work is not so great in industrial art as it is in fine art, yet there is a difference, and it is invariably recognized and paid for. It is hardly worth while to continue this argument, because no one can challenge it, and one illustration that is typical of thousands is enough. We must recognize its truth, and the value of its significance to us is determined by the proportion in numbers of our people employed in the manufacturing industries, and the amount of capital invested in them. If we were a purely agricultural people, the loss we suffer from want of industrial skill would not be so great as to be formidable, nor would the danger to our commercial prosperity be so imminent as it is. But we are a manufacturing people, with very heavy interests involved in this question, and these interests can only be preserved and developed by investing them with taste and skill. In other respects our people are highly educated and have refined taste, and will not be satisfied with clumsy and tasteless objects, whether of native or foreign manufacture. We have common sense and refinement enough to want things to look well and wear well, and unless native manufactures can be so made we do not buy them; hence the enormous importations of foreign goods which do satisfy our love of honesty and beauty by their skill and taste. You have only to go into the stores of any large city and inquire where the finest goods come from to find out why a good many native workmen are out of employment. If the present condition of labor is thriftless and unprofitable, what should be done to insure its improvement? We know what other nations have done when suffering from the same cause. The first thing England did was to establish schools of art in the centres of manufactures; but that did little good, for their influence was too limited to improve public taste. The next experiment was to teach drawing in the public schools and train highly skilled teachers of art, and therein was found the true remedy. The public was taught at the right age for learning, in childhood, and the pupils of the public schools, whose taste had been encouraged by regular exercises in drawing, crowded the schools of art in the evenings as soon as their apprenticeships to trades began and practical life commenced. In 1851 there were nineteen schools of art in the United Kingdom; this year there are nearly one thousand schools of art and art classes, and of a much higher standard of success than in 1851, and industrial drawing is now taught in the national schools. What has been done for art by the government and the people is insignificant compared with what has been accomplished in scientific instruction during the last twenty years. The regular teachers of the day schools have qualified themselves to give instruction in art and science, and the national school buildings are used for classes. In consequence there are many thousands of science classes spread like a network all over the country, discovering, developing, and economizing all the native talent of the people. The French are devoting more and more attention to technical education in the public schools, and last year, while I was in Paris, the legislature passed an ordinance appointing seventeen inspectors of drawing for the public schools of the republic. This was entirely a new measure; but it shows how keenly alive the French are concerning the sources of their national prosperity, and how little they feel that they can afford to rest on their laurels. To return from this rather long digression. I could bring before you hundreds of articles exhibiting but trifling values of raw materials, such as iron, wood, clay, glass, and textile fabrics, in contrast with great values from skilled labor put upon them; but I think we shall all agree that the value of manufactured goods depends principally upon the quality and amount of the labor they contain. Now, if we consider for a moment that the number of raw materials and metals for all the industrial occupations is comparatively few and that the cheapness of transportation makes their distribution among nations common, it is evident that the nation which has the most skill and best taste to put upon these raw materials-that is, the one that can fabricate them into the greatest variety of objects, and make them minister to taste as well as to convenience and comfort-holds a decided advantage in all the markets of the world. I do not wish to weary you with statistics on this point. Let me say, however, that last year England exported manufactured goods of the value of about $750,000,000. If we take a safe estimate and say that one half of this amount represented the product of skilled labor, you see at once what an enormous exporter she is of the labor of her people. If you examine the trade of France, you find that she greatly exceeds England as a seller of skilled labor. No one could examine the recent International Exposition at Paris without being struck with amazement at the great wealth these two nations are producing and accumulating by virtue of the skill and taste they are promoting among their peoples. I think it will be evident without argument that the great develop. ment which has taken place in these industrial occupations must affect all the classes who are non-productive, and, therefore, all society. Seeing, therefore, that it is the development principally in the indus trial occupations which constitutes the principal changes now going on in human employments, let me turn from this general view of the subject and ask your attention to a particular exhibit which practically and very completely illustrates the relation of these various classes of labor to each other and their relative importance when considered in the light of education. I invite your attention to the material and political condition of the people in the State of Massachusetts. In this State a very thorough attempt has been made to get accurate statistics bearing upon the social and material condition of the people, and the work has been so well done by the chief of the bureau of statistics, Col. Carroll D. Wright, that it is believed to stand unequalled by any similar statistical inquiry. As these results are important and I shall have occasion to refer to them, I have had them placed conspicuously on this chart, that you may the more readily grasp their import. Observe that in the State of Massachusetts we have a population of about 1,600,000. Our first inquiry was, How do these people get their living? What are their occupations? In this population we have― Employed in government and professions. Employed in trade and transportation.. Employed in domestic and personal service.. Employed in manufacturing and mechanical industries. Employed in agriculture Employed in fisheries.. Employed as laborers (unskilled and unclassified) 29, 730 104, 935 424,289 316, 459 70, 945 6,656 52, 179 300,000 Add to these numbers about 300,000 for the youth of the State, and we have a general picture of how this community is employed and the number of children in the course of preparation for the various occupations of the State. Let us examine this exhibit closely, to see which occupations form the real basis of the State's prosperity. Shall we find this basis in the first division, in the professional