were the New England academies where so many of that generation were helped forward. Children of fourteen years who have completed the district school course can enter these schools. They must work with their hands, in some one of the departments, a few hours daily. The love of work, nat- urally in each healthy child, is to be cherished and strengthened. Intel- ligent companionship, theory and practice hand in hand, teacher and pupil together in the work shop, the school room, the play ground, and at the festive board — these conditions will relieve labor of irksomeness and lift it into dignity, especially when all distinctions are lost in the equity that makes faithful work the only test of merit. We must uplift this standard of the New Education to get the best out of our youth. To grow a tree, to dig a ditch, to shoe a horse well, to make or mend a garment, to produce a roll of exquisite butter or a loaf of perfect bread APPENDIX. 99 must become a matter of .honest pride not less than a briUiant oration, or a musical performance of surpassing skill. In these colleges of the people the love of work will equal the love of play. Skillful labor will become play, as in all wholesome children it is seen to be. The manly art of self- support will be taught — now fast becoming one of the "lost arts" among our youths. The movement for industrial education is gaining ground all over the world. Enlightened governments abroad have given it hberal and in- creased support from year to year. Practical educators see that hand work is essential to the best mind work. The students who labor outstrip those who do not. Business men attest the superiority of working students in affairs. The Commercial Club of Chicago has raised two hundred thousand dollars for manual training. Mr. Phil Armour has invested a million in the same work. The Armour Institute and the Armour Mission, under the able control of Dr. Gunsaulus is transforming a thousand poor children into skilled workmen and liberally educated men and women. Its founder says "it is the best investment he ever made." Other rich men are feeling this benign impulse. Everywhere there is an advance towards a more practical education. Gentlemen of the Legislature, give the people of the counties a chance to secure this great boon for their children ! It will cost nothing to try it. Great results will not be seen at first. But let the people begin. When they have done their best, aid is sure to come from generous citizens. They will see returns a thousand fold in a crop of young men and women, sound of mind and body, self-supporting, responsible, and fully equipped for useful and happy lives. Respectfully submitted, EDWARD DANIELS. lOO APPENDIX. The following are the texts of the bills introduced to Congress by Col. E. Daniels. With some endorsements of the same from well known people : In the House of Representatives. December 19, igoi. Mr. Rixey (by request) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Education and ordered to be printed. A Bill to encourage industrial education in the several States. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the U)iited States of America in Congress assembled, That the sum of million dollars is hereby appropriated, to be expended under the direction of the President of the United States, to help the several States establish and maintain a system of primary industrial schools. Sec. 2. That the President shall have power to appoint such agents as, in his discretion, may be needed to cai:ry out the purposes of this Act, and to fix the compensation for their services. Sec. 3. That no money shall be paid to any State until it shall have provided by law for a system of practical work training open to all its youth ; and for at least one such school in each county having a population of five thousand or more : Provided, That unless it shall have in actual operation five such schools with adequate farms, buildings, and a com- petent force of teachers, and that such schools be free of debt : Provided further, That all pupils shall work with their hands for four hours daily for five, days of each week of the term. Sec. 4. That no State shall be entitled to the benefits of this Act un- less within two years it shall have complied with the conditions and given the President satisfactory evidence of the facts above enumerated. Sec. 5. That the distribution of aid under this Act shall be in pro- portion to the actual attendance at schools, the time of attendance being considered, but the President may increase the sum paid to any State if, in his opinion, the public interests would be advanced thereby in the States least able to maintain such schools. Sec. 6. That this Act shall take effect immediately. In the Senate of the United States. December 18, 1901. Mr. Nelson (by request), introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committeemen Education. A Bill to establish general system of industrial education in the ter- ritories and islands of the United Slates. APPENDIX. lOI Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there shall be established in all the Territories subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, including the District of Colum- bia and the recently acquired islands, a system of primary industrial edu- cation, to the end that all citizens may become intelligent, skillful, efficient, and self-supporting citizens. Sec. 2. That in these schools of agriculture and the ordinary arts of civilized life shall be taught practically to all youth -who apply between the ages of thirteen and nineteen. Instruction shall include the sciences which underlie these arts, and every pupil shall be required to work with his hands daily not less than four hours, under the teacher in his depart- ment, which labor shall be compensation in full for his expenses at the school. Sec. 3. That all male students shall be instructed in the military art, thoroughly organized and drilled, so as to become a part of the National Guard. For this purpose officers of the Regular Army, non-commissioned or others not in active service may be assigned. Sec. 4. That the course of instruction in these schools shall extend over a period of five years, and at the close each student who has success- fully completed his studies and maintained a good moral character shall receive a certificate showing his standing. Sec. 5. That to carry out the provisions of this bill the following sums are hereby appropriated : First the sum of one million dollars to establish a school for the District of Columbia, within the District, or in one of the adjacent States, for use of its children; second the sum of fifteen millions of dollars for such schools in Porto Rico, the Philippines, and the Territories. Sec. 6. That the Commissioners of the District of Columbia are here- by charged with the execution of this law as it applies to this said District. Sec. 7. That the President shall appoint a commission of five compe- tent persons to carry out the purpose of this law in the Territories and insular dependencies of the United States. Sec. 8. That this act shall be in force from and after its passage, and the appropriation ^Yhich it carries shall become immediately available. "We cannot do too much for Industrial Education." —John G-raham Brooks, Harvard University. "This would he absolute righteousness in education." —Elbert Hubbard. 