a misapprehension in the mind of its author on the latter point. Manual training is as distinct from trade-schools as our grammarschools are from the commercial colleges, or from the schools of medicine and law which perfect our education later. Manual training is a system of mechanical exercises scientifically calculated for and experimentally adapted to the capacities and faculties of boys of grammar-school age-or high-school age, if I might bring it a little farther; and none of the arguments which are used in this Address against trade-schools apply to it in the slightest degree. A trade-school is a school to prepare a man for some particular trade; it aims to make a bricklayer, or carpenter, or blacksmith, or machinist. Manual training does not attempt anything of the sort. It attempts to give a boy at the most impressible age a moderate insight into the elementary principles and a little experience of the practice which underlie all mechanical construction, and in that sense it is invaluable; and when compared with memorizing lists of money-order post-offices in Central Africa, and pedigrees of the queens of Madagascar before the last revolution, such as our boys are memorizing in the schools of the country, it is a great advance. I believe that manual training is a coming reform of educational methods in our common schools. The author of this Address quotes a naval authority who says that thousands of boys who are "not in a position to obtain instruction must have something done for them." And he says that "this was an unintentional acknowledgment that the manual training school is out of the reach of the masses and benefits but a few." Pennsylvania proposes to bring it in reach of all school children. The advocates of the manual training system," says the Address, "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." But that is precisely what the advocates of manual training do stop to think of. The assertion just quoted applies to our present graded grammarschools exactly NOT to manual training methods. I can count upon the fingers of these two hands the concerns in America-one is represented here in the person of Mr. Morgan, of Alliance, Ohiowhich have anything approaching the old apprenticeship system, as an assistance to American youths to fit themselves for mechanical and industrial pursuits. That specialization of manufactures which have special machinery, and make a special thing, and use comparatively unskilled labor, and teach a man or boy but one

thing out of the many things comprised, results in a "trade." I stand here as an American parent to make a plea for American boys to this representative assembly of American Engineers, which I believe to be a modern and progressive body, and I beg of you that you will not allow any utterance which can be construed as an official opinion of this organization to go out to the country that this society is against manual training in the public schools. I think anybody who has seen, for instance, the Manual Training School of Philadelphia, or the Tulane High School of New Orleans, or the schools organized by private enterprise in St. Louis, Chicago, Toledo, and other cities, will be what I am,-a partisan of manual training in the public schools.

I want to repeat again that this Address is based upon a confusion of ideas between manual training and trade-schools. These are exactly and precisely as distinct as the instruction received in our grammar-schools by the boys in arithmetic is distinct from the exercises of a commercial college. There is no attempt in manual training to make any particular kind of worker of a boy, but there is an attempt to give him experimental and general information as to the principles and materials necessary to all industrial art. Suppose, for instance, a boy is to be subsequently a preacher or doctor, or lawyer or druggist, or a member of any of the so-called professions, leaving out our own profession; in this age of mechanism, when our households are permeated with the ramifications of gas, electrical and other appliances, how can the elementary knowledge of such things be otherwise than good? The idea is carried out in the Address that such instruction would be confined in its benefits solely to those who look forward to a mechanical career. That is entirely incorrect. I challenge any one to name an occupation in which it would not be useful-even housekeeping, or, we will say, the case of a man who is a gentleman of leisure, and who is simply a householder. I challenge any one to name a place where a man can be in after-life in which this elementary education may not and probably will not be of the utmost value to him.

I ought to apologize for speaking on this subject at all in the presence of such leaders in education as Prof. De Volson Wood, for instance; but I was so full of it that I could not keep still.

Prof. J. E. Denton.-I cannot but feel that the remarks of the last speaker do some injustice to Mr. See's ideas. I do not believe that the latter is opposed to manual education so far as it is

really valuable. Like most veteran engineers of successful careers, Mr. See is loth to have the idea prevail that an engineer can practice the profession without taking his shop training in actual shop. He therefore means to call attention to the evil of expecting the manual school wholly to supply what has in the past been solely obtained by working in actual shops. In other words, he would not deny that the manual training was not good as far as it goes, but that schools cannot from their artificial character be expected to take the place of practical shop experience. I thoroughly agree with this idea, and I believe that the time is past when it need be feared that any other view prevails among managers of manual training schools.

It must, however, be noted that there are many lines of livelihood of a technical character in which the instruction in the manual training school is sufficient without supplementing it by the real shop experience which the manager of an iron-works or ship-yard undoubtedly needs in order to practice his particular branch of technical art.

