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PAGAN vs. CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATIONS.
BV
S. H. COMINGS.
3. DEFT.
MOTTO: . FOB SCHOOLS, AND LESS FOB WAR'
PAGAN VS. CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATIONS
ATIONAL LIFE AND PERMANENCE DEPENDENT ON REFORM IN EDUCATION
A PLEA FOR
UNIVERSAL INDUSTRIAL TRAINING ON A SELF- SUPPORTING BASIS
BY S. H. Comings
•IOFE, ALA.
lings Bonncy
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
KERR & COMPANY 66 Fifth Avenue. Chicago
-
MOTTO: "MORE FOB SCHOOLS, AND LESS FOR WAR."
PAGAN VS. CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATIONS
NATIONAL LIFE AND PERMANENCE DEPENDENT ON REFORM IN EDUCATION
A PLEA FOR
FREE UNIVERSAL INDUSTRIAL TRAINING ON A SELF- SUPPORTING BASIS
BY S. H. Comings
FAIRHOPE, ALA.
Edited and Revised by Lydia J. Newcomb-Comings Introduction by Hon. C. C. Bonney
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 56 Fifth Avenue, Chicago
Li*.
JOHN l». HtoaiNS dflffga^r l»«-1«a OLARK «T. P8INTER, BINDER^^Baffi^^ CHICAGO, ILtlNOI*
DEDICATED
To aU who would see the SUPREME AMBITION of our civiliza- tion TURNED from the effort to develop THINGS, to the develop- ment of the highest possible average type of MANHOOD and WOMANHOOD, and to all who would see LABOR spiritualized, and man's CREATIVE ATTRIBUTE changed from the ideal of DEGRADATION, to that of COMMUNION with each other, and with the INFINITE.
FOR THE CUTS IN THIS VOLUME WE ARE INDEBTED TO THE COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL CASH REGISTER CO., WHOSE PRESIDENT, J.H. PATTERSON, IS AN ABLE, ENTHUSIASTIC PIONEER IN INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.
28;
CONTENTS
PAGE.
FRONTISPIECE —
Ideal Plot for Summer Garden School
INTRODUCTION —
By Hon. Chas. C. Bonney 9
PHILOSOPHY—
Accelerated Evolutionary Progress n
FOREWORD —
Need of Radical Reform — Spencer's Arraignment — To Pre- pare for a Higher Social Order 13
PART I.
PAGAN vs. CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATIONS—
National Growth or Decay Dependent on Educational Meth- ods— The Old Pagans — Christ's Social Order — Renewal of
Pagan Ideals 19
PAGANISM STILL DOMINANT—
Crosby's Philosophy — Military Vanity — Disbanding Army and
Navy 23
FROEBEL'S IDEALS AND PHILOSOPHY —
Man a Creator — Hughes' Analysis — Varying Types of Play —
Froebel vs. Pestalozzi — A Seer of Collectivism 24
FROEBEL'S PLANS FOR SMALL SCHOOLS —
Handicraft Practice — Nature Studies — Study of Mechanics Not
a Waste of Time 28
MATERIALS FOR MECHANICAL STUDY—
Evolution of the School Seat 31
METHODS WITH FEEBLE MINDED —
Learning From Touch — Stupid Colored Boy — Morals Im- proved by Mechanics 31
THE UNFORTUNATE RACES —
The Law of Imitation— St. Paul's Theological Seminary . . 34 TEACHERS' RESPONSIBILITY—
Violating Froebel's Philosophy — Conservatives of Conservatism 35 F.XAMPLES AND PRECEDENTS — SUMMER GARDEN SCHOOLS ( IKM-STRATED) —
Village Boy "Toughs" — Sabbath Lessons — Science Teaching —
Increased Price of Lots 37
5
0 CONTENTS.
SELF-GOVERNMENT — PAGE.
Holland's Theory — Forward Movement 40
GEORGE JUNIOUR REPUBLIC —
"Nothing Without Labor" — Truant Schools — A Teacher's Per- sonal Example 40
PRIMARY INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS —
Striking Effect of Industrial Lessons 41
CITY, SUBURBAN AND CONCENTRATED COUNTRY SCHOOLS—
Taking City Children to Suburbs — Slum Conditions ... 42 AGRICULTURAL TRAINING —
Prof. Hayes' Plans — Prof. Harvey's Report — Agricultural Schools in Europe — County Schools in Different States — Bellamy's Indictment, Lack of Science and System — The Old Feudalism — President Patterson's Ideal — Fifty Years of Agita- tion for the Common School — Effects of Agricultural Study — No Taint of a Labor Caste in Scientific Agriculture ... 43
ELEVATION OF RACES—
Purely Literary Schools a Failure — Hampton and Tuskegee —
Aspiration and Ambition a Hopeful Indication .... 47 DRIFTING INTO Two CLASSES —
Working to Merit Recognition vs. Demanding It — A Colored State or Republic — Prejudice Against Northern Supported
Schools — Colored Preachers 50
TEACHING BY EXAMPLE —
Teachers Should Exemplify Pride in Skilled Labor .... 51 PREVENTION OF CRIME—
Enormous Cost of Crime — Six Hundred Millions — In the North,
Slums; in the South, Illiteracy 52
THE SLOW AND UNPRECOCIOUS —
Many Geniuses Lost to the World — A Higher Average of
Citizenship 53
ELEVATING LABOR vs. DEGRADING DRUDGERY —
"To Work or, to Be Worked"— William Morris' Ideal— Shorter
Hours — Religion of Democracy 54
PART II.
EQUIPMENTS vs. ENDOWMENTS —
Seventy Millions for Higher Education of the Few — Need of More Democratic Education — Two Hundred Thousand Equipment Better Than a Million Endowment — Moral
CONTENTS. ^ /
PAGE.
Stigma — Union of Culture and Skill — Smaller Colleges Strug- gle for Lack of Income — Americanism to Conquer the World — Ideas Penetrate Deeper Than Shot — "Triumphant Democ- racy"— Every Child a Full College Course 57
THE PROPHETIC SPIRIT YET LIVES—
Men Simultaneously Whittling Models for Inventions — Col. Daniels' Work — Essentials in a Scientific Civilization ... 61
CAN COLLEGES BE MADE SELF-SUPPORTING —
Chimerical but Only Incidental— "Literary Aristocracy"— "En- tirely Practical" — Retail Prices vs. Labor Cost — Individual Examples — Enough Difficulties to Arouse Enthusiasm — Men- tal Concepts Precede Accomplishments — The Equipment — First Years vs. Later Years — Booker Washington's Doubts — His Work — Other Schools — The True System 62
DOMESTIC SCIENCE AND SERVICE —
Perplexing Problem — The American Spirit — Home Making an Art — "Born to Serve" — Lower Caste Degrading — Spirit of Slavery — Lady of Aristocratic Endowments 72
SELF-SUPPORT THE BEST EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM —
The Creative Talent Best — Incentive to Best Effort — Per- sonal Adaptations — Formative Relations — Scientific Christian Democracy — Beginning Life in School — Col. Parker's Ideal — Dr. Smith's Plea — Froebel's Philosophy — Spencer's Indict- ment of Misuse of School — The Main Purpose to Make Superior People 75
HAND TRAINING AIDS MENTAL. DEVELOPMENT —
A Moral Advance — A Better Fitting for Professional Life — Educators With Mechanic Trades — The Early Common Schools — Preventing a "Labor Caste" — A Moral Taint — All Around Ability — Women's Needs — Creative Labor Man's
Highest Attribute 77
iiAi.s OF AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM—
Complete Outfit for Production — Teachers With Pride in Handicraft Skill— Free to All . .' 81
SUMMARY —
Condensed Recapitulation 82
PIIILISTINIA —
Pungent Paragraphs— Race of Pigmies— Pupils of Over Fifteen Self Supporting — John Ruskin's Words — Wm. Morris — Cur- riculum of Doing — Education Never Complete — Walls of Old- Time Colleges Crumbling 84
APPENDIX
PAGE.
PAPER BEFORE MINNESOTA EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION — PRELUDE BY EDITOR HERBERT —
Mental Gymnastics — Going Back to Three R's — "Dwarfing, Soul-benumbing, Body-enfeebling Process" — Time and Vital- ity Wasted — World Cannot Be Turned Backwards — Better Day Coming 87
FREE SYSTEM OF INDUSTRIAL COLLEGES— THE HOPE OF THE REPUBLIC— Isaiah the Sociologist — Man More Precious Than Gold — No Morality Without Labor — A New Order of People — Any Truth-seeking Committee Can Be Satisfied — No Bread-and- Butter Question in School— Col. Parker's Ideal— Man's Endowment — Moses the First Labor Leader — Forty Years' Preparation as Farmer — Exemplar of Divine Human Life a Carpenter — This- Republic to Be Destroyed by Vandals From Within — Bishop Potter's Deduction — Mental Culture Valuable for Wealth Production — Schools Great Industrial Centers — Every County Have an Industrial College — A Higher Civil- ization Coming 89
ADDRESS OF COL. EDWARD DANIELS BEFORE NEBRASKA LEGISLATURE —
Most Trades Crowded With Botches — Technical Ignorance
Assaults Life — Submit the Plans to the People — Sciences
That Relate to Life— Skilful Labor a Play— Love of Work
Natural — Returns a Thousand Fold 97
TEXT OF BILLS IN CONGRESS —
Endorsements of Eminent Men ...*....,.. 100
PLEA FOR NATIONAL LEAGUE —
Action Only Waiting Organized Effort — Twice as Much Government Aid as for War — Teachers Who Wish to Dis- tinguish Their Career 103
WILL You HELP?
Those Willing to Help the Movement 107
ADVERTISEMENT —
Teachers Wanted for Industrial School South 108
8
ADDENDA.
. OK LABOR" —
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
CIVIL I/ATION IN HATTI —
Mistaken Idea of Facts in the Case — Wrong Methods of Edu- cation — No Knowledge of Industry ........
1 UK PITIFUL PHILLIPENO FARCE —
(iovernment Teachers Improperly TaHght — Not Posted in First Steps in Civilization — Imparting False Pride .....
CONTRAST IN JAMAICA —
Freedmen Taught Principles of Agriculture — A Steady Progress — No Infamous Crimes ............
ANGLO-SAXON RACE PRIDE —
We Need Not Be Too Arrogant — Our Way Has Been a Slow and Cruel Way Upward— Not Too Good Yet— English Pa- ganism — Our Own .............
Tin: (iKKAT OHERLIXS EXAMPLE —
•.blished an Agricultural School as First Step to Reform Robber People — Greatest Success in History ..... 5
"Tun LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS" —
Warring Classes and National IX-cay — Working Together for Common Good, Progress Swift and Sure — The Teachings of the Xazarine in Economic Phrase ........ 5
AN IRRIGATION CITY—
Suggestions of A try <>f Irrigation League— Labor and
Capital May Find Peace ............ 6
"I" HE WORLD WIDE FOLLY —
All the Nations Squandering Effort on War, Enough to Make the People All Well Off ............ 7
WHAT WASTED LAIU.K COULD Do —
The Worst Waste-Labor Power— Chicago Built by Surplus Labor— The Fair City ........ 8
ADDENDA — INDEX CONTINUED.
THE ARMY OF DISCHARGED LABOR —
Cut Off From Any Chance to Earn an Honest Living — Desper- ate and Dangerous — Could Build Several Cities Like Chicago — Army of Destruction 8
THE REMEDY FOR CHILD SLAVERY —
No State Can Afford to Destroy Its Children 10
NERVOUS AMERICANS —
Appalling Increase in Nervous Diseases — President Roosevelt — Schools Should Strengthen Nevrous Children . . n
AN INSANE CIVILIZATION —
Abnormal Development an Equivalent to Insanity .... 12
MRS. LEW WALLACE'S INDICTMENT —
Severe Reflections on Our Educators — Must Not Be Pushed Aside — Charge Reaffirmed — Great School at Haubinda . . 13
TEACHER'S RESPONSIBILITY —
The Sweeping Charge of Mrs. Lew Wallace — Educators Guilty - This Nation Too Precious to be Injured by Wrong Methods of Education . . 13
NORMAL SCHOOLS —
Superintendent Washburn Home — Teachers Cannot Change
System — Too Conservative 14
TEACHERS PREMATURELY BREAK DOWN —
Fault of the System— Will N. E. A. Meet the Issue? . . . 15
PEOPLE MUST MAKE THE CHANGE —
All Reforms Must Come Up from the People 15
INITIATING SELF-SUPPORTING SCHOOLS —
Mow Can It I'.e Done? — Differing Ways — Dr. Trigg's Sugges- tion— Great Many Who Want the Chance 16
PRIMARY INDUSTRIAL LESSONS IN EVERY SCHOOL —
Make the Determination First iS
"\IORK FOR SCHOOLS AND LESS FOR WAR" —
War Spirit Sign of Decadent Morals— All 1'iatlU'ships Can Easily !'><• I V.stroyed — Better Educate the I'eople — Every Child an .All -Round Training TQ
INTRODUCTION.
I approve in the strongest terms your proposal to add to the American system of education a department of Industrial Schools, and I would extend this department to the entire system.
The hand and brain should be educated in close companionship, and no class of the students should be denied the inspiring luxury and benefit of appropriate tool using.
I have no doubt that a well conducted department of Industrial Education would prove MORE THAN SELF SUPPORTING, but if otherwise, the needful expense should be cheerfully provided as demanded by every just consideration.
The marvelous success of the early public school system of the Eastern and Middle states was largely due to the fact that the learners' time was fairly well divided between the SCHOOL, the SHOP, and the FARM. The concurrent education of the hand does not hinder, but greatly HELPS THE CULTURE OF THE BRAIN.
I believe we are on the eve of great improvements in the whole system of education, and that one of the foremost of these improve- ments will be FREE INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.
Sincerely yours,
Ciias. C. Bonney.
We extract the above, a most fitting introduction, from the last kindly letter, received a few months before the death of the great souled man, whom we dare presume to call one of the pleasantest and most profitable friends of a lifetime; a man who had attained to the highest aristocracy of character while retaining the most democratic sympathy and deepest interest in all that tended to uplift humanity. A former educator himself, he was keenly alive to plans for progress along all lines that shall prepare the people for a higher social order.
His last great work was originating, presiding over and being the moving spirit of the famed World's Congress in '93, at the great Exposi- tion in Chicago, a work that set a new pace for the growth of the ideals of human unity, and his elaborate history of that wonderful school of progress is a gospel of highest interest to the race. S. H. C.
PHILOSOPHY.
"The man is tho't a knave or fool,
Or bigot, plotting crime Who for advancement of his race Is wiser than his time. ' '
The old idea of human progress was that only by slow and almost imperceptible steps can civilization evolve to its highest forms, or the inherent evils of human nature be overcome and u highly civilized society be developed from the rudeness of barbaric ages. Today science has so revolutionized most of our early concepts that we find many of the things we have known for a long time are NOT so.
The science of society and of human progress are now well enough known — though only very imperfectly as yet — to warrant us in the statement that the evolutionary progress in social growth can be, and has been most tremendously accelerated by well known means. It has been so visibly hastened through the influence of the common school system — aided by the mechanical and industrial training of frontier necessities — that greater progress \\-a- made in two generations after its adoption than for ten centuries before.
The times demanded the common school ! Today the times demand another equally important step, to accelerate the evolu- tion of social progress, to prevent decadence, and keep up with mechanical progress, — the people need a deeper, broader, more complete education, made universal. To decree today that every child shall go through college — an industrial college — and as much more as they may choose, is not as radical or difficult a step as was the decree of the common school by our fathers, and it will accelerate social advance and the development of character fully as much as that did, and, relatively, will not cost a< much effort.
1 1
12 PHILOSOPHY.
From the data we now have, there can be no question but the dominant race can be, by well known means, so elevated, so freed from tendency to crime and degeneracy, so exalted morally, so increased in industrial efficiency, so raised in average intelli- gence, as within a very few generations for all to be fully equal to the very best of the present citizens that could be selected, while the geniuses and superiors would tower to unheard-of heights of moral and intellectual worth, a progress that is now only thought of as the product of centuries of slow, continuous growth.
While the unfortunate colored race can under proper condi- tions, which have now been well tested and have led a portion to such striking and marked advance in the forty years of freedom, be raised to a very fair degree of civilization, with their superiors attaining to high positions in social growth in a comparatively short period.
This is the somewhat ambitious "PHILOSOPHY" of this little volume.
FOREWORD,
Industrial Education for All.
"The glory of thinking is in work, and the dignity of work
is in thinking."
—Ferguson.
No proposition will meet with more general approval than that our whole educational system needs a radical reform or total revolution.
Herbert Spencer wrote his noted essay on "Education" mainly for the purpose of giving the English system a scathing con- demnation. Our system has been copied from the English with but trifling, if any, improvement.
Spencer declares that in accord with biological science each individual should be educated and developed along the same lines that the race has been developed, and we know in the evolution of the race that the hands have always been trained before the head.
The prophet Frocbel, who saw more perfectly than any other the whole philosophy of mental development, would begin with the hands in the Kindergarten, and continue this hand training through the entire course of study, teaching the hands the use of tools, and the head mechanic arts in advance of literary training. We have only touched the first step in his scientific plan in adopting the Kindergarten, totally neglecting the last and best of his full ideal.
The paii':m ideal was to despise labor: the Christian civiliza- tion professes to exalt creative labor; but so tainted are our social standards that we only partially accept this ideal, and our schools, from the highest to the lowest, tend, as Spencer said of the Knglish system, away from labor, and to produce the mental concept of a labor caste, as immoral as it is unscientific.
14 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FOR ALL.(
It is a radical charge for present-day educators to accept that their own education was wrong in method and defective in extent, and that their present work is really a failure and unworthy this scientific age, no matter how successful they may be in getting pupils to recite lessons from text books. Yet there can be no question of the justice of this charge, and from many of our most progressive educators and thinkers come sweeping denunciations of the present system, but with no accord as to the remedy. It can be found only in a system of Industrial Schools, giving to every child in the nation a complete training.
Memory -cramming and hand-neglecting has had its day ; the teachers who have neither skill nor tact in handicraft, nor knowledge of mechanics, will be pushed aside by those who have developed a power and a pride in what they can do with their hands, as well as in purely mental achievements.
An eminent educator has recently declared that the training of the hands appears to have an almost miraculous power to bring out mental activity, develop character, and elevate the morals. Another admits that our universal education in the common schools has proven a partial failure — has not been the complete success expected (what wonder, when such paganish methods have been followed). And yet its inception was a wonderful upward step, and it set a new pace -for the world's progress, and only needs to be made into a more correct system to be all and more than the most sanguine could expect.
Another educator, equally prominent, declares that our whole school system "is top-heavy and impractical, not based upon proper foundations, and will soon topple over from its own weight."* A prominent literary lady declares that our common
*When this severe arraignment of our educational system was first published in a popular Magazine, there was a very wide expression of indignant denial of its justice or truth, by a large class of the conservative teachers, who declared there was little or no ground for the accusation — that many, very many children were seriously harmed by the "forcing process," and the long confinement at memorizing study.
In one school with which we were familiar, this denial was particularly severe; yet in that very school were some most sad cases of entire nerve
INlH'STklAL Kl)l' CATION R)K ALL. 15
school system should he called "the modern method for the slaughter of the innocents;" that it is a harmful, nerve-straining method, and does not prepare for active life as it should.
' ' Pupils have to unlearn in life what they learn in school. They should be trained toward the activities of life, not away from them. ' '
-Wendell Phillips.
There need be no argument over the necessity, the practical value and the moral uplift of general hand training in our schools ; the present trend is all in that direction. The rapid introduction of weaving, basket work, paper construction, raffia work, etc., in all the most progressive schools, is a marked advance over the average system for primary instruction, and is along the lines laid down by Froebel, whose inspired mind
breakdown, some even among the colored children in the effort to "pass" to the high school.
Yet so very conservative are most of the teachers, so sure are they that the present system is all it need be, so averse to any change or innova- tion, that no words of appreciation were given, no effort to improve was made in response to the words of warning from the eminent lady writer, who so truthfully told only the unvarnished truth of a method that should be changed, and have the hearty help of all educators to bring in a better condition.
1 he Editors of the Magazine, in which the article was published, re- ported they had so many letters from parents and friends of the injured children from all sections of the country that it fully vindicated the indig- nant writer who only voiced the cry of suffering childhood.
The general truth of the indictment has had a rather grotesque con- firmation in the advertising of a well known "Breakfast Food" maker, who refers to the well known fear of injury to school children and assures the anxious parents and friends, that their precious little ones will be safe from nerve breakdown — "if only they will feed them on his quack food stuff"— "ad absurdum." We fear the dear children will need a more complete remedy than the quackery of food that costs so much more money and talent to advertise, than to make. We are sure our suggestions for change in educational methods will not meet the approval of the con- servative class of teachers, but so widely and enthusiastically have the propositions of this little volume been endorsed by many eminent educa- tor-;, and able friends of education that we can with a fair degree of equanimity bear the gibes of the CONSERVATIVES.
1 6 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FOR ALL.
best understood the whole philosophy of the mental and moral development of children.
But in our colleges, seminaries and universities, where purest science should find its best expression, we find instead the most persistent adhesion to the old and proven unscientific methods of memory cramming, with total neglect of hand training, and also the taint of a mental labor caste. All this is in complete antagonism to the suggestions of Spencer that a more scientific and practical education not only better fits for complete living, but for higher attainments and enjoyment of all that is ethical and esthetic in life.
To prepare for the higher civilization that is surely coming, one of the first and most important steps is to prepare a superior average order of people by the adoption of a UNIVERSAL SYSTEM OF FREE INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION, which shall be obligatory upon all and that will develop handicraft training as of first importance, not because it is of greater material benefit, but because it is a higher moral and spiritual attainment and is along the natural line of man's growth in mental power. A noted manual training expert declares "It produces a new and superior order of people," which is the highest conceivable aim.
Labor, being "a portion of God's own creative attribute beneficently bestowed upon man," must be cultivated as one of His highest gifts, and only by so doing can he be raised to his best estate.
The remark is often made that our social progress does not keep pace with our mechanical progress. The school should set the pace and prepare the way for all upward growth. And there is no reason why social reform should not lead and surpass all mechanical achievements. When all the people are exalted to a higher average of mental power, as they so easily can be, the geniuses of such an age will tower to undreamed-of heights.
Froebel thought his philosophy so far in advance of his time that it would require a couple of centuries for the world to come to see the value of it ; but, owing to the acceleration in evolu- tionary progress caused by the world-wide adoption of the common school and the more universal intelligence of the people, we have
INDTSTRIAL KDL'CATlo.N KOK ALL. I?
in a few decades come to see and accept his teachings; and now we only need to introduce the best methods for bringing to pass what he saw was so important, viz. : to train hands, head and heart at the same time.
In the low estimate of human life and the willingness to sacrifice it for selfish aims do we see the most radical persistence of paganism ; and the willingness of modern society to keep a large portion of our workers in ignorance and degradation — like our coal miners, factory slaves and slum dwellers — is a sure sign of the survival of pagan cruelty.
The Christ came to ''set prisoners free" to "break the chains of those who are bound." What prisoners need His freeing hand and chain-breaking love as do the prisoners of ignorance — ignorant of their own native powers?
Until every child is set free to use with skill his creative power of hand and head, it has not had the benefit of any properly called Christian civilization.
The most important work for any nation is the education of its own citizens. If only this idea could once permeate our Civilization ; if we could only have the idea adopted that people -.TV worth more than things; if we could only get away from the accursed paganism of treating men and women, boys and girls, as merely tools with which to make money, or as servants for the few ; if only we could see the hideous wrong and sin of war, and see that, instead of lavishing millions on warship-, Catling guns and riot arms, it would be infinitely better to spend it on education : if only we could see that to develop a higher average of citizenship is the highest ambition for a nation, — then might we in truth conquer and lead the world to the highest ideal of democracy.
"Americanism shall permeate the world."
—Stead.
"To be a true American, is to be a citizen of the World!"
—Ferguson.
PART I
Pagan vs. Christian Civilization.
NATIONAL C.ROWT1I OR DECAY DEPENDENT ON PROGRESS IN EDUCATIONAL METHODS.
"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."
—The Christ.
I 'agan civilizations have been neither scientific nor democratic, but have instead been cither transient or non-progressive.
A true Christian civilization would be thoroughly scientific and democratic, progressive and permanent.
The Anglo-Saxon civilization, professing to be Christian, is really so tainted with paganism that it cannot be permanent unless made more democratic and more scientific.
Along no other line is the contrast more sharply defined between the unscientific nature of the old pagan civilizations and the practical nature of a real Christian civilization than in the almost infinitely differing concepts in regard to the dignity and honor of skilled creative labor and the merit of personal service.
To the old-time pagan the honor and nobility of skill in labor that should serve his kind was an absolutely unthinkable propo- s'lion: lu o»uld not conceive it. \Yhether he belonged to the (ireek or Roman cult or to the less cultured nations, his idea of honor and empl o\ mem was war — to kill and destroy; his needful lab >r and personal service must be done by a slave, a human beast of burden.
This through l<>r- ages ha> been the only concept, and it has led to the neglect ami degradation of the toilers, the real wealth producers and creators, and to the inevitable decay of national life and civilization.
In the Greek Republic, though they had high ideals of liberty
19
2O THE CHRIST IDEAL.
for the favored classes, and the state cared for their education and training, they looked with contempt on labor, and the inevitable blight of luxurious profligacy came to hands untaught in useful service. The saving science of the union of skill in handicraft and mental culture was neglected; and sure decay came to the Republic, in spite of its intellectual development, as it had to all previous civilizations, and will come to all, to the end of time, who neglect this science. There can be no exceptions to this unvarying rule. It is an inherent principle of human life.
