boys who are not in a position to obtain instruction in trainingschools must have something done for them." This was an unintentional acknowledgment that the manual training-school is out of the reach of the masses, and benefits but a few. The advocates of the manual training system do not stop to think how the children are to be provided for during the extended period of non-production which follows their common-school education.

The parents of these children are not provided with the necessary means for maintaining them until the age of eighteen or nineteen years, but on the contrary are compelled before this time to send them where something can be done to increase the store needed for their support. If a better education is to be given to this class, the night school must supply it in connection with the workshop in the one direction; or, if the philanthropist desires to lend his assistance to support as well as to educate, the money would go farther, and the product, it seems to me, would be a much superior one, if the manual and practical education were left to the workshop in the other.

In carrying out this last scheme, the boy, who has previously received a good common-school education, should be regularly apprenticed for at least four years in an establishment engaged in the special work he expects to follow at the end of the term. Instead, however, of devoting the entire time, as at present, to shop work, but four consecutive days of the week would be spent in this way, and the remaining two in study. In order that a full complement shall be provided for the different establishments throughout the week, the boys for each establishment should be divided into bodies, so as to spend their time alternately there. By this means thirtytwo months would be spent in the shop and sixteen in the school, together with the superior advantage not only of sandwiching the mental labor between plenty of physical exercise, but of frequently having brought before the pupil the practical application of the rules taught in the school, besides his having the almost continual exercise of his hands, and his finding out how to do the varied work.

. The industrial home, with its schools, should be located in the midst of a manufacturing center. The school should be well provided with all the necessary facilities for instruction in subjects bearing upon mechanical engineering, naval and civil architecture, chemistry, electricity, mathematics, and drawing. For boys who are

* Lawrence.

able to live at home, night-schools could be provided in the same institution, taught by another corps of teachers.

Light and popular exercises at fixed periods in a gymnasium attached to the school would lighten the work, as "all work and noplay makes Jack a dull boy." At the end of the session, rewards might be given to those excelling in special branches; marks for regularity of attendance to be included in making up the

average.

It would be a great advantage to our youths if the commonschool education were modified so as to call on all of the faculties of the mind, and not to rely so much on cramming the memory. The eye should be taught early to perceive, and the hand to delineate, the objects around. The knowledge acquired in this way would be real, and of more value to the possessor than all that is abstract in most of the pursuits of life. Let us bend our efforts and lend our assistance to hasten the time "when more of the mechanical branches of our educational institutes shall find their true position, and where the students shall be instructed by example of noble work, rather than by the toy models abounding in confusing complication which they cannot understand, and which are constructed regardless of proportion and meaningless in design, and are pernicious in every sense of the term. Let us hope, if the tide of human progress is sweeping on towards a more useful education, that the day may not be far away when he who knows what to do and how to do it will be regarded as the equal of him who only knows what has been done and who did it." *

The ancients well knew the value of practice in the field, of exercises with conditions as nearly as possible like those in actual warfare, and the development of the physical and moral qualities in their legions. These subjects to-day are receiving more attention in army circles, where the importance of developing them is urged. It is said that "the commander of an army may possess all the genius of a Napoleon for great combinations and far-reaching plans; he may have the talent of a Gustavus for grand tactics, or of a Frederick or a Wellington for quick discernment in action; yet if his troops be deficient in physical and moral qualities, all may fail. It is axiomatic that the quality of the ultimate unit-the man-must vitally affect the character of the work done by the masses." +

"The Egyptian soldiers were inured to the fatigues of war in + Weaver.

* Sweet.

peace by severe and rigorous discipline; likewise the Persian troops were trained by Cyrus, by frequent physical exercises, to be inured to fatigue, and were prepared for real battle by mock engagement."* "The Greeks in turn paid the same attention to developing the physical and moral powers of their soldiers for the fatigue of campaign and for combat; only, with this people, the system was elaborated into laws that became the fundamental principle of the government-the chief end of citizenship was to become a worthy soldier. Such were the laws of Lycurgus; their sole object was to develop the male child into a powerful and skillful soldier. From their earliest infancy no other taste was instilled into them but for arms. To go barefoot, to lie on the bare ground, to be satisfied with little meat and drink, to suffer heat and cold, to be exercised continually in hunting, wrestling, running on foot and horseback, to be inured to blows and wounds, so as to vent neither complaint nor groan, these were the rudiments of the Spartan training.'

"So sensible were the Romans of the imperfection of valor without skill and practice, that in their language the name of an army was borrowed from the word 'exercise."