102 APPENDIX, "It is the ideal of an educational system." —Rev. Frank Gunsaulus, Pres. Armour Institute. "I agree with you in every essential particular." —Dr. Albert Shaw, Editor Review of Reviews. Nothing could do greater good than your plans for an indus- trial school for every county." —Senator 0. K. Davis. A PLEA For a National Complete Education League, to Pro- mote a Much More Complete, and Scien- tific Educational System. It has been proposed to form a National League — and some steps have already been taken both North and South — whose supreme object shall be to advocate and take steps to inaugurate a much more complete, natural and scientific educational system. First. That shall aim at large increase of Democratic edu- cational privileges, and to develop the highest possible average of citizenship, in morals, intelligence, and industrial efficiency — a much higher average than now prevails. A system that shall reduce to a minimum the tendency to crime. Second. That shall give to every child of the Republic a complete, all-around education. That shall train the hands with the same care as the brain. And ultimately make a full Industrial College Course compulsory for all before they may become citi- zens of the commonwealth. Third. That shall endeavor to inaugurate a wide spread sys- tem of self-supporting schools, that will in time bring all Colleges, Semingiries, and Universities as near to a self sustaining basis as possible, each with its own industrial plant. In the full belief that they can be made nearly or quite self-supporting, for all pupils of fifteen of over, and to an extent for those much younger, and afford a much higher and better mental equipment, than is now obtained in the so-called "memory storing courses" where no attention is paid to hand training. Fourth. That shall make some type of Agricultural, or Hor- ticultural training, with allied sciences, an essential portion of every child's education. Fifth. That shall make play as Froebel taught, an essential portion of all educational courses from the Kindergarten through 103 I04 APPENDIX. the University with scientifically arranged playgrounds, a part of all school equipments. Sixth. That shall make special efforts to more fully develop the dull, slow, or unprecocious, and to bring out their talents to the fullest extent possible, through manual and industrial training, both as a preventive against any tendency towards crime, and to increase their industrial efficiency^ and also to give their children the benefits of better parentage, in the full assurance that many who are dull scholars when young, have latent possibilities of becoming geniuses, if only properly developed. And in general to carry out Froebel's teachings and philosophy much more fully than it has hitherto been done, for all classes and ages. Seventh. The League shall also stand for having the same teachers for all handicraft training, and academic courses, to work with their pupils, and thus illustrate and emphasize the insepar- able union of hand and brain culture, with highest social ideals, according to the true standards of a Christian and Democratic civilization. Eighth. The League shall press for both legislative and philanthropic aid in enlarging the democratic educational advan- tages of the producing masses from whom come the tendencies to national decay or progress. Ninth. The League shall stand for a demand by the Asso- ciated Teachers, and educators of the country, backed by the or- ganizations of Agriculture and Labor, for the expenditure by the general government of at least ttvice as much for aid and equip- ment of Industrial Schools as for the equipment of army and navy, or any accompaniment of war. Teachers, educators, clergymen and thinkers of all types who approve in essentials the foregoing, will confer a great favor on the movers of this effort by sending their names to the Author, with any suggestions, and indicate if they are willing tO' help for- ward the move by circulating literature, or in any way to help the work. If enough will volunteer, aside from those now en- listed, a Convention will be called that this ideal which has been APPENDIX. 105 in the air for several years, may take on an organized form, and definite steps for aggressive action be taken. A Bill has been introdiiced in Congress, by that indefatigable worker for all social progress, Col. E. Daniels of Washington, for government aid to establish such a school in the District of Columbia, with the hearty endorsement of such men as Ex-Mayor Hewitt, President Schurman, General McArthur, et al., and the Bill will doubtless stay in committtees' hands until some organ- ized effort is made to secure action upon it. Tozvns, cities, or philanthropists who may wish to donate land for such a school, or any portion of the needed equipments, or teachers who would like to distinguish their career, by helping to organize and prove such a school as herein suggested, will also confer a favor by sending their names, and the kind of work they are competent to teach. All who in any way wish to help along the essentials of what has been proposed in this volume, are most heartily urged to send their names, and go on record, to help along by the momentum of numbers, if they can do no more at present. A few towns have already signified their desire to have such a school located in their vicinity, a few teachers have also ex- pressed their willing-ness to help forward the practical work, while many eminent professional and business men have given their approval in most unqualified terms to the movement, we feel sure it is along the lines of imminent progress, and only waits the united action of the many friends of educational reform and progress. WILL YOU HELP? This booklet will be sent to some who have not ordered it, and if it does not meet the favor of any such, the author begs pardon for the liberty taken, and hopes you will be so kind as to put a cent stamp on the private mailing card that will accompany it, with your address, and any desired criticism, and the author will remit the needed stamps for its return, with the stamps used, on the card. The author begs to state, that the booklet is not published in hope or expectation of profits, and if there should possibly be any, it, (and much more) is consecrated, and devoted to the cause of pressing the movement in all possible ways, particularly be- fore legislative committees, and teachers meetings, etc., in the hope of its being one great step in the preparation of the people for a higher social order. If the ends and aims of the booklet are favored by the re- cipient, and you are willing to aid the promotion of its object, and will mail some to friends or acquaintances, the price will be made at fifteen cents each for any number over four with the sample sent at first. And at the retail price the author will mail to any addresses sent direct. And we will be grateful for names sent of such as it will be likely to interest. 107 ADVERTISEMENT. The author is in communication with the private owner of a fine valuable college plant, that has been called a success, under the former system, but the owner now wishes to transform it to an Industrial Self-Supporting, (or approximately so) College, and wishes to open correspondence with teachers who have ability along some industrial vocation, as well as in literary lines, who will be glad to make this one of the pioneers of the new system as advocated in this little booklet. If any such will send names to the author we will be glad to help to establish their corre- spondence with the owner of the College. io8 ADDENDA. THE GOSPEL OF LABOR. "This is the Gospel of Labor — Ring- it ye bells of the kirk! The Lord of love Came down from above, To live with those who work. This is the rose He planted, Here in the thorn cursed soil, Heaven shall be blest With active rest. But the best of earth is joyous toil," "The very best schools of the future, will be based on the plan of alternate work and study." — Dr. O. L. Triggs, Chica- go University. CIVILIZATION IN HAYTI AND SAN DOMINGO. "Lrabor is God's education for man." — Emerson. Along few lines of general interest has there been more misinformation, or more unjust conclusions, than in regard to the so called failure of the attempts to elevate the freedmen of Hayti and San Domingo. A striking example of a thing the world has known so surely and so long, that is NOT SO. Again and again with fullest assurance, has it been as- serted in the press and from the platform that all efforts to raise the freed colored and mixed races of Hayti and San Domingo have proven futile, and they have been believed to be incapable of elevation to any great degree of civilization, or mental improvement, and that they must be given over to riot and revolution, unless held down by the strong hand of the "superior races." But recently a student statesman of Hayti — who knows whereof he affirms — declares that the apparent