The Christ, the teacher of a divine social order, came as a toiler, a creator of homes among an industrious people. In Him was concentrated and exemplified all the democratic ideals of all the poets, prophets and sages from Moses' time down. He taught the essentials of a scientific social order; He chose His teachers and preachers of the new social ideal from the laboring classes.
He gave the keynote to his ideal in one terse sentence, uMv FATHER WORKETH HITHERTO, AND I WORK."
At the tragic climax of His pathetic career, by a sacrament of ineffable tenderness He taught His followers for all time that in loving, useful, personal service to their kind there is NO SUCH THING AS A MENIAL MINISTRY ; but that the noblest and greatest, the highest and most honored, the really most aristocratic and exalted, are they who can SERVE most and best. A most difficult lesson for humanity to accept then and now, but a fact of most momentous importance in the science of social or national permanence.
In His immortal parable of the "Good Samaritan" He showed beyond the possibility of cavil that the hand of him that serves in time of need is the hand of a brother indeed, worthy of all honor and love; and that much-neglected lesson was renewed that we are our brothers' keepers, and that to neglect those who need our ministry or who do our work is a violation of the ethical laws of life. And according to the "Christ Ideal," we have in the modern industrial world a "Jericho Road" of economic wrong which forces boys and girls to bread-winning before they have had proper or adequate training to develop their mental,
THE CHRIST IDEAL. 21
moral or physical powers; and along this road are thousands lying' robbed, wounded and helpless, waiting the ministry of the coming "Good Samaritan" who will perforce give them the needed mental and handicraft training to make them citizens worthy of the coming age.
The transforming power of this lofty ideal of the honor of service among the immediate followers of the Christ's new social order was strikingly exemplified in the remarkable change in St. Paul from the haughtx , idle and supercilious Pharisee to the industrious tent-maker and preacher of the new social ideal of universal brotherhood, working with his hands for needful sup- port, that he might be independent of all men while preaching so radical a social change. It was a most impressive lesson for al! people and all times. It was the highest and most scientific uplift of human ideals. It was the beginning of the end of the old false pagan ideal in regard to the servility or dishonor of labor and personal service.
THE WIDE CONTRASTS IN IDEALS.
Yet today, with all our supposed advance in science and our regard for Christian ideals, we may well be startled by the persistence and dominance of pagan social ideals among us in so many forms ; and our labor concepts are among the worst. \\ ith the persistence of chattel slavery until a very recent date, among all so-called "Christian nations" has persisted the base and pernicious idea of the lowly nature of personal service and creative labor, and the equally pernicious and purely pagan idea that tin-re is honor or "style" in useless idleness, instead of actual
race and danger and ever increasing unhappiness, which is the scientific and unchanging fact, as true in the mansion as in the cabin.
It is well-nigh impossible to appreciate at once the infinite gulf that separates the false pagan ideal in regard to labor from the lofty and scientific Christian ideal, as so impressively inter- preted by that great seer of education, the immortal Froebel, whose name shall stand in future ages beside those of Isaiah and St. Paul among the illumined souls inspired to point the upward
22 PAGAN IDEALS.
path of humanity. "LABOR," he tersely declared, "is A PORTION
OF GOD'S CREATIVE ATTRIBUTE BENEFICENTLY BESTOWED UPON
MAN."
If this profound and radically revolutionary philosophy is essentially correct, as we deem it to be, then how fundamentally important it is that this divine attribute be cultivated and developed to its utmost extent — how sacrilegious not to do so-1- how wicked to neglect the Godlike gift — and how vastly different this ideal on which to build a civilization from the pagan concept of the disgrace of labor; and how little wonder that pagan civilizations went down or failed to become progressive and democratic when demoralized by such an unscientific ideal. All history of all nations, ages and individuals proves that in the moral virtues of patriotism and altruism the Immortals whose examples and teachings have helped the race upward and forward have been those whose hands have been trained in creative labor and useful service; while everywhere and at all times, from Solomon's time down, the vices and follies and profligacies that have destroyed individuals and nations have come almost wholly from the idle and those whose hands have not been trained to labor.
Will any candid mind dare deny that we have already again established the pagan ideal of a labor caste in our social stand- ards, or that in our institutions of higher education the tendency is away from labor and towards the pagan concept of a disgrace in labor, and to perpetuate this false standard, and that, as a natural consequence, most of our teachers, preachers and mission- aries go forth to still farther spread this baneful idea, this disintegrating heresy, this immoral, because unscientific, standard? No doubt this false concept has also been strengthened by the false theological dogma that all labor is a curse, instead of an exalting, Godlike attribute ; and it has been most tremendously exaggerated of late by the false, shoddy ideals of a spurious aristocracy of money without culture ; and one of the most serious problems in the future of our civilization is how to remove this root of the upas tree of pagan folly and re-establish the true concept as the basis of our civilization. It is not a light task,
PAGANISM DOMINANT. 23
but one that will tax to the uttermost the formative forces of a n< w educational system.
And we believe it can only be done by beginning a new system in ;i new type of colleges and universities, working on a new basis, and with essentially new ideas. The older ones are too conservative, too set in conventional methods. It is too hard for educators to admit that their own education was incomplete in quantity or imperfect in method, or that their present methods can be radically improved upon. It is a common belief that of all conservatives the average educator is most conservative ; so, like all reforms, what we dare plead for must come from a demand of practical people, aided as it will be by many of the progressive teachers and prominent educators who have seen the wrong of the present system, even as the great philosopher Spencer saw it so long ago.
PAGANISM STILL DOMINANT IN OUR CIVILIZATION.
"More has been given to us than to any people heretofore, and THEREFORE more is required of us. Civilization as it progresses requires a higher conscience, a wider, loftier, truer public spirit. Failing these, civilization must pass into destruction."
—Henry George.
To many it will seem a startling and antagonistic proposition that oui civilization is still largely tainted with pagan concepts and standards ; but remember it was the profound philosopher, Herbert Spencer, who made this indictment against the English system of education — and ours has been an essential copy of theirs — and if pagan ideals have been found in such high places as colleges and universities, how sure may we be to find them permeating all our civilization, as we do when we carefully analyze the lack of scientific basis for so many "long-established" social customs.
For example, we have continued chattel slavery in most so-called Christian nations until a most recent date — a purely pagan custom. Our child wage slavery is but a slight modifi- cation of the same. War, too, and all its accompaniments, is purely pagan and barban'c in the. extreme, utterly out of place
24 DISBANDING ARMY AND NAVY.
in an age of scientific democracy. Ernest Crosby shows quite conclusively that the silly, childish vanity of the savage's love for the display of his war paint and feathers finds its persistent duplicate in the present-day arrogance of the soldier when ornamented with brass buttons, shoulder straps and the unspeak- ably silly pomp of military regalia ; and he shows that the Peace Society or the great Czar need only do away with this relic of pagan folly to stop at once all wars — that our hateful army and navy would vanish like morning dew, if just deprived of their showy dress, the remains of the weakest, silliest expression of a childish savage.
We find this strange, persistent love of gewgaws, war paint and feathers so adhering to all forms of military service that not even a Sunday school "Boy's Brigade" nor the military drill for exercise in our schools can be had without the brass buttons, shoulder straps and striking dress.
But let us carry the Crosby philosophy one step farther and decree that those who study the art of human butchery shall wear the uniform of the butchers in our slaughter houses and abattoirs — the blue denim overalls and blouse — and we may be sure our paganish army and navy would not be held together a month.
In the use of jewelry and glaring dress and oft-changing fashion we see again the strange persistence of paganism.
In medicine and religion we dare not enumerate the evidences of pagan hoodoo and dogmatic superstition. We fear it taints these streams also and needs the light and help of a more scientific system of education. A system of education whose chief corner-stone shall be creative skilled labor.
FROEBEL'S IDEALS AND PHILOSOPHY.
"Man must be doing something, for in him throbs the CREA- TIVE impulse."
—Henry George.
"No high degree of morals can be established or maintained
without manual labor. ' '
— Froebel.
It seems unaccountable that such deference has been paid to
FROEBEL'S PHILOSOPHY. 25
the great educator, Froebel, and yet so little known of the breadth of his philosophy of a complete educational system, of which the kindergarten, beneficent as it is, is only the A, B, C. In his ideal the carrying forward of a system of handicraft training through all the subsequent processes of education was fully as essential as the kindergarten for the first step. He looked upon man as essentially a creator, and the development of his creative faculties as a necessary part of his education. He declared that it was of but little use to develop the receptive powers of brain without, at the same time and as a necessary reflex action, developing the active and formative powers of the mind.
He made skilled labor a part of morality and religion, the culture of the creative attribute a portion of spiritual growth.
He would look with horror at attempts at race elevation by cultivating the memory with facts and literary concepts, while neglecting to develop the creative powers of brain and skill of hand. He would follow the pathway of all race progress with each individual of every race: first cultivating the hand to do; then the brain to remember how and why.
To express one's self and to develop one's self by creative skill of the hands was with him a foundation principle ; and we shall never develop the able, all-round faculties of our citizenship until we absorb and imitate his profound philosophy.
The able educator, Hughes, justly declares that English and American educators have gone to the farthest possible distance from his theory, and are slowly and painfully coming to see the wisdom and necessity of more closely following his plans. The results have been pitiful enough with the white race, but most disastrous with the unfortunate races; and harm instead of benefit has been done to thousands of victims of ill-directed philanthropy by a false method of education.
In his ahle analysis of Froebel's Laws of Education he de- VOtes a long and most interesting chapter to the value of play as an educational force, full of most practical suggestion. And we deem it but a portion of the philosophy of handicraft training in developing the all-around character and ability for complete living. It is a portion of Froebel's teaching that as yet has not
26 FROEBEL'S PHILOSOPHY.
had one-tenth the attention it deserves. And we are sure differing types of play are but the preparations for differing social ideals.
There are plays that represent the Co-operative and Emulative idea, as well as those that belong to Competition and Destructive ideals of social life. In the emulative play, success is gained by skill, activity and alertness, which does not tend at all to harm those who do not win; while in the competitive play, as in business, it is the idea to down the opponent, with cruel force if need be, to risk life and limb to wrest from him the prize at any cost; which correctly suggests the wide difference in morals between competition and emulation.
In manual and industrial training, up to a certain point, are found many of the benefits Froebel saw in properly directed play. It is only a question of how much of each is best. In manual training schools it has been found that pupils will often volun- tarily leave play for practice in the workroom.
The recent establishment of an organized systematic public playground in the city of Syracuse is but one of the steps along the development of this great ideal of progress. Children should be guided and directed in this as in school or work.
If only we would come to see that the production and development of superior citizens is the grandest aim of civiliza- tion, how these different phases would be worked out, even as were the improvement of the Engine, Press and Auto, each having the intensest study of the ablest mechanical minds.
We need a touch of Isaiah's prophetic conception of the time when "A man shall be more precious than fine gold."
Froebel's great advance over the methods of Pestalozzi was in the discovery that the receptivity of the brain of a child must be followed or accompanied by a corresponding activity of the hand. When a new idea is presented, it must do something with its hands or create something to correspond with the concept of the mind, to get its full or approximate value. It was a funda- mental discovery, and has a most tremendous practical bearing on race elevation as well as on individual training.
Pestalozzi would teach "object lessons" by having the teacher
FROEBEL'S PHILOSOPHY. 27
bring the "object" in her hand, or, perchance, allow the pupils to take it or touch it ; while Froebel would have them "do something" or "make something" with or from the object.
He would not teach even Geography by the use of the eye alone, but would take objects like an orange, a banana, a piece of ivory, tea or coffee, and go with the class on imaginary voyages to all the countries where these things are obtained, pointing out the various routes on the map with all possible of instructive detail to arouse an interest in the minds of the class through the pleasure and excitement of the trip.
He would not teach Botany until the child had planted and grown flowers and had learned some lessons of the life and development of flowers, and then would connect the abstract science with the already aroused interest in plant life.
He distinctly taught that those who train one part only of man's nature to the neglect of the others are producing abnormal beings out of harmony with God's laws. What a reflection on present-day school methods!
Froebel seems to have been the first to discover that not to develop handicraft is to actually weaken and decrease mental ])»\ver, a most suggestive thought for those who speak of "wasting time from study to work with the hands" or who feel that time in school used in hand training is wasted.
He saw, too, the high moral value of teaching the young the ideals of the true interdependence of "each to all, and all to each," rather than the intensity of selfish individualism. What- -trengthened the bond of human unity he saw was divine and religious in its influence on character, and the wickedness of all caste divisions of society he clearly appreciated.
lie seemed to fully grasp the practical value of the Christ philosophy of the entire brotherhood of men, their perfect unity with each other and with their Creator, and in carrying this concept into effect in all one's life is the hope of the elevation of the race ; and in no other way can this ideal be so perfectly developed as in schools where all work together for a common end.
He was a seer of Collectivism ; he saw clearly and perfectly
28 A SEER OF COLLECTIVISM.
how the highest possible development of the individual is perfectly compatible with the closest Mutualism of Co-operation. He was one of the early prophets of the coming Co-operative Age, and taught the path by which it can be best brought about, the possible preparation for a Millennial Epoch, through the more complete education of the producing classes and by ennobling labor for all classes.
He clearly saw the immorality of the selfish spirit of Competi- tion as distinguished from the nobler one of Emulation.
These sentiments were more recently affirmed by the late Colonel Parker, of the Chicago Normal School, who publicly declared "that the greatest work to be accomplished by the common school system is the cultivation of a spirit of mutualism, altruism and democracy among the people; failing this," he emphatically declared, "the schools failed of their highest mission/' In no other way can they so perfectly perform this work as when teachers and pupils work together a portion of the time for the common good, while teaching and learning the invaluable lessons of mechanics and of productive labor that shall provide for their mutual needs.
"Civilization is Co-operation!" —Henry George.
FROEBEL'S PLANS FOR SMALL SCHOOLS.
The essentials of Froebel's plans for the smaller schools, where the teacher has no experience and no apparatus nor text books on handicraft training of a primary character, may be safely begun in the primary grade, whether the pupils have had kindergarten training or not, by beginning with cutting familiar objects from paper; then folding papers into envelope forms, triangles, squares, etc., etc. ;* then, with heavier paper, making boxes, cornucopias and all possible things by folding and creasing, all the time cultivating exactness in corners and edges, and general neatness of work, and closeness in following copy.
* Many varieties of this work are illustrated in a little text book of handicraft work for common schools by Professor Smith, of Chicago.
PLAN'S FOR SMALL SCHOOLS. 2Q
A few hours of this each week will delight the children, and the work will he carried forward at home instead of the noisy, purposeless plays, and will vastly help in gaining the perfect control of hands and the culture of the eye so useful in all life's activities.
From this the steps will be gradual along the varied forms of basket making, weaving in colors, braiding with three, then four or six, strands of strings, braiding corn husk mats, sewing from the simplest basting stitch to the most difficult blind darning and elaborate embroidery.*
By the time the sixth grade is reached, the simpler forms of Sloyd may be taken up — the drawing of simple forms on wood, then whittling to the drawing, and in all cases the work finished with sandpaper to have the completed product look smooth and neat.
The children from the Kindergarten up should be taught to plant seeds and care for plants, flowers, shrubs and vines, and the taste started for the future study of botany — a sure beginning f<T future home decoration with flowers and beautiful living things.
From the seventh grade the more difficult steps in Sloyd should be introduced : first, drawing more useful things on wood (paper cutters, wood cake spoons, potato mashers, measuring rules, hammer or ax handles), then whittling or planing or shav- ing them to the forms drawn, or to samples, making, useful or ornamental things, all the time striving to improve the technique of form and finish ; clay modeling, water color painting, with more or less of free-hand drawing or sketching from nature, according to the taste or ability of the pupils.
In the same simple but effective manner may "nature studies" be made most useful and intensely interesting, and a grand preparation for later studies in biology or zoology. If there are no text books in the school, or the teacher has had no training along this line, let the beginning be with the school, or a class, in
* All this is artistically illustrated in a little book by Mrs. Blair, of the Minnesota State Agricultural College, making sewing an art indeed.
30 PLANS FOR SMALL SCHOOLS.
the study of domestic animals, their habits, their varying instincts and intelligence; then with the wild birds and animals, learning all possible of their peculiar modes of living, their cunning and means of defense; then with the honey bees and insects, getting the pupils to learn from inquiry or study of their structure, their ways of life and means of defense, what species are related, their fransformations from the egg and worm to the perfect insect on wings, and of any that do not pass through the chrysalis state, etc., etc. And it will surprise the teacher who has never tried it to see how much of most interesting lore can be gathered and combined by the efforts of a small school, and of what intense interest it will be, and how it will add to the value and depth of the text-book study to thus broaden the field of investigation, and how much it will help to create the love of observation, which is one of the highest aims of all SCHOOL WORK.
Let no teacher fear to begin some of this work because of lack of training or of text books that guide into any set method of procedure. In no way may a teacher come into more complete and desirable touch or sympathy with pupils than to experiment and learn with them to do the things that are out of the conven- tional rut of school work. To ask them for help and suggestions will be a favor unspeakable, and there is no better way to "draw out" their best thought or ingenuity, "and thus double the value of the lessons learned. Often, too, it will be well to ask for answers .to problems or explanations that will require time and study to solve, and thus encourage that reflection that is the highest form of STUDY.
And in all this work outside of text-book study let there be no suspicion that the time is at all wasted or misused; instead it is likely to be the most valuable and profitable of any in the whole school work ; it will rest and refresh, and renew the power and interest in regular study, and of itself it will "draw out" observation, comparison and analysis ; it will strengthen logic, or the power to reason from cause to effect ; it will develop the control of the hand and eye, and the taste for observing things, the best method of effort and execution.
And one of the best results will be the improved moral tone
MKTIloDS FOR FKK15LK MIXDED. 31
of the discipline of the school room, for nothing is worse than the dull, uninterested effort to memorize simply because one must ; and to be fairly decorous from fear only, is far from developing nobility of character or high morality as when done from the pride in doing well, and an inte/est in the work of the school, which these methods will inspire. The pupil who reluctantly and perforce memorizes dry facts and abstract statements of principles is touched on an entirely lower moral plane, if not absolutely iniurcd morally; while if the active, intense interest and joy of learning things for their own sake is aroused and sustained, the moral tone of the pupil is exalted and his higher character developed.
MATERIALS FOR M FCIl AXICAL STUDY ALL ABOUT.
In every school room are materials for study of mechanics and the achievements of skilled labor ; the very seats and desks are most prolific texts for interesting studies on the mechanics of their construction — the pitch of backs and seats, the hinge and action of the seat, the beautifully joined strips of wood and the methods of union of wood and metal, and, above all, the history of the evolution of the school seat, from the old-time slabs, set nn rude legs put in auger holes, with no table in front to rest the books upon, to the present scientific perfected school seat, worthy of extreme admiration as a work of real ART.
So can the teacher develop a wealth of material of study in all things about the school and homes of the pupils — the farm wagon vs. the buggy, the wheelbarrow and tlu> bicycle, the sewing machine and the reaper or seed planter, all will afford lessons of most fascinating ink-rest to both pupils and teachers who are looking for progress in the ART or TI:A«-IIINC.
MF.THODS WITH THK L'KF.i'.I.F- M I XDED.
"Education is leading human souls to what is best, and getting what is best out of them.
Wholesome human employment is the first and best method in
all education, mental as well as bodily."
—John Ruskm.
32 THE FEEBLE MINDED.
We find that the unfortunate child of feeble mind, or no apparent mind at all, who cannot possibly mentally grasp the abstract idea of the difference between one and two, can be led along by first taking one apple in his hand, tasting its goodness to arouse an interest, then, taking two apples in his hands, taste of each to see that both are good ; and slowly but surely there conies to the glimmering mind the fact and the difference between only one apple in one hand or an apple in each hand ; and so on, gradually, the dull mentality comes to know two and, finally, three apples in his hands, when he could not possibly by seeing them with his eyes. After the awakened mind has learned by the touch of the hands of the one apple and of two, three or more apples, he is given a knife to handle ; he is pricked with its sharp point and slightly cut with its keen edge; he learns to respect and fear these qualities. Then he learns to cut his apple and eats the pieces, and he has gained a power to do. Then slowly he uses the knife to cut a piece of wood. A pencil mark is made on the thin piece of wood, and he is helped to cut the end rounding, to follow the pencil mark. He is delighted with the, to him, great feat. So, slowly but surely, he is led along in the development of creative power till, perchance, he can make a rude but fairly correct foot rule and mark with a pencil the inches on it in imitation of a foot rule taken as a sample to work from. This is an achievement to him quite equal to Watts' first successful movement of a piston in the cylinder by the power of steam. He enjoys doing and making, and a new interest is aroused. Slowly and gradually the growing power is led along till he is shown a box with his apples in it, but no cover to enclose them. The box is just as long as his rude rule, cut out with such labor and joy.
He is shown a saw, and his fingers feel the sharp teeth. He is led to saw off a piece of the board, and after a few trials his foot rule is laid upon the board and he is helped to saw off a piece just long enough to cover his box and hide the apples. It is lifted and replaced, till he sees the difference, between them covered and uncovered. Then some nails are shown and felt, and a hammer is put in his hands and he is allowed to pound. After
Till-. I-T.K I ',!.]•: MINDED. 33
a little lie is helped to drive some nails and his box is closed. Ik- cannot now touch nor take his prized apples — a new and startling conception. Then he is helped to draw the nails, but made to do it mainly with his own hands, and then take the uncovered apples in his hands, and again cover and nail the lid down. Then the cover is fastened on with screws and a screw driver — all done by his own hands. Then a longer box is brought, and the cover already cut is shown to be too short; then the box measured by his own rule and found to be twice the length of the rule, and the rule used all the time in his own hands to mark off the cover two rule lengths. It is sawed off and found to cover the box and enclose his apples. Then a knife and sandpaper are used to smooth the rough board so it will feel different to the touch of the hand. And so, on and on, the hand leading to the concept of the mind in nature's own way, till the seemingly utterly vacant mind is educated, drawn out to greater and greater activity, and the power of doing things leads on to usefulness of greater or less degree, till often the use of simple tools is acquired ; and finally the lawn mower and the bicycle are mastered, the hoe and spade in the garden, or the broom and duster m the house; and usefulness and enjoyment takes the place of painful vacuity.
Along essentially the same line have we seen the stupid, listless colored hoy, who had with difficulty been taught to lead the mule to water, to tie him securely in the stall, and, as a tremendous achievement, to harness and hitch him to the cotton cultivator, but who could no more take a monkey wrench and take off the nut and washer from the plow bolt than he could run an engine or a Hoe's printing press. Later the same boy, as seemingly vacant of mechanical brain as the vacant-minded child who could not learn "two" was of mathematics, became enthused to own a second-hand wheel; and, under the magic power of its touch in his own hands, he gradually came to have a glimmering sense of its intricate mechanism; and the mystery of the monkey wrench and the nut and washer on the bolt became plain and simple to the drawn-out faculty.
The same boy engaged to assist the village blacksmith, and,
34 UNFORTUNATE RACES.
feeling a sense of already having had a mechanical experience of no mean value on his wheel, would soon be able to take to pieces the broken plow or cultivator and put it together correctly when mended; would place the bit in a brace and bore a correct hole through the broken plow beam and select and insert the correct sized bolt and draw it to place with the wrench ; would soon do quite intricate jobs of taking down or putting up wagons and buggies, and in time be quite an accomplished helper in this difficult art of handicraft ; and in all such cases, with this added mental power, gained mainly through the discipline of the hand, there comes an elevation of morals; and the lazy, thriftless, "frivolous," loafing fellow becomes possessed of pride and self- respect and industrious largely in proportion to the extent of his training in handicraft skill — thus in a very practical and forceful manner confirming Froebel's theory that through creative labor there is moral and spiritual uplift; and only with this type of education is there any hope of race elevation.*
THE UNFORTUNATE. RACES.
For the unfortunate races to fill their minds with literary culture, while neglecting to develop their creative power of hands, is much more disastrous than an attempt to build the school house by rearing the bell tower and roof before any structure is begun below. The wreck of the tower may possibly be saved and properly elevated after the lower structure is erected; but those who think they have attained the pinnacle by a college diploma, with no discipline of hand, are above and beyond any hope of being taught any new lessons. They have been taught by that strongest of all teachers, imitation, to do as their teachers do,
*How few of the conventional teachers realize, that essentially the same principles should maintain for the bright and precocious pupil, as for the mentally vacant, differing in degree only, but following the same essential steps of progress from hand to brain.
Whilp the bright and precocious child may be trained to learn from the study of the abstract, it will much sooner and better grasp and retain by following nature's plan of the hand first, next the brain, in acquiring the knowledge of how to use wisdom.
UNFORTUNATE RACES. 35
who, according to Froebel, Herbert Spencer and thousands of others, have been educated to paganish ideals, not to the true science of correct development, which always trains the hands first.
"No law of human nature is more dominant than our tendency to imitate those we consider above us. ' '
In the race problem this is one of the fundamentals that must IK- reckoned with. We do most heartily wish that all the colored theological seminaries of the present system could be peremptorily wiped out or changed to such as the grand old apostle, St. Paul, would approve. His methods were to set up first his tent maker's shop, and then teach his preachers and teachers of a higher social and religious ideal, viz., that in self-reliant, self-respecting, self- supporting labor of skilled hands is the first elementary and fundamental lesson in a Christian life or civilization. If this type could become the established order, we should not so often hear the merited severe criticism of thoughtful Southern people of the colored preachers of the South ; and there is no question but that our Northern brethren of the cloth would gain a Pauline power along the same line.
