as those which confronted "letters" when science claimed its seat. Nor is it apprehended that the actual teaching of "industry" will be any more crude or inadequate than were the beginnings of either letters or science. In fact enough has been done already to demonstrate that the elements of industry are as capable of presentation and demonstration to attain true ends of education as are the elementary facts and theories of letters or science, and because of our broader view of educational means and ends there is every reason to expect that the elements of industry will enter our lower schools and the inspiring researches and expositions of industrial materials, methods, relations, and point of view will occupy our higher institutions, in much less time and in a more satisfactory way than science has done, because the scientific method is now existent and forceful and will include all these quantities in its comprehensive grasp. When science began its educational career this method had to be developed and to win recognition.

Now if I may assume that this view is tenable, what are the duties of the agricultural colleges to the attainment of such ends? Several suggest themselves:

First, the agricultural college should demonstrate by living instances the value of an agricultural course for general educational ends. This can be done by good teaching, by effective research, by scholarly aspiration, and by breadth of view. It is important to show that a thoro agricultural course not only leads to vocational expertness and success, but is promotive of manhood and efficient citizenship. To this end the cultural elements as embodied in history, economics, languages, and literature should not be repressed or excluded. To be a man among men has never been sufficiently considered an agricultural attribute, but in the future it cannot be disregarded. Whatever it may be deemed wise to do in improving and advancing our agricultural colleges in technical lines, or how much pre-professional work may be provided for in the four years' course, it will not do to pursue these plans too far. Requirement of postgraduate study for professional qualification is a much lighter burden upon a man than condemnation to narrowness and isolation. It is essential, therefore, to maintain a good amount of general culture work in the agricultural course, not only for the sake of those who follow it, but that it may exert an influence in favor of a greater amount of liberalization in other technical courses with which it may be associated. Such courses are now too narrow and their product not symmetrically developed. A graduate should not only be a technical expert but a "gentleman and scholar," manifesting such quality by daily walk and conversation and not by his "locked, lettered and braw, brass collar" furnished on commencement day. Robert Burns's standard was not written for men.

Second, the agricultural element in higher institutions must join with other elements of applied science in the earnest maintenance and promotion of the pure-science elements. From such sources in the recent past have come to industry some of its most effective promoting forces. The very existence of an

applied science is obviously conditioned upon the discovery of truth to apply. It would be destructive to undertake to lift a stream above its source. As agriculture is above all industries the one to which the greatest number of sciences make contribution, it should be the disposition of those who are now, by the Adams act, especially endowed for "original researches or experiments bearing directly on the agricultural industry" to appreciate the loftiness of science for its own sake and to win students to proper contemplation of its point of view. The term science is becoming so common that there is quite a danger of an inadequate conception of its character and function.

Third, the foregoing are incidental; the crowning duty and opportunity of the agricultural colleges at the present time are to demonstrate the educational value of the so-called agricultural studies and to prepare teachers to render that value available. Here again it is fortunate that agriculture touches so many branches of natural science, and so many arts, at so many points of contact; it is not only fortunate but this nature of agriculture, as already intimated, is its essential qualification for leadership in the wide acceptance of technical subjects in educational work of all altitudes which is evidently imminent and such leadership imposes heavy duties and responsibilities.

It is not necessary now to contend that elementary science has pedagogic value in the lower schools; that is universally conceded. It should not be necessary either to contend that elementary science instruction is rendered concrete, rational, and successful by employing it to arouse and strengthen powers of accurate observation and correct reasoning in the child-mind, and that the scientific method is capable of reduction to such simple terms that a child can not only grasp its purpose, but is awakened and delighted with it. The duty of the agricultural college of each state to lead in the effort to render this branch of instruction spirited, correct in method, and effective, and to displace as fast as possible perfunctory work and to exclude fadism, seems clear. To this end it should directly assist the normal schools by preparation of special teachers and otherwise promoting their undertakings in these lines and should co-operate with the educational departments of institutions with which it may be a part to secure qualification of teachers for such work in primary and secondary schools. The assumption of a new line of work in this direction is provided for by the Nelson Amendment to the Agricultural Appropriation Act, approved March 4, 1907, which provides that the agricultural colleges may use a portion of the additional money accruing to them by this act, "for providing courses for the special preparation of instructors for teaching the elements of agriculture and the mechanic arts."

The situation with the colleges of agriculture with reference to this undertaking is carefully set forth in an excellent article in the Experiment Station Record for February, 1907, from which the following summary statement is taken:

A careful survey of the whole field reveals the fact that there is as yet no adequate provision for the preparation of teachers to take charge of agricultural courses in schools

of agriculture, normal schools, or other secondary schools, nor is there any definite attention or encouragement given to the professional training of instructors for the agricultural work in agricultural colleges. The normal schools as at present organized cannot do this higher work, nor can it be done by the great universities unless they maintain colleges of agricul

ture.

The duty of training teachers of agriculture for both colleges and secondary schools will, therefore, under present conditions, fall upon the agricultural colleges, and the needs of the time are so great as to make this duty almost imperative. Some of the larger agricultural colleges, especially those which are departments of universities, might well provide facilities and encouragement for fundamental research in the science of education in its relation to agricultural subjects, and all should make provision for training teachers of agriculture.

Thus is outlined a service which the agricultural colleges can clearly render. As elementary industrial subjects are rising in educational recognition and service, an opportunity for the colleges of agriculture in universities to come into closer co-operative connection with the departments of education and of the natural sciences and of commerce in joint efforts for school enrichment and improvement, should be enthusiastically accepted. It will strengthen the position of the agricultural colleges within their immediate environment and increase their influence with the public at large.

The relationship, then, of the colleges of agriculture "to the national scheme of education," as my subject phrases it, is that of leadership in the most important work of rendering the curricula of the lower schools more rational; their ma erials better suited to their environment and more effective in helping the youth to find himself in life-work and associations. These institutions more than any others, perhaps, are so placed that they can lay a firm hold upon science and higher branches of learning with one hand and upon the essentials of industrial efficiency and right living with the other. The association of these elements in individual character is the problem of the ages. It was descried by the ancients in the dawn of civilization; it will be solved in the millennium. Exceptional activity in the phase which it presents to this generation is certainly within the scope of the agricultural colleges.

TRADE SCHOOLS AND TRADE UNIONS

GEORGE A. MERRILL, PRINCIPAL OF THE CALIFORNIA SCHOOL OF MECHANICAL ARTS AND DIRECTOR OF THE WILMERDING SCHOOL OF INDUS

TRIAL ARTS, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.

The most remarkable thing about trade schools is their absence--which is almost complete. They exist mainly in the minds of those two or three. million people, more or less, that represent the thinking portion of our census population of eighty odd millions. Of those two or three million, many have positive, and most of them partisan, views as to what a trade school ought to be. It is widely, if not generally, assumed that there is a natural and logical antagonism between trade schools and trade unions. This assumption, I hope to ⚫ show, is both premature and pernicious. It is a first impression which takes on a different aspect upon closer scrutiny. At least it is capable of consider

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able qualification. It is based upon the single-and unwarranted-supposition that the graduates of such schools would tend to flood the labor market with superior mechanics according to trade-school enthusiasts, and with a host of educated but unpractical workmen, as conceived by those on the other extreme. It stands, above all other consideration, as an obstacle to the immediate establishment of secondary technical schools as an integral part of our public-school system. The demand for trade schools is admittedly imperative. Even if all were agreed upon the wisdom of establishing and promoting them, their practical administration would still be confronted with difficulties equal to any that have been contended with in the history of American education. Besides the usual problems of school administration, they must face also social and economic, as well as labor problems of a most perplexing sort. Of the few that have been attempted in this country, nearly all have either failed entirely or have been diverted from their original purpose, because this combination of educational, social, economic, and labor problems has been too complex for practical solution. Schools, like other things, are inclined to move along the line of least resistance. The wording of the bequests under which a number of our present so-called scientific institutions were founded indicates that they were intended to be schools of a more practical sort, if not actual trade schools, but they have slipped over to the literary and purely scientific side, avoiding the more difficult problems which their founders wanted to solve and which were not very different from those that we are trying to solve today.