failure has come from the unnatural and unscientific methods of educa- 2 ADDENDA. tion pursued alike by both public and missionary schools, which have attempted to begin in the air, and build a mental culture with no foundation on the earth, of pride or skill in the essentials of industry and labor. The natives have seen the disinclination of their superiors and teachers to labor and following that universal trait of humanity to imitate those socially above us have felt that text book lore was not com- patible with pride in handicraft accomplishment. They have been taught the spelling book instead of gardening, higher mathematics and latin instead of the fundamental art ot tillage, from which all true civilization flows, and as naturally as water flows down grade, these people, following the false standards, have tried to live by their wits instead of by honest toil and have drifted into riot and revolution, for the simple reason that they had no industrial system in which they had any pride or interest. Here then we have the true reason for all this, decadent race history, this discouraging phase of the race problem — the heads of these people have been filled with the dry text book lore, the facts and data that have so little to do with active life, and particularly for newly freedmen, while the hands were all untaught, no pride in useful achievement culti- vated, the very foundations of a progressive social order neg- lected, and a false pride established in following the ex- ample of the teachers and preachers of the dominant race to eschew all possible labor of the hands, all the creative attribute of man, the highest given ; is it any wonder they have drifted into riot and revolution? They had no industrial system in which the ambitious could find a field for their best efforts and so have fulfilled the old adage more truthful than elegant. "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do." And the world all untaught in a correct social science, has stood aghast, and declared that the colored races could not attain to the civilization of the white race, as impious to the Creator as it was unscientific. Knowing what we now do of the success of such schools as Hampton and Tuskegee, can there be a shadow of doubt, that if there had been such in Hayti and San Domingo, and hand-i-craft had preceded head-craft as nature provides, and pride and ambition in industry been made the corner stone of their teaching, they would have had a hopeful progressive history ? ADDENDA. THE PITIFUL PHILIPPINO FARCE. "I£ the blind lead the blind, they shall both fall into the mud."— Bible. ' And now we get word that the same pitiful farce is being repeated in the Philippines, under the auspices of our Govern- ment schools. The teachers having been miseducated them- selves, are scattering the poison of a false system in the dark places and thus fulfilling the Scripture adage in regard to the leadings of the blind. A letter recently received from a friend who has been a government teacher in the Philippines and who has had a long and successful experience in this country as College President, an intense student of sociology and a humanitarian of wide sympathies, tells of all this. He declares that he pleaded earnestly that the first steps in educating the natives should be along industrial lines, but the imported American teachers had no hand-i-craft skill themselves and no approximate ap- preciation of its value as the first steps in an advanced social order, so they taught as they had been taught, imparting in- voluntarily the idea that to be educated and cultured is to avoid work and that labor is only for slaves and inferiors, and he declares it has done untold harm, and thousands of the natives have been spoiled from ever becoming practical, effi- cient citizens in the new civilization. They are puffed up with conceit and vanity because they have a little smattering ol English, and can put their name on paper, but have no ambi- tion or pride in skill in gardening, or any of the foundations of an industrial life. The few Agricultural schools and Experiment Stations are a great benefit to the older farmers and the few who get their teachings, but nothing can take the place of imparting to the youthful masses the very fundamentals of-an advancing civi- lization, that must come from skill in tillage and the arts tha^ naturally flow from that, and using the creative talents that only bring to man at-one-ment with his CREATOR. THE CONTRAST IN JAMAICA. "Rightness exalteth a nation." — Bible. Under the more humane rule of the British in Jamaica, the freedmen have been taught some of progressive agriculture and have made a slow but steady improvement. The relations 4 ADDENDA. of the races have been pleasant, no infamovis crimes on record, no lynching-s or mobs called for. With better schools and more complete training in a variety of mechanic arts and men- tal culture the}^ would have attained a higher social develop- ment, for there can be no question but the evolutionary move- ments can be accellerated by proper study of social science, when the world shall have developed it as a science. A'Ve now learn that some promising young men from all these Islands of the Sea are in attendance at Tuskegee and Hampton, where a broader training is given, so we may hope in the future there will be a more rapid progress and the days of riot and revolution, tumult and turbulance will be no more. ANGLO-SAXON RACE PRIDE. "Pride goeth before distruction, and a haughty spirit be- fore a fall."— Bible. We need not be too arrogant in our race pride when we look back over the bloody pathway by which we have come up from the time when the great preacher of a better civilization, St. Paul, took his life in his hands, to preach to the heathen on Britons soil, who were sacrificing human beings to their su- perstitions. Neither the record of the cruel past nor the revelations of the present are conducive to our pride in our so called "Christ- like" social order. It is not at all flattering to our race to read Editor Steads expose of the unspeakable atrocities of the so-called "nobility," nor General Booth's "Darkest Eng- land" and the "Submerged Tenth"in a land that boasts of be- ing the richest nation on the earth. One English writer of world wide prominence declared that England is still in the main a paganism, with a few spots covered with a thin veneer of Christianity, and these spots making the surrounding pa- ganism more hideous in contrast. And when we study our land with all our boast of freedom and progress we find the atrocity of "child slavery" in our factories, with an army of men Avithout any way of earning an honest living. We have not yet studied the science of social adjustment to be very proud of our racial superiority, or we would not allow this nor the thousands of children to come up in the slums where it is impossible that they become anything but human monsters, costing millions to keep them in a state of subjection for the safety of the favored ones. ADDENDA. 5 It was a heathen pagan Emperor that. said that a nation could not expect to survive long, that derived its main reve- nues from the vices of its people, yet we are still deriving our principal revenue from the most destructive vice of our people and our children are taught in schools tinctured with pagan folly, and denominated "murderous" by able critics. Surely we too may well begin to study at the fundamentals. And we may welUbe very patient with the apparently slow progress of neglected races until we develop enough of the "Science of Society" to know how to maintain our own stand- ing and correctly help those who have not yet had even our imperfect advantages. THE GREAT OBERLINS EXAMPLE. 'What man has done, man may do again." — Ancient Proverb. All our farcical failure to elevate the Indians, and now the Philippines and other neglected people are in striking contrast to the success of the great Oberlin, who perhaps caused one of the greatest social reforms on the largest scale of any in re- corded history. He began his work by establishing an Agri- cultural school and taught the wild, rude, robber natives of the Pyranees an improved agriculture as the first step in a moral betterment. And so on from this fundamental begin- ning till he changed the whole people of the province, from the poorest, most wicked, and degraded, to the most refined, intelligent and thrifty of any in the nation. His beginning, history and great success, is one of the most convincing and inspiring proofs of our whole contention possible. "THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS." "When all the elements of national life work together in harmony for progress, then material prosperity and moral ad- vance are rapid and sure, but when divisions and discord be- tween warring classes of citizens comes in to absorb mental effort, then national decadence and death sets in and when car- ried one step too far, then reform and recovery is impossible." — Henry George. 'These startling words of the humane able student of all social law were penned nearly half a century since; when 6 ADDENDA. Strife and divisions between classes had not attained to half the portentious evils of today. This philosophy of the able economist is but putting the essential teachings of the Carpenter of Nazareth into econo- mics phrase. He declared that "The meek (the altruistic) shall inherit the earth," and that "the strong shall bear the burdens of the weak," which is only another way of saying that all shall work together for common progress or common good and by that means they shall "inherit the earth." And all this is but the unchanging law of democratic economics, as potent and invariable as the law of gravitation. Those who for selfish ends foment class divisions and strife, are more surely and rapidly undermining the foundations of the Bfcpublic, than the maddest anarchists. When old Rome was climbing to a world supremacy, her peasantry all owned their own land and lived in their own homes, and their patriotism made them invincible, but when class divisions and unjust laws had taken their homes and lands and the drift was to the cities and to slavery, all patriotic ambition was destroyed and the nation was ready for the ruthless destroyer. So today the appeal "back to the land" is but the plea to save our Republic already nearing the danger line from the rush to the cities, and the consequent clash of classes and di- vision of interests. Then let us speed the plans to get the people back to the land and make it charming by all that art and science can teach of the most progressive agriculture that is always the most attractive of professions and full of the highest pleas- ures of earth. And why should not the "Science of Society" and all the essential laws of human development and the methods for accellerating the evolution to higher and yet higher degrees of democracy, be taught in all our schools, and all that can be learned of proper, equitable and wasteless distribution of created wealth, be as carefully taught as are the ideals of perfect production or selfish accumulation. AN IRRIGATION CITY FOR SURPLUS LABOR. "The common people are the class most to be considered in the structure of civilization." — Walter H. Page. How may the dangerous divisions and strife between war- ring classes be so hopefully treated as by an effort to build an ADDENDA. "Irrigation City" with its "Industrial Schools and Colleges," its gardens and farms, shops and factories, where all surplus labor can become more than self supporting, and let capital and labor shake hands over the project that will bring peace and unity and co-operation between the now clashing, war- ring interests so dangerous to our public welfare even as the grand old hero Oberlin brought peace, prosperity and a high social order to the ignorant robber bands of the Pyranees. From 93 to 97 our commissioner of labor declared there were from one to three million workers all the time out of their usual employment. The suffering and death, resulting, would be equal to a quite severe war. Had this vast labor power been marshalled for a campaign of construction, as suggested by the practical Secretary, of the Irrigation League, and as it could have been much easier than were the armies of destruction from '61 to '65, it would have built several cities like Chicago, in the irrigation land, with farms and appliances to have made the inhabitants vastly more than self supporting and would have added several BIL- LIONS to the taxable permanent wealth of the nation and would have created a demand for all manufactured goods that would have kept many of the idle shops and factories busy, and capital employed and would have created a home market for products, a thousand times more to be desired than any foreign market, that must be sought after often at cost of war. Shall we allow this monumental folly and wicked waste to be repeated, in the coming depression, or shall the Free Indus- trial School and the CONSTRUCTIVE ARMY be set. at work to show the world a new example, the most striking and helpful of all the CENTURIES? "Democracy means constant social growth." — W. H. Page. THE WORLD WIDE FOLLY. "Peace hath her victories." — Milton. From a profound student of social problems, who with a small party has made the circle of the globe, we get the fol- lowing : "Everywhere we went we were impressed with this thought, IF ONLY all the nations of the earth would give the same earnest study and energy to teaching their people how to live, how to develope their natural resources, and their own best talents, that they now give to war and the prepara- 8 ADDENDA. tions for war, how soon the world would be encircled by a real Millennial epoch of peace and abundant prosperity." Soon might come that dream of poets and prophets, the federation of the whole world in a brotherhood of unity, where the emula- tions should be highest attainments in usefulness, not in the grim powers of destruction. WHY NOT BEGIN IT NOW? WHAT WASTED LABOR POWER COULD DO. "Great waste is both wicked and unscientific." — Parsons. Of all the illogical wastes of our "Insane Civilization" per- haps the worst and most collossal, and least realized is that of the waste of labor power when idle. A few years ago the great city of Chicago was burned to the ground, and something like two hundred million dollars worth of buildings destroyed, and in three or four years it was all replaced, and twice as much more created, by the surplus labor power of the country, while all other productive industry went on unchecked, indeed the rather stimulated and increased by the active demand for products from the well paid labor, whose increased purchasing power was felt in every hamlet in the land. During the last two years, an army of approximately a hundred thousand men have built all the wonderful "Fair City" at St. Louis, which will soon be all torn down and be no increase to the taxable wealth of the nation. THE ARMY OF DISCHARGED LABOR. "A hungry desperate man is of all animals the most dan gerous." Recently we read in the daily press, that an army of nearly or quite seventy-five thousand men have been discharged by the railroads, and other large industries, aside from as many more last autumn, thus cutting them off from any chance to earn an honest living, and wasting a great share of their crea- tive labor power, and making them a danger to society from the very desperateness of their situation. The national treasury has already a fund of over twenty- seven millions in hand with which to build great irrigation works, thus opening a most profitable and permanent way of using the labor power now being wasted in idleness, and if it is used to build an irrigation city, of homes and farms, h ADDENDA. ^ 9 will remain a permanent addition to the taxable wealth of the nation. While if this army of idle labor, now irritated and an- tagonistic, is left to suffer it may very probably destroy vastly more in red riot and revolution than it can replace in many more years of constructive labor. A few years ago our Government without a tithe of this sum on hand or "in sight" called together the largest army the world had ever seen, and taught them the art of destroy- ing men and property, and in a few years they destroyed one or two billions of the accumulated wealth of the country. If then our government, would at once begin to use this sum now in the Treasury, to employ this labor to create some permanent wealth, how much more sane and reasonable than to risk its waste and the danger it will be to the peace of th* country. Truly to build such an irrigation city, we would need many teachers to teach the people skilled gardening and intensive farming, so did the army need thousands of drill masters to teach the art of destroying property and men. We may wel! ask what is all our skill and science, our schools, colleges, churches, and universities for if not to produce a civilization, or social order that shall open the doors of natural opportu- nity, and teach people how to use the bounties of nature and their own powers of hand to create their own living, and thus at the same time create a "balance wheel" for the labor market, to use in a profitable manner the surplus labor not now needed in present production for the market? We call on our educators and captains of industry for an answer. Valuable as has been the lesson taught by the great Fair, of the world's progress in mechanic art, we are profoundl}? impressed with the conviction, that the world impression that could be made by organizing, educating, and employing the army of discharged labor, to build their own city of homes, and to create their own self supporting industries, would have been a thousand fold more important, and would have helped forward the evolution of a higher democratic ideal more than all the great Fairs yet held. In so far as man him- self is above and superior to the machines he makes, even so far is the development of social progress, that shall eliminate the waste of men, above that of the development of progress in purely mechanical achievements. 10 ADDENDA. One of the most important items in mechanic progress has been to prevent all waste in power or material, so the highest achievements in civilization shall be to save all the pitiful waste of men that has heretofore been the bane of all undemocratic civilizations, and we now have attained the time when this great ideal should have its due study and make its first exhibition to the waiting world. "While another man has no land, my title to mine is viti- ated." — Emerson. THE REMEDY FOR CHILD SLAVERY. "No nation can afford to neglect its children." — Horace Mann. The words "Child Slavery" have an intuitive horror to every sensitive mind, and we are sure justly so, but as all healthy growth is step by step, and not from bad to best at once, so we think the working of poor children in our factories may yet be made a means of grace to the poor children of the mountains, by giving them training in garden and schools which they could not have but for the chance to earn some of its. cost. If the children were to be divided into shifts, to work a few hours, and then study or work in the gardens and shops, and thus do what they can without abuse of their growing powers, it would mitigate the crying evil, and gradually open the way to the time when no child shall be allowed to labor for wages till of mature age, as it should be. And in accord with "the growing spirit of the age, the adults should also be divided into shifts and not allowed to work in the air of any factory or shop over eight hours at a time. And then be trained in gardening, mechanics and those arts that will make them self reliant, self respecting, self sup- porting people, who alone are fitted to be the ruling citizens of a Republic. The fact is already well established that in- telligent labor is always of more value even in tending the almost automatic machinery of modern production than un- trained. In some such way as this only can any state escape exe- cration for allowing its children to be destroyed by thousands, to make profits for soulless corporations. If the poor children of the mountains can earn a chance for gaining a wider out- ADDENDA. 11 look, and a training for an independant and intelligent life, by giving a portion of their time, even to the slavish labor and w^ages of the factory system, it may be one step in advance, but to give their whole time as now to the soul and body destroying factory slavery is a paganism, not excelled in at- rocity, by any story of all the past slaveries in the worlds cruel history. If all the states of our country would heed the words ol that able son of the south who says "the children of a state are its most valuable of undeveloped resources and let no greed of gain chain them to a destructive slavery." NERVOUS AMERICANS. "AMBRICANITIS." "The strength of a chain is measured by its weakest link." "A people who have become physically degenerate, will also be morally and mentally decadent." No student of social progress or decline, can learn of thi appalling increase in nervous diseases, and the constantly in creasing number of nervous wrecks, among the American people, with all the attendant suffering, and loss of mental power, without the most pessimistic forebodings for the fu- ture. And it is practically certain that a great share of it comes from our unnatural, unscientific school system, with its high pressure and long continued nerve strain, and almost total neglect of physical exercise and muscle development; while with a proper school system the effect would be the other way, to correct any tendency from other causes towards nerve weakness, and to produce robust bodies, with ample strength of nerve and mental powers for the most strenuous of life's activities. Instead of weakening strong children, a proper educational system should strengthen weak children. The weak and nervous child should come from its sehool period with its nerve strength built up instead of enervated, and in so many cases entirely destroyed. Of this there is ample proof, and our President Roosevelt is one striking example, who a puny boy, was so developed in his school age as to become an athlete, with nerv*e vigor of great endurance. The same is being illustrated in the won- derful school at Haubinda, Germany, where weakling anemic boys are in one year so strengthened as to be able to make 12 ADDENDA. long trips across country, sleeping out of doors in rigorous autumn weather with no detriment, and making as good or better progress in academic studies as pupils in other schools who do no work with their hands. The day for the suggestion that any class of pupils cannot stand the strain of a course of study, in school, college, or university, has gone by, and the day is dawning when the weak and nervous young lady, or boy, will be sent to college or university for the express purpose of building up a robust body, and a vigorous enduring nerve power, while attaining to the very broadest and most complete educational course possible to gain from an institution of learning. "Any study that is not recreative to a growing child, is always injurious." — Dr. Dewey. "I would rather have Illiterates for citizens than Nerve- Wrecks." — Nelson. AN INSANE CIVILIZATION. "The faults and vices of our philosophy and literature, are attributable to the enervated habits of our literary classes." — Em_erson. Recently in an address to a student body, a clergyman of international repute, a man much in demand for commence- ment orations and Chautauqua platforms, declared it as his belief that a course of mental training alone, produced such an abnormal development, such a one sided mental equip- ment as to merit the name of an insanity, and in his opinion so far has this been carried in England and America, that it is correct to speak of our social order as an insane system, with abnormal standards. Surely a most startling proposition to come in all candor from such a source. But who shall deny the charge? It is apparently the only reasonable explanation for all the crudities and absurdities of our civilization, and it is too serious and startling to be pushed aside lightly by our educators, whose patriotism and science as well is thus called in question. MRS. GENERAL LEW WALLACES INDICTMENT. "The mute appeal of neglected children is to you the voice of God."— W. A. Page. The above and the severe indictment of Mrs. Lew Wal- ADDENDA. 