almost heretical to think of trade-teaching as existing side by side with so-called educational work, and many of those present today would undoubtedly take the ground that the elements going to make up educational practice cannot have a place in trade instruction. This leads us at once to the distinction between the two methods-trade-teaching on the one hand, and educational training upon the other.

The education we have had in mind, unconsciously perhaps, is such as for the most part has had no real, vital, or intrinsic connection with life, or has played little or no part in the future of the individual. Those of us who have stood for educational training-and this has probably been shown more clearly in the field of manual training than elsewhere in school work—seem almost to believe it a crime to prepare boys to earn their bread and butter. Education has somehow seemed distinct from living, and work having a direct bearing upon the industrial life in its many phases has been kept well away from the boy.

*

The work of the trade school, on the other hand, we have classed as being possessed of a narrowing influence. The pupil of public-school age is of necessity unable to determine his fitness or capacity for special work. He must first get that broadening which comes from a general training, and upon this foundation he may later specialize.

There is, to be sure, much justice in the distinction as drawn, especially when we consider the work of the trade school of the past as contrasted with what it promises to become. What I shall say, then, as to the value and demand for trade schools will not be so much from the standpoint of such schools as now exist, but I shall have in mind a somewhat new type of institution, that would, in my judgment, prove an energizing element in the industrial and social life of the day. * *

*

The trade school is, to my mind, essential, and its numbers, should increase; but just as we must, if you please, industrialize hand-work in schools, so must we educationalize the trade school. What I mean to say is this: The demand for trade schools carries with it the demand for a certain content in curricula for such schools, brought about, in part, by our intricate and intensive industrial system, specialized and organized as it now is. The work must be educationalized by injecting into it the thought element to a greater extent than has formerly been the case. As, in dealing with traditional subjects, thought without action brings partial results only, so in the trade school, action, mechanical work, dissociated from thought, is uneducational, and in that sense not the best trade teaching. In a trade school graduate is demanded more and more not only one who can perform his particular service, but one who can plan and initiate as well; who can see reason in action, and who can, thru wise leadership, guide others successfully to perform allotted tasks. *

In the manual-training school we are finding scores of boys who, by training or by nature, are fitted to enter one or another of the industrial arts

and to engage in some gainful occupation demanding mechanical knowledge and skill. The grammar or high-school work has not given such boys, nor can it do so, the necessary mechanical ability demanded in their work; such, for example, as was gained under the old apprenticeship system. What it has given them is a point of view, a perspective; or it has perhaps merely suggested to them certain lines along which they might successfully specialize. But what shall be done with boys of this class who are financially unable to pursue a three- or four-year highschool course, that they may then enter a technical or engineering school, or that they may have opened to them a drafting room, a machine or pattern shop, or a testing laboratory?

The manual training high school, or polytechnic institution of secondary grade, creditable tho its technique be, will not properly fit these boys for their future work, even should they be financed during their school residence. It is also a question as to how far it is desirable to carry forward the general education of a boy of this character after he has shown peculiar adaptability along certain specific lines. At present but two courses seem open to such boys: they must either drop out of school before finishing the grades (as happens in the large majority of cases), and take up some line of work for which they may not be at all fitted; or they may, perhaps, find an opportunity to enter some shop or factory, or some commercial pursuit, and learn, finally, the practice of only a particular phase of handicraft. They have thus failed utterly to get at that richer purpose of life which underlies the purely mechanical side of industrialism, and which makes it meaningfull, interesting, and uplifting. In many cases, to be sure, financial gain may result, but our standards of success are certainly not to be confined wholly to this field. Besides, it is needless to suggest that the individual made alive to both the theory and practice of his vocation is more likely to succeed than is his neighbor schooled in the latter only.

I have passed over entirely that vast army of boys who, failing to find in the common schools that which is satisfying, or at least not in sufficient quantity or intensity to hold them, and finding no school of trade or mechanical practice open to them, turn to the street. Here at once is the interest caught by industrial life in its many manifestations. The rivers and wharves, with their bustling activity, the loading and unloading of ships and cars, engines and machines in their various services, street work, building construction, and manufacturing-all are engaging at first; but the immature mind, without guidance or suggestion, soon turns to other things. And so are kept full the ranks of the improvident and unemployed-enemies to themselves and a menace to society.

Manufacturers and tradesmen will tell you that it is well-nigh impossible to find those who are competent to occupy positions of prominence and responsibility in their establishments. Such men are no longer

willing to take boys as apprentices, and coach them thru several years; and those who now come to them are, for the most part, only partially capable of following the explicit directions laid down for them. The manual-training school graduate, on the other hand, while possessed of less skill than the boy of the trade, has back of his knowledge of practical things something of the theory underlying it all, and can more readily modify his work to meet present requirements. He can also lay out, suggest, create, initiate, new lines of action, which is the crying need of the time. Neither of these two classes of youth, however, seems to fit exactly the conditions as they are found to exist, or to fulfill the demands made upon them. They are too often misfits.

May not Germany offer us a suggestion as to a possible line of improvement? I have in mind the Fortbildungsschulen, or continuation schools, which are proving one of the most important educational elements in Germany today. There, as in America, it is the favored few only who pass from the elementary into the secondary school. Many boys must of necessity earn their own living at an early age, and are thus forced to enter some gainful pursuit. Time cannot be spared them to further carry on academic education as such, nor is it always possible or desirable to enter a trade school proper. Then, again, many boys, and even men of mature years, already in the trade, avail themselves of both scholastic and practical phases as offered by the continuation school. Permit me to quote Mr. H. Bertram, of Berlin, who writes in December, 1899, as follows:

Amid the developments of civilization among the nations, the idea of the continuation school is making its way with increasing strength. Urgently required by the conditions of social organization, and in its turn acting on them, the new institution appears in many forms. It claims its place side by side with the church and the school.

Among the great number of those who enter early on the practical business of life, to whom the primary school has given only a meager education, there awakens, sooner or later, the desire to share in the stores of knowledge which human intelligence has won, in the insight into the working of the forces of nature which it has acquired and applied to industry, in the arts which ennoble and support human action; in short, to participate in the spiritual treasures which are, as it were, the birthright of those born under a luckier star. This desire, which opens to the diligent the way to material prosperity and inner contentment, seems for society as a whole an important incentive to industrial progress, and turns the discontent of the slaves of machinery into the happiness of men conscious of their own success. The more the old order changes, which held the work-people in the narrow bonds of tradition, the more is customary prescription replaced by education and independent judgment, by insight into existing conditions, by special excellence within a particular sphere. For this reason, the elementary school, however efficient and methodically correct its action may be, cannot suffice for the happiness of the masses, nor for the preservation of society. The instruction must come into close contact with the life of the future citizen, and must be at the command of anyone desirous to learn, as long as he seeks it. But the seeker, born amid such conditions as these, needs guidance. Public libraries, newspapers, magazines, help him the more he pushes forward; but without expert assistance he hardly finds the beginning of the path.

Such is the object of the continuation school.

Exact definition of these schools is difficult. Courses of various kinds are offered, the work being carried on during the weekday evenings and on Sunday mornings. They are in reality supplementary schools. *

While the work of these schools, then, is of a somewhat general character, and for the most part of a theoretical nature, drawing, and, in some instances, shop courses are carried on. When a certain industry predominates in a locality supporting a continuation school, it is only fair to suppose that the work done, general tho it may be, will be colored, to some extent at least, by the demands of such industry. In some instances the classes are arranged according to the various trades followed, as bookbinders, printers, lithographers, bakers, metal workers, workers in wood and stone.

