study of things is both fascinating and difficult; those who teach things must have mastered the difficulties and must retain the enthusiasm born of the fascination. In conjunction with a technical faculty is needed an adequate apparatus, consisting of a sufficient supply of raw material, such as lumber and metal in a state for transformation into concrete lessons with the minimum of labor and the maximum of industrial training; and also are needed tools of best quality adapted to the purposes of the industrial course. Such an equipment is expensive, but not so expensive as a faculty without special adaptation for the work of the school, and raw material and tools of so inferior a quality as to compel the waste of time and of public money. The course of study will require the construction of typical pieces of work which may be called "concrete lessons." The world of forms will be reduced to the concrete in wood and in metal; if the course wander from the line of the construction of types, the institution becomes a trade school, and may turn out furniture or horseshoes. The lessons will be worked out exclusively by hand. A steam or an electrical engine may be made the text for instruction, but not the substitute for manual manipulations. The founders of manual training schools may pass by the claims of ethics in their zeal to realize the advantages of industrial education. From Plato to Spencer the cry has been for a man, and with the hope of finding him the manual training school has been organized to assist in the search. Ethical studies are those which help any one to know "his own bent of mind and his natural powers." The manual training school is a school of ethics and industry. Industrial schools that exclude ethics train mere apprentices instead of training citizens. When morality touches industry the waking world springs into new and magnificent activities. It is the ethics of industry that will enthrone it, and by the exclusion of ethics industry will become debased. Industrial training implies a profound acquiescence in the study of the social relations. It implies a harmonious curriculum that may be somewhat loosely described as having ethical proportions. Manual training schools must bridge the gap between the savagery and the citizenship of the nineteenth century, and awaken that knowledge of relations which constitutes the harmony of daily life. These schools must equip their students with a knowledge of those social forces which, when reduced to their governing principles are recognized in the affairs of men; from the industrial laboratory into the lecture-room wherein ethics is taught is the harmonious journey in education. History and political science are necessary studies in such schools, because they teach the experience of men in their efforts toward perfect government. In literature the complete productions of English, German, and French classical writers will acquaint the student with the best sentiments current among men. Chemistry analyzes matter; biology is the study of life; mathematics interprets forms and relations and quantities, and social science investigates individual, state, and international problems of an economic character. The home must remain the theological seminary for students attending the public schools. In the organization of manual training schools an opportunity is secured for the harmonious combination of industrial and ethical culture. When the realization of the right of the individual to himself is a harmonious development education becomes philosophical, but the selection of one department of knowledge as the exclusive instrument for human training must breed imperfect men. Any arbitrary elevation of a single group of studies into isolated sovereignty must impart false views to him who surveys other groups from such an altitude. Man is by nature an ethical as well as an industrial being. His mind is larger than the world in which he has his physical activities, and the world of matter cannot satisfy his spiritual longings. There is a world of action, another of emotion, and another of cognition. Man must enter and explore each of them. Even that group of historical studies covered by international law and jurisprudence, certainly a group of intrinsic interest, cannot be made the solitary seminary for the training of a man. A nation may become an industrial empire, but it may fail at the same time of being a nation of right-minded people. The exaltation of philosophy consists in the harmonious sweep of its generalizations, and the exaltation of individual man consists in the harmonious evolution of his character. A crowned industrial training may be only another tyranny, for harmony alone. is freedom. The real triumphs of industry come from another source than mere handcraft, mere dexterity; the empire worth winning is the living definition of harmonious ethical relations; the man worth finding is the being whose character is integral. About the individual still cluster for solution the essential ethical problems; industrial training can do no more than to help him to know his relations in the world of thought, of feeling, and of material uses. The realization of freedom is the harmony of thinking and doing. Ethical and industrial sciences are two essential members of the body of knowledge, but neither should be suffered to degenerate or to attain an abnormal growth. It