13 lace's noted article* is a most severe reflection on our Asso- ciated Educators, and we must repeat and reaffirm her charge. We have seen its truth in all parts of our country, and have heard it approved by many most thoughtful people. We find many teachers who agree to the essential truth of ail her most startling charges, and adniit that no adequate attempt has yet been made to strengthen the weaker children, or guard against injury to nervous ones. And in the name oi our countrys' future, in the name of hundreds of children killed, and the thousands injured, and in the name of the thousands of sufferers, we call upon and beg of our National Educational Association, that this appalling condition be given their most profound and serious consideration. The thought of the world is too much aroused, the importance of the case is too great to be pushed aside with neglect any longer. The success of the school at Haubinda, and the recognized li Described in current 'Tnternational Magazine" by Dr. August Forel, of the University of Zurich, Switzerland.! need of a change has caused other schools to be established in several parts of Europe, and makes it seem that they will likely soon surpass us in this as they have in the number of their other industrial schools. Surely America, that first established the ideal of the common school, and the giving to every child a fundamental education cannot afiford to let the old countries so far surpass her in these types of schools best adapted for the progress towards a higher Democracyj "To talk about education in a democratic country, as less than the free education for EVERY CHILD is a mockery." — W. H. Page. THE , EDUCATORS' RESPONSIBILITY. "To whom much is given, from them much will be required." —Bible. Is it less than a severe reflection on our National Educa- tional Ass'n that such a sweeping and derogatory charge as was that of Mrs. Lew Wallace's arraignment, confirmed as it was by the wide correspondence of Editor Bok, and by the observations of so many people, who have reiterated the charge in all portions of the country, should go on unnoticed and unanswered for all these years? *Iu "Ladies Home Journal." 14 ADDENDA. If it is or was approximately or remotely correct, to charge that our school system is a menace to the health and nerves of the nation's children, a cause of death to many and an irreparable injury to more, and a danger to all, then is it a national disgrace and, danger, for the children of today are the people of the nation's defense of tomorrow. And a charge of an injury, where there should be great bodily as well as mental benefit, is of so startling importance, as im- peratively to demand immediate attention from all who have the educational interests of the nation in their hands. They, of all others, should take immediate measures to repel the serious charge of a murderous system, or take the most heroic steps to change the methods so as to avoid all possibility of doing so serious a wrong to their sacred trust. This nations' life has cost too much, and the hopes of the world are too intensely centered in our welfare, to allow any possible avoidable injury to come to the rising generation of those who must assume the tremendous responsibility of carrying forward the ideals of a " Triumphant Democracy." NORMAL SCHOOL PREPARATION OF TEACHERS. "The proper question at examination should not be, what have you learned from text books, but what have you be- come?" For what activities are you prepared? The able Superintendent of the Washburn School for Boys of Minneapolis, suggested that the first and most important, and possibly the most difficult step in bringing in the new ideal of hand training in schools, would be to get the ideal accepted and adopted in the Normal schools, where the teachers are trained for actual work. For here he thought would be a strong hold of conservatism and conventionality, equal to the average college or university. But we have been much gratified to hear from the head of one normal in the east, who had foreseen the importance and need of this kind of teaching, and has inaugurated working classes, to train teachers in floriculture, gardening and other handicraft lines, and proposes to enlarge along this line as fast as he can get support to do so. In one of the most prominent of southern Normals, we also find still more complete equipment for teaching a variety of handicrafts, and what is best of all the efficient lady head ADDENDA. of this department is a thorough enthusiast over the already, visible benefits of the system — not experiment. We dare opine, that the Normal that does not see the shadow of com- ing events, and prepare to drill teachers in all possible lines of hand culture and particularly some work that touches til- lage of the soil, and the growing of useful or beautiful things, will soon be away behind the times; and their teachers not in demand for the best schools. TEACHERS PREMATURELY BREAK DOWN. "The prosperity o£ the state depends on ALL the people being properly educated." — Gov. Heyward. It is a matter of most common remark that the teachers vocation is one of severe nerve strain, and that many break- down under it at an early age, and thus lose their best years of usefulness. This alone is enough to condemn the system, for of all citizens of the state, the teachers should be the most valued, and what ever cuts their life or activity short is a severe loss to the social organism. The later years of a teachers life should be of most usefulness and would be if conserved by a proper change from mental to physical labor, in their daily work, as it would be in an industrial system of school life. Will our N. E. A. then squarely meet the issue and either show to the world the fallacy of all these charges, or set about seeking a sufficient remedy to satisfy the people who have put such a priceless charge in their hands. THE PEOPLE MUST MAKE THE CHANGE. "All great reforms must come up from the common peo- ple." — Ancient Egyptian Proverb. From a venerable and venerated friend whose thought is always candid and able, comes the suggestion that the re- forms we ask must perforce come from the demand of the people themselves, that what is demanded by the need of the times and the aroused spirit of the world, is so far away from the conventional established ideal, it cannot be wrought out by ' the present professional educators, they have not the power to stem the tide of established custom, but it must be brought about by the united demand of the people and the progressive teachers who have already seen the wrong of the present and 16 ADDENDA. the hope of the better system, whose eyes are open to the coming light, and who see the fundamental need of the time. "The teachers of the old system fool themselves, and misr lead their pupils into the belief that a literary course alone can make SCHOLARS."— W. H. Page. INITIATING SELF-SUPPORTING SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. "Where there is a will, there is a way." — Proverb. "Life without work is guilt, and work without ART is brutality." — Ruskin. So often comes the querie, "What are the first steps to be taken in oganizing a Self-Supporting school or college?'' But from the nature of the case, very definite instructions can- not be given for all the varying conditions, localities and per- sonalities of those essaying the effort. To some teachers and in some places, the first steps along the industrial line will be in gardening and intensive farrning, adding the shops and tools for making the needed things of the school as time and condition may dictate. The ideal way would be for the state or national government to furnish the equipment complete before beginning, and no doubt when the ideal becomes fixed in the minds of the people, this will be done. To some teachers in some places, the first steps will naturally be in some type of "Arts and Crafts" adding the p-ardening and other features later, as has been done by Elbert Hubbard at East Aurora. To our view one of the very fundamentals would be to teach some type of work on the -land, some form of labor on the face of Mother Earth, some touch of the ideal of that wonderful allegory in Genesis, where perfect man is given a "garden to trim and dress" as the best condition for highest moral and mental growth, and towards which all turn as the best remedy for our social ills. To produce its own food is one of the most homelike concepts of such a school. A most valuable and practical suggestion comes from Dr. Triggs of the Chicago University, that for a private school that perforce must be self-supporting, the first steps should be to establish the industrial and economic portion on a pay- ing basis before commencing any distinctly school work. Thir. at least would make it a safe step, but we believe some actual study can be begun at the first, and not interfere with thQ ADDENDA. 