that drawing is a merely "ornamental" study. To "reinvigorate the productive powers of a nation at the very sources of art," by the teaching of drawing, is not a merely ornamental process, but a highly economical one. The report goes on to say:

The South Kensington system, so successfully and skilfully imported into America by Walter Smith, is likely to render as great service to that country as it has already rendered to England herself.

The report objects to our use of the lead pencil in drawing, and recommends practice with the soft crayon point. But, as a matter of fact, we use both hard and soft points to draw with, and so are more catholic in this matter than either the French or the English.

But its conclusion is very significant. It says, if certain suggestions concerning the processes of drawing were adopted, then "Massachusetts would leap at a single bound to a superiority in art instruction in primary education to which the old nations of the European world have hitherto been unable to attain. But, just as they are, the examples of the primary and grammar school work shown at Philadelphia are very satisfactory. When one considers that it represents the fruit of only two years of trial, it must be admitted that such remarkable results have never before been secured in so short a time."1

The works upon which this criticism was made were produced in the public schools of Boston and Massachusetts.

It is refreshing, also, to see that the Boston school committee has not lost its interest in this great question. In its last report, just issued, occurs the following trenchant and incisive statement:

The question of teaching trades in our schools is one of vital importance. If New England would maintain her place as the great industrial centre of the country, she must become to the United States what France is to the rest of Europe: the first in taste, the first in design, the first in skilled workmanship. She must accustom her children from early youth to the use of tools, and give them a thorough training in the rechanic arts.

That, in my humble opinion, is the most important utterance yet made in this country on the subject of technical education. And if every school committee in the United States would adopt the sentiment and act upon its conclusions, the one great obstacle to the industrial development of the country would soon be removed.

Thus far we have been considering education in Massachusetts as bearing upon the occupations of adult life in a most important section of the community.

We admitted in the preliminary argument that public education should also tend to good citizenship, and it will be well to inquire what would be practical education for good citizenship in Massachusetts. Good citizenship includes an intelligent use of the franchise and a ready compliance with the laws promoting social and political order.

Looking again at this classification of occupations in this Massachusetts community of 1,600,000 persons, it will be found that in this body

The italics in this passage are mine.-Walter Smith.

of 316,000 workmen lies the chief danger to social and political order, if danger shall arise.

It is not among those who are employed in trade, agriculture, or the professions, or among the servants of the households, that the State needs to apprehend danger. They are all the servants of the mechanic, by whatever name known, and fear no competition, for they never encounter any, so long as their providers, the mechanics, are in full work and can employ them. But discontent and hatred of capital are apt to lurk among those who have to do skilled work without possessing much skill, and have to compete with the highly trained artisans of Europe without ever having had the opportunity of being qualified for the competition.

A man who cannot earn or command of capital more than a dollar a day, has a much stronger hatred of capital than one who can earn three dollars; and one has but to study the labor question conscientiously to see that the more you increase a man's wage-earning power, by virtue of superior skill and taste, the more you increase his respect for social and political order, and the larger is his stake in the continuance thereof.

So we see that the material, social, and political interests of Massachusetts are centered about her industrial population, and practical education in the State, whether regarded from its bearing upon adult occupation or upon good citizenship, should consist in giving the 300,000 youth of the State an education which should have a strong wage-earning power in industrial occupations. Her commercial, professional, and agricultural occupations have long been provided for in this respect; but until quite recently no particular efforts have been made for the education of her mechanics and artisans in the elements of knowledge which bear directly upon their wage-earning power in adult life.

There are doubtless many among her public men who believe that all industrial education is special in its character and should be given in special schools only, after general education has been completed and the workman has commenced practical life. This is a view which has been held and abandoned by the most skilled nations in Europe, which have learned to see by actual experiment the value of teaching the elements of art and science to all their people, from the first day of school life to the last, in the public schools.

There are others among her public men who are awakening to the fact that the future prosperity of the State depends in no small degree upon the skill and the taste which the next generation of artisans can be made to possess.

This is not an occasion, and the time is insufficient, to dwell upon all the educational, material, and political considerations that are presented in this exhibit. I will only add that no one can study the results displayed in Colonel Wright's admirable report without seeing most conclusively that it is the kind of education given in the public schools of

the State for the next few years that will determine largely her future material, political, and social condition.

I have dwelt upon this practical exhibit in Massachusetts because it seems to me a very instructive one for an educator to study. It gives some excellent material with which to cope with theoretical, sentimental educators on the one hand and narrow minded or ignorant taxpayers on the other.

To the educational essayist, who can see in education only a process of intellectual training, and who loves to dwell on the humanities and all the various aspects of æsthetic culture, and who decries all education that has not for its object the broadening of the intellectual powers of pupils or disciplining their minds, whatever these terms may mean, these statistics speak a practical admonition indeed. They show that an education directed solely for such purposes would be immediately practical to but comparatively few people in the State, while it would be incomplete as a fundamental wage-earning education for the real productive workmen who form so large a part of the adult population.

To the taxpayer, groaning under the expense of the present educational arrangements and blindly advocating a return to the three R's, this exhibit is equally instructive, for it shows him that education to be practical, that is, wage-earning, must be largely industrial; in other words, it must contain certain features for which that which we may call a three-R's power education does not provide at all.

