into the public schools and to foster the establishment of classes for adults. He published in 1872 a large illustrated work upon art-education,* which is indispensable to a thorough investigation of the subject and will be found full of practical suggestions to those wishing to introduce the study into the schools.

Mr. Smith was also appointed general supervisor of art in the Boston schools. The annual report of the committee on drawing, published June 10, 1873, contains 28 pages of heliotype fac-similes of drawings made in the ordinary course of instruction by pupils in the public schools and free industrial night-classes, which were exhibited at the annual exhibition. There are drawings from pupils in the primary, grammar-, and high schools, and of children of all ages, from 8 years upwards. The ages of the pupils of the evening-classes whose drawings are given are from 14 to 25. These drawings are made by mechanics, clerks, wood-engravers, carpenters, and shipwrights. Certainly, as showing the result of but two years' instruction, these drawings are remarkable and full of encouragement to those who hope so much from the experiment.

Two difficulties have been met: the want of persons qualified to teach the publicschool-teachers and the want, in the advanced classes, of pupils who had had the benefit of proper elementary training.

The general supervisor gives normal instruction to the teachers, and his lessons are repeated by two assistants; 500 city-school-teachers attended these lessons in 1872 and 620 in 1873.

Massachusetts Normal Art-School.-The need of some provision for the art-training of teachers became so evident that the legislature made a small appropriation for that purpose, Mr. Walter Smith being appointed director and an able corps of instructors secured. In their first annual report the board of visitors say: "The most important event of the past year connected with the educational interests of the Commonwealth was, doubtless, the establishment of the State Normal Art-School." After expressing in the strongest terms the importance, in their judgment, to the State of general artistic and technical training, they say: "The special purpose of this school is to train teachers of drawing and the arts of design. It is the first institution of the kind established in the country. The necessity of providing this new educational instrumentality became apparent as soon as the attempt was made to carry out the provisions of the law requiring the teaching of industrial drawing." The report, after declaring there is no longer any question but that this school is demanded, closes by saying: As Americans, we are apt to boast of our enterprise, especially in all matters pertaining to popular education, but it is a fact which ought to moderate our disposition to indulge in self-complacency that, since the movement was begun in this State in 1869 in favor of industrial-art-education, in several European cities very large and costly establishments for this purpose have been built and equipped in the amplest

manner.

The following extract from a letter recently received at this Bureau from Mr. Smith is of interest in this connection :

Called by the city of Boston and the State of Massachusetts to organize a system of industrial drawing in both, the first thing I discovered with certainty was that qualified teachers of drawing did not exist in this country, and after a careful examination of all the drawing-classes in the State, I saw the one thing necessary to make success possible was to train teachers. I have had over two hundred applications

for admission to the Normal Art-School, and if proper convenience were given-I judge that a great training-school is essentially needed in this country-such a school can open with 500 students next year. It has been terribly uphill-work, and is so now, the appropriation being entirely insufficient. Still, the best work ever

#

done in this country, the authorities tell me, is being done in the school. • I have on my desk applications from many colleges and universities in several States for accomplished teachers of art. I don't know one. It will take us four years to make one, and then we may make perhaps from ten to twenty. I wish that America could have, as every European country has, an industrial-art-school, which should by its graduates affect the value and beauty of every branch of industry.

398.

Art-Education, Scholastic and Industrial, with illustrations, James Osgood & Co., Boston, 1872, pp.

In his report for 1873 Mr. Smith dwells upon the importance of enforcing the provisions of the law requiring drawing to be taught in all the public schools, and especially in the teaching of drawing in the primary schools, and remarks that the usefulness of the free industrial classes is much impaired by the need of teaching the primary lessons in drawing, a difficulty which existed in England and on the Continent so that "the success of the art-schools was limited and their influence on manufactures inappreciable." The remedy there was found in teaching every child to draw in the public schools; and in a few years the effect was marked, so that in England, instead of there being less than a score of schools, barely supported by the public, as was the case in 1851, there are now in the United Kingdom nearly 800 schools of art and evening-classes at which instruction is given in industrial drawing.

The agency in popularizing drawing, next in importance to the normal art-school, is the drawing-class in each normal school. Here the teachers of the public schools will be prepared for teaching drawing as one of the elementary subjects of general education.