66

'Military exercises were the important and unremitted object of their discipline. The recruits and young soldiers were constantly trained, both in the morning and evening; nor was age or knowledge allowed to excuse the veterans from daily repetition of what they had carefully learnt." †

"The luxury and voluptuousness of the East filtered into Europe through the conquests of Alexander and of the Romans, sapping first the physical strength of the Greek phalanx, then that of the Roman legion, and leaving the last to be toppled over by the vigorous brute strength of the unorganized, undisciplined hordes of barbarians from the North. All that was noble and worthy of the military art in Europe vanished; progress, civil and military, disappears in the chaos of the Dark Ages.

"The only trained soldiers of this period are to be found in the East. The Saracenic armies that followed the Great Prophet and the caliphs that came after him, forcing Islam on Christian people, were made up of valiant slaves who had been educated to guard the person and accompany the standard of their lord.

"The highest development of this class of troops is had in the Janizaries of the Ottoman Turks." +

* Rollin.

+ Gibbon.

+ Weaver.

The organization was afterwards maintained by levying on the same tribes. "At the age of twelve or fourteen years the most robust youths were taken from their parents, their names enrolled in a book, and from that moment they were clothed, taught, and maintained for the public service. Their bodies were exercised by every labor that could fortify their strength; they learned to wrestle, to leap, to run, to shoot with the bow, and afterwards with the musket. A spirit of submission and temperance, silence, patience, and modesty, pervaded both officers and men.” *

"It is suggested that the manly sports of our day come in, just at this point, to produce a high average man, not a specialist, to supply the deficiency and complete the system. In these sports the average man is the best man; they call upon the mind and body in a soldierly, manly way, for an intensity of effort that cannot be attained, it is believed, in any other form. It is agreed that nothing so serves to develop physical activity, endurance, coolness in excitement, quickness of thought, daring, and other moral traits that spring from the enthusiasm associated with contest of numbers seeking success through combined effort under leadership, with emergencies ever present and always changing. In no other way can battle conditions-physical and moral-be so perfectly simulated." The pre-eminence which practice in the field, as well as physical endurance and moral qualities, gave to the soldiers of ancient times, and made them victorious in battle, while the loss of these qualities allowed them to be readily vanquished by vigorous, undisciplined, brute strength, is an argument, not to neglect, but to pay more attention to practice in the field of labor chosen, and to the development in our youth of all that made the ancients great, for success in the peaceful warfare of trade. Nor is this all; the thousands, of whom but a few can become generals or even captains in this contest, whose services, however, cannot be dispensed with, should be trained as workmen capable of assuming a higher position, taught as men to feel proud of their occupation, encouraged by proper reward and acknowledgment of their skill, shown that patience is requisite to secure the prize, that the genius of both the engineer and workman is the genius of patience, and that “a piece of cobbler's wax that will keep a man fastened to his work chair is the potent thing that the world calls inspiration." ‡

* Trollope.

+ Gibbon.

Weaver.

DISCUSSION.

Mr. S. J. MacFarren.-I should have regretted it exceedingly if this Address had been allowed to pass with the possibility of its being construed by the press, for instance, as the utterance of this Society with reference to the system of manual training which is attempted to be introduced into our public schools, particularly here in this State at this time. Governor Beaver has appointed a committee whose members have visited the industrial and technical schools of Europe, at the head of which committee is Dr. Atherton, President of the Pennsylvania State College, and which has upon it also such men as the President of Girard College. They have prepared a bill on this very subject; and just at this time anything which could be construed by the enemies of manual training into an expression of opinion by this Society adverse to such systems would be particularly unfortunate, and for that reason I am glad to have the opportunity, as one of your newest and smallest members, to say a word on the subject of this proposed reform, which is a most important one, and which engineers, of all people, should appreciate and favor.

The author says that "it would be a great advantage to our youths if the common-school education were modified so as to call on all of the faculties of the mind, and not to rely so much on cramming the memory. The eye should be taught early to perceive and the hand to delineate the objects around." No educated or thoughtful person, or parent who has thought about his own boy's future, would criticise that for instance, it being directly in the line of favoring manual training, as is also this other statement that "the Ancients well knew the value of practice in the field, of exercises with conditions as nearly as possible like those in actual warfare, and the development of the physical and moral qualities in their legions." Those two quotations I mention first because they belong to the ground-work of the argument for the support of manual training in the schools. But we find that the bias of the Address and of the author's own mind is evidently against manual training. For instance, he quotes some one's definition of the object of technical education, which he says is "to give an intelligent knowledge of the sciences and arts which lie at the basis of all industries." He says that is not very clear; I think that is a clear definition; and then he goes on to confound manual training with trade-schools. In fact, this whole Address is based upon