"To work was from the beginning, and is today the joy, the pride
and the honor of life."
—Bishop Doane.
•"If any will not work, neither shall he eat."
—Saint Paul.
A TEACHER'S RESPONSIBILITY.
In view of Spencer's indictment of present methods of education in his widely road essay, we have never been able to understand how the progressive, earnest, conscientious teachers have been willing to go on without protest, continuing a system so tainted with paganish ideals, and how so many are even adverse to any effort towards change or improvement. But we do know that in general the educators are the very Conservatives of Conservatism, and some are so rooted in egotism as to be unwilling to admit that any possible advance can he made on
36 TEACHER'S RESPONSIBILITY.
their own methods, and even so blinded as to boast of their adhesion to the false ideal of looking with contempt on labor.
We cannot understand how true, earnest, present-day teachers can be willing to go on and lead their unwilling young students through all the "flounderings, mental gymnastics" and mind- dwarfing processes of the present courses in our high schools, seminaries and colleges, in view of these lessons from Spencer and his lucid proof that the scientific nature methods would so much better fit for actual life — so much better prepare for home and citizenship — and last, but not least, fit for the esthetic culture of exalted attainments in the highest realms of art and music and for the moral and religious development of our strangely complex being ; or when they consider the teachings of Froebel, the modern Socrates, who saw so clearly how Nature's way of education is always from the concrete to the abstract — from the hand to the brain — from action to reason.
Yet in spite of it all, in spite of the long and loud mutterings of discontent at the present system, our teachers stand in the way arid continue to teach as they were taught, instead of being, as they ought to be, the radical leaders along the path of mental evolution and progress.
Yet no one has ever dared to oppose Spencer's logic, that to cram memory with what will be quickly forgotten is not developing, but that it is practically starvation to deny the mind the quality of food it has a longing for and that will give it strength along the lines that will be continually added to by life's activities, which is the true ideal for educational efforts. His philosophy stands all unchallenged and unanswered, though a most severe and sweeping denunciation of present methods.
We are sure this wrong method of mental development has had a most unsalutary effect on our national character and made us as a people so weak in logic that we endure with strange apathy and stupid submission the many illogical enslavements and taxa- tions of a corrupt and foolish political and economic system ; and we believe we have never attained to our proper place as an entirely free and progressive people, as we should do under a truer educational system.
(i.\RI)I£X SCHOOLS. 37
"The knowledge obtained from books is but the tool to develop the true wisdom for life."
But we arc glad to welcome the signs of an awakened consciousness of a better order and all the wide-awake and pro- gressive spirits among our educators and, better still, among those who are outside the profession but earnestly watching its work- and effects, all alive to the benefit of going at once to Nature's own method of "feeling after knowledge" first by the hand, then learning of the abstract later ; and the rapidly advancing demand for teachers who can teach the hands to do, as well as the head to think, proves that the new order is at hand.
"Industrial training of the rural population is one of the most important problems before the American people."
—Ex-Mayor Abram S. Hewitt.
KXAMi'LHS AND i'KL CliDENTS.
Some very successful experiments have been made where industrial features were given due prominence with most gratify- ing results.
CARDl-X SCHOOLS.
One of the most practical in the line of this new system of education was established by the Cash Register Company of Dayton. Ohio, at the suggestion of its able president.
Nearly one hundred boys were gathered off the streets and eaeli one given a garden plat of about six rods, where he was taught gardening and floriculture by an expert. The boys were given all the products of their work, and prizes for attention and superior skill. Their work continued only four hours per day — two in the morning and two in the afternoon — so as not to become monotonous; and it has Kvn found to be not only a most charming study, that the boys look forward to with eager- and enthusiasm, but it has had a most wonderful moral influence. The rowdy, hoodlum boys — the so-called "toughs" of tin- street, who were the terror of the neighborhood — have become gentlemanly and polite, and find their work more attractive than their old sports: and a striking proof of this change is found
Receiving Instructions from Head Gardener.
Midsummer Work.
The Flower Patn.
<;.\Ki)i-;.\ SCHOOLS. 39
in the fact that lots in that neighborhood have more than trebled in value.
The success was beyond the promoter's highest anticipations, 'lie boys becoming so changed under the charm of being workers .vith God in Nature's magic wonderland of growing things.
These boys from the garden schools have changed the whole tenor of their lives. Their homes will have flowers, trees and vines; their leisure will be likely to be spent in a garden rather than in a saloon. They have tasted one of the highest joys of life at Nature's own fountain.
Can there be a possible doubt that these factory boys will be more likely to be law-abiding, home-loving citizens for these hours of teaching and work in the first and highest place of man's labor? This love of caring for living, growing things, this communion with Nature's most wonderful and charming ways, is one of the greatest safeguards for all young people — girls as well as boys ; and no industrial school will be complete without its farm and garden.
In other garden schools or children's farms one-half the product of the plat was sold to pay for seed and teachers' salaries, and in this way were nearly self-supporting; and, no doubt, in the saving of crime alone these schools paid a thousand per cent on their cost, and should be established in every city in the country.
It may be a question for serious consideration how much our Sunday school workers may learn from the moralizing influence of these garden schools. It is certainly an inspiring fact that village boys and girls \vho have won the name of "toughs" can be brought to comparative cfood order, and the value of lots largely increased, by the elevating influence of garden work; and we believe these children could be touched by a Sabbath lesson freed from all theological dogma, but full of the spirit of reverent love for the great All Father — the source of all life and law — and s<une of the simple, tender and direct teachings of the carpenter of Galilee on our mutual relations and the oneness of man and his Creator.
And we are equally sure that primary lessons in botany and
4O GEORGE JUNIOR REPUBLIC.
the varied sciences connected with soil, seed, climate, fertilizers, etc., could be imparted in the garden schools that would be of deepest interest and begin that taste for study and for knowing things that would make the later study in school a matter of delight and interest, instead of the dull burden of abstract study of the conventional school text books.
SELF-GOVERNMENT.
More than half a century ago J. G. Holland wrote out the theory of self-government for pupils in school in his charming story of "Arthur Bonicastle." The idea was too great and good to be adopted at once, but, like all advanced ideas, had to wait a generation before its worth was fully appreciated and the needs of a more democratic ideal called it into use ; but now the world is ripe for it, and we find many schools adopting this method of discipline, as well as some philanthropic works like the Forward Movement of Chicago, which has for several years taken a large crowd of young children for a summer outing and adopted this method of maintaining discipline, with most satisfactory results.
GEORGE JUNIOR REPUBLIC.
The George Junior Republic was started in this way, and has grown into a permanent institution. This is exactly what its name indicates, a republic of minors who are self-governing, and whose motto is "Nothing- without Labor." It is made up largely of homeless or worse than homeless boys and girls from the cities. They have the usual amount of school work, and must work out of school hours for all their needs. They are paid in the coin of the Republic for their work, and, as there is no provision for those who are lazy, those who do not work soon suffer for the necessities of life, and so learn to have a wholesome respect for labor as well as for law. The results so far have been surprisingly satisfactory. How much better this than taking single boys or girls to lonely country homes, where everything is so utterly out of sympathy with their former environment.
In our truant schools it has been found necessary to introduce hand work, and so interesting does this become that we often
PRIMARY INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 41
find good boys playing truant that they may be sent there, where tlu-y "learn to make things with their hands."
In schools for feeble-minded children it is often found that mental activity can only be aroused through the physical. So in our prisons frequently the first signs of an awakening of the mental and moral faculties come through some training of the physical.
In a small denominational school a plant was put in a few years ago for industrial training ; but no teacher could be found who could or would teach the ideals of labor by example, and the plan was approaching failure, when a principal took charge from one of the agricultural colleges. He came prepared with overalls and blouse, and, with the genuine enthusiasm of a trained horticulturist and botanist, at once called for volunteers to work in the garden with him as a daily task. Very soon the labor caste which had been established was all swept away, and the pupils vied with each other for the privilege of working in the garden and shops with their favorite teacher, who had found the charm of skillful labor and the pride of accomplishment with his hands, and who had the winning spirit which comes from high mental culture and a love for Nature's ways, and whose hands had the cunning and skill with tools that made his work like the magic touch of the artist's pencil, a charm that is always attractive and always wins.
In this school, as in all manual training schools, it was found that the work settled all problems of discipline.
"Education should fit for completest living, not to create a
Literary Aristocracy."
—Herbert Spencer.
PRIMARY I NOrSTRIAL SCHOOLS.
In one of our Southern cities a Primary Industrial School for the neglected children of the factories was started as a philanthropy, and has proven such a success that it has been made a part of the public school system. These children would not
at KM id the schools devoted wholly to memory cramming, but when the industrial training was introduced were eager to take part.
42 CITY AND COUNTRY SCHOOLS.
SUBURBAN CITY AND CONCENTRATED COUNTRY SCHOOLS.
It has been suggested that one much-needed change in city schools would be to take all the schools away from the congested districts into the suburbs, where every school building could be surrounded by green grass, with fresh air and ample playgrounds among flowers, trees and gardens ; and this would stop the growth of slums and slum elements, as children once used to such environments would never again desire or be willing to go to slum conditions.
We deem this thoroughly practical, and not so radical a change as the rapidly extending system of concentrating the country schools in one central school, carrying the children to and from school at public expense, and the advantages immensely more. In both cases there would be plenty of room to introduce complete manual training. The street cars can carry pupils at a cent each at a profit ; and children so educated would surely become a "new and superior order of people," and by adding such a system of "Summer Garden Schools" as we have described, would be one of the most valuable and important features and beneficial portions of our regular common school course.
AGRICULTURAL TRAINING.
"Our agricultural interests, either in view of their domestic value, or as exports, are the most important interests of the nation, yet they are least perfectly developed of any."
— Prest. Geo. T. Powell.
"No nation will long survive the decay of its Agriculture."
— Thos. Jefferson.
"The strength and glory of a nation depends on its tillers of
the soil."
—Thos. Jefferson.
Xot only is Agriculture one of the most important, but its study and practice is one of the most inspiring and elevating to man's moral nature, and the great and historic characters, from Moses' time till today, have come from the discipline and spiritual uplift of some type of agricultural pursuit.
One of the most interesting studies and movements along the line of progress in advancing industrial culture and agricultural science has been started in the States of Minnesota and Wisconsin. In the former State primary and some advanced study of scientific agriculture is being started for all the common schools, the effort having been initiated by the able head of the agricultural depart- ment of the State' University, Professor Hayes, who has also :ited a most practical plan for concentrating from ten to fifteen adjacent school districts into one high school of agriculture and allied sciences. And as up-to-date farming requires a general knowledge and ability in several of the handicraft trades, such schools will naturally need to teach a variety of mechanic arts f( r complete work for their agricultural pupils, and they will soon see the need of making provision for the boys and girls from the villages and towns, who will also need a wide variety of industrial education, with the fundamental training in some phases of agricultural science. And the natural evolution of the best methods will naturally bring more or less of the self-
43
44
AGRICULTURAL TRAINING.
supporting principle into use, if, as we are fully persuaded, it is the best and most scientific method for gaining an industrial training.
BUSY HAPPY BOYS OF THE "SUMMER GARDEN SCHOOL."
The suggestion is one of great promise for the future, and is in effect being adopted in several States, and will no cloubt become as universal as any branch of the public system of instruction in the age of the new democracy that is TO BE.
AGRICULTURAL TRAINING. 45
This is but the first step in the upward way to equip the youth of the coming age more completely for higher and yet higher attainments in "complete living."
President Patterson of the Cash Register Company makes the very pertinent suggestion that at present there are about 98 per cent of the pupils leave the schools with no training at all in any branch of agriculture, when the percentage should be reversed, or, better still, that no pupils should be allowed to leave without thorough knowledge in some branch of agricultural lore — the working together with God in nature to produce the needs of life. In Wisconsin the Superintendent of Schools, Professor Harvey, was sent to Europe to study particularly what could be learned of their methods for agricultural education. He came home with startling reports of the much larger number of agricultural colleges, in proportion to the inhabitants, than in this country ; and the State, at his suggestion, has started a move to have an agricultural school for every county, the plan being to have the State bear one-half the expense and the county the other half.
Professor Harvey's bulletin containing his report of agricul- tural and industrial education in Europe, and outlining his plans for progress here, is very inspiring reading for any one who hopes for highest progress in the fundamental art of rearing a high grade of citizenship.
Alabama, New York and some other States are already moving in the same direction, and a bill has been presented in Congress for the government aid in furthering the work so hopeful for the future.
Xnt only is agriculture the most important industry in a material sense for the nation, but the effects of its study and practice on the moral and spiritual nature are the most elevating and inspiring, and have always developed the greatest and strongest characters in the world's history, and therefore should be considered the most important science in an educational curriculum.
And whenever the educational system of the nation is reformed to the degree of having for its main purpose, its sole aim, the development of the highest average of citizenship in mental and
!|6 AGRICULTURAL TRAINING.
spiritual attainments, then will the teaching of some phase of agricultural lore be considered as fundamental as the mutiplica- tion table. And for this we plead with every organized agricultural interest or labor union ; it is the one thing that each and every child should be taught of necessity as a portion of the A, B, C in his training for the duties of citizenship. The least that any one should be at all satisfied with for any child of city or slum would be a course in the Summer Garden Schools or the Agricultural High School, as suggested by the practical Professor Hayes.
In this age of research, if agriculture is to retain its proper place as the most exalted and exalting vocation, most attractive to brightest minds, it must be made scientific and the charms of all technical knowledge brought to bear to make it the choice of the liberally educated. It must be so changed that not a suspicion of labor caste taint can attach to the educated farmer.
Edward Bellamy once truly said that in no other line of large staple production^ there such a lack of system and science, nor such a waste of .effort. If there were no other reason for the change to a free universal system of Industrial Education, this alone would be sufficient.
In the new and better social order which is surely coming, the new 'Triumph of Democracy," of which the demand for universal free industrial training is but one of the many indications, there will be new and dominating social and educational standards, as far above the present as the present is above those of the past feudal times, when the men and women of the estate were con- sidered as only a portion of the appurtenances of the barons' estab- lishment— handy things to have for use or for defense, but with scant rights to be respected, and no mental culture to be thought of as belonging to their caste.
And only when, as suggested by President Patterson, ninety- eight per cent of all the children have a fairly full course in some line of agricultural study, some taste of skillful gardening or floriculture, some technical knowledge of animal life, a botanic study of food plants, a course in the wonders of bacteria, both useful and destructive, of the chemistry of soils, foods, fertilizers,
'i i IK J.i. KY.uiuN or 'Jin: RACES. 47
grains and vegetable growths, skill along some lines of horticul- ture, and a general knowledge of the varied fruits and how to improve and propagate them and adapt them to various localities of markets and demands, of preserving and selecting, shipping and selling — only when all these widely varied branches of these most interesting and charming fields of intellectual growth are fully taught in schools open and free as air to every boy and girl of this Republic, only then may we claim that necessary progress along this line has come to an approximate end, or even to a fairly well developed system.
And as we learn that it took nearly fifty years of persistent agitation in the days of our fathers to fully establish the idea that the common school was a necessity, so may we be willing to work as long as needful for. this next great step upward and forward along the same general pathway.
THE ELEVATION OF THE RACES.
For the elevation of the races nothing has proven so valuable as agricultural training, and, radical as the proposition may seem, it is our conviction, after much study and many visits to different schools, continuing for weeks in several cases, that it would be better for both races if every school for both Indian and colored pupils were closed where no industrial training is combined with literary studies, and ten times as much aid should be given to industrial schools, and that in the South only those schools con- ducted in this way are of any value in solving the race problem. All ethers lead away from the ideal of the dignity of labor, and in quite too many cases create a useless, idle and often a vicious class, who have learned to imitate the vices of the dominant race, but do not emulate their virtues, the uplift of skilled labor is wanting, and education only creates wants that the hands have not acquired the skill to provide.
At Hampton, Tuske^ee and many other like places we get the true spirit that uplifts and prepares for the active duties of life and the higher enjoyments of an advanced civilization.
The very fact that the colored race have social, economic and political aspirations and ambition, whatever of ridiculous and
48 THE ELEVATION OF THE RACES.
vexing embarrassments it may bring temporarily, should after all be cause for hope and congratulation for the future. For any country to have a large element with no hopes, no aims, no ambitions for progress and betterment and no ambition for a share in governmental functions, would mean a mass of inertia most dangerous and detrimental.
Professor DuBoies, and Colonel Graves, and all who would defend the purely literary type of schools for race elevation, will do well to ponder carefully our main proposition that one of the essential contrasts between a true Christian or scientific civilization and the pagan type is largely in the widely varying concepts in regard to labor and its sacred office in race development.
If the great Froebel's concept was correct, and man is a creative being, that this is his highest attribute, that all civilization is but the creative labor of man, then when this fundamental proposition is properly apprehended, the best method for all school systems will settle itself, and men will needs be educated to bring this attribute to highest perfection.
Professor DuBoies, while ably accentuating the importance of a high degree of training for teachers, entirely begs the question as to which type of school is best for race development, in his claim that all the industrial schools have some teachers from the literary institutions. He cannot but be aware of the patent fact that the superior industrial schools have been vastly fewer than the others, and also of the other equally plain proposition that, according to the universal and dominant law of humanity, to try to imitate those who are supposed to be above in social standing has naturally led the bright and ambitious young colored people to the schools mostly patronized by the white people, and both have drifted into the idea that an education means mainly memorizing from text books, and a college education means escape from the drudgery of labor, as it has come to be understood. And there can be no question but in spite of the lack of the best methods, these bright and ambitious young people, when trans- planted to the more correct atmosphere of Hampton, Tuskegee et a!., will soon catch the spirit of the place and become valuable teachers, but that is no proof whatever that they would not have
TIIK KLKVATION n I- TIIK BACKS. 49
been better if trained more correctly from the first; and if labor had been made scientific, and skill in it taught as an accomplish ment instead of a drudgery, they and all the teachers ai pivichers of the race would have exerted a much higher an more beneficial influence on their struggling people.
The able and accomplished chancellor of a great university, who declared he had learned three trades since he was a college educator, and found in the shop work his best mental recupera- tion, and a stronger executive power for his daily work in class room, is a far stronger proof of all we plead for as the most powerful aid in race progress and the only hope of the colored races coming to any self-reliant, self-respecting position in CIVILIZATION;
Xo doubt Professor DuBoies will repel our suggestion of the best type of theological seminary being founded on the model set by St. Paul as the kind essentially needed for race uplift; it was rejected bv the arrogant Roman aristocracy of the time, to whom it was so repugnant that they took off his head to stop the heresy, and degraded the ministry into an alms-taking, non- \vorking class, from which it has never fully recovered.
If the in many respects able pleader for the good of "black men's souls" will carefully study the matter out, he will come to the same conclusion as the great, if not the greatest, friend of his race, "that a lot of the facts we learn in school are NOT so," and must he "unlearned in life," and much that he has learned in the so-called "best white schools" is not the best for the white race, and utterly fatal to the elevation of his own nuv ; wh > no doubt must travel the >ame or a similar pathway as all other races, and let the hand lead the brain in the upward pathway, as Nature decn
\\~e will dare sui^e-t that very likely it may yet prove best for his race to grow into a high social state, to follow the essential rule for the boy in learning to swim, to go by themselves and WORK out the problem unaided by the dominant race, who will no doubt always hold them to a lower caste socially and politically, and will always exploit them economically. Of one thing we may be certain : that to teach the head the desire for better style
5O DRIFTING INTO TWO CLASSES.
in living and more ambition along any line, and not teach the hands how to satisfy the aroused ambition, is of all things most cruel. And the preachers or teachers of the weaker race, whose example or teaching is tainted with the ideals of a labor caste, are surely doing them an injury; while those who teach a self- reliant, self-respecting, self-supporting, industrial independence are but following the lessons of the great social reformer, St. Paul, whose efforts were along very similar lines.
Professor DuBoies speaks of "Industrial Education" as "adapted to needs of artisans," and of the "long-established and approved methods for the education of the white race," apparently oblivious of the fact that in the minds of a vast and constantly increasing number of people a handicraft education is best for all learned professions, and the "long-established methods of education" have been heartily condemned by many most scien- tific minds, and are like most all systems and customs "long established," away behind the progress of a scientific age, and only held in place by the LAW OF INERTIA.
DRIFTING INTO TWO CLASSES.
The colored people of the South seem to be drifting into Awo sharply defined classes. One class, represented by the graduates of such schools as Hampton and Tuskegee, proud of the skill of their hands and what they can do that is useful, are at work trying to win respect and consideration by their merits and progress; while another class, led by the graduates of purely literary schools and represented by the mob spirit shown at Boston, where earnest, candid argument was met by noise, con- fusion and some still more disreputable methods, is aggressively, and sometimes insolently, demanding social and political recog- nition. And from this class, quite as much to be pitied as blamed for a false ideal gained by imitating a false standard, comes the class that are the clog and hindrance to their normal progress.
If they ever get a colored republic or separate state by themselves, it is the former class alone who will make its success possible, while one of the heaviest burdens will be the latter class — from those who know more of Greek than of the laws of
DRIFTING INTO TWO CLASSES. 51
mechanics, more of Latin than of the science of agriculture, and who. through unfortunate imitation of the dominant race, have imbibed the ideal suggested by Herbert Spencer, that the object of an education is to produce a "literary aristocracy" rather than to fit for "complete living." If, instead of all this, the colored preachers and teachers will but study and imitate the example of the great preacher and social reformer, St. Paul, who knew and taught the essential nobility of skilled labor as the foundation of a Christian civilization, the worst phases of the race problem will soon be solved.
In most all the Southern towns is to be found the worst menace to law and progress in the large class of fairly educated young colored men, who can write a gcod hand and have a fair education from text books, but who have imbibed the ideal of the disgrace of labor, and, having no trade, can only work at the commonest and least paid industries ; and, as they have also imbibed the idea that they must gain their living by their wits, tin v drift into crime as naturally as ducks into water; and from this class comes much if not all of the active prejudice against Northern-supported colored schools, while the universal testimony is that those who have trades are the thrifty, law-abiding class, wh'»se progress is a hope for the race.
The many colored preachers who have thus imitated the un-ci< -ntific rind un-Christian aversion to skilled labor from the type of schools they have attended, are powerless to come into any helpful touch with the unfortunate loafing class, and thus their influence is neutralized where MOST NEEDED.
"These hands ministered to my necessities, and to those with me."
—Saint Paul.
ii:.\< IIIXG BY EXAMPLE.
The greatest criticism \ve would make upon our agricultural colKires and schools, where wide industrial training has been introduced, is that the teachers who are in the literary department do not teach labor, and vice versa, and thus exemplify to their pupils the proper relation between mental culture and pride in skilled labor.
52 PREVENTION OF CRIME.
At the great industrial center and school at East Aurora the Greek professor is the blacksmith, and has the same prid^. in his work at the forge that he has in his translations. In one school with which we are familiar the professor of agriculture not only superintends the raising of the products, but also teaches the pupils the chemistry of the same, and then insists that the pupils shall know how to cook them. But we know of but few such instances.
That such a revolutionary change in our whole educational system must be a matter of growth will be admitted; but that it need be a matter of slow growth we emphatically deny. The need and demand for it is too great and immediate, and the first steps have already been taken to such an extent as to assure its future.
PREVENTION OF CRIME.
"Universal Industrial training will be self sustaining to the
state in the prevention of crime."
—John Ruskm.
The civilization of the North stands aghast at the vast waste of child life in our cities and the enormous cost of crime that comes from neglected children whom we know could be educated into good and profitable citizens ; and this alone is sufficient motive for the change that will save this vast outlay for crime and its results by guiding the hands of the young towards useful, skilled, creative labor that will aid in both mental and moral uplift. The case here is urgent. It brooks no delay. One eminent writer sets the cost of preventable crime and accessories in one city at forty million dollars per year, and fully six hundred millions for the whole country. What would not this vast sum do in reasonable, scientific educational prevention, in making of the street waifs skilled, intelligent, thrifty citizens?
A hundred George Junior Republic schools filled with the neglected children of the slums would be as economical as patriotic in educating the waifs toward useful citizens. The Minnesota Reform School believes that an average of over eighty per cent of its graduates become good citizens. And these, it
THE >LU\V AM) I N 1'KECOCIOUS. 53
will be remembered, are of the1 bad boys sent to be reclaimed, and industry is one of the main dependences to reform them, while it is claimed that from sixty to seventy per cent of the average village and city boys who have no industrial training go to the bad.
The civilization of the Southland has an equally or still more ominous question in the race problem, with a vast illiterate contingent of poor whites, all of whom stand as a portentous menace to the future, but who may all be turned into useful, thrifty and law-abiding citizens, if only we v/ill begin their uplift in the way God and Nature intended, by developing their hands in useful skill and letting the mental growth follow, as it naturally will, if we will but reverse our present "rude and undeveloped" system and give that the first place which Nature gives to every child born into this world — the desire and ability to learn its first lessons through it? hands.
THE SLOW AM) UN PRECOCIOUS.
"The strength of a chain is measured by its weakest link."