Exhibition of art-work done by the Massachusetts free industrial classes.-At the second exhibition of works from the free industrial classes of the State of Massachusetts, in 1873, there were exhibited 1,209 drawings made by the pupils in these schools, (nearly double the number exhibited in 1872;) the classes of architectural and industrial design in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology exhibited some 40 architectural drawings, chiefly original designs, and 150 industrial drawings in color, partly copies and partly original designs, of muslins, cashmeres, carpets, paper-hangings, and oil-cloths. This latter school, called the Lowell Free School of Industrial Design, is intended to train young men and women in practical designing for manufactures. So much space has been given to the progress in art-education in Massachusetts, because there the experiment is being tried for the whole country. It will require several years to produce the fullest results, to show the effect of a course of such training carried through the entire school-life of the pupil, but it will be hardly necessary for experienced educators to wait until the completion of this experiment to judge accurately of its relative value. The verdict thus far in Massachusetts seems wholly favorable.

Mr. Smith, in his Art-Education, speaks of the insensible art-education given by the noble buildings and the public art-collections of the old countries. Of the almost immediate deterioration suffered by an art-designer from a deprivation of these familiar artsurroundings he gives a striking instance. Of all this kind of art-training Americans are and must be long deprived, which is in itself an argument for giving special attention in school to securing some art-training.

Industrial importance of a knowledge of drawing.-The inventions which result in the machines and mechanical contrivances of which the American mind is so prolific must all take shape on paper before they can take other form; they must be drawn before they can be made. In all things which are made by man, in all manufactures, a knowledge of drawing and the possession of the skill which artistic and technical training give are useful to workmen and to master. To all makers of textile fabrics art has significant words to say about designs and hues.

In seeking to show clearly the usefulness of a knowledge of drawing and its application to so many forms of industry, I have thus far failed to notice the higher and more ennobling influence of art, not only upon the manufactures of a people, but upon their character-the latter preceding the former; for until the workman becomes refined, until his eye is sensitive to see and his hand facile to reproduce the finer lines of form, the more delicate shades of color, his work cannot improve.

That general art-training, beginning with the teaching of drawing to school children and faithfully followed out in the different industries and professions where it is applicable, will accomplish this, the experience of Great Britain has demonstrated; and, further, that whatever of money, of labor, and of time has been expended to accomplish this result has been more than repaid by the products of the industries created and improved, Mr. Smith, in the following statement, affirms:

He says that, while, owing to labor-saving processes, &c., the cost of production has

diminished one-half, the value of the manufactured article has nearly doubled. He accounts for this by stating that every manufactured article has three elements of value : first, the raw material; secondly, the labor of production; thirdly, the art-character. In a vast majority of the manufacturing-products of every country the elements of cost of material and cost of labor are insignificant in comparison with the third element, viz, art-character. It is this which makes the object attractive and pleasing or repulsive and undesirable, and is, consequently, of commercial value. In many objects, where the material is of little or no intrinsic worth, the taste displayed in their design forms the sole value or the principal; and it has been the general elevation of that element which has nearly doubled the commercial value of English manufactures.

Facilities for art-education now existing in the United States.—In order to ascertain what opportunities are afforded for art-training and what public art-collections are at present existent in this country, a schedule of inquiries was prepared and sent out from this Bureau, the returns to which, so far as they admit of tabulation, will be found among the statistical tables in the appendix.

As the result of these inquiries, we find that, in addition to the introduction of drawing in the public schools of Massachusetts and the establishment of a State Normal ArtSchool at Boston, drawing has been taught in the public schools of quite a number of cities and towns in different States; that in all the schools of science in the country mechanical drawing at least is taught.

The Worcester Free Institute, at Worcester, Mass., offers a three-years course of theoretical and practical training in those branches of knowledge that underlie the industrial arts.