Prof. De Volson Wood.-The fact that I have ventilated myself many times upon this and kindred subjects is sufficient to allow Mr. MacFarren's greater interest and zeal in the matter. Having heard from one representative of our institution, it is not necessary for me to take much time in order to make a point or two. In fact, I had not contemplated saying anything upon the subject. The position of the writer would doubtless have been more readily understood had he discriminated more clearly between the different grades of instruction. The character of instruction is necessarily different for boys under seventeen years of age, who devote most of their time to learning a trade, and those over that age who devote most of their time to study. The most marked recommendation of the author seems to be this: "In carrying out this 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 his term." Now, a school has its definite functions. A school is a place for learning and for giving instruction, and if, as he goes on to say, four days in the week should be employed in manual operations and two in study, then it becomes either a manual training school or a trade-school. Now, in such a school, granting that it were established, instruction should be given in the shop as well as in the school-room.

The author goes on to say: "The school should be provided with all the necessary facilities for instruction on subjects upon mechanical engineering, naval and civil architecture," etc., etc. Upon reading this, I inferred that the plan contemplated the thorough instruction of mechanical engineers. But I see that it is qualified by saying "subjects bearing upon." It will hardly be claimed at the present day with the large amount of literature which exists on mechanics, mechanical construction and mechanical engineering, that a boy who devotes a large portion of his time to manual work can accomplish much in the line of the studies here marked out. It has come to pass that a four-years. course seems too short, not merely for young men who begin at fourteen but for those who begin at eighteen, in order to accomplish what is desired in the schools. It is intimated in the paper, that a young man who is trained in a thorough course of study will not follow the profession, but will turn aside into something else. In other words, that he will not come down to using his hands. Such may or may not be the case. I know of many young men who, after having taken the severest course in our schools, went through all the grades of labor in the shop; they went through more rapidly than the men who had not had a school education. They could accomplish more in the same time. In many cases special arrangements are made with the proprietors, so that they could be advanced as rapidly as their proficiency warranted. It is not necessarily the case that a young man receiving a high education will scorn the manual part.

The fact that some learn the profession entirely after graduation, and others engage in scientific and official labors, is no argument against the higher education. The same facts are true of all professional education. With the exception of those who forsake the profession, it is an argument in favor of such education; for the fact that many are retained in these new relations, and that others maintain themselves in their positions, is an experimental proof that such spheres of action are a desirable part of the social and business organisms of society. The graduate fills a place which the uneducated cannot, and, by coming in contact with business men and managers, creates a demand for the knowledge which he possesses, and which it is the province of the school only to supply.

The schools are the outgrowth of a desire and the necessity. Men having risen to positions of eminence in their profession

without education have desired knowledge, and schools have risen on account of that desire, and so far as they supply that want so far they are a success. If the school cannot give something that the shop cannot, then the school is a failure. The school is a place where sciences are to be learned. A manual training school has a different aim-more particularly that of training the hand. I am certain that this Society looks with favor upon the school, although its members may look upon it with different degrees of favor.

Some may assert that too much time is given to abstract study -that so little use is made, for instance, of higher mathematics that time may be more profitably spent in subjects called practical to the exclusion of such mathematics; but the student knows that many engineering subjects demand a knowledge of higher mathematics in order to investigate them, and it is the province of the school to give him the desired instruction. If not done in the school, it may not be done at all. The literature on engineering is manifold, ramifying all departments of physical science, and he who would attain to a fair knowledge of it must devote to it years of study. This, then, is a plea for the highest grade.

Now for the manual training. One of the greatest difficulties to be overcome in the manual training school at the present time is to secure instructors. There are teachers in our public schools to-day who have a genius for teaching manual training, but they are few in number. I stepped into our public school one day, and I saw on the table a wooden shovel, and another article also of wood. I asked the teacher where he got them. He said he asked the scholars to bring in of their own handiwork these things, and this is the result. Now, that is a very simple illustration of what you will secure in a manual training school, and not every teacher can do it successfully. If manual training is enforced by law, many teachers will put on the air of doing it without the spirit, and it is the spirit that is wanted more than anything else. The law, however, should result in its more rapid development. A few years since great stress was laid upon object-teaching, and justly so. Many teachers without the name had been teaching by objectlessons before it was known as a system. Now this manual training goes back of that, and instead of putting a machine or working device before the pupil, and requiring him to talk about it, the manual trainer requires the boy to make something with his own hands. Knowledge gained in this way will not be vague, but will be defi