Under the present system it is usual at an early age to condemn to bread winning and factory slavery those pupils who seem in any way slow or deficient in power or inclination to acquire through the memory- cramming process the conventional type of education. This is a particularly great wrong both to society and the individual; for, if it be admitted that in the development of a higher form of average democracy is the pathway of true progress, then should the slow and less ably endowed, the weak und simple, have extra pains taken to develop what intellectual faculties they have to the highest possible point — not only to enhance their value to the state and to society, their productive abilities, but also that their children may have the heredity of a better parentage : and we clare claim that, among any given one thousand of the so-called ''poor scholars" who are prematurely doomed to an early slavery at bread winning, with the minimum of mental training and with no hand training at all, in any thousand of such will be found many capable of becoming men and women of nnrk. of guiius. if they could be led along to a
54 THE SLOW A^D UN PRECOCIOUS.
few years later age and have the advantages of hand culture and a chance to study mechanic arts or industrial training in some of its branches which are adapted to their peculiar mental drift.
It is a well attested fact that many men and women of exceptional ability are late and slow in giving any evidence of strong mental power, and may never do so until some mechanical or technical study, some form of handicraft training, brings to the surface unexpected talents of a high order.
In this manner will colleges and universities based on the plan of alternate study and work, and that shall hold pupils until years of maturity, be of most inestimable value, both in creating a higher average of intelligence among all, but also (and of greatest importance) in finding and bringing out many men and women of rare merit and usefulness, who, under the present system, are almost totally lost to the world and doomed, like the flowers of the desert, to bloom unseen and unknown. We are fully persuaded, if there were no other reason for the demand for a self-supporting system of schools for higher education, that this alone would be ample for a most comprehensive effort to establish such in every county in the whole land, to promote the higher average of the citizenship by cultivating the slow and unprecocious and by developing the latent geniuses from those who only come to their Ml powers at a later age.
"Had Caesar, Napoleon, Columbus, Shakespeare, Sir Isaac New- ton, Adam Smith, or Herbert Spencer been assigned by fate the lack of an education, or the dreary toil of an Irish bog laborer, what would their native talents availed?"
—Henry George.
ELEVATING LABOR VS. DEGRADING DRUDGERY.
"What thy hands find to do, do it with thy might."
-The Bible.
Convinced as we are that true labor is a God-like attribute, exalting and ennobling when normally exercised, we are also aware that it can be so imposed upon men as to become
ELEVATING LAROR VS. 1>K». K A I >I N < - HKflKiEBY. 55
drudgery, enslaving and demoralizing in the extreme. Booker Washington tersely expressed this when he said, "To work, to Kcrk, TO WORK (for one's own) is the height of Christian civilization; but to be worked, to be worked, TO BE WORKED (for another's profit) is the barbarism of slavery."
William Morris says it is to put into all labor the ideals of the artist, to have all possible skill, knowledge and intelligence in regard to the correlated sciences, and to feel the joy of working, to contribute to the needs of the world ; in the effort done in this spirit, even the digging of a sewer may become a joyful service and a means of spiritual growth to the worker. To know how to excel and to take pride in superior accomplishments makes the whole difference between drudgery and art. We see this difference between scientific agriculture and the drudgery of ignorant farming ; and this wide contrast may be seen in every vocation and in every form of labor; and for this quality of mental uplift of the workers there is no other way but to develop the mental powers, cultivate the artist spirit, and at the same time make skillful the hands that do the world's work. The result will be such an average of high moral purpose, joy and efficiency as the world has never yet seen. "To mix brains with our hand work" is but a homely expression for this wide contrast between the labor that blesses and the drudgery that degrades; and the man or woman who kn<,\\s all the scientific relations of the material manipulated by his or her hands has a joy in work to
be had in no other wav. And if to this be added the joy of yukd ' '
serving a person or a cause, then the highest joy of earth may
come from labor, which otherwise might be drudgery of basest degree.
With modern forces for production, it is unquestionable that four to six hours of labor each day would supply the world with a plenitude of luxuries such as princes now might envy ; and this amount of la!>or would be only what is needful for healthful exercise, and, when done with proper aim and method, would give a moral and spiritual uplift uncqualed by any other means. All men do not now have the opportunity to work. With shorter hours and the worker receiving his due proportion of
56 ELEVATIXG LABOR VS. DEGRADING DRUDGERY.
product, all could be employed. All this should be included in a new system of education that shall propose the training of head, hands and heart as a trinity of equal importance in the building of character and in soul growth.
With this as the motive for reorganizing our whole educational system, we may confidently look forward to such an evolution of the "religion of democracy," to the development of such a high average of citizenship as the world has never seen, with the growth of all the grandest ideals of an international unity of spirit and interest among men as shall make the hideousness of war a thing unthinkable and unheard of again.
With such an average citizenship as we shall have when a full industrial college and university course is given freely to every child, we may be sure such a social order will be developed as will make the adoption of a short working day imperative, and the people, cultured in art and science, will develop a perfection of human society such as has only been dreamed of by the poets of past ages. The millennium epoch may be surely looked for with unquestioning faith.
This will be the age spoken of by Ferguson when "the university will come to all free as air and glorious as sunshine," and the religion of democracy have its most holy accomplishment; and all this may begin its coming tomorrow, if we will.
"It is unspeakably pernicious to think or speak of the develop- ment of humanity, as stationary or completed."
Froebel.
PART 11.
That with student labor alone, an industrial education plant has been built worth over half a million dollars, and at the same time the students have acquired a much better education than if the plant had been previously prepared, and they had come with money to pay their way thro a conventional course, is the second greatest achieve- ment in importance in the educational history of America.
Equipment vs. Endowment.
"Education is the most essential interest of the State."
-Wendell Phillips.
The time has come when seminaries, colleges and universities should no longer depend upon endowments for support, but rather upon industrial equipment. During the past year the enormous sum of fifty to seventy millions of dollars has been put into endowment funds for facilities for higher education for the comparatively few ; and, vast as is the purchasing power of this great sum, it will scarcely produce a ripple in the educational history or progress of the nation, and will have no appreciable effect on the democratic progress of education for the masses, where help and progress are most needed ; while, if even one- quarter of this had been put into the equipment of self-supporting industrial schools for all, it would have marked a new and distinct epoch in educational advance and set a new pace for the world's progress as noteworthy and as grand as did the great step of the heroic fathers of the Republic when they established the collective ideal of the common school for the benefit of every boy and girl in the nation — a movement that required fifty years of vigorous agitation to establish.
This greatest achievement of our democratic fathers helped forward the evolution of the race more than it had moved in centuries. The otablislinu-nt «>f a system of free industrial
57
58 EQUIPMENT VS. ENDOWMENT.
self-supporting schools and colleges for all will be a step of equal if not greater importance in accelerating race progress and the advance of democratic civilization.
There are many grave objections to the whole plan of endow- ments : the system has had its day. It is time for something more democratic and not so tainted with pagan abuses. The whole system of endowed educational institutions is a relic of the age and concept that a few only should be provided with educational facilities, and that the vast majority must toil in ignorance to produce the wealth needed for the favored few. It is an utterly paganish concept and system, out of date and place in a democratic and progressive age.
An equipment of two hundred thousand dollars in farm, shop, factory and working material for a self-supporting school will care for more pupils than a conventional college having a full million-dollar endowment.
The system of education under an industrially equipped school will be a correct one, not a concession to false ideals, but dominated by the true democratic spirit of self-help and perfectly adapted to cultivating the creative attributes of the pupil.
Then, too, a school depending upon endowments must always be more or less handicapped by the moral taints attaching to the moneys received, as were the schools founded by Captain Kidd from the proceeds of his peculiar economic system, even as later methods have tainted and compromised the schools dependent v upon them for support.
Again, the endowment system locks up enormous amounts of
money in bonds, mortgages, etc., away from active creative
channels in commerce and industry, and places the influence of
the school on the undemocratic and unscientific side of continuing
« ^high interest rates — always an undesirable condition and adverse
' to democratic progress.
One noted school, which was founded on most radical ideals, has been so tainted with this spirit as to have won a most unenviable reputation as a stickler for high rates of interest and a merciless forecloser of farm mortgages — a most unworthy reputation for the moral influence of a great educational institu-
EQUIPMENT VS. K. \Do\\-.MK. NT. 59
which should he a radical leader along the line of true democracy; for along that line is the only true ideal of social progress.
In well equipped industrial schools the strength and virility of teachers will he best conserved. Teachers who devote them- selves to mental training only, have a very severe tax upon nerve force and personal magnetism, and vast numbers have broken down before their best years of matured service came, under this strain of nerve effort ; while in an industrial school they would often have the restful change from brain to hand work, which is a natural recuperation, and in this manner retain for a much longer period the powers of nerve and magnetic forces so necessary for best success in leading and molding young lives.
Aiul last, but really most important of all, by working a portion of the time each day with' pupils, they are setting the example and social standard of the union of culture with skill in creative labor or useful service, which is one of the essentials in a scientific civilization, and without which no social state can he made progressive or permanent.
Were there no other reasons, the latter alone would justify the change ; and we feel sure the coming reform and the highest ideals of progress are coming from and through the change from Endowments to that of Equipments. The one who demonstrates the practicability of a well equipped industrial school to be Self-supporting will do a grand work for humanity and write his name large as a benefactor of his kind. And philanthropists who will equip such schools, or help to do so, will win renown as helpers of their race, and erect a monument of more lasting material and greater glory than any marble or bronze placed for mere show.
\Ve are sure there are many of the smaller colleges, now struggling with inadequate endowments or income, whose useful- ness would be enhanced a hundredfold if they could and would change all or a portion of their endowments into an industrial equipment for self-support from their own productive labor. And tlu v wouM then he in line with the rapidly advancing demands of the people, who wish for the best type of a liberal or complete
6O EQUIPMENT VS. ENDOWMENT.
education, and in line with the ideals suggested by Herbert Spencer's able address, and more fully defined in the philosophy of the seer, Froebel.
-We also know that many philanthropists and prominent business men, when their attention is called to these ideas, are much more ready to help such schools, for any race or any section, than the schools for mental training alone.
We deem it patent to all why our government should aid in establishing such practical schools at this time, and why our motto, "MORE FOR SCHOOLS AND LESS FOR WAR," should become a national watchword for all who have an ambition to hope for the time suggested by the eloquent Englishman, "when American- ism shall conquer the whole world;" for we can sooner conquer the world with the school than with the battleship; ideas will penetrate deeper than rifle shot.
Tremendously as the world has been taught to fear our "armor-clads" and the range of our artillery, they may yet stand in greater awe of the moral and mental achievements of a nation of college-trained people. A perfected democracy will much sooner subdue the world than the best armaments ; exalted ideas will win and hold the allegiance of the coming peoples of all lands longer and better than the most perfect examples of brute force.
When we decree that every child of this Republic shall have a full college course, and a college course far more complete and thorough than any heretofore given, it will thrill the world with a new expectancy of lofty achievement, as yet unknown in the history of the race. It will, indeed, be an example of "Trium- phant Democracy" that will set a new pace for the highest ideals of an ambitious generation.
THE UNIVERSITY.
AX INTELLECTUAL AND INDUSTRIAL CENTER.
When in all modern process, from making a garden to a locomotive, there is a continual demand for the highest and most scientific study and skill, what could be more appropriate than that the University should be a great center of industrial activity where the students can work their way through the course of mental and hand culture — each a corrollary of the other — and then if they wish to remain in the atmosphere of learning, or to carry forward some post-graduate course of investigation, can still work on in their chosen vocation and enjoy the social privi- leges of the place, with the possibilities of self-supporting labor and mental ripening all provided for and open for their main- tenance? Is not this whole ideal intensely practical and possible of attainment?
THE PROPHETIC SPIRIT YET LIVES.
\Yhen the world is ready for any great advance in achievement in any line, the prophecy of the coming change will be felt in many and far separate places, at about the same time. When the world \va,s ready to cast off the curse of human slavery the impulse was felt from Russia to San Domingo, from England and France to the l/nited States, at about the same moment of historic time. When the world was ready for a great advance in labor-saving machinery, men of all sorts were found whittling from wood, models of sewing machines and reapers in mam- places in many countries at about the same time, with no previous knoule 'l.^e of each other's efforts, or why the inspiration came t«> thorn at the time.
So has it been in this matter of a revolutionary change in the methods of our educational system. We ourselves thought when in 1868 we penned our first conception of an industrial college,
61
62 THE UNIVERSITY.
with its own plant, to be partially or quite self-supporting, and that should convey a better quality of mental discipline than the conventional college, some of whose graduates had deeply im- pressed us with the fact of their unpreparedness for life, that we could flatter our egotism on being the first, or one of the very first, who had conceived the progressive plan ; but we have since learned of many others who had come to essentially the same thought and had seen the need and value of training the hands and brain at the same time, and that each was a necessary portion of the needful training for life ; and all this with no knowledge of each other, nor any knowledge of the writings of the great men who had been moved by the same prophetic spirit. And today there are hundreds who deeply feel that the change is now imminent and must come as soon as the needful men and methods can be evolved.
The great-souled man* who has already taken the first practical steps to introduce to Congress and to Legislatures bills for putting the movement into legal form, was at work preaching the gospel and stirring the thoughts of many in his wide acquaintance to see the great need of the movement, and now it is only waiting the power of combined numbers to become enacted into laws in the nation and in the several States that shall make it as well an established custom as the common school has become, which in its inception took a full generation of most energetic agitation before it was adopted by the several States of the then small and struggling beginnings of this now mighty nation, which can waste more each year in tawdry ornamentations than the whole thing will cost, and where the cost of preventable crime is more than the total assessed value of the property of the fathers at the time they took this great step.
CAN COLLEGES ?>E MADE SELF-SUPPORTING?
"The grandest achievements of the race are those that have been proved impossible."
— Jas. L. Hughes.
* See Appendix.
COLLEGES S I .LI -SUPPORTING. 63
To most of our readers the above question will immediately present itself, and in answering it the mental evolution will, no doubt, in most cases, follow about the same lines of those of an eminent and veteran educator when first presented with the proposition of FREE UNIVERSAL INDUSTRIAL TRAINING as the next step in educational progress and an essential in social evolution.
He at once assented to the value and importance of the union of hand and head culture for all as vastly desirable, and to the idea that the time is ripe for the movement and that it would pay in various ways. In prevention of crime, he admitted it would be most supremely efficient, and that it would produce a citizenship of remarkably increased power as wealth producers, Jjcr and after careful thought he declared, "Whether it can be wholly self-sustaining or not is unimportant, quite incidental. We need such a system of universal training for all the people, at any cost to the state, to keep up with the needs and demands of social growth ; but it seems chimerical to expect it can be made fully self-sustaining and not hinder its fullest usefulness as a general system for scientific and literary study."
After a few weeks of study upon the plans and possibilities of a system of self-support, he declared his full conviction that not only could industrial schools for pupils of fifteen or over be made fully self-sustaining, but that they could be made to pay a fair dividend on the needed capital for equipment, and at the same time impart a quality of education far above that of the average college or university that adhered to the old process of mind discipline, to the total neglect of training the hands — now so popular among those who have 'indulgent friends to pay their bills and help them to attain that kind of education whose chief accomplishment is often, as Spencer declared, to create a type of ''literary aristocracy," of but little use in preparation for the higher ideals of complete living.
Another educator, of international reputation, declared the system could be made perfectly practical and in every way d'.->irable. and added that in his own school many pupils now gain complete support by working three hours per day five days tn\ the week, and eight hours on Saturday, and this with no
HTtat^
UM/i«t*f: -;< >? ai~ fU^Tf
64 COLLEGES SELF-SUPPORTING.
detriment, but rather a decided advantage to their progress and efficiency in the academic courses ; and all this with no organized system to assist the pupils to most effectual means of labor, and they obliged to pay retail prices for everything needed, or from four to six times as much as the actual labor cost if produced in a plant established as a working portion of the school.
This is a most important factor, not usually understood by those who only think casually on the subject.
According to the published reports of the United States Census Bureau, and confirmed by the Commissioner of Labor, the labor cost of the average products is only about sixteen per cent of the price at which they are sold at retail. As many of the products of the school plant would not be produced quite as cheaply as in commercial factories, although much better in quality, it may be safe to estimate a labor cost of one-fourth the prices usually paid by teachers and pupils.
We see at once that if students can earn the minimum wage of only ten to twenty cents per hour, and only work twenty to twenty-four hours per week, they can earn a sum that will mean self-support, even though they pay retail prices for everything, and be more than self-supporting when the necessities of life can be obtained at the actual labor cost. In this way the cost of living for teachers will also be greatly reduced.
We deem it only necessary to refer to the well known facts in regard to many of our agricultural colleges, our many trade and industrial schools of various kinds, and to 'the well known schools of Hampton and Tuskegee — in all of which no effort has been made or suggested to fully accomplish entire self-support, but where one-fourth to two-thirds of the running expenses have been equaled by the productive value of the work of the schools — to prove beyond the possibility of question that when the effort is really and earnestly made to establish schools of entire self- support, it can be done by only carrying a little further along a system already an established success and of most uniform beneficial results to the quality of mental equipment acquired in all these schools.
In all our modern colleges are a few brave boys and girls
COLLI:<;I:S SKLF-SUT PORTING. 65
working1 their way through with no systematized method to reduce the labor to a minimum of time and effort, but, often under the greatest difficulties and disadvantages, these brave students work on and pay their own way, getting1 a minimum for their labor and paying a maximum of profit on all they have to buy ; and these self-supporting students average among the very highest, both in school and in after life. Had they the facilities for creating their own needs organized to make the labor both most productive and best adapted to teach mechanics and handi- craft skill and to save retail profits on all their needs, the labor hours could be greatly decreased and the mental benefits of the labor vastly increased.
A volume could be filled with the heroic successes of those who have secured a full college and university education by all kinds of labor and under all varieties of adverse conditions ; and the higher general average of usefulness and ability of this class of graduates over those who have their bills paid for them will be generally admitted; and scarce any one will deny that, if a system of hand training and mechanical education had been an i-ssontial and systematized portion of their course, the average of mental power would have been still higher yet.
The almost universal consensus of opinion among all pro- gressive educators and thinkers, the general trend of progress in education, is wholly towards the combining of hand and brain culture. The only portion of the problem we need to elucidate i* how with the least possible financial difficulty to get the nev system established \\here it will take its proper and needful place as THE UNIVERSAL SYSTEM, and thus do away forever with the present paganish methods, mainly adapted, as Spencer declarer "to establish an aristocracy of letters," wholly out of place in this democratic country, where all the best thought of the age is to advance democratic ideals and to forever do away with all the false and shoddy ideals of an effete aristocracy.
To carry out this full program is an effort of just enough difficulty to form a charm and to arouse the enthusiasm of progressive teachers and furnish a motive for heroic endeavor, we arc sure; and that the completed result will make a great historic
66 COLLEGES SELF-SUJ'1'ORTING.
evolutionary epoch there can be no question. Nor can there be any question that the time is fully ripe for the step as an important factor in the surging storm of social reform that is now sweeping the world and demanding attention from all patriotic minds.
There has been enough accomplished in the past to prove that colleges and universities and other schools can be very success- fully carried on, on an entirely self-supporting basis, as soon as competent, thorough-going effort is made to develop the system by those who have an enthusiasm for the grand purpose of making a full college and university course open and free to< every boy and girl of the land, and the added enthusiasm to make it a superior course to anything ever enjoyed heretofore.
As an eminent writer says, all material advance must be preceded by higher intellectual and spiritual concepts and ideals. So does the social and economic advance, now so needful in the interests of peace and prosperity, wait upon this advance in educational matters.
A school equipped with special facilities for best possible courses of both handicraft training and literary or scientific accomplishments would have for main summer work and teaching the farm, with stock, dairy, gardens and all food-producing equip- ments possible, where the food of the school would be produced # Iciest labor cost, and a surplus for sale at regular established teu :l prices.
it would have a printing plant for instruction in the art of printrng and for the production of its own books and papers, and a surplus to sell.
It would have its own tannery to exemplify the trade and to turn the hides of the beef used into profitable product; and the raw hide, worth only three to five dollars, will be worth fifty to one hundred when made into shoes, harness, etc. The self- supporting school should make enough to supply its own needs, and a surplus to sell at market rates.
A small weaving and knitting outfit would enable it to furnish most of its own clothing at one-tenth the usual cost in labor time, and a surplus to sell at usual prices, making a profit to pay balance of teachers' salaries and incidental expenses.
COLLKC.KS SKLF-Sl'I'l'OkTlNG. 67
The same with furniture, implements and fixtures ; and a great advantage to pupils in gaining their mechanical and industrial training will be the naturally greater interest in creating the things for their own personal use, rather than in making for the impersonal market. It will develop habits of care, nicety and thoroughness of detail, which is of itself a moral lesson of vast importance.
It Null readily he seer, that during the first years of such a sdio-il there will be difficulties and obstacles that will entirely vaui>h after the system is under way and the order established. At the beginning the pupils will not have acquired the esprit dc corps of the work, and will lack the facility of adapting their efforts to best advantage ; but as soon as a few years of successful progress have been made, and the system learned by those in attendance, then it will be found that pupils who were of little industrial value the first year will become of much greater value the second, and each year of increasing value in the productive labors of the school. So the extra value of the labor of juniors and seniors will fully compensate for the lesser value of freshmen and sophomores.
It has been utterly surprising how much valuable material has been produced even by children of ten years of age, working only four hours per day, in the "Summer Garden Schools," "Children's Farms" and "Pingree Potato Patches." The same is true of the Primary Industrial and Truant Schools, where braiding rugs and straw, and making things of use which convey lessons in handicraft and have the charm of novelty, has been introduced. The work of pupils of the first years in school can be and has been made to bring some revenue; and when pupils have been in such schools a year or two, where the aim is to be as nearly self-sustaining as possible, they will each year become more productive workers ; and finally, when they enter an industrial college, will in the later years produce enough to make the full course nearly or quite free of outside cost. The fact that it will be a matter of growth is but the following out of evolutionary laws, and proves it* naturalness.
If so be it should be best, in order to give all students some
68 COLLEGES SELF-SUPPORTING.
&
thorough training in a variety of trades and along higher art in a chosen and congenial trade or industry, or to adapt the training to learned and special professions, if this should be found to require some more years for most complete and perfect develop- ment, this is no detriment, as it would be infinitely better for the majority of the young to be directly and daily under the care of teachers during all these formative years; and the superior practical value of industrial training with the immensely better moral and mental equipment, coupled with the fact that it is all obtained with no burden to parents or the state, would make it a thousandfold more desirable than the shorter period for a memory-cramming, unpractical course, such as is now doled out to the unfortunate victims of a system of so-called education, with scarce a vestige of the "drawing out" of mental faculties in the whole course.
Pupils who enter a self-supporting school at from fourteen to sixteen years of age cannot begin life in any possible manner so hopefully, so advantageously, as in a course that from its very nature draws out and develops thinking powers and applies the thinking to practical efforts of the hand. The whole effort of working a few hours per day to create the needful food and clothing, aside from its healthful, sanitary value, is most perfectly adapted to develop the ability to reason from cause to effect, and thus strengthen the logical powers now so almost totally lacking in so many students who have had only the memory-cramming process of mental growth. These are the people whose only philosophical analysis of a sequence is the oft-used philosophy, "It is because it is."
"MJAN MORE PRECIOUS THAN FINE GOLD."
If the prophetic time ever comes, when highly educated and ennobled manhood is considered "more precious" and desirable than making money or things, then will men or women who labor in shop, factory, store or office, not be allowed to delve more than six hours indoors, and will then return to the elevating charms of home-building, and to the gentle arts of horticulture, and gar- dening, and in daily touch with Nature, their hearts will become
COLLEGES SKLF-SUTORTING. 69
attuned to accord with the Infinite Nature, who gave the first "lessons in life" in a garden, in the atmosphere in which only, man can come to his best estate. And no man or woman has attained his or her best, until he or she has learned the joy of caring- for living things.
From the garden, the trees, vines, flowers, the fruits and foods of our own growing, come some of the formative influences that develop our best, and for all this the school of "Self-support" will best prepare.
If our civilization is to be freed from every destructive taint, we must come to see that no aim or object of social desire is so great as the highest possible attainment and development of the average citizenship; and the present hateful haste and waste of rushing the voting into bread-winning life all undeveloped and immature, to become, like the machines they tend in factory and shop, mere automatons, is most harmful and ultimately destructive to national permanence.
Booker Washington in a recent utterance questions whether the industrial school can be fully self-supporting and perform its highest function as an educator, though admitting the high value of all the economic production possible. If Booker Wash- ington had had no other problem to solve, no work to do but to develop his school to the highest possible usefulness with self- support as the only means of existence, it is very certain, with his ability and perseverance, his continual presence at the school would have been vastly useful, and neither he nor we dare say to what degree he would have gained success.
But his arduous work raising the needed means to enable the pupils to live and study and work, while creating a plant worth over a half millions dollars, has in several ways been a national object lesson of unspeakable value. And we do not believe there are many advocates of purely literary education that will dare deny that his pupils have had a far better education for an advanced position in life, while doing all this work, than they would have had, had they gone with means to pay their way through and had no hand training at all. The exemplification to tin world of this lesson, the proof of the advanced ability of a
/O COLLEGES SELF-SUPPORTING.
representative of the race that has come through his public labors, all together make a demonstration whose value has not been exceeded in importance by any phase of educational progress of this generation, a lesson of vastly greater importance than all the seventy millions that have been given for the highest advantages of the few who can afford to climb to the top of the university ladder at this time, when all the world is trembling with anxiety to see if democracy is to be dethroned and cast from the pinnacle of hope where our fathers first planted its banner.