In schools for the practical teaching of art as applied to industry and manufactures, the free industrial classes for adults, in Massachusetts; the Lowell Free School of Industrial Design at the Boston Institute of Technology; the schools of Cooper Union, New York; the School of Design of the University of Cincinnati, and the Philadelphia School of Design for Women complete the list as comprised in the information in possession of this Bureau. It is probable that there may be private schools or classes giving this instruction which are not yet known to this Bureau; but, making all allowance for the existence of a few sporadic schools, the contrast is sufficiently marked between the "four hundred similar schools" in the little kingdom of Würtemberg, with its population of 2,000,000, and the few scattered schools we have enumerated, which are the only provision for industrial- and technical-art-education made in this great country for its 40,000,000 people.

For the special training of artists we have the schools of the National Academy of Design, New York; those of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the schools of the Academy of Design, Brooklyn; the Yale School of Fine Arts, New Haven; the new College of Fine Arts in the Syracuse University—which comprise all at present existing. The San Francisco school is soon to open.

Several of the colleges of the country have introduced some instruction in the history of art and have made a beginning in the way of an art-collection, believing that some knowledge at least of the history of art was requisite, if their graduates were to possess an education that could be properly termed liberal.

Of the colleges possessing any special collections or facilities for giving any instructions in art, even the most general, we find, excepting Yale and Syracuse, with their special art-departments, only Harvard, the University of Michigan, Cornell, Rochester University, the College of Notre Dame, (Indiana,) and Vassar College, out of the 323 colleges of the country, that either give any art-training or possess any art-collections, however small.

Of public art-institutions there are in the country the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Boston Art-Museum, the Corcoran Art-Gallery, (Washington,) the Art-Association of San Francisco, and the valuable collection of the Pennsylvania Academy, soon to be reopened to the public in the galleries of their new building. The Metropolitan Museum of New York, which awakens interest and hope rather by reason of the possibilities of future usefulness suggested than by its own collection, has

already demonstrated that the general public take interest in art-museums when the collections are worthy of interest and when access to them can be had without charge, as it can to the leading galleries and museums of Europe, the visitors averaging 1,000 a day on Monday, the "free day," and 60 a day on other days, when an admission-fee is charged. The loan-collection of this museum has shown the great and unsuspected wealth of the community in rare, costly, and curious works of art.

While I have recorded the paucity of institutions capable of giving a thorough arttraining and the few public art-collections now in this country, it is nevertheless apparent that there already exists in the leading cities the material which needs only to be made available to afford all necessary facilities for general- and technical-art-training; and if it shall be undertaken in earnest, there is possible in this country a development both in industrial art and in what are called the higher branches of art, which at the end of twenty-five years will render obsolete the verdict passed upon us at the World's Fair in 1851, and never yet reversed. What England has done in this direction we can do. No time nor force need be wasted. We have but to adopt and modify the methods so thoroughly tested there to the different conditions that may exist in our several communities.

I commend this subject of the relation of art to education to the consideration, not only of all educators, but to all who are interested in the varied manufacturing-industries of our many States. Skill is the modern secret of success. Science becomes ever more certainly the measure of prosperity. Science underlies and must precede art. In the common schools the children of America must be trained to draw, if her artisans are to hold their own in the world's contests and if her artists are to enshrine her history.

TABLE XIX.-SCHOOLS FOR THE DEAF AND DUMB.

Table XIX of the appendix embraces statistics in detail of all schools in this country for the instruction of deaf mutes. The following summary shows by States the number of institutions, the number of instructors, and the number of pupils under instruction during the year. Reference is made to the abstracts of educational progress of the several States for information in respect to organization, means of support of the institutions, methods of training, courses of study, &c. Statistical summary of institutions for the instruction of the deaf and dumb.

TABLE XX.-SCHOOLS FOR THE BLIND.

The following summary of Table XX of the appendix shows by States the number of institutions for the instruction of the blind, the number of instructors, and the number of pupils in 1873. Reference is made to the table for detailed statistics of each. A particular statement of the condition of the several institutions, methods of instruction and discipline, employments of pupils, &c., will be found under the appropriate heading in the abstract of educational progress in the several States.

The following summary of Table XXI of the appendix exhibits the statistics of 178 asylums for orphans and homeless youths. They are under the supervision of 1,484 persons and contain over 22,000 inmates. As this Office has the names of more than 200 other such asylums it is believed that this class of institutions in the United States shelters at least 45,000 unfortunate children.