7 economic safety or progress at all, by working only eight hours per day, and having evening classes for study, and in this way good progress can be made in the true education that shall distinguish this type of school from that whose only ideal is to memorize so much of text books any way whether of any use or not. If the industrial work is led as it should be in all cases by one who is in the spirit of the school and a competent en- thusiastic teacher, a vast and valuable amount of real mental equipment will be gathered from the oral instruction given in the daily conversation of the teacher, and a love developed for knowing things and all about the sciences related to daily life, which is one of the very best foundations for all educa- tion. Through this means many of the laws of nature and mechanics, and the allied sciences can be imparted, making it one of the most profitable portions of a true education, with- out any use of text books at all. And we know from experi- ence that there are a vast number of young people all the way from 15 to 50 years of age that would spring at the chance to win such an education, and go through such a course, if the hope was opened before them, and who would be willing to work full time the first two years, at any reasonable labor, to get a start that should give them the hope of a completed course. After the first one or two years of full time work, the next 3^ears could be divided according to circumstances, say work- ing each day three or four hours, for four or five days per week, and full time the other one or two days, as found neces- sary to make the cost of all things fully covered by the amount of labor done, having all the time evening classes if desirable, and oral conversational instruction as can be so well given when teachers and pupils work together. It can all be done as soon as there is any enthusiasm for it. From an able and experienced educator comes the sugges- tion that in nearly every village and country school district the work of industrial training can be begun without any new expense or trouble, that there are experts, in varied lines of handicraft who would volunteer to teach a few hours per week or would do some teaching and take payment in the work of the pupils after a few lessons had made them expert enough to be a help worth some consideration. The teachers of woodwork and blacksmithing in an Agri- 18 ADDENDA. cultural College made the statement that the boys who have a natural taste for those trades can gain enough skill in two or three weeks to be able to earn wages as helpers, and rapidly come to be worth more than half as much as journeymen tradesmen. All this line of educational work will grow of its own charm, easier and faster than the memory cramming of text book rules and data. PRIMARY INDUSTRIAL LESSONS IN EVERY SCHOOL DISTRICT. From a most practical and able educator, comes this sug- gestion — which is really but a concrete expression of what is already begun in hundreds of schools where the vision of a better system has already been revealed to teachers of an open mind. "Let but the firm determination come to parents and school authorities alike that this killing high pressure nerve strain shall cease, and at once; this memory cramming from text books be modified by more general and practical instruc- tion, and the school day be cut squarely in two; and it be decreed that hereafter only half of the days time shall be given to text book study ; and at once in a hundred different ways will the way open to the better method of handicraft training, and the study of mechanical principles, and its prac- tice in all the ways at hand. Let gardening and floriculture be begun on vacant lots, or on land rented or donated, and taught by the best experts within reach.. Let wood-working be attempted in varying ways, from whittling from drawings of canes, spoons, profiles of differing types of facial form, and let the carpenters teach the elements of their work, and get help to partly or wholly repay time spent in lessons. The same with other trades and arts. The arts of basket weaving and rug braiding, from rags, corn husks, tough grasses and pine needles. Study out some simple forms of Sloyd with its progressive steps from a simple stick whittled to a square or round, to the perfect hexegon and octagon, and so up to the making of a fancy tabarett, which will be accomplished much sooner than would be ex- pected." The Jack Knife can be made an implement of art culture, equal to the pencil or brush if only directed into making ADDENDA. 19 things of symmetry, instead of the usual inane whittling merely to make shavings. The use of shears and scissors iii cutting silhouettes, birds, profiles, dresses and aprons for dolls, etc. And all this will grow in interest and value as the work goes forward and skill and interest deepens, and all has its great value in mental equipment, and it will sharpen the ability to memorize all needful text book lessons and vastly help to keep discipline and interest in a healthful growth. MORE FOR SCHOOLS AND LESS FOR WAR. "The growth of the war spirit, is a sure sign of moral decadence." The present Japanese war has proven beyond question that the art of destruction, has made even greater progress than the art of invulnerability in making battleships, in vincible as they have seemed. And we now know that the great steel armoured ships, costing so many millions, can be destroyed like an egg shell, in a moment of time by the fearful engines of destruction modern science has enabled us to perfect. And there is every reason to believe this will continue to be more and more so, and that in the near future it will be impossible to make a ship, if it is not already so, that will not be at the mercy ot an alert and active foe, and liable to be shattered and sunk in a moment at any time. In view then of all this and in view of the worse and more destructive, demoralizing effect of cultivating the war spirit among our people — always a degrading influence — how un- speakably foolish and wicked to squander millions of wealth on battle ships, when so many of our poor people are held in the unspeakable thralldom of illiteracy, the worst slavery the mind can conceive. Does any sane mind for one moment believe there could be a particle of danger, if this Republic should at once announce to the world, that we WILL HAVE NO MORE WAR— that from now on we will disarm, and scatter our silly army and navy, and hereafter depend on the worlds court of arbitra- tion to settle all our controversies, if so be we ever have any to settle. And instead of all this worse than wasted effort, announce to the world that we will at once begin to enlarge our schools and colleges, so that EVERY CHILD and adult 20 ADDENDA. too who wishes it, shall not only be taught to read and write, but also shall have a very complete all around training, of hands and head and heart, in all that will make' them the highest type of citizens the world has ever seen, in both in- telligence and efficiency as wealth producers, and people cul- tured in all high ideals of esthetic living. And if we should announce to the world that instead of a portion of our people being taught the arts of destruction, and of killing each other, they shall all be taught more fully than ever before heard of in the annals of the worlds history, in the sciences of Agriculture, and Mechanic arts, also that all our children during the formative period of their whole youth shall be kept under the moulding influence of teachers, with the end and aim always in view of making each and every one of them the highest type of useful citizens possible to develop from their given talents. Does any sane mind doubt that such a step would at once set a new pace for the world's progress, and be the actual means for bringing in that era, so dimly foreseen by the an- cient Seers, when wars shall BE NO MORE. A little more than a century ago we set the world an ex- ample of forming a government with a democratic constitu- tion, and that first radical step has been followed more or less closely by some where near a hundred countries who now have a constitutional government. May we not then hope that every patriot heart will join our cry, and ask that we shall have a still more inclusive de- mand than our Motto and let it be "MORE FOR SCHOOLS AND NAUGHT FOR WAR." ADDENDA. 