The whole achievements of the school, and its well known effects, are a standing rebuke to the system and the effects of the system so roundly rebuked by Spencer and so at variance with the teachings and philosophy of the inspired FROEBEL.
But outside his school, Hampton, the George Junior Republic, the Rabbi Hirsch School, the Industrial School of Berrien Springs, Michigan, and a very few others, there has been scarce ar*y study given to any attempt at an approach to entire self- support. But, while the data are fragmentary, they are full of encouragement. A recent and most important and hopeful effort has been started by that widely, known and progressive manu- facturer, N. O. Nelson, of St. Louis, Missouri, at his great works at.Le Claire, Illinois. After some years of careful study of the problem in all its phases, he has determined to begin the development of an absolutely self-supporting school in connection with his farm and large factories.
His wide, careful study of sociology, his energy and ability as a business builder, coupled with his enthusiasm for this great attempt, and his high ideals of the practical needs of such a progressive move in educational methods, will all assure a careful but steady growth of the institution till it will be the leader in the new and most important advance in education of the century. We dare believe it is a much more important step in educational history than the gifts of tens of millions, for the higher education of the few, of the past few years.
At Glen Ellyn, a beautiful suburb of Chicago, President Geo. McA. Miller has fortunately obtained a large and picturesque site, with some costly buildings most admirably adapted to their
COLLKCMS SHI.F-SUITORTING. "J\
use, and the co-operation of several other schools, and some valu- able industries with which they are already successfully develop- ing the first steps towards an industrial university whose ultimate aim is to be self-sustaining from its own productive industries and to stand for all that is most progressive in educational methods.
A successful Southern college has recently come into hands that propose to turn it into a college of the new ideal of labor and study combined to exalt the ideal of the nobility of skilled labor and to develop the creative attribute as one of the highest ambitions of an intellectual life.
It is becoming almost an every-dav affair to hear of some new attempt at founding some school of domestic science, some primary industrial school, or some departure along this general line of hand and brain culture, as the better method of preparation for the higher, ideals of the new century. It is all only a portion of the great sociological move of the age and time towards the higher growth of democracy as a portion of the religious progress that trends towards Froebel's concept that whatever helps human unity is of itself religious and leads to highest human exaltation.
It will be time enough later on to decide which fulfills best the functions of an educator, the school supported wholly or partly by outside help, or the one that is wholly and entirely self- sustaining-, with strong arguments and indications that a school plan can be wrought out that shall be wholly independent of any outside revenue, and at the same time be the most perfect and scientific system of education ever established, following Nature's own plan. And surely the wider possibilities of giving all a completer training will more than offset any trifling disadvan- tages, if there are any, of the school system that is supported by s:«mc outside help. Until this system is found, a large portion of the young will be denied a chance for a full training, and the state will suffer from imperfectly trained and developed citizens: and from these untrained, undeveloped citizens will always come a large percentage of criminals whose cost to the state will be a drag on the progress of the age.
Domestic Science and Service.
One of the most perplexing labor problems in our modern civilization is that of domestic service in our homes, and the social position of all women who do any work with their hands. So long has the race inherited the ideals of serfdom and slavery, and so superficial have been our concepts of an exalted democ- racy, so easily have we declined from the lofty aims of the noble founders of the republic to the compromising ideal of a past paganism, yet so widespread has been the sentiment of indepen- dence, and self-assertion, as a portion of the "American spirit"- in more or less crude form — that there is, and always seems likely to be an "irrepressible conflict" between the maid of native blood and the mistress who desires a menial servitor, and very much of real suffering and perplexity has come to thousands of home- makers from want of proper help in the home and in the care of children, and the latter have been much injured morally, in thou- sands of cases, by contact with servers of low intelligence and 'vicious tendencies.
This whole problem, difficult and perplexing as it is, will be vastly assisted towards a healthy solution by the universally higher education for which we plead,, and by making of the do- mestic science of home keeping an art (as it really is), and giving to cultured skill the social regard to which it is entitled.
Prejudice, fear and ignorance on both sides stand in the way of an early solution, and the only remedy likely to be attained is from the effects of a correct educational system that shall renew and exalt the true concept of an ennobling democratic realization of the unity of all creative labor, and the appreciation of all cul- ture in the home, a solution that cannot come hastily, but waits upon the growth of the ideal that all skilled work is an art worthy the ambition of any degree of native talent.
Some most suggestive hints of what may be accomplished, are given by the eminent Christian Romancer in his thotful work
72
DOMKSTK SCIENCE AND SKKVICE. 73
entitled "Born to Serve," in which the contrast is sharply drawn between the elevating atmosphere of a home made comfortable and delightful by the management of a cultured, educated, effi- cient helper, instead of the vicious, ignorant servitor, willing to accept the lower caste now established in such service, and he also strikingly shows the beneficial effects on the children of the home, of association and care from a helper of real worth and cultured character, rather than one of superstitious ignorance and vulgar mind ; so often now the only available type.
A prominent educator truthfully declares that no one can per- manently accept a lower caste, without loss of self-respect and a lowering of the morals ; then how utterly unchristian, undemo- cratic and unpatriotic the brutal selfishness of the coterie of northern ladies who would curtail the school advantages of the young girls of their town, because forsooth with an education they would be unwilling to accept the lower caste of a (slave) servant.
How widely in contrast to the wealthy southern lady of estab- lished social position, who in an able magazine article, shows that all democratic progress must primarily come from the ambition of the workers for better social recognition for merit, is the rank inconsistency of people who cultivate a pride for helping to do away with chattel slavery, while wishing to perpetuate a tyrannical domestic slavery and to inflict a perpetual degradation of ignor- ance and loss of moral uplift on their servers. Surely the essen- tial spirit of slavery dies hard, and Christian Democracy is but a name to conjure with.
The rejection of a lower caste or menial position is a promise of better things for the future, and is only one of the many signs of the social awakening of the times, and is a promise of hope to all who see that the pathway of progress is always and ever towards the higher and still higher evolution of the ideals of democracy, and the true motto of progress is and always must be "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." The concept of all that this means comes slowly, but the new education that is surely coming will accelerate it. and the differing methods of co-operative housekeeping and skilled specialists, with educated minds, and
74 DOMESTIC SCIENCE AND SERVICE.
the more scientific division of labor, will all tend to the solution of this most trying of modern problems.
The inspiring example of a lady of most aristocratic endow- ments, and high position as an educator, who went with the "working girls" to help organize to press for better conditions and a higher life, and helped her less endowed sisters by her pres- ence and sympathy, and in so many cases in our metropolitan cities, the daughters of the wealthy setting a new pace by their help and advice to the workers to gain a better social place, by united action and mental culture through a more careful study of the life problems in their special environment, is all along the line of a true solution of the problem, that can only best be solved by the universal complete education for which we plead.
Self-Support the Best Educational Method.
It is a most pertinent and important query to decide i-f the best educational accomplishment is compatible with the effort to make a school nearly or quite self-supporting from its own productive labor; whether it is best to turn all possible lessons in work towards producing a revenue for the living and general expenses of the school. The solution of the problem will largely depend on what is the ideal for the completed course of a system. If its aim is to pass a given amount of text book examination, then we would say emphatically it is net the best system, but if it is jo "draw out" the pupil's deepest interest in preparation for all phases of life, to learn while in school what his or her manner of life shall be, what are the personal adaptations, and to begin in school the work of life and to learn those things that will make the pupil a lifelong student, always alert to gain more of such information as shall not only increase efficiency but also broaden the intelligence, to arouse the love of knowing things and to take an interest in all work done and a pride in doing the best possible, then we say by all means the work for self-use will quicken the interest and arouse ambition the best of any possible method.
If, again, the object of school life is strongly towards the ideal of Colonel Parker, to develop the mutualistic, altruistic and democratic qualities ; or of Froebel's ideals, to increase and enlarge the creative attribute and deepen the sense of mutual interdependence; where the personal interest is involved in all things made and planned in the school, when each article is liable to be owned or used or sold, and its price involved, in the con- scientious, thorough manner in which it is finished; when all these are the incentives for careful study and work to do the nest, then is it surely the most natural and most scientific manner to engage the pupil's best efforts and most effectually to draw
75
76 SELF-SUPPORT BEST EDUCATIONAL METHOD.
out his best application and interest, and that means to develop his moral qualities, which is the highest aim possible.
By no other means can there be such perfect sympathy established between pupil and teacher as when working together for mutual needs, and this gives the teacher the formative influence when helping to decide what the pupil's best adaptations are for a life work ; and thus is avoided the oft most perplexing problem as to what to undertake, with no correct way of diag- nosing the direction of native talents. Surely for the vast majority it will be better to "WORK OUT THE PROBLEM" while gaining the means of living and. paying for all with the labor of the hands from day to day.
In the new social atmosphere that would be established by a universal complete educational system, there would naturally be two ideas established that would be dominant and aggressive: one, to develop man's beneficent creative attribute to the highest and best; the other, to change the present abnormal and de- structive selfishness and replace it with a constructive mutualism and altruism, the only traits that really build in civilization, to modify or do away with the present insane rush and grab and greed, so expressively and properly denominated by Carlyle as the "hellish scramble," and which develops such qualities and manifestations. Dare any deny that this has gone so far from any correct ideal that all the formative influences of a new and most radical educational system will -be required to restore a true democracy to its former high place in the thought of AMERICANS.
In the industrial system of today do we find so much that is purely paganish in that it continually sacrifices men to things and Isaiah's concept is reversed. "Fine gold is esteemed more precious than man," and men have been ruthlessly destroyed to produce cheapest things, and society has been dumb over the pagan cruelty of putting the young into factory slavery, to do continually one monotonous thing with all its dwarfing, soul and mind benumbing effect, from youth to age. Even in professional life this abnormal subdivision of hbor and specialization of study and practice of what may be hoped to pay best in a material sense
SELF-SUPPORT HKST EDUCATIONAL METHOD. 77
has induced men of high mental culture to narrow their intel- lectual power by confining their thought to one line, instead of the wider, broader, better development of many things and many topics of study, all of which will be modified by the educational system of self-support, which will necessarily lead to some knowledge of many trades arid sciences of allied things, wfi'c*
The whole scientific and Christian ideal would be to at all times and in all ways keep the main study and work, from the /..-., shop to the laboratory, the ideal of making the broadest and most all-around developed men and women, as the chief concern of all art, study, business or religion. To "draw out" and magnify human talents of highest altruistic use is and should be the aim of all teaching.
II AND TRAINING AIDS MKXTAL DEVELOPMENT.
A veteran educator in urging this ideal of hand training in connection with mental culture, and for making it free and universal, declared that he did it not for material reasons mainly, but because it represented moral and spiritual advance.
Another prominent educator with ripe experience in manual training declares his observation to establish the fact that pupils can work four hours per day at industrial lines and make better progress along purely literary lines than with no industrial training during the school period; and he gives his unqualified endorsement to the proposition that a course of training in mechanics and industry with the academic will afford a vastly superior mental equipment for any practical or professional life.
The college professor who declared he had learned three trades after becoming an educator said he had found it the best recuperative recreation he had tried, and with it he was conscious of an added mental powor.
We know of two very able university educators whose rule of life is to work four hours per day in garden or shop, with most beneficial results, and a wholesale merchant whose shop and tools are his constant source of rest and recreation.
We are sure that if a system of Free Universal Industrial Colleges were to be organized, whose whole cost of maintenance
7 SELF-SUPPORT BEST EDUCATION' AL METHOD.
was to be upon the taxation of the country, it would still be the cheapest and best method for preventing crime, and that it would so increase the wealth-producing power of the citizenship as to be immensely profitable to the state.
It would not be so radical a step in advance of the age as was the establishment of the common school in the early history of this nation, when it seemed by the pre-established custom a great wrong to tax one man to educate another man's child. To decree that every child should be kept in school till the age of legal responsibility and never allowed to become a citizen until well trained in handicraft, and with a college diploma for a compieted course of general study, would, we are sure, like the establishment of the common school, mark an epoch in the history of our country. The age demands and will sustain the movement.
In the early history of one of our most popular colleges, teachers and pupils worked together full half time at the heavy work of clearing, building and farming to grow their own crops, and while doing all this the able president declared they made as good progress along literary lines as has ever been done since with no work at all ; and the early students had a higher average of all-round ability than later ones. Similar records have been partially made by many pioneer colleges.
In almost all our colleges there is a larger class wishing for the meager chance of self-support than the opportunities offer. If the present colleges would or could use a portion of their endowment funds, now locked up to draw interest, to build an equipment for productive labor, it would be a decidedly better use of money and open a wider door of usefulness to many a struggling college. But to be most perfectly adapted to the ideal of a scientific system each college and university should be fully equipped for productive labor by its pupils, and make a certain amount of labor and hand training a necessary portion of every course for every pupil, thus preventing a labor caste or its possibility from tainting its moral atmosphere ; and only when this has become universal in our colleges, seminaries and univer- sities can we be said to be free from the moral taint so heartily condemned by the philosophical Spencer and accepted by so wide
IJKST KIH'C'ATK )\AI. M KT I lo[). 79
a circle of progressive minds, and the era of a perfected educational system, dreamed of as only possible in a far distant future by the prophet Froebel, be begun.
Then only may \ve hope to have teachers, preachers, mission- aries and professionals who shall not scatter pagan social standards to demoralize our home society and injure our influence among the benighted islands of the sea or in the dark continents of the earth.
One of our most able all-round educators speaks of the almost mysterious mental power gained by the totally uneducated (according to common parlance) who have learned several mechanical trades, or perhaps have only worked in younger years at several trades enough to have acquired their essential principles with some degree of hand skill, and through this have become men of well known "all round" ability.
This cultivation of ''all-round ability" was the special charac- teristic of early New England people, who, in the home manufacture of everything used on the place, had a very wide education in mechanical principles and gained much skiH in a varied handicraft ; and it developed a mental equipment of exceedingly high average powers, not only in practical matters, but also in the higher flights of metaphysical, spiritual and scientific deductions — Wendell Phillips declared the highest the world has ever seen.
In the study of its effects on national character it can be seen among the characteristics of peoples from Northern Europe —those who have for some centuries been tenants on land belong- ing to others, having no special inducement to repair homes and kerp thing's in order, have lost the "all-round ability," but which is soon re-developed in pioneering in this country ; while the ' peoples from the countries where they own their own homes and have made and repaired their furniture, implements and clothing have a far superior adaptation to all-round utilities and a higher average mental and moral equipment.
The mind-dwarfing effect, too, is easily seen among those who have for some generations been confined to factory life, where they have onlv been taught to tend some one machine and to do
80 SELF-SUPPORT BEST EDUCATION AT. METHOD.
only one monotonous thing, which reduces the "all-round" talent to a minimum ; and from this class there but rarely springs a genius.
In the training of women heretofore it has been almost universal to totally neglect ail teaching of mechanical principles or any handicraft skill, while it is certain that she peculiarly needs the development of the logic and ability to reason from cause to effect which the study and practice of mechanics is so well adapted to impart.
Froebel would have girls have the same plays as boys till twelve or fourteen years of age, and have them trained along handicraft lines all through their whole educational course; and there can be no question of its high mental and moral benefit.
In a few progressive schools manual training, cabinet work and even light forging have been given the young ladies and has been enjoyed with enthusiasm and great benefit. Gardening and horticulture should be a necessity for every young lady, and no diploma given without proficiency along some line of industrial education.
This would be a most important step in the development of a higher average citizenship.
The philosophy of universal hand culture as an important portion of all education and its bearing on the permanence of national life are too well known and acknowledged to need any profuse argument among practical people. It will not be questioned except by those who have been perverted by a false system, and the most of these will admit the value of it.
The extreme but profound philosophy of Froebel has won its way to the minds of almost all thoroughly progressive teachers and thinkers ; and we cannot more radically put the value and essential necessity of hand culture as a fundamental portion of an education from the kindergarten through the uni- versity. His philosophy only seems extreme when brought into contrast with a system confessedly tainted and corrupted, utterly unworthy an age whose ideals are to make a sovereign of every citizen and to prevent any slavish class from being developed in society.
SKI.F-Sri'I'oKT F.KST EDUCATIONAL METHOD. 8l
I'.ut the days of the old system are numbered, and it is now only a question of how soon the system of universal hand culture can he established, and with it to re-establish the true Christian ideal of the God-like attribute of creative labor as an expression of man's highest mental and spiritual development.
ESSENTIALS OF AX EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.
What then are the essentials of an educational system for an advancing Christian and democratic civilization and suited to the aims of a twentieth century progress and the hope of a permanent national life?
\Ye answer: Well equipped plants, with abundant land for gnnk-ns, hothouses, dairies, etc., and the necessary appliances for carrying on the work ; shops of all kinds furnished with necessary materials, that the labor of students may be used to advantage; and teachers who will work with pupils ; all this added to the usual outfit for an academic education, and the equipment is o-mplete. This for a general outline.
In detail, a school of this sort should be established in every enmity, and such forms of manufacturing and agriculture und-rtaken as are adapted to the locality. Eventually every college and university a center for industrial activity, as well as mental training.
We have this idea of handiwork in the kindergarten ; later we find it in the manual training that is being introduced into our schools so rapidly and successfully. Let us carry this idea still further, and when the boys and girls are old enough to begin wage earning and feel the necessity of leaving school that they may add somewhat to the revenue of the family, or at least supply their own needs, let us have a UNIVERSAL SYSTEM OF FREE, sF.u •• supi'oKTiNc, INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS, thoroughly equipped by the state, where, without further cost to state or parents, they may cultivate the threefold nature, hand, head and heart, to its highest capacity.
Summary.
If then an essential difference between pagan and Christian civilizations is in their widely varying concepts in regard to the nobility of labor;
If the Anglo-Saxon civilization is still tainted with the pagan idea of the disgrace of labor ;
If hand training is of such immense value as the complement of mental culture, and together they tend to form a high moral character ;
If our present school system is based upon pagan ideals and tends to produce a "labor caste;"
If our schools do not fit for "complete living," and our graduates must "unlearn in practical life much that they learn in schools;"
If the influence of teachers will be greatly increased when they work with their pupils in garden and shop;
If it will be an advantage in the forming of character for pupils to remain longer under the guidance of teachers ;
If the children of the slums and the poor and ignorant everywhere can be elevated in their three-fold nature ;
If the children of the profligate rich can be changed into useful members of society;
If a larger proportion of feeble-minded and unprecocious children can be developed to a greater degree of usefulness through the training of the physical ;
If Industrial Training be the most efficient means for the prevention of crime;
If it be true that pupils have greater pleasure and incentive in working to supply their own needs than in working without special aim;
If skilled hands and cultured brains give the highest happiness ;
And if the strength of the whole must be judged by the strength of the weakest part, and this will tend to establish national permanence:
Then is it indeed time that we as a nation establish a
82
Sl'M.MAKV. 83
Complete System of FREE, sELi-xsri-i-nRnxr, IMH:STKIAL SCHOOLS AND O>LI.I:<;I-;S in every part of our country.
"The coming ideal of Democracy shall be to have the University go to every man and woman of the nation; and we dare add that it should go to them as free as air and as glorious as sunshine. In fact, the hands, while plucking from the Tree of Knowledge should learn in the act how to cultivate the Tree to its fullest fruition."
—Ferguson.
PHILISTINIA"
HUBBARD'S PUNGENT PARAGRAPHS.
"The world does not need colleges, seminaries or universities that unfit for useful effort."
"The best part of life is in supplying yourself with the things you need."
"If everything is done for us, we will not do much for ourselves."
"If you knew of a school where a boy or girl of sixteen to twenty could go and earn a living while getting an education, would you not send them there?"
"To be able to earn a living is quite as necessary as to parse a Greek verb."
"The only reason why the industrial college has not yet been evolved is that we have not, so far, evolved the men big enough to captain both education and industry."
"We have men big enough for college presidents— thousands of them; but we haven't men who can direct the energies of young men and women into useful channels, and at the same time feed their expanding minds. This indicates a race of pigmies."
"There is wide room for the man or men who can set in motion a curriculum that will embrace Earning a Living and Mental Growth, and have them move together hand and hand. ' '
"Life until yesterday was considered one thing, and Education another— which is exactly as it should not be. For the man who can weld Life and Education, the laurel is waiting."
"The chief error of colleges lies in the fact that they have separated the world of culture from the world of work. They have fostered the fallacy that one set of men should do the labor, and
84
PIIILISTINIA. 85
another set of men should have the education— that one should be ornamental, the other useful."
"To bolster their position, they have manufactured the specious arguments that the professionals are better than the people who toil to clothe and feed them."
"The fact is, the opportunities for an education should be within the reach of every individual."
"The colleges are constantly graduating incompetent people, and this will continue till men get a living and an education at the same time."
"President Eliot says, 'I will never be satisfied until one-half the curriculum at Harvard is devoted to doing things. ' ' '
"The preacher who is separated from the world of useful effort hasn't anything worth telling on Sunday."
"To do no useful work for four years, in order to be useful thereafter, will some day be looked upon as a barbaric blunder."
"Five hours of manual labor a day will not only support the student, but will add to his intellectual vigor and conduce to his better physical, mental and spiritual development. This work should be a portion of the curriculum."
"All persons should do some work; no person should be over- worked."
"To work intelligently is education; to abstain from useful work while getting an education is a false education."
"All degrees should be honorary, and be given for doing some- thing useful to society."
"THE WALLS OF THE OLD-TIME COLLEGE ARE CRUM- BLING."
— "The Philistine."
ADDENDA.
THE GOSPEL OF LABOR.
"This is the Gospel of Labor — King it ye bells of the kirk! The Lord of love Came down from above, To HTC with those who work.
This is the rose He planted, Here in the thorn cursed soil,
Heaven shall be blest
With active rest, Pi ut the best of earth is joyous toil."
"The very best schools of the future, wiH be based on the plan of alternate work and study." — Dr. O. L. Triggs, Chica- go University.
CIVILIZATION IN IIAYTI AND SAN DOMINGO.
"Labor is God's education for man." — Emerson.
Along few lines of general interest has there been more misinformation, or more unjust conclusions, than in regard to ihr so called failure of the attempts to elevate the freedmen of Ilayti and San Domingo. A striking example of a thing i In- world has known so surely and so long, that is NOT SO.
A^aiw and again with fullest assurance, has it been as- serted in the press and from the platform that all efforts to raise the freed colored and mixed races of Hayti and San Domingo have proven futile, and they have been believed to be incapable of elevation to any great degree of civilization, or mental improvement, and that they must be given over to riot and revolution, unless held down by the strong hand of the "superior races."
Put recently a student statesman of Hayti — who knows whereof he affirms — declares that the apparent failure has come from the unnatural and unscientific methods of educa-
ADDENDA.
tion pursued alike by both public and missionary schools, which have attempted to begin in the air, and build a mental culture with no foundation on the earth, of pride or skill in the essentials, of industry and labor. The natives have seen the disinclination of their superiors and teachers to labor and following that universal trait of humanity to imitate those socially above us have felt that text book lore was not com- patible with pride in handicraft accomplishment. They have been taught the spelling book instead of gardening, higher mathematics and latin instead of the fundamental art ot tillage, from which all true civilization flows, and as naturally as water flows down grade, these people, following the false standards, have tried to live by their wits instead of by honest toil and have drifted into riot and revolution, for the simple reason that they had no industrial system in which they had any pride or interest.
Here then we have the true reason for all this decadent race history, this discouraging phase of the race problem— the heads of these people have been filled with the dry text book lore, the facts and data that have so little to do with active life, and particularly for newly freedmen, while the hands were all untaught, no pride in useful achievement culti- vated, the very foundations of a progressive social order neg- lected, and a false pride established in following the ex- ample of the teachers and preachers of the dominant race to eschew all possible labor of the hands, all the creative attribute of man, the highest given ; is it any wonder they have drifted into riot and revolution? They had no industrial system in which the ambitious could find a field for their best efforts and so have fulfilled the old adage more truthful than elegant. "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do."
And the world all untaught in a correct social science, has stood aghast, and declared that the colored races could not attain to the civilization of the white race, as impious to the Creator as it was unscientific.
Knowing what we now do of the success of such schools as Hampton and Tuskegee, can there be a shadow of doubt, that if there had been such in Hayti and San Domingo, and hand-i-craft had preceded head-craft as nature provides, and pride and ambition in industry been made the corner stone of their teaching, they would have had a hopeful progressive history?
ADDENDA. 8
THI-: i-iTirri. i-im.irriNn FAUCI-:.
"If the blind lead the blind, they shall both fall into the mud."— Bible.
And now we get word that the same pitiful farce is being repeated in the Philippines, under the auspices of our Govern- ment schools. The teachers having been miseducated them- selves, are scattering the poison of a false system in the dark places and thus fulfilling the Scripture adage in regard to the leadings of the blind.
A letter recently received from a friend who has been a government teacher in the Philippines and who has had a long and successful experience in this country as College President, an intense student of sociology and a humanitarian of wide sympathies, tells of all this. He declares that he pleaded earnestly that the first steps in educating the natives should be along industrial lines, but the imported American teachers had no hand-i-craft skill themselves and no approximate ap- preciation of its value as the first steps in an advanced social order, so they taught as they had been taught, imparting in- voluntarily the idea that to be educated and cultured is to avoid work and that labor is only for slaves and inferiors, and he declares it has done untold harm, and thousands of the natives have been spoiled from ever becoming practical, effi- cient citizens in the new civilization. They are puffed up with conceit and vanity because they have a little smattering of English, and can put their name on paper, but have no ambi- tion «»r pride in skill in gardening, or any of the foundations of an industrial life.