The newly opened Manhattan Trade School for Girls, to which reference has already been made, also offers a suggestion as to what is demanded in the future trade school. It began in November, 1902, with a half-hundred girls in attendance. Today, after eight months' successful work, the attendance has more than doubled, the school being crowded to its utmost capacity, and scores of deserving girls clamoring for admittance are upon the waiting list. Not only is the training of these girls entirely free, but scholarships are also given to help maintain the pupil, and the family perhaps, while the education of the former is going forward; for in many instances such girls are the sole support of one or more members of a family.

Already this school has shown what can be done thru thoro, scientific trade-teaching. The trade is sympathetic and enthusiastic. Girls who before entering the school were receiving three dollars or less per week, with little or no opportunity for advancement, have from time to time. been sent out on probation. In all such instances the employers of these girls ask to be allowed to retain them at salaries ranging from four to five and six dollars per week. The earning power of the girls has thus been increased 100 per cent. in six months, and in many cases advancement is certain. * With increased skill in technique and increased capacity on the quantitative side there comes also the ability to plan and carry forward new lines of work. Nor is this all. The view is broadened; the work becomes less of a burden, and loses its aspects of drudgery; and the individual is led to see her place in, and necessity to, the great social whole. Existence becomes life.

*

It is not necessary to dwell upon the work of any particular institution of the trade class offering training to boys, for with these we are all more or less familiar. * * I would in closing, however, repeat, for the sake of emphasis, my hearty belief in the value of the trade school, as we today have it. Those who are guiding and directing such schools are pointing out numbers of their graduates who are occupying positions of prominence and trust, and who are helping, in their own way, to work out

the problems being thrust upon them. Some of these men rise superior to their surroundings, and despite a lack, in some cases, of a liberal education, make names and places for themselves. Let us, I say, have more of such schools. In addition to these schools I am pleading for a school, call it what you will, that shall be broad in its tendencies and thoro in the instruction offered; a school that shall have as its dominant idea such training in the industries as shall fit the boy to accomplish in the least time the maximum of work; a school that projects into its instruction. thought and reason; a school that shall lead the boy to a more complete knowledge of the industries and of that for which they stand, and that shall help him to appreciate the lives, words, and deeds of his fellows, that they may serve as a stimulus in the enrichment of his own life.

I believe it is practicable and that the time is upon us when the educational trade school is to come and contribute toward the working out of our educational problem; and that this school, while teaching a trade. to those who so desire, will at the same time place within the boy's grasp an appreciation of, and ability to deal with, the most important and essential elements with which life has to do. I believe further that it will help many to become self-supporting, self-respecting citizens, able to rise financially and advance industrially, and to take their places as contributing elements in the great social order.

DISCUSSION

L. D. BURLINGAME, chief draftsman, Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Co., Providence, R. I.—In the papers to which we have just listened we have had two phases of the trade-school question presented. Mr. Chamberlain shows the need of trade schools for those already employed at a trade. He emphasizes the importance of "continuation schools" to give further instruction to those at work during the day. Mr. Higgins, in a well-thought-out plan, aims to train boys that have not been employed so that they will acquire sufficient skill to work at a trade. Each need is real. Mr. Higgins asserts that the present manual training and trade schools are inadequate to produce skilled workmen. My experience leads me to agree with this view, at least as applied to machinists and draftsmen. I believe, however, that our present schools, when properly conducted, give a training that aids a boy to start later in practical work, even tho the start be at the bottom, and to make more rapid progress and progress to a higher point than would otherwise be possible.

When work is specialized as it is today, when the experience of the shopman is often limited to the running of a single machine, the evening trade school can give him needed auxiliary training, without his giving up his employment. Such a school in its day classes can help the man that, reaching a point in his work where he realizes his deficiences, finds means to go back to school. A school for both classes of men should approach problems from the shop side rather than from the technical standpoint, even when dealing with the academic branches; it should adapt its teaching to those that either never have learned or have forgotten school methods. The "continuation school," as outlined by Mr. Chamberlain, can give such instruction to meet the needs of this class of men.

The two ends sought, that a boy obtain a higher education and yet be able to earn a