21 The American League For Industrial Education, The American League for Industrial Education was or- ganized in Chicago on June 20, 1904. And the objects of the organization are set forth as follows in their preamble : 1st. To conduct an educational campaign for an Industrial, public school system which shall include both agricultural and manual training in all public schools, so that children shall be taught to farm as they are now taught in Denmark and France in the public schools. 2d. To promote the establishment of school gardens in connection with all public schools and of public Manual Train- ing schools farms in every county in the United States, and of enough such school farms in the vicinity of all cities to give to every boy an opportunity to learn how to till the soil for a livelihodd, and get his living from the land by his own labor. 3d. To enlist the co-operation of Agricultural, Civic, Com- mercial, Educational, Industrial, Labor, Manufacturing and other cyganizations as well as philanthropic support and leg- islative action in furthering the objects of the League. 4th. To maintain a Press and Literary bureau for the pro- motion of the objects of the League, and the collection and dissemination of information concerning Industrial Educa- tion, including both farm and manual training and to bring before the people of the country, through lectures, and public addresses, and by holding local and national conventions, the advantages, methods and motives of industrial education and the national importance of a public system of industrial schools. Among those who have already consented to act as officers of the League are prominent business men, well known jurists and eminent educators. One of the leading bankers of Chi- cago has consented to act as treasurer. Eventually it is expected that every State in the Union will be represented on the official board. . The objects and purposes of the League have already been endorsed by two large organizations of representative busi- ness men by appropriate resolutions. A very large membership is confidently expected. ADDENTBA. OFFICERS OF THE American League for Industrial Education who have already expressed their willingness to serve 1714 RAILWAY EXCHANGE BUILDING 7 JACKSON BOULEVARD CHICAGO N. O. NELSON, Ch'm Board Trustees E. D. HURLBERT, Treas., GEO. H. MAXWELL Vice-Pres. Merchants Executive Chairman Loan & Trust Co. JEROME H. RAYMOND S. H. COMINGS Gen'l Secretary Corresponding Secretary O. L. TRIGGS, Field Secretary BOARD OF TRUSTEES JANE ADDAMS, Chicago Head Resident Hull House Social Settlement C, O. BORING, Chicago Member Board of Directors The Forward Movement C. B. BOOTHE, New York Chairman of the Board The National Irrigation Association E. B. BUTLER, Chicago' President Board of Trustees Illinois Manual Training School Farm JOHN W. COOK. DkKalb, III. President Northern Illinois State Normal School JOHN PARSON, Chicago Farsou, Leach & Co., Bankers 140 Dearborn Street MILTON GEORGE, Chicago Founder Illinois Manual Training School Farm FRANK H. HALL, AirROKA, III. Superintendent of Institutes Illinois Farmers Institute WILLET M. HAYES, St. Anthony's Park, Minn. Profes'-or of Agriculture University of Minnesota H. D. HEMENWAY, Hartford, Conn. Director Hartford School of Horticulture WILLIAM O. WATERS. Chicago Rector Grace Episcopal Church T. D. HURLEY, Chicago* Pi'esident Visitation and Aid Society THOMAS KANE. Chicago President Winona Assembly Winona, Indiana O. J. KERN, RoCKFORD, III. Superintendeut of Schools Winnebago County, Illinois J. H. KRAUSKOPF, Philadelphia President National Farm School Do^'lestown, Pa. GEORGE McA. MILLER, Glen Ellyn, III. President Ruskin University HERBERT MYRICK, SPt*iNGFiELD, Mass. Editor American Agriculturist and Orange Judd Farmer N. O. NELSON, St. Loui.s, Mo. President N. O. Nelson Mfg. Co, President I^eClaire College JOHN H. PATTERSON, Dayton, Ohio President National Cash Register Company EVERETT SISSON,. Chicago Publisher "The Interior" Director Winona Assembly R. S. TUTHILL, Chicago President Board of Trustees St. Charles Home for Boys ADDNEDA 2S "I like your ideas and fully agree with your plans." Thos. C. Atkeson, Professor Agriculture, W. Va. Unsty. Eductl. Cora., Natl Grange. No o-rowing child should ever be allowed to study at mem- orizing more than two hours at any one time, nor for more than two such terms in any one day. It is too severe a derangement of digestion, and too great a nerve strain. — Dr. Dkwey. "Education is something more than training youth — it is building a new social order." — Dole. "A nation that fails to make the best out of every individ- ual citizen, to the fullest measure of his capacity, must still be accounted barbarous." — Henderson. "No work that cannot be done with pleasure should be done at all." "Genuine art is always the expression of pleas- ure in labor." — Wm. Morris. "I agree to the fullest extent with your grand book, and in all your plans as therein expressed." (Rev.) J. Herman Randall. "Whoever brings universal industrial education to pass will be entitled to the laurel." — Dr. S. G. Smith. "The college may draw too heavily on the intellectual re- sources of the pupil. ... As a result the graduate may come forth bearing a mind disciplined to think, but lacking the power of body or will to use it." — Prest. Thwing, Western Reserve University. ■2i ADDENDA. ENDORSEMENTS. "You are not too radical, I agree with all you have written, and will help along the move all I can." It is the next great step in our civilization." — Dr. W. H. Thomas, and Mrs, Van- dialia Varnum Thomas. "I agree with all your arguments and propositions exactly. Your book should be read by five millions of the best people, and I will help along your League all I can." — N. O. Nelson. "The book has held me like a romance, it is full of virility, and complete argument. I was in favor of Industrial educa- tion before, but did not know the strongest arguments for it." — Mrs. Clara Parish Wright. "You have concentrated a wealth of arguments, and facts most conclusive." — L. A. Damon, Teachers College, Columbia University. "I am thoroughly in accord with all your contentions, the best schools of the future will be on the plan of alternate work and study." — Dr. O. L. Triggs, Chicago University. "Your propositions are perfectly feasible, and should be put into action. If pupils had an organized system for pro- ducing all their own needs, they could do so at no detriment, but to an actual advantange to their academic studies." — (Prof.) A. J. Cook, Pomona College. "Your book is very interesting and suggestive, and should have a wide reading." — Mrs. Virginia C. Meredeth, Minnesota Agricultural College. "It is a great book."^Andrew M. McConnell, Atlanta Al- kahest Lyceum Bureau. "It is just what I have been looking for." — Geo. H. Max- well, editor "Talisman." "Your book looks small, but it is weighty, we have spoiled enough Indians and colored people by false system of educa- tion ; it is a pity to have it go farther, and spoil the Filipinos : success to you in your great work." — (Rev.) Wm. C. Damon. "Too much cannot be said in praise of this unassuming little book, which marks an epoch in educational literature," — Waverly Magazine.