The few Agricultural schools and Experiment Stations are a great benefit to the older farmers and the few who get their teachings, but nothing can take the place of imparting to the yon th ful masses the very fundamentals of an advancing civi- lization, that must come from skill in tillage and the arts tha^ naturally flow from that, and using the creative talents that only bring to man at-one-ment with his CREATOR.
Till: CONTRAST IN JAMAICA.
"Rightness exalteth a nation." — Bible.
Under the more humane rule of the 1'ritish in Jamaica, the freedmen have been taught some of progressive agriculture and have made a slow but steady improvement. The relations
4 ADDENDA.
of the races have been pleasant, no infamous crimes on record, no lynchings or mobs called for. With better schools and more complete training in a variety of mechanic arts and men- tal culture they would have attained a higher social develop- ment, for there can be no question but the evolutionary move- ments can be accellerated by proper study of social science, when the world shall have developed it as a science.
We now learn that some promising young men from all these Islands of the Sea are in attendance at Ttiskegee and Hampton, where a broader training is given, so we may hope in the future there will be a more rapid progress and the days of riot and revolution, tumult and turbulance will be no more.
ANGLO-SAXON RACE PRIDE.
"Pride goeth before distruction, and a haughty spirit be- fore a fall."— Bible.
We need not be too arrogant in our race pride when we look back over the bloody pathway by which we have come up from the time when the great preacher of a better civilization, St. Paul, took his life in his hands, to preach to the heathen on Britons soil, who were sacrificing human beings to their su- perstitions.
Neither the record of the cruel past nor the revelations of the present are conducive to our pride in our so called "Christ- like" social order. It is not at all flattering to our race to read Editor Steads expose of the unspeakable atrocities of the so-called "nobility," nor General Booth's "Darkest Eng- land" and the "Submerged Tenth"in a land that boasts of be- ing the richest nation on the earth. One English writer of world wide prominence declared that England is still in the main a paganism, with a few spots covered with a thin veneer of Christianity, and these spots 'making the surrounding pa- ganism more hideous in contrast.
And when we study our land with all our boast of freedom and progress we find the atrocity of "child slavery" in our factories, with an army of men without any way of earning an honest living. We have not yet studied the science of social adjustment to be very proud of our racial superiority, or we would not allow this nor the thousands of children to come up in the slums where it is impossible that they become anything but human monsters, costing millions to keep them in a state of subjection for the safety of the favored ones.
ADDENDA. 5
It was a heathen pagan Emperor that said that a nation could not expect to survive long, that derived its main reve- nues from the vices of its people, yet we are still deriving our principal revenue from the most destructive vice of our people and our children are taught in schools tinctured with pagan folly, and denominated "murderous" by able critics.
Surely we too may well begin to study at the fundamentals. And we may well be very patient with the apparently slow progress of neglected races until we develop enough of the "Science of Society" to know how to maintain our own stand- ing and correctly help those who have not yet had even our imperfect advantages.
TIIK <;KI:AT OHKKLINS EXAMPLE.
'What man has done, man may do again."
— Ancient Proverb.
All our farcical failure to elevate the Indians, and now the Philippines and other neglected people are in striking contrast to the success of the great Oberlin, who perhaps caused one of the greatest social reforms on the largest scale of any in re- corded history. He began his work by establishing an Agri- cultural school and taught the wild, rude, robber natives of the Pyranees an improved agriculture as the first step in a moral betterment. And so on from this fundamental begin- ning till he changed the whole people of the province, from the poorest, most wicked, and degraded, to the most refined, intelligent and thrifty of any in the nation.
His beginning, history and great success, is one of the rnnvincing and inspiring proofs of our whole contention Me.
-TIM-: I.A\V OF III'MAN PROGRESS."
"When all the elements of national life work together in harmony for progress, then material prosperity and moral ad- vance are rapid and sure, but when divisions and discord be- tween warring classes of citizens comes in to absorb mental effort, then national decadence and death sets in and when car- ried one step too far, then reform and recovery is impossible." — Henry George.
These startling words of the humane able student of all social law were penned nearly half a century since; when
ADDENDA.
strife and divisions between classes had not attained to half the portentious evils of today.
This philosophy of the able economist is but putting the essential teachings of the Carpenter of Nazareth into econo- mics phrase. He declared that "The meek (the altruistic) shall inherit the earth," and that "the strong shall bear the burdens of the weak," which is only another way of saying that all shall work together for common progress or common good and by that means they shall "inherit the earth." And all this is but the unchanging law of democratic economics, as potent and invariable as the law of gravitation.
Those who for selfish ends foment class divisions and strife, are more surely and rapidly undermining the foundations of the Republic, than the maddest anarchists.
When old Rome was climbing to a world supremacy, her peasantry all owned their own land and lived in their own homes, and their patriotism made them invincible, but when class divisions and unjust laws had taken their homes and lands and the drift was to the cities and to slavery, all patriotic ambition was destroyed and the nation was ready for the ruthless destroyer.
So today the appeal "back to the land" is but the plea to save our Republic already nearing the danger line from the rush to the cities, and the consequent clash of classes and di- vision of interests.
Then let us speed the plans to get the people back to the land and make it charming by all that art and science can teach of the most progressive agriculture that is always the most attractive of professions and full. of the highest pleas- ures of earth. And why should not the "Science of Society" and all the essential laws of human development and the methods for accellerating the evolution to higher and yet higher degrees of democracy, be taught in all our schools, and all that can be learned of proper, equitable and wasteless * ^-^distribution of created wealth, be as carefully taught as are the ^ideals of perfect production or selfish accumulation.
AN IRRIGATION CITY FOR SURPLUS LABOR.
"The common people are the class most to be considered in the structure of civilization." — Walter H. Page.
How may the dangerous divisions and strife between war- ring classes be so hopefully treated as by an effort to build an
ADDENDA. 7
"Irrigation City" with its "Industrial Schools and Colleges," its gardens and farms, shops and factories, where all surplus labor can become more than self supporting, and let capital and labor shake hands over the project that will bring peace and unity and co-operation between the now clashing, war- ring interests so dangerous to our public welfare even as the grand old hero Oberlin brought peace, prosperity and a high social order to the ignorant robber bands of the Pyranees.
From 93 to 97 our commissioner of labor declared there were from one to three million workers all the time out of their usual employment. The suffering and death resulting, would be equal to a quite severe war.
Had this vast labor power been marshalled for a campaign of construction, as suggested by the practical Secretary of the Irrigation League, and as it could have been much easier than were the armies of destruction from '61 to '65, it would have built several cities like Chicago, in the irrigation land, with farms and appliances to have made the inhabitants vastly more than self supporting and would have added several BIL- LIONS to the taxable permanent wealth of the nation and would have created a demand for all manufactured goods that would have kept many of the idle shops and factories busy, and capital employed and would have created a home market for products, a thousand times more to be desired than any foreign market, that must be sought after often at cost of war. Shall we allow this monumental folly and wicked waste to be repeated, in the coming depression, or shall the Free Indus- trial School and tlie CONSTRUCTIVE ARMY be set at work to show tin- world a new example, the most striking and helpful of all the CENTURIES?
"Democracy means constant social growth." — W. H. Page.
THi: WORLD WIDE FOLLY.
"Peace hath her victories." — Milton.
From a profound student of social problems, who with a small party has made the circle of the globe, we get the fol- lowing: "Everywhere we went we were impressed with this thought, IF ONLY all the nations of the earth would give the same earnest study and energy to teaching their people how to live, how to develope their natural resources, and their own best talents, that they now give to war and the prepara-
8 ADDENDA.
tions for war, how soon the world would be encircled by a real Millennial epoch of peace and abundant prosperity." Soon might come that dream of poets and prophets, the federation of the whole world in a brotherhood of unity, where the emula- tions should be highest attainments in usefulness, not in the grim powers of destruction. WHY NOT BEGIN IT NOW?
WHAT WASTED LABOR POWER COULD DO.
"Great waste is both wicked and unscientific." — Parsons.
Of all the illogical wastes of our "Insane Civilization" per- haps the worst and most collossal, and least realized is that of the waste of labor power when idle.
A few years ago the great city of Chicago was burned to the ground, and something like two hundred million dollars worth of buildings destroyed, and in three or four years it was all replaced, and twice as much more created, by the surplus labor power of the country, while all other productive industry went on unchecked, indeed the rather stimulated and increased by the active demand for products from the well paid labor, whose increased purchasing power was felt in every hamlet in the land.
During the last two years, an army of approximately a hundred thousand men have built all the wonderful "Fair City" at St. Louis, which wilKsoon be all torn down and be no increase to the taxable wealth of the nation.
THE ARMY OF DISCHARGED I^ABOR.
"A hungry desperate man is of all -animals the most dan gerous."
Recently we read in the daily press, that an army of nearly or quite seventy-five thousand men have been discharged by the railroads, and other large industries, aside from as many more last autumn, thus cutting them off from any chance to earn an honest living, and wasting a great share of their crea- tive labor power, and making them a danger to society from the very desperateness of their situation.
The national treasury has already a fund of over twenty- seven millions in hand with which to build great irrigation works, thus opening a most profitable and permanent way of using the labor power now being wasted in idleness, and if it is used to build an irrigation city, of homes and farms, il
ADDI:M»A. »
will remain a permanent addition to the taxable wealth of the nation. While if this army of idle labor, now irritated and an- tagonistic, is left to suffer it may very probably destroy vastly more in red riot and revolution than it can replace in many more years of constructive labor.
A few years ago our Government without a tithe of this sum on hand or "in sight" called together the largest army the \\orld had ever seen, and taught them the art of destroy- ing men and property, and in a few years they destroyed one or two billions of the accumulated wealth of the country. If then our government, would at once begin to use this sum now in the Treasury, to employ this labor to create some permanent wealth, how much more sane and reasonable than to risk its waste and the danger it will be to the peace of th* country.
Truly to build such an irrigation city, we would need many teachers to teach the people skilled gardening and intensive farming, so did the army need thousands of drill masters to teach the art of destroying property and men. We may well ask what is all our skill and science, our schools, colleges, churches, and universities for if not to produce a civilization, or social order that shall open the doors of natural opportu- nity, and teach people how to use the bounties of nature and their own powers of hand to create their own living, and thus at the same time create a "balance wheel" for the labor market, to use in a profitable manner the surplus labor not now needed in present production for the market? We call on our educators and captains of industry for an answer.
Valuable as has been the lesson taught by the great Fair, of the world's progress in mechanic art, we are profoundly impressed with the conviction, that the world impression that could be made by organi/ing. educating, and employing the army of discharged labor, to build their own city of homes, and to create their own self supporting industries, would have been a thousand fold more important, and would have helped forward the evolution of a higher democratic ideal more than all the great Fairs yet held. In so far as man him- self is above and superior to the machines he makes, even so far is the development of social progress, that shall eliminate the waste of men. above that of the development of progress in purely mechanical achievements.
10 ADDENDA.
One of the most important items in mechanic progress has been to prevent all waste in power or material, so the highest achievements in civilization shall be to save all the pitiful waste of men that has heretofore been the bane of all undemocratic civilizations, and we now have attained the time when this great ideal should have its due study and make its first exhibition to the waiting world.
"While another man has no land, my title to mine is viti- ated."— Emerson.
THE REMEDY FOR CHILD SLAVERY.
"No nation can afford to neglect its children."; — Horace Mann.
The words "Child Slavery" have an intuitive horror to every sensitive mind, and we are sure justly so, but as all healthy growth is step by step, and not from bad to best at once, so we think the working of poor children in our factories may yet be made a means of grace to the poor children of the mountains, by giving them training in garden and schools which they could not have but for the chance to earn some of its cost.
If the children were to be divided into shifts, to work a few hours, and then study or work in the gardens and shops, and thus do what they can without abuse of their growing powers, it would mitigate the crying evil, and gradually open the way to the time when no child shall be allowed to labor for wages till of mature age, as it should be.
And in accord with the growing spirit of the age, the adults should also be divided into shifts and not allowed to work in the air of any factory or shop over eight hours at a time. And then be trained in gardening, mechanics and those arts that will make them self reliant, self respecting, self sup- porting people, who alone are fitted to be the ruling citizens of a Republic. The fact is already well established that in- telligent labor is always of more value even in tending the almost automatic machinery of modern production than un- trained.
In some such way as this only can any state escape exe- cration for allowing its children to be destroyed by thousands, to make profits for soulless corporations. If the poor children of the mountains can earn a chance for gaining a wider out-
ADDENDA. 11
look, and a training for an independant and intelligent life, by giving a portion of their time, even to the slavish labor and wages of the factory system, it may be one step in advance. but to give their whole time as now to the soul and body destroying factory slavery is a paganism, not excelled in at- rocity, by any story of all the past slaveries in the worlds cruel history.
If all the states of our country would heed the words oi that able son of the south who says "the children of a state are its most valuable of undeveloped resources and let no greed of gain chain them to a destructive slavery."
NKIJVnrs A.MKUIfANS. "A MKKK \\NITIS."
"The strength of a chain is measured by its weakest link."
"A people who have become physically degenerate, will also be morally and mentally decadent."
No student of social progress or decline, can learn of th< appalling increase in nervous diseases, and the constantly in creasing number of nervous wrecks, among the American people, with all the attendant suffering, and loss of mental power, without the most pessimistic forebodings for the fu- ture. And it is practically certain that a great share of it comes from our unnatural, unscientific school system, with its high pressure and long continued nerve strain, and almost total neglect of physical exercise and muscle development; while with a proper school system the effect would be the other way. to correct any tendency from other causes towards nerve weakness, and to produce robust bodies, with ample strength of nerve and mental powers for the most strenuous of life's activiti-
Instead of weakening strong children, a proper educational system should strengthen weak children. The weak and nervous child should come from its school period with its nerve strength built up instead of enervated, and in so many cases entirely destroyed.
Of this there- is ample proof, and our President Roosevelt is one striking example, who a puny boy. was so developed in hool age as to become an athlete, with nerve vigor of .threat endurance. The same is being illustrated in the won- derful scho.,1 at Ilaubimla. Germany, where weakling anemic are in one year so ^treiiirthened as to be able to make
12 ADDENDA.
long trips across country, sleeping out of doors in rigorous autumn weather with no detriment, and making as good or better progress in academic studies as pupils in other schools who do no work with their hands.
The day for the suggestion that any class of pupils cannot stand the strain of a course of study, in school, college, or university, has gone by, and the day is dawning when the weak and nervous young lady, or boy, will be sent to college or university for the express purpose of building up a robust body, and a vigorous enduring nerve power, while attaining to the very broadest and most complete educational course possible to gain from an institution of learning.
"Any study that is not recreative to a growing child, is always injurious." — Dr. Dewey.
"I would rather have Illiterates for citizens than Nerve- Wrecks."— Nelson.
AN INSANE CIVILIZATION.
"The faults and vices of our philosophy and literature, are
attributable to the enervated habits of our literary classes." — Emerson.
Recently in an address to a student body, a clergyman of international repute, a man much in demand for commence- ment orations and Chautauqua platforms, declared it as his belief that a course of mental training alone, produced such an abnormal development, such a one sided mental equip- ment as to merit the name of an insanity, and in his opinion so far has this been carried in England and America, that it is correct to speak of our social order as an insane system, with abnormal standards. Surely a most startling proposition to come in all candor from such a source. But who shall deny the charge? It is apparently the only reasonable explanation for all the crudities and absurdities of our civilization, and it is too serious and startling to be pushed aside lightly by our educators, whose patriotism and science as well is thus called in question.
MRS. GENERAL LEW WALLACE'S INDICTMENT.
"The mute appeal of neglected children is to you the voice of God."— W. A. Page.
The above and the severe indictment of Mrs. Lew Wai-
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lace's noted article* is a most severe reflection on our Asso- ciated Educators, and we must repeat and reaffirm her charge. We have seen its truth in all parts of our country, and have heard it approved by -many most thoughtful people. We find many teachers who agree to the essential truth of all her most startling charges, and admit that no adequate attempt has yet been made to strengthen the weaker children, or guard against injury to nervous ones. And in the name of our countrys' future, in the name of hundreds of children killed, and the thousands injured, and in the name of the thousands of sufferers, we call upon and beg of our National Educational Association, that this appalling condition be given their most profound and serious consideration. The thought of the world is too much aroused, the importance of the case is too great to be pushed aside with neglect any longer.
The success of the school at Haubinda, and the recognized II Described in current "International Magazine" by Dr. August Forel, of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. || need of a change has caused other schools to be established in al parts of Europe, and makes it seem that they will likely soon surpass us in this as they have in the number of their other industrial schools. Surely America, that first established the ideal of the common school, and the giving to every child a fundamental education cannot afford to let the old countries so far surpass her in these types of schools best adapted for the progress towards a higher Democracy.
"To talk about education in a democratic country, as less than the free education for EVERY CHILD is a mockery." — W. H. Page.
THE EDUCATORS' RESPONSIBILITY.
"To whom much is given, from them much will be required." —Bible.
Is it k-ss than a severe reflection on our National Educa- tional Ass'n that such a sweeping and derogatory charge as was that of Mrs. Lew Wallace's arraignment, confirmed as it was by the wide correspondence of Editor Bok, and by the observations of so many people, who have reiterated the charge in all portions «>f the country, should go on unnoticed and unanswered for all these years?
*In "Ladies Home Journal."
14 ADDENDA.
If it is or was approximately or remotely correct, to charge that our school system is a menace to the health and nerves of the nation's children, a cause of death to many and an irreparable injury to more, and a danger to all, then is it a national disgrace and danger, for the children of today are the people of the nation's defense of tomorrow. And a charge of an injury, where there should be great bodily as well as mental benefit, is of so startling importance, as im- peratively to demand immediate attention from all who have the educational interests of the nation in their hands. They, of all others, should take immediate measures to repel the serious charge of a murderous system, or take the most heroic steps to change the methods so as to avoid all possibility of doing so serious a wrong to their sacred trust.
This nations' life has cost too much, and the hopes of the world are too intensely centered in our welfare, to allow any possible avoidable injury to come to the rising generation of those who must assume the tremendous responsibility of carrying forward the ideals of a " Triumphant Democracy."
NORMAL SCHOOL PREPARATION OF TEACHERS.
"The proper question at examination should not be, what have you learned from text books, but what have you be- come?" For what activities are you prepared?
The able Superintendent of the Washburn School for Boys of Minneapolis, suggested that the first and most important, and possibly the most difficult step in bringing in the new ideal of hand training in schools, would be to get the ideal accepted and adopted in the Normal schools, where the teachers are trained for actual work. For here he thought would be a strong hold of conservatism and conventionality, equal to the average college or university.
But we have been much gratified to hear from the head of one normal in the east, who had foreseen the importance and need of this kind of teaching, and has inaugurated working classes, to train teachers in floriculture, gardening and other handicraft lines, and proposes to enlarge along this line as fast as he can get support to do so.
In one of the most prominent of southern Normals, we also find still more complete equipment for teaching a variety of handicrafts, and what is best of all the efficient lady head
ADDENDA. 15
of this department is a thorough enthusiast over the already. visible benefits of the system — not experiment. We dare opine, that the Xormal that does not see the shadow of com- ing events, and prepare to drill teachers in all possible lines of hand culture and particularly some work that touches til- lage of the soil, and the growing of useful or beautiful things, will soon be away behind the times, and their teachers not in demand for the best schools.
TEAniKUS PKK.MATrKKLY BREAK DOWN.
"The prosperity of the state depends on ALL the people being properly educated." — Gov. Heyward.
It is a matter of most common remark that the teachers vocation is one of severe nerve strain, and that many break- down under it at an early age, and thus lose their best years of usefulness. This alone is enough to condemn the system, for of alj citizens of the state, the teachers should be the most valued, and what ever cuts their life or activity short is a se\cre loss to the social organism. The later years of a teachers life should be of most usefulness and would be if conserved by a proper change from mental to physical labor, in their daily work, as it would be in an industrial system of school life.
Will our X. E. A. then squarely meet the issue and either show to the world the fallacy of all these charges, or set about seeking a sufficient remedy to satisfy the people who have put such a priceless charge in their hands.
TIII: i-F.ori.i: MTST MAKE THE niA.\<;i:.
"All great reforms must come up from the common peo- ple."— Ancient Egyptian Proverb.
From a venerable and venerated friend whose thought is always candid and able, comes the suggestion that the re- forms we ask must perforce come from the demand of the people themselves, that what is demanded by the need of the times and the aroused spirit of the world, is so far away from the conventional established ideal, it cannot be wrought out by the present professional educators, they have not the power to stem the tide of established custom, but it must be brought about by the united demand of the people and the progressive teachers who have already seen the wrong of the present and
16 ADDENDA.
the hope of the better system, whose eyes are open to the coming light, and who see the fundamental need of the time. "The teachers of the old system fool themselves, and misr lead their pupils into the belief that a literary course alone can make SCHOLARS."— W. H. Page.
INITIATING SELF-SUPPORTING SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES.
"Where there is a will, there is a way." — Proverb.
"Life without work is guilt, and work without ART is brutality."— Ruskin.
So often comes the querie, "What are the first steps to be taken in oganizing a Self-Supporting school or college?" But from the nature of the case, very definite instructions can- not be given for all the varying conditions, localities and per- sonalities of those essaying the effort.
To some teachers and in some places, the first steps along the industrial line will be in gardening and intensive farming, adding the shops and tools for making the needed things of the school as time and condition may dictate. The ideal way would be for the state or national government to furnish the equipment complete before beginning, and no doubt when the ideal becomes fixed in the minds of the people, this will be done. To some teachers in some places, the first steps will naturally be in some type of "Arts and Crafts" adding the p-ardening and other features later, as has been done by Elbert Hnbbard at East Aurora.
To our view one of the very fundamentals would be to teach some type of work on the land,. some form of labor on the face of Mother Earth, some touch of the -ideal of that wonderful allegory in Genesis, where perfect man is given a "garden to trim and dress" as the best condition for highest moral and mental growth, and towards which all turn as the best remedy for our social ills. To produce its own food is one of the most homelike concepts of such a school.
A most valuable and practical suggestion comes from Dr. Triggs of the Chicago University, that for a private school that perforce must be self-supporting, the first steps should be to establish the industrial and economic portion on a pay- ing basis- before commencing any distinctly school work. Thir. at least would make it a safe step, but we believe some actual study can be begun at the first, and not interfere with tho
ADDENDA. 7
economic safety or progress at all, by working only eight hours per day, and having evening classes for study, and in this way good progress can be made in the true education that shall distinguish this type of school from that whose only ideal is to memorize so much of text books any way whether of any use or not.
If the industrial work is led as it should be in all cases by one who is in the spirit of the school and a competent en- thusiastic teacher, a vast and valuable amount of real mental equipment will be gathered from the oral instruction given in the daily conversation of the teacher, and a love developed for knowing things and all about the sciences related to daily life, which is one of the very best foundations for all educa- tion. Through this jmeans many of the laws of nature and mechanics, and the allied sciences can be imparted, making it one of the most profitable portions of a true education, with- out any use of text books at all. And we know from experi- ence that there are a vast number of young people all the way from 15 to 50 years of age that would spring at the chance to win such an education, and go through such a course, if the hope was opened before them, and who would be willing to work full time the first two years, at any reasonable labor, to get a start that should give them the hope of a completed course.
After the first one or two years of full time work, the next vrars could be divided according to circumstances, say work- ing each day three or four hours, for four or five days per week, and full time the other one or two days, as found neces- sary to make the cost of all things fully covered by the amount of labor done, having all the time evening classes if desirable, and oral conversational instruction as can be so well given when te:>rb<-rs and pupils work together.
Tt can all be done as soon as there is any enthusiasm for it.
From an able and experienced educator comes the sugges- tion that in nearly every village and country school district the work of industrial training can be begun without any new expense or trouble, that there are experts, in varied lines of handicraft who would volunteer to teach a few hours per week or would do some teaching and take payment in the work of the pupils after a few lessons had made them expert enough to be a help worth some consideration.
The teachers of woodwork and blacksmithing in an Agri-
18 ADDENDA.
cultural College made the statement that the boys who have a natural taste for those trades can gain enough skill in two or three weeks to be able to earn wages as helpers, and rapidly come to be worth more than half as much as journeymen tradesmen.
All this line of educational work will grow of its own charm, easier and faster than the memory cramming of text book rules and data.
PRIMARY INDUSTRIAL LESSONS IN EVERY SCHOOL DISTRICT.
From a most practical and able educator, comes this sug- gestion— which is really but a concrete expression of what is already begun in hundreds of schools where the vision of a better system has already been revealed to teachers of an open mind.
"Let but the firm determination come to parents and school authorities alike that this killing high pressure nerve strain shall cease, and at once; this memory cramming from text books be modified by more general and practical instruc- tion, and the school day be cut squarely in two; and it be decreed that hereafter only half of the days time shall be given to text book study; and at once in a hundred different ways will the way open to the better method of handicraft training, and the study of mechanical principles, and its prac- tice in all the ways at hand.
Let gardening and floriculture be begun on vacant lots, or on land rented or donated, and taught by the best experts within reach. Let wood-working be* attempted in varying, ways, from whittling from drawings of canes, spoons, profiles of differing types of facial form, and let the carpenters teach the elements of their work, and get help to partly or wholly repay time spent in lessons. The same with other trades and arts. The arts of basket weaving and rug braiding, from rags, corn husks, tough grasses and pine needles. Study out some simple forms of Sloyd with its progressive steps from a simple stick whittled to a square or round, to the perfect hexegon and octagon, and so up to the making of a fancy tabarett, which will be accomplished much sooner than would be ex- pected."
