In sawing, &c.:

Sawing in cast iron,

Sawing and chipping in wrought iron,

Sawing and filing to template in wrought iron.

There was also on exhibition a case containing the products of fifteen lessons of four hours each in forge work, but we can not enumerate them.

Now the method is this: The student makes the drawing of the design, and in so doing gets a vivid idea of the shape or form required, and some idea of how to produce that form. The teacher asks for this idea, and nothing is done until the method is clear in the mind of the student. An analysis of the work to be done is placed upon the blackboard and a certain value assigned to each element. The student notes this analysis and goes to work. The student thus knows himself just how much each point perfectly done will count in the inspection, and by aid of the analysis he is generally able to predict the quality of his own work within five per cent. In the laboratory thirty-two students are doing the same piece of work at the same time. Thus, the teacher has his own attention concentrated upon one point, and is able to oversee a large number of workers.

The remaining remarks were mainly disconnected statements, made in answer to questions. The following is their substance:

At first we gave to the student five hours to do what a workman would do in oe. At the close we gave him two hours for it.

Not a man out of fifty-two students failed in this work, although marked in it more rigorously than in other studies, and in only one case was a student obliged to do the same piece a second time. There was no stumbling of the student, because the teacher was always present and always watching.

It was the most astounding educational product that I have ever seen. Have questioned practical mechanics who have come to the Institute, as to how the work compared with that of apprentices, and have invariably received the answer that it was far superior. Have asked them how it compared with the work of journeymen, and they have replied that they would choose a majority of our students in preference to a large proportion of the journeymen in their employ. They are astonished when told the time in which the work was learned and performed, and will hardly believe it.

The work of 28 of the 52 students was worthy of public presentation. I think the method can be applied in any school and to any pupils who are physically able to do the work.

[The speaker here described an experiment in the city of Boston in which the method had been tried with very elementary students with very satisfactory results. He also distributed pamphlets containing an account of this experiment.]

In the Institute of Technology this work was done in addition to the regular studies, and I have yet to hear that it was done to the prejudice of their standing in those studies. As to the cost of this instruction, by

having four drawers and four sets of tools to each bench we can put 128 students through this course in ten weeks. This will work our laboratory six days in the week and eight hours per day. In a year of fifty weeks we could put through five times as many, or 640 students in one year. Now for expenses. The rooms we had; it cost first about $1,000 to fit up the rooms with benches, vises, and tools, each set costing $5.60. We paid our teacher $100 per month. I consider it feasible to have a high school with a shop of this kind that will not cost much more than it does now. Would put the pupil through one school at a time, as vise-work; then forge-work; then wood-work, &c. Would make these schools so educational in their character, that whether the student ever used the skill or not, the schools would be justified as an educational feature.

All begin the same piece of work at the same time, and when it is finished, the pupil passes it in.

We don't make salable articles because such are not the best to make for educational purposes. When the pupil makes an article that is fit to sell, it is not best, in an educational view, that he should make another of the same kind. The expense, too, is far less when articles are not made to sell.

The audience was large during these remarks, and manifested unusual interest in them. Several others made remarks as follows:

MR. HENKLE, of Ohio:-I believe this is the solution of a very difficult question. A boy can thus get several years of schooling and the basis of a trade at the same time. I have heard nothing so suggestive since the first meeting of the General Association twenty years ago.

A gentleman remarked that something of this kind had been in operation at Washington University for three years.

Prof. SOLDAN, of St. Louis:-There is a school in Leipsic which is private, but the pupils work from the beginning to the end of the course, the presumption being that students thus educated are better fitted for the general purposes of life.

Mr. SMART, of Indiana:-As to the practicability of this system, I know of a shop where there are fifteen apprentices. They are employed in carrying water, running errands, &c., but not in learning the trade. This is the usual way. I asked the director of this shop in what time he could teach all these boys learned in their apprenticeship of three years? He replied that he could do it in six months.