What is true of Massachusetts is true to a greater or less extent of the Eastern, Middle, and of many Western States, and will become more true of every State day by day and year by year. Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are following in precisely the same line of development as Massachusetts, and already their industrial interests are increasing beyond all others; while in Ohio so careful and observant a statesman as General Garfield has pointed out that the State has passed the period of her agricultural development, and her increase in wealth and population is now to be found in her industrial counties.

In this connection I cannot refrain from calling attention to the earnest words of Governor McClellan, of New Jersey, in his recent message, in which he emphasizes the importance of making the public education of the State more industrial in character, to meet the developing wants of the people. Among other things, he says:

It is now universally recognized that industrial drawing, i. e., drawing as applied to the arts and trades, not landscape drawing, is the basis which underlies the vast majority of the pursuits of our people, and that it can be profitably made a part of the course in our public schools. We need technical schools in various parts of the State. For instance, in South Jersey one is required in the interests of the glass-makers of that region; in Paterson they are needed in the interests of the silk and cotton factories and the great machine shops of the city. In Trenton a school is needed immediately for the benefit of the potteries, where boys and girls may be taught modelling, designing, and decorating, as well as the making of pottery itself;

for the potteries of Trenton have now reached a point where they daily suffer from the lack of a sufficient number of skilled employés, and if properly encouraged they will soon develop into one of the largest and most important interests of the country.

I might here suggest to Governor McClellan that, if Trenton cannot find a Flaxman to transform her clay into gold, she can at any rate do what Lambeth has done, establish a school of art under trained masters, and thus educate the workers employed in her potteries; and the State of New Jersey can make this an equal success by requiring drawing to be taught in her public schools to every child, as Massachusetts has done; thus offering an outlet for the talent of every child, creating a market for her manufactures, and making of Trenton the Lambeth and Etruria of the United States.

By availing themselves of the pioneer action of Massachusetts in creating teachers of industrial art, just as Massachusetts availed herself of the same action taken by England, every State in this Union may, any day it chooses, add the elements of industrial education to the instruction given in her public schools.

The United States has not far to seek for a market for her skilled industries when she possesses them. She is her own market, and one that England and France find very profitable. She has only, therefore, to reach forth her hand and take it; but it must be done by her hand, and not by her head alone.

The time may come, though it can come only in the way I have suggested, when the skilled hand of America may go through every land; and that will be a vast improvement upon keeping our unskilled hands in our own pockets, going through our own purses to pay for our want of skill.

I am well aware that, in claiming that public education should be based more than hitherto upon an industrial wage-earning power for the masses, I lay myself open to the criticism of those who hold to certain disciplinary and culture views as main considerations in education. They must, however, admit that at present people are dissatisfied with the education given in the public schools. This is a fact which cannot be ignored; and, if we probe the discontent to the bottom, we shall find it resting on the conviction that the education of to-day does not sufficiently provide for the adult life of all classes; and in pleading for more attention to industrial skill and taste I have only indicated a practical remedy which has been found successful elsewhere. If the advocates of culture above skill have any more likely remedy to propose, the public will be glad to hear it. I yield to no one in advocacy of the broadest possible æsthetic training in public schools, but I hold it to be our first duty to try to fit our youth to maintain themselves when they arrive

at adult age, if need be, by the work of their hands, so as to be prepared for the competition which is pressing harder every day, and thus protect themselves from being superseded by machinery, which is gradually monopolizing all the labor that requires no skill. In face of such developments, the mere ability to read, write, and cipher, and the possession of a thin film of culture education, are no protection to mechanics and are not wage-earning to them in the sense in which these acquirements may be to others. I do not wish to be misunderstood on this point. I believe in the fullest development possible for public education; but I hold that we cannot as sensible men claim the right to-day to put the needs of the mercantile and professional classes before and to the exclusion of the industrial classes.

The interest in industrial education now rising will not die out. It will soon make itself felt in no light manner, and this annual disbursement of $70,000,000 in the Northern States will not be begrudged when the industrial classes see that their needs are recognized as well as those of the mercantile and professional classes.

All that the creators of industrial wealth need and have a right to ask for is as good a preparation for their practical life in the public schools at present existing or to be established as all other classes are getting. To them, culture means a knowledge of living arts, while to others it may mean a knowledge of dead languages; and there is certainly as good a reason for the existence of the first sort of culture as for the second.

As we turn from the contemplation of particular States and survey the conditions surrounding and permeating this broad American life with all its possibilities, we have to note that much of our future weal or woe centres about the profitable employment of the industrial classes. Already they hold no small share of political power, and it is in the nature of things that their numbers should greatly increase. At present they are suffering from broad competition on the one hand and labor saving machinery on the other, and between this upper and nether millstone they are apt in their discontent to look upon capital and upon government as their oppressors.

These are facts which educators, economists, and statesmen cannot afford to ignore. The country is getting older; it is rapidly developing the wants and the tastes of older civilizations; and now, having provided for the education of the laborer, the shopkeeper, the merchant, and the professional man, it is time for us to recognize that the day of the mechanic has come at last, and come to stop.

Having dwelt more fully than perhaps I ought to have done on the general aspect of this question, I wish, in the few moments left to me, to make some suggestions on the second part of my subject: industrial drawing.

The term industrial drawing is used to distinguish it from all fanciful or ornamental education coming under the name of drawing.