The University of Idaho has organized a four-year undergraduate course in forestry and is establishing a forestry station on a section of land located on Lake Coeur d'Alene, in Kootenai County, for demonstration purposes.

A law of 1909 divided the State of Idaho into two educational districts and made provision for the establishment of a secondary agricultural school in each.

With a record-breaking attendance of over 1,300, the farmers' course, women's course, and special dairy course at the college of agriculture, University of Wisconsin, came to a successful close February 19, again demonstrating that brief courses of practical instruction meet the demands and needs of the several classes for whom they are provided. The success of the special courses in home making and in the operation and management of creameries and cheese factories, both of which were given for the first time this year, was especially notable.

Over 400 women, representing 29 counties of Wisconsin as well as 8 other States, attended the lectures and demonstrations in cooking, nursing, and other subjects pertaining to home making. (University Bulletin, Feb. 22, 1909.)

XII. INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

NATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.

The society held its second annual convention in Atlanta, Ga., November 19 to 21, 1908. One of the most important features of the meeting was the preliminary report of the committee of ten previously appointed to consider the relation of industrial education to the general educational system of the country. This report was as follows:

The committee appointed to consider the relation of industrial education to the general system of education of the country is composed of members living in widely separate parts of the country. Since the appointment of the committee in the spring of 1908, it has been found practically impossible to prepare a final report. The following is therefore offered as a preliminary statement with regard to this matter.

The need for industrial training and the facts concerning our own lack of it have been so often repeated that they may be accepted. All who are acquainted with education in European nations know that in the matter of industrial training we are far behind such countries as Germany; that our apprentice system, even if materially extended, can offer industrial education to only a compara

tive few; that there are practically no facilities for the training of the youth between the ages of 14 and 18 for industrial pursuits, and the opportunities for those who are in the trades to improve their skill by theoretical training is confined to isolated and occasional schools. It is also perfectly clear that this is an industrial age, and that the education which is to serve for a whole people must take account of vocational training.

Assuming these facts as clearly demonstrated, it is evident that two distinct groups of our population are to be considered: (1) Boys and girls between the ages of 14 and 18 who leave the grammar school and at present have no systematic opportunity for training in the industries; (2) the men and women now in the industries who desire to increase their skill and efficiency by further study. The problem of industrial training seems, therefore, so far as the schools are concerned, to be divided into practically two parts, according as it applies to one or the other of these groups.

I. THE INDUSTRIAL TRAINING OF YOUTHS.

The vast majority of children leave school at the end of the grammar-school period, a number, in fact, leaving the school before that time. Any vocational school which has to serve this great group of citizens must evidently fulfill the following conditions:

(a) Such a school must articulate at some point with the public-school system of the country, preferably with the grammar school. In other words, the grammar school must at some point of its course lead a boy or a girl naturally into a vocational school, if such schools are to be fruitful to the great mass of youth.

(b) If the grammar schools are to make this connection with vocational schools, it is clear that the grammar schools should at some part of their course do their part in developing the vocational purposes of the pupils on the basis of enlightenment concerning the advantages of skilled vocations, including the trades. It is clear, also, that every study should be so taught as to bring out its application to life, particularly to the skilled vocations, although those studies would not be so taught in the grammar school as to provide preparation for any particular trade. It is clear, too, that the grammar school should introduce elementary industrial training in some form, either in the form of manual training at the bench or at the forge or in household pursuits, wherever the training could be effectively given. Such an introduction of subjects for industrial training must come through the substitution of these subjects for something in the curriculum. The way to industrial education lies not in a more complex curriculum in existing schools, but in a larger variety of schools, each with a simpler programme and each seeking to do well the work it sets out to do.

(c) Such schools as may articulate with the grammar school for the training of youths will therefore most likely assume the form of training schools for particular industries. They will be local in their character and will seek to serve the needs of a local industry. The boy or girl trained in them will not be a skilled journeyman in any trade, but will have received a fundamental training in those things which will make him a skilled journeyman in a short time, and will at the same time prompt him to a higher form of vocational efficiency than he is likely to have had otherwise. In this respect the industrial training school for youth is likely to have much the same relation to the preparation of a skilled journeyman as the high-grade engineering school has to the preparation of a practical engineer.

II. SCHOOLS FOR THOSE ALREADY IN THE INDUSTRIES.

Experience would seem to indicate that the schools which seek to serve those already in the industries will assume one of two forms:

(a) Industrial improvement schools.

(b) Trade schools.

The industrial improvement school has so far, as it is likely to do in the future, assumed the form of an evening school in which are taught the fundamental sciences upon which a trade rests, together with such technical information as can be given in a physical, chemical, or mechanical laboratory. For example, those who are engaged in the power station of an electric railroad, as motormen, as electricians, or as linemen, may in such a school learn the fundamental theory of electricity, the methods of insulation, of electrical measurement, and of the transformation of energy. All of these principles may be illustrated before their eyes in the electrical laboratory, and they may thus acquire a foundation of knowledge which will enable them to become in time foremen, managers, or perhaps inventors. Such a school appeals only to the men of more than usual ambition and energy.

The pure trade school, on the other hand, undertakes to teach not alone the fundamental processes of a trade, but its technique. It therefore lays chief emphasis upon giving to its students such continuous practice as may bring them up to the point of expertness. It seeks to reproduce as nearly as possible the conditions of actual practice.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS.

It seems clear to your committee that schools of all the types which have been mentioned here, both for youths and for adults, are likely to be attempted, and in fact are being attempted in the various parts of the United States. The committee believes that all these types of schools are to be welcomed as experiments in the general problem which we are seeking to solve. Success in industrial training does not depend upon the adoption of one type of school. A measure of success is likely to be achieved by all of these efforts, and in the judgment of your committee it is wise for those who have to do with industrial education to welcome during the next decade of experimentation all these forms of industrial education, whether they be in the form of a trade school for boys, an industrial improvement school for boys and adults, or a trade school for the workers of a trade. Ultimately all these efforts will, by the force of educational gravitation, relate themselves to the public-school system of the country, partly by the adaptation of the public-school system itself, partly by the adaptation of these industrial schools. No series of schools can finally survive which does not so relate itself to the public-school education, since the source from which pupils are to be drawn must in the long run be the public schools. The committee therefore feels that any of these efforts, undertaken in an intelligent, sympathetic, and proper spirit, is to be welcomed as a new contribution to the general problem of industrial education in the United States.

The officers of the society for 1909 are Alexander C. