LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, Washington, D. C., February 7, 1893.

SIR: I have the honor to transmit herewith the Eighth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, which report relates entirely to industrial education in its various forms in the United States and foreign countries.

In the act making appropriations for the legislative, executive, and judicial expenses of the government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1891, under the appropriation for this Department, was the following item: "For the investigation of, and report upon, the various industrial school systems, and also technical school systems, of the United States and foreign countries, five thousand dollars." The plans which were adopted for the prosecution of the inquiry, indicated by this special clause in an appropriation act, comprehended a very wide and searching inquiry into the effects of manual training and trade instruction upon the individual, the intention being to ascertain where the graduates of manual training, trade, and technical schools, or those who have received partial courses in such schools, were employed, and from their surroundings and their employers to learn all the facts relative to their economie and moral condition. The schedule which was adopted for the collection of the desired information included inquiries concerning the age of the student workman, the various occupations he had followed, whether he had been trained conjointly by the study of books and the use of tools, his proficiency in the actual use of tools and materials relative to the proficiency of other workmen, whether he attained an average degree of skill and efficiency in the use of tools quicker than those who had not had manual or trade training, whether he had acquired greater economy in the use of materials than others, whether he is more proficient in the things that indicate mental cultivation-such as methods of work, planning, arranging, etc., his promise of becoming a more intelligent workman than those not receiving special training, his moral qualities relative to the average workman, his faculty for managing men, his interest in the welfare of the

establishment, whether he received greater compensation than that given to persons not coming from the technical schools, and various other general facts which would go to indicate the exact results of manual and trade training. The plan was to make this report the result of original inquiry, and it was expected that under the general powers of the Department, as outlined in its organic law, the investigation could be carried beyond the cost stated in the act quoted. Under a former ruling of the accounting officers of the treasury department, this expectation was justified. But after the work was well under way a new ruling was made (and I believe a proper one), which limited the Department in this particular investigation to the sum of $5,000. Originally, the intention was to give most prominence to the chapters on manual training in conjunction with book work, the kindergarten in relation to manual training, manual training and trade instruction in reformatories, and the effect of industrial education upon individuals as shown by special investigation. All these subjects were to have been the result of original inquiry, and the material drawn from other sources was to have been subordinated to the Department's own efforts. The treasury ruling referred to made a reversal of this plan necessary. The chapters relating to the present status of industrial education in this and other countries have been made most prominent, and those giving the results of original inquiry the least so, although perhaps the more important part of this report. The chapters on the present condition of industrial education, while they are to a considerable extent the results of careful compilation, could not have been made as comprehensive as they are without the original work of the experts of the Department. In making the general chapters only the most trustworthy information has been accepted. This change of the plans of the Department results in a report which may appear in some respects to duplicate matter published by the bureau of education under the title of Industrial and Manual Training in Public Schools in the United States, being Part II of the work on Art and Industry. This exhaustive volume, prepared by Dr. Isaac Edwards Clarke, of the bureau of education, comes to me after this report is ready for the press. A careful examination of it shows that the two reports practically sup plement each other, and that they do not to any considerable extent cover similar lines. The report of the bureau of education enters more largely into historical matter and into the theory of industrial education from the standpoint of the teacher. Our own, so far as the chapters

on education in the United States and foreign countries are concerned, gives condensed statements of the exact status of different institutions for manual training and industrial instruction, while, of course, the original matter in the other chapters is not canvassed at all in the document just published by the bureau of education. Where the reports tonch most closely is in what each has to say concerning what has actually been done in some American cities. Otherwise, as stated, the reports are supplemental each to the other, and the fact that they reach widely different constituencies renders the little duplication occurring of no practical importance.

In its original work the Department has been fortunate in securing the assistance of men not generally employed by it. Through the kindness of the honorable secretary of war, the Department was able to avail itself of the services of Lieut. Henry T. Allen, second United States cavalry, military attaché of the United States legation at Saint Petersburg, and the services of Mr. Charles W. Hills, of the quartermaster general's départment. Through the courtesy of the honorable secretary of the treasury, Mr. J. Fred. Meyers, a gentleman thoroughly acquainted with the German language and Germany, and greatly interested in the cause of industrial education, gave his services to the Department in connection with our inquiries in Germany. Dr. Henry H. Belfield, the director of the Chicago Manual Training School, was of great service to the Department in ascertaining the results of manual training in connection with book work. Dr. Homer T. Fuller, of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, contributed important material in explanation of the so-called Russian method of manual training. Dr. Azel Ames, jr., of Boston, temporarily residing in London, furnished the Department with a valuable preliminary report on industrial education in Great Britain, which greatly assisted our experts in prosecuting their special inquiries. Mr. John Koren, a gentleman thoroughly conversant with the Scandinavian languages and familiar with the habits. and customs of the people of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, rendered efficient service in the Department's inquiries in those countries. valuable services of all these gentlemen were secured at a minimum cost through their patriotic endeavor to assist in so important an inquiry as that relating to industrial education. Their labors were supplemented by various members of the regular force of the Department.

The

The tabulations have been carried out under the direction of the chief clerk, Mr. Oren W. Weaver, and by Mr. G. Wallace W. Hanger,

of this Department, who has general charge of the tabulating force. To these gentlemen and the members of the force assisting in the production of this report, I am under great obligation. Especially do I wish to thank Dr. William H. Rand, of this office, who has had special charge of the compilation of all material not resulting from the original work of the Department, aud Mr. Charles H. Verrill, who has been engaged in the revision of the report. I am also under special obligation to Hon. Horace G. Wadlin, chief of the bureau of statistics of labor of Massachusetts.

In addition to this regular annual report of the Department there have been prepared two special reports, one relating to the compulsory insurance laws of Germany and the other to the Gothenburg system of liquor traffic, while an investigation relating to the housing of labor in different countries is in prosecution. A portion of the force has also been engaged upon the collection of data relative to the phosphate industry of the United States, in accordance with a resolution of the Senate. Much time has also been occupied in completing and perfecting the Department's share in the work of the Senate committee on finance, especially in relation to wholesale prices and wages for the period from 1840 to 1891, inclusive, and for the supplementary period including October 1892. This report of the Senate finance committee, contemporaneous with this annual report of the Department, is an exceedingly important one, giving as it does the rates of wages paid in leading industries for the long period named. All these rates of wages, in accordance with the general practice of this Department, have been collected from the actual payrolls, and not from statements made to the Department. Access has been obtained in nearly all cases to the payrolls themselves, and transcriptions made therefrom for use in tabulation and in classification. The collection of data, therefore, is most trustworthy in following the rates of wages from 1840 down to the present time. The Department also prepared for the committee on interstate and foreign commerce of the House of Representatives a compilation of the labor laws of the various states and territories and the District of Columbia, which compilation accompanied a report submitted by Hon. John J. O'Neill, of that committee, July 20, 1892, and has since been printed. It is a work of about six hundred pages, giving quite in extenso the specific labor laws of all the states that had been enacted up to and including the legislative sessions of the different states for the year 1890-'91.