The Jack Knife can be made an implement of art culture, equal to the pencil or brush if only directed into making
AD1»KNI»A. 19
things of synmu'try. instead of the usual inane whittling merely to make shavings. The use of >hear.s and scissors in cutting silhouettes, birds, profiles, dresses and a])rons for dolls, etc. And all this will grow in interest and value as the work goes forward and skill and interest deepens, and all has its great value in mental equipment, and it will sharpen the ability to memorize all needful text book lessons and vastly help to keep discipline and interest in a healthful growth.
.MMIIK FOR SCHOOLS ANI> I.FSS FOR \YAK.
"The growth of the war spirit, is a sure sign of moral decadence."
The present Japanese war has proven beyond question that the art of destruction, has made even greater progress than the art of invulnerability in making battleships, in vincible as they have seemed.
And we now know that the great steel armoured ships, costing so many millions, can be destroyed like an egg shell, in a moment of time by the fearful engines of destruction modern science has enabled us to perfect. And there is every n to believe this will continue to be more and more so, and that in the near future it will be impossible to make a ship, if it is not already so, that will not be at the mercy 01 an alert and active foe. and liable to be shattered and sunk in a moment at any time.
Tn view then of all this and in view of the worse and more destructive, demoralizing effect of cultivating the war spirit among our people — always a degrading influence — how un- speakably foolish and wicked to squander millions of wealth on battle ships, when so many of our poor people are held in the unspeakable thralldom of illiteracy, the worst slavery the mind can conceive.
Does any sane mind for one moment believe there could be a particle of danger, if this Republic should at once announce to the world, that we WILL HAVE X< ) M< >KK \VAR-that from now on we will disarm, and scatter our silly army and navv. and hereafter depend <>n the worlds court of arbitra- tion to settle all our controversies, if so be we ever have any 'tie. And instead of all this worse than wasted effort, announce to the world that we will at once begin to enlarge our schools and colleges, SO that KVKRY CHILD and adult
20 ADDENDA.
too who wishes it, shall not only be taught to read and write, but also shall have a very complete all around training, of hands and head and heart, in all that will make them the highest type of citizens the world has ever seen, in both in- telligence and efficiency as wealth producers, and people cul- tured in all high ideals of esthetic living.
And if we should announce to the world that instead of a portion of our people being taught the arts of destruction, and of killing each other, they shall all be taught more fully than ever before heard of in the annals of the worlds history, in the sciences of Agriculture, and Mechanic arts, also that all our children during the formative period of their whole youth shall be kept under the moulding influence of teachers, with the end and aim always in view of making each and every one of them the highest type of useful citizens possible: to develop from their given talents.
Does any sane mind doubt that such a step would at once set a new pace for the world's progress, and be the actual means for bringing in that era, so dimly foreseen by the an- cient Seers, when wars shall BE NO MORE.
A little more than a century ago we set the world an ex- ample of forming a government with a democratic constitu- tion, and that first radical step has been followed more or less closely by some where near a hundred countries who now have a constitutional government.
May we not then hope that every patriot heart will join our cry, and ask that we shall have a still more inclusive de- mand than our Motto and let it be "MORE FOR SCHOOLS AND NAUGHT FOR WAR."
PI. : -..
In 'MR- <»f the airiest <>f recent books written by a colored man pleading for the education and betterment of his unfort- unate race, we find the following innocent and plausible look- ing sentiments expressed. H . "Teach the Thinkers to think, and the Workers to work," followed in the same con- nection by the ^tatement that "It is silly to make a Scholar a Blacksmith, but sillier stiU to make a Blacksmith a Scholar."
riausible as these innocent sentences Jook to the casual reader, we deem them full of the subtlest poison to his own .struggling race and subversive of all democratic progress to any race or people. This ideal of "Teaching the Thinkers to think," and not to work, and the "Workers to work," and not to think for their own protection, if carried to its ulti- mate, we an- sure would again naturally and inevitably lead to just such a state of society as prepared the way for the ruin of the Republics of old Greece and Rome, where a small coterie of well educated men "Taught to think," but not to work, nor to respect the workers, thought out ways to re- duce the "Workers who had been taught to work," but not think for their own protection to the most abject and piti- ful poverty and slavery that has ever disgraced humanity. And these "Thinkers who had been taught to think," but not to work, became the most arrogant tyrants and profli- in all the world's sad history, and this baneful senti- ment has always and always will tend to bring men to this condition to the end of time, if carried to its natural ultimate.
AKl ! 1C 'I YIIAMCAL I.I I K1JAIIY MKN.
There is no aristocracy more arrogant or more tyrannical than men of letters when their education has been of the kind so caustically de>cribrd by Herbert Spencer as "not adapted to fit for complete living and usefulness, but to form a class of literary aristocracy" different and separate from the class of workers.
formula could be more effective than this of the man who pleads so eloquently for the good of "Black folk souls" ••- Thinkers to a state of uselessness, crime and folly, and the Workers to abject and hopeless slavery.
How widely in contrast is the suggestive epigram of ^e author of "The Religion of Democracy" who . "The glory of thinking is in WORK, and the dignity of work is in THINKING."
And who would dan t the "sillin devel-
oping n of such ' 1 r.lacksmiY Klihu
22 ADDENDA
Burritt, who literally "stood before Kings" because of his great ability, which came from the very mixture of brawn and brain development, that is the only true ideal of the high culture for which we so earnestly plead. If our black- smiths, carpenters, farmers and all workers could thus be "taught to think and to work," to know of the science of society and the philosophy of political economy, for their own pro- tection, how much less of real slavery we would have to curse both classes, those who rule to ruin, and those who are ruined by the ruling.
THE DEMOCRATIC FORMULA.
A thousand times would we reiterate the formula, "Let the Thinkers be taught to think, and to WORK, and to respect all who work with skill, and let all the Workers be taught to THINK for their own protection." Let every "blacksmith", farmer and worker have a high mental devel- opment, let him know of all sciences allied to his work, and above all, let him know of social science and the laws and philosophy of democratic political economy and understand all the intricate schemes of the "Thinkers who have been taught to think" — and not to work — for robbing and enslav- ing with invisible chains those whose work produces all the wealth for the "Thinkers."
Nor must we go back to old Greece or Rome for illus- trations of the baneful effects of this pernicious formula of the miseducated, misguided, mistaken man, who has been led to suppose that the present civilization is the ideal for the Anglo-Saxon race, or that the conventional system of education is in any degree a scientific one, or adapted to democratic progress, or even for the highest development of a true order of scholarship.
THE ENGLISH ''THINKERS" ENSLAVING FORMULA.
We need but to go to our mother country, England, or to observe the present conditions and tendencies in all the Anglo-Saxon civilization, to see the pernicious workings of this false formula.
In England the "Thinkers, who have been taught to think", for their own good only, have thought out a formula of finance that has diverted an almost unthinkable amount of unearned wealth into the coffers of a few great bankers who have thereby been made the financial autocrats of the whole world, and has put into their hands the interest-bearing bonds of nearly every nation on earth, as well as those of nearly every railroad in the world. And within a given time.
ADDENDA 23
according to reliable >tatistics, has taken from the United States over five billions' worth of gold and silver and other labor products, for which we have received no tangible re- turns. It has all been a gratuitous tribute to their system.
Their formula was, "Base all money on gold, and for every dollar of gold obtained, issue ten dollars or more of interest-bearing credits, and the world shall pay us untold tribute." And in the vast extension of this plan more un- earned wealth has been accumulated than was ever before put into the hands of any one human agency. And the pa- thetic side of it all is that it has come from the unpaid toil of millions of those "Workers who have been taught to work, but not to think for their own protection." And this system is still at work, and the world's workers are unaware of its subtle power to rob and enslave.
This formula of "ten dollars of organized credit, bearing interest, for every one dollar of gold," and its vast enlarge- ment until in many cases there has been many times ten times the credit bearing interest for every one dollar of gold in hand," is the height of the art of robbery and enslave- ment yet attained by English "Thinkers who have been taught to think, and not to work,' for what they want.
And the profligate character of these arrogant English "Thinkers" who have enslaved the world, is told by the shameful revelations of Editor Stead. It could hardly be worse.
And the abject conditions to which they have reduced the "Workers who have been taught to work," but not to think for their own safety, is told by the long, cruel history of Ireland, and General Booth's startling book, "In Darkest England," and its "Submerged Tenth." Worse, if possible, than the pitiful slavery of old Rome.
AMKKICA'S ioi:\iti..\ •• \\ A i K it i-.n STOCKS/'
But in America our "Thinkers who have been taught to think," and not to work, have attained to a yet higher degree in the consummate art of robbery and enslavement of the workers.
"Watering Stocks" begun in a small way less than a generation ago, by the doughty dry land Commodore, whose patriotism and democracy were tersely epitomized in the oft quoted phrase. "Damn the people," has become like a Car of Juggernaut, and we now have a veritable king of diluted securities whose issuance of beautifully lithographed
24 ADDENDA
certificates of fictitious imitation investments has been as the letting out of many waters, and thousands have been overwhelmed by the flood. Recently he and his associates boast that at one sitting they had successfully issued thirty- six millions of this fictitious capital on which labor must pay dividends.
And this etherial type of "Vested Interests" has all the legal power to draw "Dividends" from labor's products, that the most solid forms of "accumulated capital" has, and so rapid is the increase of this form of enslavement that it will be but a short time till the total thralldom of our "Workers" will be consummate.
Teaching "Thinkers to think," and not to work, and teaching "Wjorkers to work," and not to think, for their own protection, has been the wrong method in all the past, and it is what we most heartily condemn in the present system of education. It at once constitutes two classes of society with divergent, clashing interests, that, as Henry George says, will only and can only result in social disintegration and national decadence and death.
CANNIBALISTIC CONCEPTS CONTINUED. '
All of these systems of enslavement of the "Workers" whose toil produces the wealth of the world, is but a con- tinuation and variation of the old cannibalistic concept that the strong and smart man shall eat or prey upon the weak or simple man, only that these refined methods are in this realm what the "Auto," the "Wireless Telegraphy," and the "Dirigable Flying Machine" are in the realm of mechanics, the highest achievements now conceivable to our imagina- tions.
Surely our misleading pleader for his enslaved race will need the long life of the Patriarchs, and the assiduity of an Apostle, to undo the harm his pernicious formula may have done to the young of his race, who will no doubt look to him as an "Oracle" trained in the best institutions (so called) of learning of the dominant race.
But thank God there is a rising tide of "Thinkers" who have seen the follv .of going back to paganish social stand- ards, and have a high concept of man as a CREATOR, as well as a THINKER.
THE ADOPTION OF OUR "DEMOCRATIC FORM- ULA" IS AT HAND FOR ALL.
ADDENDA
The American League For Industrial Education.
The American League for Industrial Education was or- ganized in Chicago on June 20, 190.}.. And the objects of the organization are set forth as follows in tluir preamble: ist. To conduct an educational campaign for an Industrial public school system which shall include both agricultural and manual training in all public schools, so that children shall be taught to farm as they are now taught in Denmark and France in the public schools.
2d. To promote the establishment of school gardens in connection with all public schools and of public Manual Train- ing schools farms in every county in the United States, and of enough such school farms in the vicinity of all cities to give to every boy an opportunity to learn how to till the soil for a livelihodd, and get his living from the land by his c-wn labor.
3d. To enlist the co-operation of Agricultural, Civic, Com- mercial, Educational, Industrial, Labor, Manufacturing and other organizations as well as philanthropic support and leg- islative action in furthering the objects of the League.
4th. To maintain a Press and Literary bureau for the pro- motion of the objects of the League, and the collection and dissemination of information concerning Industrial Educa- tion, including both farm and manual training and to bring before the people of the country, through lectures, and public addresses, and by holding local and national conventions, the advantages, methods and motives of industrial education and the national importance of a public system of industrial schools.
Among those who have already consented to act as officers of tin- League are prominent business men, well known jurist.^ and eminent educators. One of the leading bankers of Chi- cago has consented to act as treasurer.
ntually it is expected that every State in the Union will be represented on the official board.
The objects and purposes of the League have already been endorsed by two lar^e organizations of representative busi- ness men by appropriate resolutions.
A very large membership is confidently expected.
26 ADDENDA
ENDORSEMENTS.
"You are not too radical, I agree with all you have written, and will help along the move all I can It is the next great step in our civilization." — Dr. W. H. Thomas, and Mrs. Van- dialia Varnum Thomas.
"I agree with all your arguments and propositions exactly. Your book should be read by five millions of the best people, and I will help along your League all I can." — N. O. Nelson.
'The book has held me like a romance, it is full of virility, and complete argument. I was in favor of Industrial educa- tion before, but did not know the strongest arguments for it."— Mrs. Clara Parish Wright.
"You have concentrated a wealth of arguments, and facts most conclusive." — L. A. Damon, Teachers College, Columbia University.
"I am thoroughly in accord with all your contentions, the best schools of the future will be on the plan of alternate work and study." — Dr. O. L. Triggs, Chicago University.
"Your propositions are perfectly feasible, and should be put into action. If pupils had an organized system for pro- ducing all their own needs, they could do so at no detriment, but to an actual advantange to their academic studies." — (Prof.) A. J. Cook, Pomona College.
"Your book is very interesting and suggestive, and should have a wide reading." — Mrs. Virginia C. Meredeth, Minnesota Agricultural College.
"It is a great book." — Andrew M. McConnell, Atlanta Al- kahest Lyceum Bureau.
"It is just what I have been looking for." — Geo. H. Max- well, editor "Talisman."
"Your book looks small, but it is weighty, we have spoiled enough Indians and colored people by false system of educa- tion ; it is a pity to have it go farther, and spoil the Filipinos ; success to you in your great work." — (Rev.) Win. C. Damon.
"Too much cannot be said in praise of this unassuming little book, which marks an epoch in educational literature." Waverly Magazine.
ADDENDA 27
"I like your ideas and fully agree with your plans."
THOS. C. ATKKSON, Prof. Agriculture, \V. Va. Unsty. Eductl. Com., Natl. Grange.
No growing child should ever be allowed to study at mem- orizing more than two hours at any one time, nor for more than two such terms in any one day. It is too severe a derangement of digestion, and too great a nerve strain. — DR. DEWEY.
4 'Education is something more than training youth — it is building a new social order." — DOLE.
"A nation that fails to make the best out of every individ- ual citizen, to the fullest measure of his capacity, must still be accounted barbarous." — HENDERSON.
"No work that cannot be done with pleasure should be done at all.'-' "Genuine art is always the expression of pleas- ure in labor." — \\'M. MORRIS.
"I agree to the fullest extent with your grand book, and in ^all your pi-ins as therein expressed."
(Rev.) J. HERMAN RANDALL.
"Whv'vrer briars universal industrial education to pass will be entitled to the laurel." — DR. S. G. SMITH.
"The college may draw too heavily on the intellectual re- sources of tli2 p ipil. . . . As a result the graduate may coins forth bearing n mind disciplined, to think, bur. lacking the power of body or will to use it." — PREST. THWING, Western Reserve I'niversity.
"One of the best books I have read for years." — (Ex- Sec'y) HOKE SMITH.
" So palpably false as to injure the cause you are trying to promote." — A TEACHER.
" I heartily congratulate you on your work and plans."
PROF. BRIERLY, Editor Southern Educational Review.
ADDENDA
OFFICERS OF THE
American League for Industrial Education
Who have already expressed their willingness to serve
1714 RAILWAY EXCHANGE BUILDING
7 JACKSON BOULEVARD
CHICAGO
N. O. NELSON,
Ch'm Board Trustees
JEROME H. RAYMOND,
Gen'l Secretary
D HURLBERT, Treas., Vice-Pres. Merchants Loan & Trust Co.
S. H. COMINGS,
Corresponding Secretary
GEO. H. MAXWELL,
Executive Chairman
O. L. TRIGGS,
Field Secretary
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
JANE ADDAMS, CHICAGO Head Resident Hull House Social Settlement
C. O. BORING, CHICAGO
Member Boar«i of Directors The Forward Movement
C. B. BOOTIIE, NEW YORK Chairman of the Board The National Irrigation Associatioi
E. B. BUTLER, CHICAGO
President Board of Trustees Illinois Manual Training School Farm
JOHN W. COOK. DF.KALB, ILL.
President Northern Illinois State Normal School
fOHN FARSOM, CHICAGO
Farson, Leach & Co., Bankers 140 Dearborn street
MILTON GEORGE, CHICAGO
Founder I linois Manual Training School Farm
FRANK H. HALL, AUKORA, ILL. Superintendent of Institutes Illinois Farmers Institute
VVILLET M. HAYES,
ST. ANTHONY'S PARK, MINN. Profes or of Agriculture University of Minnesota
H. D. HEMENWAY,
HAKTFORD, CONN. Director Hartford School of Horticulture
WILLIAM O. WATERS, CHICAGO Rector Grace Episcopal Church
T. D. HURLEY, CHICAGO President Visitation and Aid Society
THOMAS KANE, CHICAGO
President Winona Assembly Winona, Indiana
O. J. KERN, ROCKFORD, ILL. Superintendent of Schools Winnebago County, Illinois
J. H. KRAUSKOPF, PHILADELPHIA President National Farm School Doylestown, Pa.
GEORGE McA. MILLER,
GLEN ELLYN, ILL.
President Ru«kin University
HERBE'RT MYRICK,
Si'KINGFlKLD, MASS.
Editor American Agriculturist an<l Orange Judd Farmer
N. O. NELSON, ST. Louis, Mo. president N. O. Nelson Mfg. Co. President LeClaire College
JOHN H. PATTERSON,
DAYTON, OHIO
President National Cash Register Company
EVERETT SISSON, CHICAGO Publisher "The Interior" Director Winona Assembly
R. S. TUTHILL, CHICAGO President Board of Trustees St. Charles Home for Boys
S. H. COMINGS, FAIRHOPE, ALA.
APPENDIX.
\ Forward and Upward Step in Universal Education.
A Radical Paper Read at Annual Meeting of Minnesota
Educational Association, St. Paul, Minnesota,
December 28, 1901, by S. H. Comings.
PRELUDE. (By Editor National Printer-Journalist.)
While at the recent meeting of the executive committee of the National
.clitorial Association, in a private conversation with the editor, Vice-
'resident F. R. Gilson repeated the very general complaint as to the de-
ciencies of high school scholars and graduates in practical knowledge,
n orthography, reading, writing and arithmetic. He complained of "fads,"
ml thought that it would be better to go back to the "three R's" of our
thers than to continue the present system. All employing printers and news-
per publishers, and all business men and manufacturers make the same
nd or similar complaints. The fact that without the counterbalancing
ducation of useful, creative toil at home, which gave every child moral
•id physical fiber and inspired to noble aims in life, during the early
tys of the republic and the settlement and development of new states, an
iicational system has grown up in this country that is one-sided and en-
ehling. It consists of mental gymnastics and the memorizing of lan-
.iages, history, mythology, and an excessive amount of abstract facts,
jeords and theories that are largely meaningless to the learners and in
10 proper manner call into play the creative faculties or give impulse to
doing something, to performance or preparation for practical endeavor.
[f any one proposes a change, he is called a faddist, and the dull, dwarfing,
^oul-beminibing. body-en feehling processes in so-called education go on.
'f argument is brought to bear, the cry that comes back is that a greater
•r cent of the cellege graduates get into literature, into political office, and
"nee into the biographies and encyclopedias, than of those who do not
Midi advantages (?). The fact is that the necessity of this kind
• i schooling has been so drilled into the minds of the people that it is
aken as a panacea by all who have some broad inspiration to effort — by
'1 the brightest, hardiest and ambitious as a necessary medicine, and
o^pitc the fact that most of these afterwards look back with regret to the
inic and vitality wasted in learning that which can never be made useful
8?
88 APPENDIX.
and must be forgotten, but who go forward under the first inspiration with weakened effort to regain what has been lost and to learn what is found to be necessary to an active life and finally succeed despite the energy and years wasted.
Many, however, come out of schools with such shattered, enfeebled bodies, so poorly equipped zvith practical views of life, lacking in moral purpose or aim, as to seek some sinecure, some office without toil or any duties that require either mental or physical effort.
As the wheels of the world can not be turned backward to return to the "three Rs," as Editor Gilson suggests, we are glad to welcome the signs of reform and progress indicated by the following propositions, which we most heartily approve, and radical as it may seem to those who have been satisfied with present conditions, it is only along the lines laid down by the great Frcebel for a complete school system.
BENJ. B. HERBERT.
A Free Self-Sustaining System of Industrial Schools and Colleges for All the Hope of the Republic.
Thirty centuries ago that grand Patriot and Prophet, Isaiah, the Sociologist, foretold the time when
"A man shall be more precious than fine gold."
\Ve fully believe the time has now come when the highest possible development of the average citizenship shall be the great aim and object of our civilization.
Today on every hand we hear the anxious inquiry, "What can be done to make the achievements of the coming century more progressive and glorious for humanity than the one just passed?"
What question more forcible can come to an educational association, since upon us rests the tremendous responsibility of laying scientifically the foundations for the enlarged capacities of a nobler manhood, and the higher attainments of practical usefulness, of a more exalted womanhood, such as the coming age demands.
No one who has watched the steps of progress in educational methods for the past decade will question that along the lines of practical and in- dustrial training are the signs of greatest progress, or refuse to believe that this will make most efficient and useful the average citizenship of the coming century.
The world has come to see the inspired wisdom of the assertion of Froebel— the great soul who originated the Kindergarten system— "That there is no such thing as the attainment or preservation of a high morality without the cultivation of skilled manual labor;" and we may safely insist that on the average the higher the attainment of creative skill in handi- craft the higher the moral exaltation; and that the unhappiness and de- gradation that comes to useless, idle hands is as sure in the mansion as in the slum.
Almost all here will accept the broad statement made by the versatile chaplain of the school at Tuskegee, "That man's complete powers are only found by simultaneously developing his head, hands, and heart." And no one dare say which is most important in forming the happy, well-balanced character, most useful in the world's work.
The fact has been quite fully established that the most potent force in reclaiming the young who have started down the slippery grades of crime is through industrial training, along with mental and moral culture; and likewise the same in the first steps upward for those unfortunates who have little or no mental power, and for the elevation of the uncivilized races.
89
9O APPENDIX.
The superintendent of the Haskell Indian School declared, 'That while he felt that mental and manual training together were like the two halves of a globe, both about equally necessary to make a whole, yet if he could only have one he should unhesitatingly choose the shops and the farm rather than the school, for elevating the Indian toward civilized cit- izenship."
Pathetic indeed have been some cases of apparent failure along this line, where the reliance for race elevation has been on literary training alone, but a gratifying success came later when the change to hand cul- ture has brought most satisfying results on the same field.
The enthusiastic pioneer manual training expert of Chicago declared, "It makes a new and superior order of people."
Most all agree, at least partially, with the stirring condemnation of the present system of head education alone, by the eminent literary lady who says it deserves the title of "The modern method for the slaughter of the innocents," resulting in many cases in nervous wrecks, and in no case fulfilling the greatest object of an educational system, to draw out and ripen for use, the latent forces of intellectual, moral and physical being for the needs of practical life.
Many of the best educators have made very similar declarations in favor of most radical changes in our educational system and in deprecia- tion of the present method of study alone. And all agree that mechanical and industrial training is as important for the learned professions as for those whose life's work is wholly along industrial avocations. It gives a practical quality to mental power obtained in no other way.
A prominent educator has declared that the main purpose of much of the present system of education is to create a literary aristocracy, and there can be no question but much of our system was copied from English and old world methods — where aristocratic ideals were dominant — and very much readjustment of courses of study is needed to adapt a system to the higher ideals of true democracy in thfs practical and humanitarian age. And along these lines of least resistance do we find pupils most wil- lingly led. Most students will love the sciences that pertain to matters of daily life, and along these lines they will become students for life, one of the greatest aims for all education.
All of this, and vastly more, that we cannot touch upon, has fully established the fact that for the coming age handicraft and general indus- trial training shall go along with mental culture, and that the moral uplift of educating the hands for creative labor is due to every cJiild of the Republic
To suggest the easiest and most natural pathway for this great con- summation of giving to every child a complete and liberal education is the purpose of this paper; and we deplore the absolute inadequacy of our time for a fair presentation of our contention that it is both possible and
AITI:.\DIX. 91
practical, and that here and now is the time and place to initiate the move- ment.
After several years of study and consultation with many eminent edu- cators in many dierent portions of our country, we are of the decided opinion that for students of over fifteen and sixteen years of age, it is perfectly feasible to organize a system of free industrial high schools and colleges that shall become nearly or absolutely self-supporting from the productive labor of the students and at the same time be the most effective method for a correct and scientific educational system.
If this is practicable then surely there is no need of further delay in taking the initiative steps for so great and progressive an upward move- ment.
Is there not an imperative call to this patriotic and progress-loving association to put forth its widest efforts to "set the pace" for such a work as shall be the beginning of a system that shall secure the highest average citizenship the world has ever seen?
The facts and the figures, the precedents and examples, the confirming opinions of prominent educators and business men who have enthusiastic- ally indorsed the plan, are all too numerous to mention here. Many of them have come from the early history of our pioneer colleges and schools, where teachers and students have worked half time at the hardest manual labor and yet made records of progress fully equal to the best of modern days and graduated scholars of more uniform practical power than the later schools of study alone.
The achievements of our co-worker, Booker T. Washington, is one illustration, perhaps the most inspiring, and the nearest to our proposal that we need offer.