Prof. H. W. GRUBE, of Louisville, submitted questions of difficulty in the carrying out and advisability of establishing such shops. He considered that there would be danger of over-production if this Boston Industrial School alone could turn out 500 finished mechanics in one year; as that would make 15,000 in one generation. Now as one gentleman had suggested that such an Industrial School could readily be attached to any school system in any city of over 10,000 inhabitants, that very soon there would be such an amount of young men able to practice these trades as to overcrowd the market. They would then be obliged to shift around or go into the professions for lack of work. He furthermore took the ground that the interest that was taken in industrial education was caused by the opinion that the public-school system so far had turned out to be in

adequate to the wants of the age and country; the prevalent belief was that there was a dislike of work among the youth and rush for genteel occupations; he could not see how these schools would remedy the evil, as there were plenty of mechanics who could not find employment; he knew of some skilled mechanics who had not found work for years; he knew graduates in high honors of the Stevens Institute Works who could find no market for their education; he feared the sum total of human happiness would not be increased, unless the industrial schools were established very cautiously on a limited scale, and would do no good, unless they produced more skilled workmen than we have now, and on the supposition that there was need of more skill.

Dr. HANCOCK, of Ohio :-The difficulty presented is one we shall not solve here, but we may begin the solution. I heartily sympathize with the effort to give more knowledge and thus more power to our young men and women. How to do this is the question we are now solving.

Prof. THOMPSON, of Nebraska:-It has been difficult to teach manual skill to students because of the hostility of journeymen of the same trade. The University of Nebraska attempted to run a printing-office in charge of a journeyman printer, but the moment he put upon the market work done by students the Printers' Union remonstrated, and rather than be expelled he chose to give up his position.

Dr. RUNKLE:-Such difficulty does not pertain to the Russian system. A. charitable mechanics' association in Boston, when made acquainted with its objects and methods, offered the use of a large sum of money for carrying the system into operation.

Dr. BUCHANAN, of Louisville:-It is impossible for us to overrate the importance of industrial education as now developed. It has been thoroughly established by experience that education in the arts, and even a considerable amount of useful labor at the same time may proceed successfully in the entire course of education without interfering with the broadest and deepest mental culture that is possible. Certainly, then, there can be no difficulty in incorporating into every system of liberal education that thorough training in artistic skill proposed by Prof. RUNKLE, and even a special training in various practical arts by which each pupil may earn his subsistence or win his way to wealth.

The pupils of the Ohio State Reform School who give half their time to study and half to useful labor on the farm have made as good progress during many years as the pupils of the common schools who do no labor. So far from industrial culture interfering with intellectual culture, it really lends to it a powerful support by strengthening the character and developing the moral energies. It is upon these moral energies that the entire value of human character depends. The intellect itself cannot attain a manly development without the development of a manly character. . While industrial education thus becomes an assistant to intellectual growth and mental discipline, it is destined to revolutionize the world in its social condition, and that revolution is now beginning. It will certainly double the productive power of more than a million of laborers. If it makes these laborers (now worth a dollar a day) worth two or three dollars it will do more to elevate our population in the social scale, increase the

general prosperity, and terminate the conflict of capital and labor than any agency now in the field of progress.

Moreover, it will elevate the mechanic arts to an extent not dreamed of at present. The medical profession would be in a degraded condition, indeed, if it were acquired only by nursing the sick under a physician without schools, literature, or instruction. The mechanic arts acquired only by apprenticeship, without any thorough intellectual teaching, are in that degraded condition to-day, and industrial education will do more than books and colleges have done for the professions. It will elevate their social status, increase their productive power, and give us a new industrial world. At the close of President RUNKLE'S address and the animated discussion that followed, Professor PHELPS, of Wisconsin, offered the following resolution:

Resolved, That the hearty thanks of this Department be, and they hereby are, tendered to President RUNKLE, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for the able, practical, and satisfactory presentation of the methods of instruction in industrial art now so successfully in operation in that institution.

Professor Phelps warmly supported the resolution, remarking that the lecture of President RUNKLE had come as a new revelation to many earnest educators present, who had been anxiously grappling with the problem of industrial education, and who now felt that in the plans so admirably presented they could see light ahead. For his part he felt that no subject that had been brought before the Association for years would prove more fruitful in beneficent results to the great question of the hour than this. The resolution was adopted by a rising and unanimous vote.

Dr. RUNKLE thanked the meeting for its kind expression of interest. The interesting discussion lasted too late to permit the reading of the following paper by Prof. CHAS. O. THOMPSON, and it was ordered to be printed in the Proceedings.

THE RELATION OF MANUAL LABOR TO TECHNOLOGICAL

TRAINING.

The modern teacher is characterized by the prominence he gives to manipulation. By it, he fixes impressions and corrects judgments. He hails object-teaching and welcomes FROEBEL. When art is the subjectmatter of teaching, he somewhat depreciates the anatomists and holds analytical study of art as inartistic. He will work down, in figure-drawing, from the outward and palpable, and find the bones. He requires the pupil in language to know the phrase, in which a Greek for instance would express his thought and then to divine the secret of its beauty. Idioms of his own tongue he must persistently turn into idiomatie Greek. After this, he may study philology if he will.

This teacher will have geometry applied to the solution of such problems as will disclose its uses in determining the relations of matter, forces, and space; so that it shall not evaporate in the dry air of pure thought. His treatment of the inductive sciences is calculated to lead his pupil along the path of the pioneers, not for repeating, in an automaton way,

their steps, but for adding a knowledge of their methods to the treasures they disclosed. Blackboards, telescopes, and test-tubes, are indispensable to the success of the modern plan for teaching youth those things they will practice when they become men.”

It accords with this thought that the workshop should have a place in the mechanics' school. The isolation of the workshop from the school is as unnatural as any other feature which makes the complete separation, in this day, of the artist from the artisan. They once thought with the same brain and wrought with the same fingers. Art and mechanics have suffered by the change, as common facts attest. Men like to fashion their commonest utensils nowadays after those ancient models wrought by the artist-artisans; and the spirit of the Greek rests like a benediction from a departed friend upon all impressive modern art.

The condition of the mechanic-arts, men are everywhere trying to improve. In all cities where manufactures abound, evening schools, libraries, and lectures, attract the mechanic, and many technological schools undertake to equip youth more amply for the practice of the industrial arts. These efforts all proceed from a recognition, more or less explicit, that apprentices must be better educated, but they are always tempered by an equally strong desire that they shall be so educated as not to lose their relish for handicraft. Boys must be fitted for an intelligent application of science to the industrial arts without being unfitted for the practice of those arts. Three elements enter into this much desired training— Handicraft, Technical Education, and Culture.

The best palpable evidence that a demand for such a training of youth exists among practical engineers is furnished by the Report of Discussions on Technical Education, which were held at the hall of the Franklin Institute, in Philadelphia, June 19, 1876, by a joint meeting of the Institutes of Mining and of Civil Engineers. Probably a more thoroughly representative body of men were never assembled. The thoughts of leading members were presented in writing, and the reading of these papers was followed by animated and thoughtful discussions. In this discussion the three parts of an engineer's training-handicraft, technics, and culture-were clearly recognized and the third emphasized. By the term Engineers is meant all persons who intelligently apply the arts of production and of construction to the business of turning the forces of nature to the advantage of man.

There was no diversity of opinion as to the importance of these Elements, but in regard to their relative position different views were held. These are some of the questions to be settled on the pedagogical side:

Shall handicraft precede the technical school, mix in it, or follow it? 1. Shall culture, in the sense of studies calculated to impart general knowledge and develop taste and judgment, precede the technical school or follow it? 2. Shall the technical school be strictly professional or partly that and partly a school of general culture? 3. What shall the technical school require for admission and for graduation?

*Published by Am. Inst. Mining Engineers. Dr. T. M. Drowne, Sec., Easton, Pa.