tion which promotes it is well placed. Interest in both is essential to a proper understanding of these relations, and the most harmonious working of the two interests can come only through some organized union.

Seventh, we give stimulants to observation in societies for scientific culture and converse. Those who take a part in such societies are able to find in their daily tasks many a bit of information and many a question that stirs to pleasant enthusiasm. How much of good work may be thus accomplished depends upon the effectiveness of the previous method, and the inspiring influence of instructors.

This leads to the eighth particular which is, that much of the labor needs to be under the oversight of competent instructors, whose special science is thus illustrated. No other method seems to embrace so many of the essentials to successful work as this, since the Professor himself can devise, as no one else can, the means of illustration, and the incentives to best accomplishment. Of course, not all the oversight can be given by professors; much must be left to foremen, and even to older students. But the general outline of labor, the details of experiments, the more delicate manipulations, and the inspiriting force of the whole, must come from the professors, themselves enthusiasts in their departments. This alone insures such unity of interest as the objects to be gained require.

I have set forth thus formally the objects to be sought, and methods found desirable here, because each has an importance of its own, and the general subject gains its importance from the sum of these minor interests. All are operative constantly, and the work goes on as each has proper attention from those in authority. Any untested theories, and all minutiæ of detail, which must vary with different men and means, I have sought carefully to avoid.

But this record of observation must be far from complete without a glance at what are always more or less in the way of complete success,

THE DIFFICULTIES.

In the beginning of any such system, and often throughout its progress, its smooth and efficient working is likely to be impeded by want of sufficient knowledge or skill on the part of instructors or foremen. Students are proverbially critical, and any weakness detected in their superior as to information or practical art, is bandied about among the crowd until it assumes extravagant proportions. The same difficulty is felt to a degree in ordinary teaching; but there the points of contact are fewer and the emergencies which expose weakness are less frequent, while the prestige of previous training is greater. When this is outgrown, as it will be to great extent in every individual case, there still remains often a lack of that directive energy without which knowledge and skill are of little avail with others. It often happens that the most skilful and the best informed in practical affairs are least able to instruct and persuade others in the same line of action. To such people it is always so much easier "to do it oneself," that only a keen enthusiasm for instructing others can help them to endure the bungling of a novice long enough to direct him.

So there is needed for such work a somewhat rare talent and accomplishment, which are seldom to be found in our country outside the pale

of active, independent business life. Very few, as yet, are led by philanthropy in this direction, and the salaries of such positions are seldom large enough to attract men of tact and experience. They must grow up with the system.

The students themselves furnish difficulties not slight. The very unwieldliness of large classes makes it impossible to distribute the work to the best effect, or to give the much needed oversight. They will allow their lessons sometimes to invade their labor in such a way as to interfere with attention and efficiency. Some interesting topic of the class-room may be allowed to prevent, instead of encourage, observation and energy. Some, too, are constitutionally or habitually averse to toil, and so, not only fail themselves, but impede others. The gradually increasing prestige of the system makes it attractive to parents whose sons have been brought up in comparative idleness, without any stimulant of necessity. The more of such students there are the more difficult is the task of adjusting the system to its work. It is questioned how far industrial schools ought to be burdened with the task of reforming bad habits, just as it has always been questioned as to other schools. The difficulty is no greater I suppose, in training of this kind than in any other, but it is newer, and as yet is dealt with by less energetic methods. Usually instructors are tried no more by laziness in work hours than in study hours. Our effort has been to make good work and good scholarship stand on equal bases.

But the exigencies of a great institution having so many interests as a college, bring difficulties independent of human weaknesses. I have already hinted at the trouble it is to provide at all times such work, in proper quantities, as meets the demand. Every expedient has to be devised at times for the profitable occupation of all the students during certain definite hours of the day. Skilful planning avails much, but a residuum of friction is to be expected from this source after the best of effort. On the contrary, at other seasons business is pressing, and haste precludes usual care for methods that are essential to instruction. Often it seems necessary to ignore for a time the educational basis and put the best man where he can do the most, rather than get most good. Only constant close attention to this danger can prevent its interference with vital elements in the system.

Between the different departments of education there may be such competition as seriously to mar the work that is meant to illustrate all. The work system is intended to combine, as in real life, the illustrations of many sciences. In ordinary college routine, departments of instruction are slightly dependent upon each other for concessions or favors; here they are much more so, and no court of arbitration is able to adjust without some friction and loss of enthusiasm. A patient forbearance needs to be cultivated on all sides and kept in constant use.

Finally this, like all practical education is costly,-how costly, it is diffi cult to tell. For such instruction there must be a larger corps of instructors, and assistants, and those of no inferior order; a more certain multiplication of buildings, tools, and means of illustration in proportion to numbers; and much more machinery of accounts, records, reports, and plans, than any simply literary college has need of. But very much the

same thing is true of any scientific school, and more even, of schools of arts. From some careful estimate based upon expenditures at the Michigan Agricultural College, I judge that such education costs no more in proportion to the time given to it than any thoroughly scientific training. Its cost is overestimated, because a part of it is found in just such kinds of employment as are usually engaged in for the profit of the business, and we have not yet learned to separate the act of learning from performing, as we have in keeping accounts.

