the old conditions than he is to-day has no place in this discussion. Industry in the United States was promoted by a protective tariff, and industrial and commercial supremacy was won as a result of the utilization of our great natural resources and the centralization and specialization of industry. But, while specialization has come to stay, the employee should not of necessity remain always a specialist.

When John Mitchell, in his book "Organized Labor," stated that the American workingman had concluded that he would always remain a working man, and that his opportunities for advancement were accordingly becoming less and less, the press of the country almost unanimously found fault with his statement, and he was severely criticized by teachers, preachers and promoters. Is it not possible that Mitchell considered first his own industry, that of mining, and was his statement not true of the miner? Will not every one admit the possibility of the miner of to-day becoming an owner to-morrow to be most remote? True, he may become the proud possessor of a few shares of watered stock in a mining company. Yet, despite his statement, Mr. Mitchell has publicly endorsed the work of a correspondence school engaged solely in the work of promoting industrial education, and he has testified to the fact that a great number of miners have been enabled to increase their earnings and advance to high positions in the employ of the mining companies as a result of the opportunities afforded them by this particular school.

A few years ago, I enjoyed the privilege of accompanying Mr. Mosely and his Industrial Commission on its tour, and in company with the members of the Commission I visited a number of our largest manufacturing establishments. In every factory that we visited, members of the English Commission were warmly greeted by foremen and superintendents who had known them in England and Scotland. These men had learned their trades in English factories and had been members of English Workingmen's Societies.

On one of these occasions, David Wilkie, for many years an officer of the Scottish Shipwrights' Unions and a man well known to organized labor in America, said to me: "It is no wonder you are beating us in America, for you have taken your foremen and superintendents from the other side."

Admitting that the American workingman will always remain a workingman, and conceding that the fate in store for him is not so very deplorable-particularly if through organization he can establish conditions equal to the ideals of the American Federation of Labor--it is worth while for him to strive to advance to the highest grade of employee in mechanical and artistic. ability; the higher remuneration is a sufficient inducement.

Two years ago Governor Douglas of Massachusetts appointed a commission for the purpose of ascertaining the needs of industrial education in the State of Massachusetts, and observing the work that has been accomplished by industrial schools in Massachusetts and other states. As a result of the investigation, the Governor proposed state aid for industrial schools, and his proposition was opposed by many of the trade unions of his state.

It is true that an antipathy to trade schools exists among the members of trades unions, for the reason that the schools with which they have come closely in contact often have been creators of forces used by employers to defeat efforts of mechanics to secure increases in wages. Other private trade schools are notoriously known as defrauders of ambitious boys through misrepresentation, while they are the source of great revenue to their promoters.

During the textile strikes in Lowell and Philadelphia four years ago, I found as a result of personal investigation made at a time when the employees of the textile mills were bitter in spirit against their opponents, that little, if any, antipathy existed toward the Textile School of Lowell and the Textile School of Philadelphia. This is accounted for by the fact that these particular schools have proved themselves of great benefit to the apprentice and mill employee.

The Board of Education of the City of New York has for one year successfully operated a night trade school in the Borough of Brooklyn, and its classes are filled with journeymen and apprentices employed in various trades.

Industrial education will be greatly beneficial to the individual and the State if it reduces the term of apprenticeship and aids the individual in increasing his capacity as a producer and wage carner. The bricklayer, plasterer, machinist, and many other classes of mechanics can only become skilled through long practice and careful training of the eye and hand. Theoretical in

struction will not make a musician, but practice without instruction will produce a certain kind of musician, and the reason that we have so much "rag-time" production in American industry is because our mechanics know nothing of theory.

In the yards of a majority of the large farmers in the country can be found hundreds of dollars' worth of discarded machinery, useless almost before the paint lost its lustre. Close down the 1epair shop of any of our railroads, and you will close down the railroads in a few weeks. The skilled mechanics in the machinist's trade, and the all-round men who know their trade, are today found in the repair shops.

I understand that the objects of this Society have been approved by the national officers of the largest trades unions of the country. Its objects are the promotion of industrial education, in order that the quality of the product of American industries may be improved, that the earning capacity of the mechanic may be increased, that the needs for highly skilled, all-round mechanics may be supplied, and I wish it the greatest measure of suc

cess.

ADDRESS

By Miss JANE ADDAMS,

Head of Hull House, Chicago.

When I come to New York I frequently hear generalizations which English travelers have made in regard to Chicago, and usually I regret to say, the generalizations are not very flattering. Sometimes, however, a traveler who comes West from New York says an illuminating word concerning the cities on the Eastern coast. This happened a year or two ago, when a cultivated man, who had spent six months in America said that, while Americans prided themselves upon being free from tradition, and liked to think that they treated every situation from the most practical standpoint, regarding it solely upon its own merits, he had discovered that they were more bound by the traditions they did not know, than any people he had ever met.

He insisted that this contention could be demonstrated most readily from their educational methods. American schools, as he saw them, emphasized first one and then another aspect of education, but these were always traditional aspects. Some schools placed the emphasis on the three R's. This was, of course, a result of the financial period, when merchants desired. cheap and efficient clerks. In response to this demand the children were taught to add columns of figures quickly and correctly, and to come promptly to their tasks in the morning. Other schools laid stress upon chaotic "general knowledge" and held exercises on "current events." These exhibited a survival of the encyclopedic period of the French Revolution and the early Liberal Movement.

The schools which placed emphasis upon grammar and the precise fidelity to absurd spelling-as he was pleased to call it— exhibited survivals of the Renaissance, while the schools which

cared much for the essay, the syllogism and absurd logic which is used nowhere in real life, showed the abridged form of medicval disputation. It was, of course, easy to trace the classical influence in other schools, while still others emphasized the Fairy Tale, as the direct inheritance of the child from the matriarchal. period.

Our schools, it seemed to him, waged an unending battle among themselves, but it was always fought within the charmed. circles of the survivals and recapitulations of the past. Curiously however, each school insisted that its own method was original, though like the famous gentleman, who spoke prose without knowing it, the school man often prided himself upon making discoveries of methods which had been used centuries before.

He made two exceptions, I am happy to say, and one of these schools was in Chicago, and the other was in New York. He said that throughout the country in only these two schools did he find educators facing the situation which actually existed. Only in these two places were they organizing the child's activities, with some reference to the life which he would later lead, and attempting to give him some clew as to what to select and what to eliminate when he should come into contact with contemporary social and industrial conditions.

Our astute traveler deemed it very strange that with a remarkable industrial development all about us, affording such amazing educational opportunities, that our schools should continually cling to a past, which did not fit the American temperament and was not adapted to our needs. He concluded that our educators had been overwhelmed by the size and vigor of American industry, that they were too timid to seize upon the industrial situation and to extract from it, its enormous educational value. He lamented that this lack of courage and initiative, not only failed to fit the child for an intelligent and conscious participation in industrial life, but that the lack of properly educated men was reflected in the industrial development itself. This development in its turn, reflected old habits, and without enough intelligence to eliminate the bad or to select the good, repeated the traditional mistakes of industry.

American cities exhibit stupendous extensions of the medieval Ghetto, huge areas of the Lancashire factories, and of the Black Country in which the social life of the workers repeat the coarse