It is needless at this time to point out that the ordinary manual-training high schools are not trade schools. They have specifically disavowed vocational aims, claiming to teach toolwork only for its educational and disciplinary value. What, then, and where are the trade schools? In the South there are some for negroes. There are a few for watchmakers; a few textile schools; a number of dressmaking schools-the last named frequently for the purpose of teaching special systems for drafting garments. In some of the reform schools trades are taught. There are institutions with trade-school features for dependent youths, such as the Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades, and Girard College. There are a number of evening supplementary schools, some that have developed out of the work of manual-training high schools, and others that are maintained incidentally by religious, charitable, and philanthropic societies. Several large manufacturing concerns have organized their apprentice systems in a manner approximating actual schools. Some have been established by private, and some by organized effort in opposition to labor unions. Some are conducted on a strictly business basis for personal gain. The New York Trade School, the largest of all, admits young men from seventeen to twenty-five years of age, and teaches them trades during an attendance of three and four evenings a week, from 7 to 9:30, for one, one and one-half, and two years, the length of time being different for different trades. That is the list of American trade schools-all but complete. It will be observed

that they all deal with special classes of people or with special conditions-for negroes, for dependent and delinquent children, for the promotion of special industries, for local reasons, etc. These all have their place and value, especially as temporary expedients and as contributors of experience to the general good of the cause; but their importance is nevertheless a minor one in our consideration of the real trade-school problem that confronts this nation today. What are we going to do, not for the exceptional, but for the average, normal, free, white, American boy who wishes to learn a trade in conjunction with his general education and as a part of his preparation for life? Where are the institutions to which a boy may pass directly from the grammar school and in which he may learn a trade, or even the rudiments of a trade, together with such other things as he may need in his future career as an intelligent mechanic and a worthy citizen? That is the kind of trade school to be desired, and it is the establishment of schools of that sort that we have in mind when we speak of the trade-school problem-and I repeat what was said in the beginning, that the most remarkable thing about them is their absence. Yet they are the only kind worth making a national question of. A plea for them was entered a number of years ago by Elmér E. Brown, now United States commissionor of education, in an address before a woman's congress in San Francisco. He directed attention to the fact that we have law schools, medical schools, schools of pharmacy, commercial schools, and other secondary and higher technical schools, but none for the mechanical pursuits. In the expenditure of public money for educational purposes the future mechanic is entitled to equal opportunities for intelligent advancement, as compared with those preparing for professional and commercial careers. There are some who say that it would not be good policy to use public money in that way, but it is not easy to see how a line can be drawn between one class of vocational subjects and another.

It is asserted, and not often denied, that labor unions have deliberately restricted the number of apprentices in their respective trades, for obvious reasons. Reasoning from this, it is anticipated that they will be hostile to trade schools. I speak in the future tense because in the first place the present number of trade schools is so few, and for the more important reason that the attitude of labor unions, and especially of organized labor, on the question of trade schools has never been defined. In the Seventeenth Annual Report of the United States commissioner of labor (1902), which dealt exclusively with trade and technical education, an attempt was made to deal with that phase of the matter, but the result of extensive inquiries that were made at that time among labor representatives indicated that the subject of trade schools had not become a live topic among the trade unions. True, the question is in the air, but so far as the labor unions are concerned their position in the premises is one of suspense. Since the matter is thus in a speculative stage, let us treat it somewhat analytically and see whether there are not good reasons why labor interests will not and should not be unfriendly to trade schools.