also to sponge. A physician in Geneva remembers that burnt sponge was an old remedy for goitre; he tries an application of iodine and finds it almost a specific. I was reading a short time ago about an English professor who was spending a short vacation in a little town near the sea shore. He noticed that some of the stones near the beach were exceedingly light. He sent a specimen to a London chemist for analysis. As no fee accompanied it the specimen was thrown aside and neglected. Next summer, however, the professor, returning to the coast, had his interest in these singular stones revived, and made such an analysis as he could himself and proclaimed to the farmers of Suffolk that they had whole quarries of fossil guano right by their doors. No doubt these farmers poked fun at the professor as he poked and pottered among the rocks and shingle; but I presume they would admit that his poking amounted to something when it gave them a cheap and abundant fertilizer which so increased the productiveness of their land as to put large sums of money in their pockets, although it did not put any in his. It is said that when Dr. Black, of Edinburg, first set forth the doctrine of latent heat (a discovery which was of great importance to physical science and practical engineering) some one asked him how he ever hit upon it. "Why," he answered, "I didn't hit upon it, for I never missed it." To his trained faculties and habits of observation it was ever present in the conversion of solids into liquids, and liquids and solids into gases; in the melting of the snow bank and the boiling of the kettle. We might add cases almost without number showing how the human faculties are quickened by education, combined with indefatigable industry in some particular line. It is a well-known and universally recognized fact that nearly all the inventions that have been so helpful to men have come from skilled workmen, and these discoveries have been almost invariably in the line of the industry they pursued. In their work their faculties were developed and quickened; they had a larger vision and firmer grasp of things than the untrained workingman who has no conception that there can be anything new under the sun. Comparisons have been made of intelligent and ignorant labor, the result of which fully corroborates all that we have claimed for education in their line as improving the individual faculties. In 1846 Horace Mann, who was then secretary of the Massachusetts board of education, corresponded extensively with prominent business men connected with the leading industries of the Nation in regard to the productive value of educated labor as compared with that of ignorant labor. The investigation disclosed a degree of superiority on the part of educated labor that was most astonishing. Mr. Mann said in his report: "The hand is found to be another hand when guided by an intelligent mind. Processes are performed not only more rapidly but better when faculties which have been exercised in early life furnish their assistance. In great establishments and among large bodies of laborers where men pass by each other ascending or descending in their grades of labor just as easily and certainly as particles of water of different degrees of temperature glide by each other, then it is found to be an almost invariable rule that the educated laborer rises to a higher and higher point in the kind of labor performed and also in the wages received, while the ignorant sinks like dregs and is always found at the bottom." Trained for work, and above all trained in work, is what makes the most complete man, physically, mentally, and morally. It increases the muscle and braces the nerves; it conserves manly vigor, and increases both the enjoyment and the length of life; it makes idleness intolerable, and welcomes enterprise and adventure as a delight; it promotes self-respect and self-reliance, and begets a manly independence. What a man can do is his kingdom; by working he reigns. Industrial education leads in a large degree to the direction of labor as a substitute for its actual performance. Fingers were made before tools, but tools were made subsequently to do the work of fingers, and in many cases they both do better work and vastly more of it. Manual labor is largely a thing of the past, both in agriculture and the arts. I can remember when we used to go into the harvest field, sickle in hand, and cut the standing grain handful by handful, lay the handfuls together till we had enough to bind into a sheaf. At length somebody, an ingenious Yankee no doubt, said to himself: "I will give fingers to my scythe," and so invented the old square cradle with which a man could reap two acres in a day more easily than he could a half acre with a sickle. Then somebody thought he could make a cradle both lighter and simpler, and being lighter would accomplish more work with the same muscular exertion, and so we got the "muly" cradle with which an acre more a day could be cut than with the more cumbrous square cradle. The sickle has long ago disappeared; probably very few present ever saw one used in harvesting. The cradle is fast disappearing; once in a while it is called into requisition to pick up some lodged places or to harvest some rough new piece. No more aching backs in the harvest field and long, weary looks over the slowly diminishing expanse of uncut grain. The farmer, with a look of quiet satisfaction, brings forth his horses from the stable, attaches them to the harvester, round and round the field they go, the farmer riding on the machine, superintending it and driving his team, and at night from sixteen to twenty acres are reaped and bound in sheaves, and much less fatigued than if he had bent over a sickle to cut a half acre, he can enjoy an evening hour on the veranda with his daily. paper and his pipe. The same thing is true to a much greater extent in some of the arts than it is in agriculture. Solomon describes the virtuous woman as seeking wool and flax and working willingly with her hands at the spindle and the distaff. What a contrast between this ancient process of manufacture and the present process by which cotton is converted into cloth. Instead of the virtuous woman sitting at the distaff and spindle, the steam is let on to a powerful engine, and a seemingly endless series of shafts, belts, pulleys, and wheels, and iron teeth and fingers are set in motion. The cotton is cleaned, carded, spun, wound, warped, dressed, and woven. A steam-engine of a hundred horse power is estimated, I believe, at nearly the strength of a thousand men, and is sufficient to give rapid motion to fifty thousand spindles, each separate spindle producing over a mile and a quarter of fine cotton thread during the working hours of the day. The fifty thousand spindles spinning each day thread enough to go nearly three times around the world. This is all done by the machinery. About 750 persons are necessary to superintend it; but the result produced by the machinery with the superintendence of 750 persons is equal to what could be spun by 200,000 persons doing it by hand, i. e., one pair of hands superintending the machinery is equal to 266 pairs of hands sitting at the distaff and spindle. In fact, machinery has reached such a degree of perfection, and so great is the variety of work that can be done by it, that the training in handicraft given under the old apprenticeship system is almost a thing of the past. Train ing in technical schools must take its place and supply the ever-increasing demand for a better class of workmen. Not that the technological schools are going to teach a few trades, but rather such elements of technical knowledge as are of general application both on the farm and in the workshop. This would include such branches as free-hand and mechanical drawing, bookkeeping, the practical applications of geometry, as leveling and surveying, mechanical engineering, modelling, and physical and natural science, together with sufficient training in the workshops to give a general knowledge of machinery and sufficient training in the use of hand tools and simple mechanical processes to fill out the general technical idea. Again, I observe that industrial education is essential to our national prosperity. Without a wide diversity of industries no great nation can prosper or even exist. In this diversity of industries we necessarily come into competition with other nations, and this competition means the survival of the fittest. The nation that can put into the great markets of the world the best article at the lowest price, commands the trade and holds the situation. Nothing can be more evident than that the best results in workmanship cannot be produced without skilled workmen; and in order to have a sufficient number of skilled men in the varied industries of the nation, technical schools must be established and maintained. The history of industrial progress in Europe and in this country for the last thirty years gives the most absolute confirmation to this statement. At the first international exhibition which was held in London in 1851, England was awarded the palm of excellence in a great majority of the industrial departments. This result filled the nation with joy. The great manufacturing cities were lit up with bonfires and were as jubilant over it as the successful political party is in this country after the election of a president. It meant to England an open market and ready purchasers for her manufactured goods all over the world. The European nations recognized their defeat. They realized also its cause and at once embarked vigorously in the enterprise of technical schools. Sixteen years after the London exhibition the nations of the world brought together the products of their industrial skill in the city of Paris, and when the awards were announced it was found that England had carried off the palm in only about one-tenth of the industrial departments. This was a surprise. If in 1851 England was as jubilant as the Democratic party felt over the election of Cleveland, in '67 they felt a good deal like the Republican party over the defeat of Blaine. A parliamentary commission was appointed to investigate the cause of this terrible blow to the industrial prospects of the nation, and the conclusion is forcibly stated in these words of Edward Huth: "The workmen of other countries," he said, "have a far superior education to ours, many of whom have none whatever. Their productions show clearly that there is not a mechanic working a machine, but that brains sit at the loom and stand at the spinning-wheel." The report to parliament was soon followed by the great education bill, and since that time science and technology have been assigned a larger place in the higher schools and universities of Great Britain. Europe is dotted all over with schools and colleges whose aim is to impart that kind of education which will start their pupils on the way to reach the highest and best results in every department of industry-teaching farmers the principles underlying the improvement of domestic animals, and how to make the soil |