is the peculiar privilege of the organized manual training school to promote the union of ethics and industry, of which union the ultimate effect is beneficial to society. The kingdom of man comes only with understanding. Ethics and industry transform the empire of matter into an empire of uses, of which polities and laws and education are only forms. In the harmonious union of ethics and industry may be seen the potency and the promise of the solution of some American social problems at the present time. FOURTH ODE, HORACE. BY C. O. STEVENS. STERN Winter is broken at last By the longed-for coming of Spring, The rustics no more by their fires, Nor the herds to their warm stables cling, Already Cytheræan Venus Leads the dance by the light of the moon, And the chaste nymphs, joined with the Graces, A NEGLECTED DUTY OF THE WOMEN OF W MASSACHUSETTS. BY GEORGE PELLEW, A.M., LL.B., OF THE SUFFOLK BAR. E are apt to take our civilization for granted as an inalienable possession that we inherit without effort and without cost, forgetting that civilization is a prize won by the human race with incredible difficulty, and retained only on the condition of eternal vigilance, on the condition of unremitting, ceaseless education. In America, moreover, education is of special and vital importance. In most countries the government is in the hands of a limited class, wealthier and therefore usually better educated than the people at large. Here the people are the government. A political society, it has been said, is like a partnership, except that “the only legalized modes of dissolving the connection are death or self-banishment. Would it not be good policy for the members of such a firm to expend a little both of their time and revenue to qualify all of those future members, whose admission they cannot prevent?" Can any interest touch more closely the wellbeing of every home in the State than the education of those who are to be the arbiters of the fate of ourselves and of our children? ... "By using the appropriate means," said Horace Mann, fifty years ago, "it is perfectly practicable to have a community whose main body shall march forward in the line of industry, prosperity, and uprightness, while a few stragglers or deserters only shall leave its compact ranks to enlist under the banners of vice. . . . Of all the means in our possession, the common school has precedence because of its universality; because it is the only reliance of the vast majority of the children; because it gives them the earliest direction, and an impulse whose force is seldom lost till death." One chief agency in continuing and developing the civilization of the past, and in securing the wise administration of the government, is the public school system. This alone goes to the root of the matter. In what way, then, can influence for good be best exerted on the public schools? Clearly the most simple and direct method is the exercise of the greatest care in the selection. of those who have charge of their management- the school committees. It is usual to belittle the importance of the school committees. The office of a member is supposed to be one of no considerable influence and to require but slight ability, while the emoluments, if any, are meager, and the candidates but too often beginners in the profession of politics, who would rather be selectmen, but who prefer any public position to the insignificance of private life. If properly performed, however, the duties of the school committees are inferior to none in the public service of the Commonwealth. "The committees are to prescribe the books which are to be used in the schools. They are to see that every child whose parents are unable to supply it with books is supplied at the expense of the town. They are to visit every district school soon after its opening and shortly before its close, and once a month during its continuance. They are to see that none but the very best persons who can possibly be procured are put in as keepers of that inestimable treasure, the children of the district. They are to make to the towns annually a detailed report of the condition of the schools, designating particular improvements and defects in the method or means of education, and stating such facts and suggestions in relation thereto as, in their opinion, will best promote the interests and increase the usefulness of said schools.' These reports are to expose errors and abuses, and to be accompanied by plans for their rectification. They are to particularize improvements and to devise means for their attainment." Instead of being an unimportant officer, a member of a school committee holds the very life of the community in his hands. He wields the mightiest instrument ever forged by the fates for promoting the welfare or insuring the degradation of a people, the education of the children. He is a prophet greater than Joshua, for he can stay the sun of civilization in his course. He is a magician wiser than Circe, for he can turn at his pleasure swine into men, and children into swine. He can pour poison or the elixir of life into the wells that quench the intellectual thirst of the people. He can make the citizens of the future accept the worse as the better reason without fear of the death penalty decreed by the wiser Athenians. He can control time itself and crowd a century of years into a decade by hastening the moral |