There, with student labor alone, he has created a plant worth nearly a half million dollars, during a little over a decade of time, and at the same time has given his pupils a far better average education than if theyj had come with money in their pockets to pay their way and gone through the usual college course. The frequent remark heard from visitors at his school is, "Why cannot our white children have as good a school as this?"
We feel sure that any truth-seeking committee can be satisfied that with a fairly equipped plant with modern appliances students of high school age can produce enough for all their own needs in from four to six hours' labor per day, and the evidence is overwhelming that students who give this amount of time to exhilarating creative labor for their own u>es in the simps. ^arden> and farm, will excel in mental progress and in- tellectual equipment the students who pay their way and do no work with their hands.
I )e>pite the contention of »oine of our esteemed friends who are man- ual training experts that no direct reference to the bread-and-butter ques- tion should enter the school life, we still maintain that this method of
0- APPENDIX.
direct production for personal uses is the more natural and more scientific method, and has many and evident advantages over any other method. Among which we claim that in labor, for personal needs, and in creating things in which the students have a proprietary interest will naturally and inevitably lead to greater care and nicety of detail and greater effort at durable and thorough work — habits of great importance in educational labor.
Perhaps one of the greatest advantages may be along the line sug- gested by Col. Parker, of Chicago Normal School, who declared that the highest aim of our common school system is the cultivation of the altruistic or mutualistic spirit, the unifying effect among the people of study and work together. This alone he declared was the grandest and highest aim of school life.
And to attain this we believe nothing can equal the system we propose, where teachers and pupils shall have a mutual interest and mutual labor in creating the varied products for their own use.
This, if anything, will produce the development of that "brotherhood spirit" which has been the dream of poets and philosophers of all ages.
We believe in no other way can the deplorable and dangerous antag- onisms between classes of society be so effectually pacified as by thus leveling upward those who have heretofore been called the lower classes simply from lack of that culture which would enable them to appreciate all that is highest and best in life.
This disintegrating conflict between social classes is one of the most feared features of present conditions by all the most thoughtful sociologists.
This system we are assured will do more than any other method to establish the real nobility and dignity of skilled labor and exemplify the suggestion of Froebel that "By labor God has endowed man with a portion of His own Creative Attribute."
A prominent editor tersely declares, "It was not without design that the exemplar of a divine human life and the expounder of the highest and most scientific philosophy of life should have had his training as a useful carpenter in the environment of an agricultural community." And all down the records of history we find the greatest and best men come from the school of industrial life and from close contact with nature.
The first divinely appointed "Labor Leader," after the fullest possible education in court and university, was forced to pass a period of forty years' tuition as a stock raiser and farmer before he was properly fitted to become the founder of a great empire and a law-giver whose enactments were among the loftiest expressions of a true democracy the world has ever seen, and the basis for the laws of civilization for four thousand years.
Whatever may be the grounds for the contention that the school period should be entirely divorced from any effort to gain a living, its worst
AITKNDIX. 93
disadvantages cannot possibly equal the vast advantages to the nation that shall so reduce the burden to the taxpayer and the individual as to make the privilege and advantages of a complete education universal, and thus check the tendency, necessary among so large a class, to begin active, and oftentimes demoralizing, labor at an early age with mental equipment scantily developed.
The figures show us the startling fact that increase of crime and its results is the heaviest burden upon the taxpayer next to the common school as a direct result, and probably the indirect result of a loss of equal proportions in the loss of creative labor among the criminal classes. While many sociologists declare that with half the direct cost of crime and its accessories spent in wise methods of prevention there need be scarce any crime at all. We believe it safe to assume that in one generation of such universal industrial training as we propose, the reduction of crime and its costs and the vastly increased production of such a citizenship as would result would vastly reduce the present enormous burden of taxation.
A wise student from Europe suggested that this republic would not be likely to be destroyed by any Goths and vandals from without, but would be very likely to be destroyed by vandals from within, and we know that the most of the tramps, assassins and criminals that are a menace to our age and a vast expense to the State, come from the so-called "neglected classes," who have no proper educational development.
Among this unhappy class are no doubt a full proportion of poets, philosophers, inventors and statesmen who, with our system, would be properly educated to bless the world with their talents, instead of as now being a curse to themselves and the world.
Another and not the least of the advantages we shall claim for this system of education would be the cultivation of the elevating love for the gentle arts of horticulture, gardening and scientific farming and all their allied branches.
Man's highest moral life, we are told, was in the garden, and the nearer he can be led back to a living communion with nature and all her visible forms, the better for his ethical development.
We are sure that when entirely divorced from the love for and cul- tivation of living things, man cannot attain to his best, and for all this our ideal system of study and work of shop and garden, farm and office, with the combination of healthful hours of creative labor and intellectual cul- ture, will be for the highest development for life's work and pleasures.
One of the most discouraging features to the optimistic sociologist of to-day is the dwarfing, narrowing effect on the mental powers of the many who are forced to begin factory life in early years, and only learn to do some one monotonous task that -tunts and destroys all powers of initiative and independence. As Bishop Potter remarks: "It reduces men to the mental condition of the machines they tend."
94 APPENDIX.
With such a system of universal complete education all the young will be under the strong and beneficient personal influence of teachers during the critical formative period of life so very far above the dwarfing, and ofttimes demoralizing influences, which now surround and destroy the many who are obliged to begin breadwinning at an immature age with scant mental equipment.
From this uplifting influence about the young we may safely rely on producing citizens of such mental and moral character and ability as shall be fully competent to deal with the intricate problems of social, economic and political adjustment of an advancing civilization, which more and more requires to be controlled by a citizenship unlimited by ignorance and actuated by the lofty patriotism that comes only from high mental and moral culture.
If the glorious time is to come which was so tersely foretold by the great prophet, "When men and their highest culture shall be more precious to the aims of civilization than fine gold or anything it can purchase," then shall those who toil in shop, office or factory only be kept indoors from six to eight hours, and then go forth to homes with gardens, trees, vines and flowers and living things to care for, which will in a large measure restore the blessedness of the picture of original Eden. And for this type of a higher life our self-supporting industrial schools will specially prepare the citizens of the coming glorious age.
And such an ideal life for the toilers has already had its incipient de- velopment in many living examples and with most inspiring success.
The world is just beginning to see — but as yet dimly — the grand truth that a high degree of moral and mental culture is as profitable in production of wealth as it is ennobling and exalting in personal character. It is very safe to assume that the wealth production value of a skilled cit- izen is from two to four times as great as the uneducated.
Our pilgrim fathers, inspired by the need of a broadly intelligent citizenship for their proposed republic, established the common school for the free education of all. It was a most raclical departure, but the grandest of their achievements, the chief cornerstone of our institutions, and it "set the pace" for the whole world. It came when the clock of progress had struck the hour for a grand step upward and forward to a higher evolution of democracy.
At that time every child had a complete and thorough industrial training in the domestic manufacture of almost all the clothing and im- plements of the home, and this varied and practical training resulted in producing the high average type of early New England citizens, with their all around capacity. Wendell Phillips declared it the highest type of Christian civilization the world had ever seen. European visitors ad- mitted it had created a nezv and superior order of people.
Since then the factory system has come in, and with its minute division
APPENDIX. 95
of labor has tended to dwarf the intelligence and capacity of a great por- tion of those who are kept at one monotonous line of work, wholly depend- ent on a "boss" for all initiative, never having the uplift of creating or owning a home of their own and totally divorced from any touch with nature in the care of living things.
Has not the clock of progress, impelled by an imperative social need again struck the hour for the next great step upward and forward to a still higher evolution of democracy that shall give to every child of our land a full and complete education of head, hands and heart ?
We believe the time is ripe ; the resistless forces of social and mechan- ical evolution call today for a higher average type of citizenship than ever before, and we have already the well tested and proven method for pro- ducing the superior character of people which the needs of the time de- mand.
Shall we, then, hesitate to act up to our highest inspiration?
Has there not come to this association a most inspiring opportunity to initiate a work that shall set a new pace for the world's progress and hasten forward the fulfilling of that vision of the great statesman and prophet, when men and their highest development shall be more precious than all the fine gold of material things?
Most will agree that the only serious obstacle to this great consumma- tion is the possible financial burden, but this, as we have partially shown, can be reduced to the minimum by the fact that the creative forces of modern production are such that pupils can create the most of their own needs and at the same time have the best system for development of their varied powers, with such sure preventive of their crimes ever being a tax upon the state as to make the move one of as great economy as of uplift, and for this purpose a plant costing, say, one hundred thousand dollars, will be much more effective than the usual college endowment of a million dollars or more.
In view of this we can see the great waste and wrong of the whole sy-u-in of large endowments for colleges and universities, where such large amounts of capital are locked up from active usefulness and able to benefit but comparatively few.
We deem it no imaginary concept to believe that in the near future some of our great schools will become also great industrial centers, where .students shall not only have work for support during school years, but also where those who wish to continue to live in an atmosphere of in- tellectual activity, or who may wish to go with farther study or original research, may continue to use the industrial plant, for the means of health- ful labor and livelihood, so long as they may desire to do so.
We believe every candid mind will see the superiority of this propo- sition over the present system ; and we know of one philanthropist who
96 APPENDIX.
had subscribed towards an endowment fund for a college who declared he would at once make his gift five times larger for an equipment fund when the plan was presented to his consideration, and others have given similar assurances of preference for this system.
To those who may question the ability of students to produce all their own living expenses, with no detriment to their mental progress, we need only refer to the well known facts in relation to the actual small labor cost of all the essentials of good living, but we forbear to use more time for details.
We would not presume to come before this association with so radical a proposition without the approval of many practical men.
If one such school can be established to lead the way, we may con- fidently look forward to the not far distant day when every county of our state shall have a school equal in social and economic value to our noted agricultural college near this city, and the South can have a hundred schools like Booker Washington's.
And when the whole citizenship shall be thus elevated and cultured we may be sure the geniuses of such an age will tower to heights as yet undreamed of in exaltation of character and usefulness.
If, then, our several contentions are essentially correct — that no educa- tion can properly be called liberal or complete without mechanical and general industrial training; if it be needful for all classes and professions for best mental equipment; if it be true that a self-supporting system is the most natural and scientific method; if the State cannot afford to have half-developed citizens; if the uplift and joy of skilled creative labor be the inalienable birthright of every citizen ; if labor be an important part of ethical culture ; if this complete system of education for all be the surest and most economical prevention of destructive anarchy and crime — then surely there has come to this association and to this State, which has now a high reputation for progressive action, the great privilege of beginning a movement not second in importance to humanity to the great step of our pilgrim fathers, who set the pace for developing the highest type of people the world has ever yet seen.
The world has recently been electrified by news of gifts of fifty million dollars for higher university educational purposes. Startling as is this colossal contribution for school purposes, and beneficial as it may be for higher attainments for the few, we are profoundly impressed with the conviction that to open the doors to a free and all around industrial and mental training to every boy and girl of the mass of people will be of vastly more importance to the State and nation than these monumental gifts.
If then we shall set in motion this great movement, the future chron- iclers of this nation shall give as the history of our two greatest steps forward and upward, towards the higher civilization that is surely coming,
Al'l'KNDIX. 97
the first, when the pilgrim fathers decreed that every child should learn tu read; the second like unto the first, when we decree that every boy and girl shall be taught hoi<' to <vorA'.
The glory and safety of a republic lies in the ^intelligence and inde- pendence of its toilers and wealth producers, for from them comes the tendency to growth or decay. A higher life for all the people is the need of the hour.
S. H. COMINGS, 1272 County Road, St. Paul.
NOTE.
A committee in Minnesota acting on this plan, at a second meeting, after a full discussion, decided to call for bids, or offers of land and help from any of the towns of the state, for the first two or three experimental schools to demonstrate how far such schools can be made self-supporting.
The chairman, Dr. Smith, suggested that it would be a much more desirable school to have in or near a town than any of the reform schools, for which there had been a lively competition from several towns.
Extract
From an Address Before the Nebraska Legislature by Col. Edward Dan- iels, of Washington, D. C. In regard to a pending bill on County Industrial Schools.
A I'LAX FOR SCHOOLS OF INDUSTRY OF EACH COUNTY.
The mass of children in Nebraska, as in most states of the Union, leave school in the lower grades. Only one-twentieth reach the high school. They have no chance to get such complete training as each needs in actual life. Most of them must work with their hands. But there is no adequate provision to make them intelligent and skillful workmen.
There are few skilled workmen among the native born. The natural right of each to the best means of unfolding all his power is abridged to his personal loss. The progress and prosperity of the state is arrested or delayed, and the future menaced by an appalling increase of the incap- able and discontented.
Already every trade is crowded with botches and amateurs who sac- rifice the property, health, and lives of their patrons. From the careless milker in the country dairy, who fills the precious fluid on which babes and invalids must feed with poisonous filth, to the high priced plumber, who turns the sewer gas into the schoolroom or the chamber of sleeping in- nocence, technical ignorance assaults unceasingly the whole line of life!
This state of things results from a serious defect in our educational
98 APPENDIX.
system. It has not brought its best ideas within reach of the great body of the people.
To meet this neglected duty of the state to that large class of children now growing up, a bill (No. 143, Senate File) has been prepared. You are respectfully urged to examine it carefully, and, if approved, support it earnestly. It is a simple, inexpensive mode of starting a good work. This bill appropriates no money and creates no expensive offices or liabilities.
It makes a part of the officers of each county, ex officio, a body cor- porate for the purpose of establishing a school of applied science and in- dustry. They organize and submit to the people the proposition to have such a school. If the people approve, power is given to tax themselves two mills per dollar of valuation for five years. If the people refuse, the board still exists and can appeal for donations. There is thus always an author- ized responsible body that can execute the will of generous citizens. The good cause will grow with discussion and increasing knowledge.
If the people tax themselves for founding the school, they elect a board of five trustees who thereafter manage it. They locate the site in the county with ample land for intensive farming. Temporary shelters may be erected and the students assembled. Workshops, with appliances for teaching the trades, are to be provided. Agriculture and horticulture, including fruit growing, dairying, forestry, irrigation, animal industry, will be taught, and elementary but thorough instruction in the sciences that relate to life, home building and home keeping, the art of making themselves and others comfortable, healthy and happy, should be taught to all — girls as well as boys.
The permanent buildings of such a school, and all that they contain, should, as far as possible, be created by the pupils and their teachers. Such a school would be near all the people of each county. They could take their children there, erect some cheap shelters for temporary use, supply them with food cheaply, and visit them often. Similar to this, fifty years ago, were the New England academies where so many of that generation were helped forward.
Children of fourteen years who have completed the district school course can enter these schools. They must work with their hands, in some one of the departments, a few hours daily. The love of work, nat- urally in each healthy child, is to be cherished and strengthened. Intel- ligent companionship, theory and practice hand in hand, teacher and pupil together in the work shop, the school room, the play ground, and at the festive board — these conditions will relieve labor of irksomeness and lift it into dignity, especially when all distinctions are lost in the equity that makes faithful work the only test of merit. We must uplift this standard of the New Education to get the best out of our youth.
To grow a tree, to dig a ditch, to shoe a horse well, to make or mend a garment, to produce a roll of exquisite butter or a loaf of perfect bread
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i
must become a matter of honest pride not less than a brilliant oration, or a musical performance of surpassing skill. In these colleges of the people the love of work will equal the love of play. Skillful lahor will become play, as m all wholesome children it is seen to be. The manly art of self- support will be taught — now fast becoming one of the "lost arts" among our youths.
The movement for industrial education is gaining ground all over the world. Enlightened governments abroad have given it liberal and in- creased support from year to year. Practical educators see that hand work is essential to the best mind work. The students who labor outstrip who do not.
Business men attest the superiority of working students in affairs. The Commercial Club of Chicago has raised two hundred thousand dollars for manual training. Mr. Phil Armour has invested a million in the same work. The Armour Institute and the Armour Mission, under the able control of Dr. Gunsaulus is transforming a thousand poor children into skilled workmen and liberally educated men and women. Its founder saVs "it is the best investment he ever made." Other rich men are feeling this benign impulse.
Everywhere there is an advance towards a more practical education.
Gentlemen of the Legislature, give the people of the counties a chance to secure this great boon for their children! It will cost nothing to try it. Great results will not be seen at first. But let the people begin. When they have done their best, aid is sure to come from generous citizens. They will see returns a thousand fold in a crop of young men and women, sound of mind and body, self-supporting, responsible, and fully equipped for useful and happy lives. Respectfully submitted, EDWARD DANIELS.
IOO APPENDIX.
The following are the texts of the bills introduced to Congress by Col. E. Daniels. With some endorsements of the same from well known people :
In the House of Representatives.
December 19, 1901.
Mr. Rixey (by request) introduced the following bill; which was referred
to the Committee on Education and ordered to be printed. A Bill to encourage industrial education in the several States.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the L'nitcd States of America in Congress assembled, That the sum of - million dollars is hereby appropriated, to be expended under the direction of the President of the United States, to help the several States establish and maintain a system of primary industrial schools.
SEC. 2. That the President shall have power to appoint such agents as, in his discretion, may be needed to carry out the purposes of this Act, and to fix the compensation for their services.
SEC. 3. That no money shall be paid to any State until it shall have provided by kw for a system of practical work training open to all its youth ; and for at least one such school in each county having a population of five thousand or more : Provided, That unless it shall have in actual operation five such schools with adequate farms, buildings, and a com- petent force of teachers, and that such schools be free of debt : Provided further, That all pupils shall work with their hands for four hours daily for five days of each week of the term.
SEC. 4. That no State shall be entitled to the benefits of this Act un- less within two years it shall have complied with the conditions and given the President satisfactory evidence of the facts above enumerated.
SEC. 5. That the distribution of aid under this Act shall be in pro- portion to the actual attendance at schools, 'the time of attendance being considered, but the President may increase the sum paid to any State if, in his opinion, the public interests would be advanced thereby in the States least able to maintain such schools.
SEC. 6. That this Act shall take effect immediately.
In the Senate of the United States.
December 18, 1901.
Mr. Nelson (by request), introduced the following bill; which was read
twice and referred to the Committee on Education. A Bill to establish general system of industrial education in the ter- ritories and islands of the United States.
AI'l'KNDIX. IOI
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
That there shall be established in all the Territories subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, including the District of Colum- bia and the recently acquired islands, a system of primary industrial edu- cation, to the end that all citizens may become intelligent, skillful, efficient, and self-supporting citizens.
SEC. 2. That in these schools of agriculture and the ordinary arts of civilized life shall be taught practically to all youth who apply between the ages of thirteen and nineteen. Instruction shall include the sciences which underlie these arts, and every pupil shall be required to work with his hands daily not less than four hours, under the teacher in his depart- ment, which labor shall be compensation in full for his expenses at the school.
SEC. 3. That all male students shall be instructed in the military art, thoroughly organized and drilled, so as to become a part of the National (iuard. For this purpose officers of the Regular Army, non-commissioned or others not in active service may be assigned.
SEC 4. That the course of instruction in these schools shall extend over a period of five years, and at the close each student who has success- fully completed his studies and maintained a good moral character shall receive a certificate showing his standing.
SKC. 5. That to carry out the provisions of this bill the following sum* are hereby appropriated: First the sum of one million dollars to establish a school for the District of Columbia, within the District, or in one of the adjacent States, for use of its children ; second the sum of fifteen millions of dollars for such schools in Porto Rico, the Philippines, and the Territories
SEC. 6. That the Commissioners of the District of Columbia are here- by charged with the execution of this law as it applies to this said District.
SEC. 7. That the President shall appoint a commission of five compe- tent persons to carry out the purpose of this law in the Territories and insular dependencies of the United States.
SEC. 8. That this act shall be in force from and after its passage, and the appropriation which it carries shall become immediately available.
"We cannot do too much for Industrial Education."
—John Graham Brooks,
Harvard University.
"This would be absolute righteousness in education."
— Elbert Hubbard.
IO2 APPENDIX.
"It is the ideal of an educational system."
— Eev. Frank Gunsaulus,
Pres. Armour Institute.
"I agree with you in every essential particular."
-Dr. Albert Shaw, Editor Review of Reviews.
Nothing could do greater good than your plans for an indus- trial school for every county."
—Senator C. K. Davis.
A PLEA
For a National Complete Education League, to Pro- mote a Much More Complete, and Scien- tific Educational System.
It has been proposed to form a National League — and some steps have already been taken both North and South — whose supreme object shall be to advocate and take steps to inaugurate a much more complete, natural and scientific educational system.
J'irsi. That shall aim at large increase of Democratic edu- cational privileges, and to develop the highest possible average of citizenship, in morals, intelligence, and industrial efficiency — a much higher average than now prevails. A system that shall reduce to a minimum the tendency to crime.
Second. That shall give to every child of the Republic a complete, all-around education. That shall train the hands with the same care as the brain. And ultimately make a full Industrial College Course compulsory for all before they may become citi- zens of the commonwealth.
Third. That shall endeavor to inaugurate a wide spread sys- tem of self-supporting schools, that will in time bring all Colleges, Seminaries, and Universities as near to a self sustaining basis as possible, each with its own industrial plant. In the full belief that they can be made nearly or quite self-supporting, for all pupils of fifteen of over, and to an extent for those much younger, and afford a much higher and better mental equipment, than is now obtained in the so-called "memory storing courses" where no attention is paid to hand training.
Fourth. That shall make some type of Agricultural, or Hor- ticultural training, with allied sciences, an essential portion of every child's education.
I:ifth. That shall make play as Froebel taught, an essential portion of all educational courses from the Kindergarten through
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IO4 APPENDIX.
the University with scientifically arranged playgrounds, a part of all school equipments.
Sixth. That shall make special efforts to more fully develop the dull, slow, or unprecocious, and to bring out their talents to the fullest extent possible, through manual and industrial training, both as a preventive against any tendency towards crime, and to increase their industrial efficiency, and also to give their children the benefits of better parentage, in the full assurance that many who are dull scholars when young, have latent possibilities of becoming geniuses, if only properly developed. And in general to carry out Froebel's teachings and philosophy much more fully than it has hitherto been done, for all classes and ages.
Seventh. The League shall also stand for having the same teachers for all handicraft training, and academic courses, to work with their pupils, and thus illustrate and emphasize the insepar- able union of hand and brain culture, with highest social ideals, according to the true standards of a Christian and Democratic civilization.
Eighth. The League shall press for both legislative and philanthropic aid in enlarging the democratic educational advan- tages of the producing masses from whom come the tendencies to national decay or progress.
Ninth. The League shall stand for a demand by the Asso- ciated Teachers, and educators of the country, backed by the or- ganizations of Agriculture and Labor, for the expenditure by the general government of at least twice as .much for aid and equip- ment of Industrial Schools as for the equipment of army and navy, or any accompaniment of war.
Teachers, educators, clergymen and thinkers of all types who approve in essentials the foregoing, will confer a great favor on the movers of this effort by sending their names to the Author, with any suggestions, and indicate if they are willing to help for- ward the move by circulating literature, or in any way to help the work. If enough will volunteer, aside from those now en- listed, a Convention will be called that this ideal which has been
APPENDIX. 105
in the air for several years, may take on an organized form, and definite steps for aggressive action be taken.
A Bill has been introduced in Congress, by that indefatigable worker for all social progress, Col. E. Daniels of Washington, for government aid to establish such a school in the District of Columbia, with the hearty endorsement of such men as Ex-Mayor Hewitt, President Schurman, General McArthur, et al., and the Hill will doubtless stay in committtees' hands until some organ- ized effort is made to secure action upon it.
Towns, cities, or philanthropists who may wish to donate land for such a school, or any portion of the needed equipments, or teachers who would like to distinguish their career, by helping to organize and prove such a school as herein suggested, will also confer a favor by sending their names, and the kind of work they are competent to teach.
All who in any way wish to help along the essentials of what has been proposed in this volume, are most heartily urged to send their names, and go on record, to help along by the momentum of numbers, if they can do no more at present.
A few towns have already signified their desire to have such a school located in their vicinity, a few teachers have also ex- pressed their willingness to help forward the practical work, while many eminent professional and business men have given their approval in most unqualified terms to the movement, we feel sure it is along the lines of imminent progress, and only waits the united action of the many friends of educational reform and progress.
WILL YOU HELP?
This booklet will be sent to some who have not ordered it, and if it does not meet the favor of any such, the author begs pardon for the liberty taken, and hopes you will be so kind as to put a cent stamp on the private mailing card that will accompany it. with your address, and any desired criticism, and the author will remit the needed stamps for its return, with the stamps used on the card.
The author begs to state, that the booklet is not published in hope or expectation of profits, and if there should possibly be any, it, (and much more) is consecrated, and devoted to the cause of pressing the movement in all possible ways, particularly be- fore legislative committees, and teachers meetings, etc., in the hope of its being one great step in the preparation of the people 'for a higher social order.
If the ends and aims of the booklet are favored by the re- cipient, and you are willing to aid the promotion of its object, and will mail some to friends or acquaintances, the price will be made at fifteen cents each for any number over four with the sample sent at first. And at the retail price the author will mail to any addresses sent direct. And we will be grateful for names sent of such as it will be likely to interest.
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ADVERTISEMENT.
The author is in communication with the private owner of a fine valuable college plant, that has been called a success, under the former system, but the owner now wishes to transform it to an Industrial Self-Supporting, (or approximately so) College, and wishes to open correspondence with teachers who have ability along some industrial vocation, as well as in literary lines, who will be glad to make this one of the pioneers of the new system as advocated in this little booklet. If any such will send names to the author we will be glad to help to establish their corre- spondence with the owner of the College.
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