employments? Certainly not. These are not employments which add directly to the productivity of the State. Indeed, these occupations could not exist were it not for other employments beneath them. Shall we find this basis in the second, among those engaged in trade and transportation? Here again we have secondary employments, mere distributers of wealth, not producers of it. These occupations all presuppose the existence of others around them. Shall we find this basis in agriculture? Note the small number engaged in this occupation, and as we all know that Massachusetts is not an agricultural State, what she raises in the way of agricultural prod ucts must be of an exceptional character, or must owe its existence to exceptional markets created near by. Agriculture, therefore, is wholly dependent upon the existence of other contiguous occupations. Shall we find this basis of prosperity in this other class of occupa tions, her servants, embracing over 424,000 of her population? Certainly not; for these persons are in no sense producers. They are those who, unfitted for other occupations, drop to the lowest level of personal service. Where, then, do we find the basis of the prosperity of Massachusetts ? Here, with these 316,000 workers in her industrial workshops. They form the principal producers of the wealth of the State. We have just seen that in industrial manufactures there are two elements, raw material and skilled labor. As Massachusetts produces no raw material-save her east wind, which has never yet been utilized in industrial fabrications- it is evident that even her right to an industrial existence rests simply and solely upon her possessing the other element, skilled labor. This exhibit of occupations, therefore, shows us conclusively that Massachusetts is an industrial State solely by virtue of having 316,000 persons possessing certain degrees of skill and taste. If we were to turn to the capital employed, we should find the productive capital principally invested in two ways, in manufacture and in agriculture. An examination would show us that the capital invested in the latter is largely dependent upon the existence of the former for its returns. The figures concerning invested capital are as follows: Capital in industry $593, 000, 000 Capital employed. Annual product. 41,000,000 To sum up the whole situation in a word, Massachusetts exists today as a State by virtue of her manufacturing or industrial interests. As these interests prosper, other interests in the State prosper; as these decline, all other interests in the State decline; so that you have a community based, so far as its material condition and prosperity are concerned, upon its industrial employments, and able to contribute to these employments but the one single element of skilled labor. As we are considering this matter in its relation to practical life, and as the statistics clearly show that Massachusetts holds her position among her sister States by virtue of the labor of 316,000 of her mechanics and artisans, it will be easy to see the important bearing of the public edu cation of the State on their occupations. Be it remembered that it is the work of the hands and brains of these men that holds the other interests of the State together. It is the skill and taste they can infuse into their work, the change they can create in the raw material that capital can bring them, that constitutes the real profit to the capital of the State. Recognizing this through the urgent representation to the legislature of some of her most intelligent mantifacturers, the State passed a law in the year 1870 that drawing, allowed by all to be the common basis of all industrial education, should be taught to all children in the public schools; also, that all citics and towns having more than ten thousand inhabitants should provide classes for free instruction in industrial draw 103 ing, either in day or evening schools, under the direction of the school committees. Here is the act: [Chapter 248, acts of 1870.] SECTION 1. The first section of chapter 38 of the general statutes is hereby amended so as to include drawing among the branches of learning which are by said section required to be taught in the public schools. SEC. 2. Any city or town may, and every city and town having more than ten thousand inhabitants shall, annually make provision for giving free instruction in industrial or mechanical drawing to persons over fifteen years of age, either in day or evening schools, under the direction of the school committee. SEC. 3. This act shall take effect on its passage. This act took effect on May 16, 1870. It empowered any town, whatever might be the extent of its population, to establish such evening classes for industrial drawing, and required twenty-three to do so. Though many difficulties were encountered in carrying out the law, there was an evident desire to obey it, and the difficulty of finding teachers was met by the State in the establishment, in 1873, of a normal art school for the education of teachers of industrial art. In all this action there seems to me to have been the greatest economical sagacity. It imposed on the community the task of having drawing taught, and when the cry came that there were no teachers of the subject, it provided the teachers. And the State of Massachusetts, though it may not be doing in all of its parts what the larger cities in it are doing, will be led in the future, as in the past, by the action of its great centres of population. The school committee of the city of Boston may be said to have taken a national lead in this matter, one that has been watched and commented on by European nations with much interest. Thus, the French commission on the educational system of the United States as shown at the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876, reports as follows: Scarcely six years ago Massachusetts introduced regular instruction in drawing, and the Northern and Western States are rapidly following her lead. If the last Paris Exposition revealed great advances in English industry due to the art movement developed since 1851 by the South Kensington School, what may we not expect from American activity, stimulated by the Philadelphia Exhibition? Everywhere, already, educators are pointing out defects, stimulating emulation, and they find an echo in the teachers of schools, as well as in the employers of labor. France must defend that preeminence in art which has heretofore been unquestioned. She has enormous resources which ought to be developed by well planned primary instruction. With us, as elsewhere, it is not enough to have excellent special teachers of drawing; it is not enough to have good courses and good special schools; but all teachers, male and female, must be able to give the first instruction in drawing in daily classes to all their scholars,1 France, which has gone to work energetically after her misfortunes, ought to devote herself to the study of drawing, with no less ardor, and reinvigorate her productive powers at the very sources of art. I might here say that, in the words italicized, France is advised to do what Massachusetts has been doing for some years, and this testimony from such a source ought to satisfy the theoretical educators who fancy The italics in this passage are mine.-Walter Smith. |