The real test of costliness is in the results. If this system develops more than ordinary power to cope with the world's forces, and is building up a bond of union between learning and labor, that elevates the one and renders more useful the other, its cost is but the profitable investment that civilization makes for its own promotion.

Thus twenty years of experience have settled to many minds the possibility of manual labor as the part of the college curriculum, and some general principles as to its proper objects and methods; there yet remain many differences of opinion as to the grandeur of the results. It is to be hoped that, as difficulty after difficulty is met and overcome, the world will accept this among the many settled means of true culture.

In very hastily transcribing these well-settled opinions, I have had very little opportunity for consulting any of my colleagues upon the subject. I think, however, that the views here presented do not misrepresent the largely prevailing sentiment among officers, alumni, and students. They are submitted for your consideration with the hope that they may be still further sifted, till only the finest of the wheat shall remain.

The Department then adjourned.

Second Day's Proceedings.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15, 1877.

The Department was called to order by the Chairman pro tempore, Dr. BUCHANAN. The first business attended to was the appointment of the Committee on Nomination of Officers, which was overlooked the day before. L. S. THOMPSON, S. R. THOMPSON, and S. H. WHITE, were appointed the committee.

President J. D. RUNKLE, Spoke extemporaneously on

THE RUSSIAN SYSTEM OF MECHANICAL ART EDUCATION, AS APPLIED IN THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY.

[It is regretted that this excellent address illustrated by charts and specimens of students' mechanical work cannot be reproduced. The following meagre report is taken from the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Secretary's notes].

President J. D. RUNKLE was then introduced to the meeting, and began

his remarks given as follows with as much fulness as possible from notes taken during their delivery:

Some of you may have noticed the Russian exhibit of technical education at the Centennial last year. For eight years I had been seeking a solution of the question of manual education, and my mind was therefore in a very receptive state for such ideas. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology we had made the theoretical part of technical education as complete as was possible. We had sent out men well educated in their professions, but in one sense with their hands tied-men designed to be the directors of construction shops, who possessed absolutely nothing of the manual skill required in such construction. We found that the most successful of these engineers were those that went into the shop after leaving the Institute and learned the trade. But for these men to place themselves on a level with apprentices at that stage required great decision of character, such as few possessed. It might be said that they should serve their apprenticeship before going to the Institute. Now there are three periods, in one of which they must do it, if they do it at all—before going to the technical school, while there, or after they leave it. I believe the true place is in the school while pursuing their studies—that the manual instruction part can and should be put into the school course. Not one in twenty-five of those who go into apprenticeship with the idea of going to school afterwards ever go back to the school. Now, if it is possible for a man to get skill of hand without teaching, as he does by apprenticeship, then we as educators ought never to admit that we cannot teach it in the school.

It may be asked what distinguishes the Russian system? It is this: trades are built upon art. Art is fundamental. There are certain general practices underlying construction that we may call arts. Now we may teach these arts with or without teaching the constructions depending upon them. When we teach them without the constructions we abandon the idea of the artisan; we abandon the idea of manufactories. Now the Russian system does this, and teaches the arts just as we teach chemistry, in a laboratory: but previous to 1868 the School of Technology at Moscow followed the apprenticeship system, in which the student learned the art only through the trade.

The following diagram, exhibited during the lecture, shows how visework, as an art, underlies several familiar trades. The second diagram shows some of the natural divisions of vise-work.

Vise-work is important to the workers named below:

In adopting the Russian system at our Institute we fixed upon visework for our first laboratory. We then decided to teach 32 students at a time at 32 benches with 32 vises, just as we teach analytical chemistry in a laboratory. The next thing was to obtain a man who had the requisite skill and then the capacity to work himself over according to these ideas. This was a matter of difficulty, for each would almost invariably ask what trade he was wanted to teach. When the right man was found the idea was developed in his mind by asking him what trades he was master of, and could teach; and when these were all named he was asked what fundamental manual skill was most essential in them all. In this case visework was decided upon. The next thing to be decided upon was the tools, and in our case tools for filing and chipping were selected.

(A case containing these tools used at the Institute was on exhibition during the afternoon. They consisted of a variety of files, chisels, callipers, saw, and hammer).

The next thing we wanted was a series of designs, the working out of which was best calculated to teach the use of these tools.

(A set of these designs was exhibited upon the walls of the room. There were also upon the table a set of drawings of these designs, made by the student himself. These drawings were soiled and blackened, and had actually been used by a student in working out the designs in metal. A case containing completed products corresponding to these drawings, and for each product the corresponding blank from which it was made, was also on exhibition, and the object of much interest. This case contained the actual work of one student during thirty lessons of four hours each, and comprised the following objects with their corresponding blanks: In filing to line, all cast iron: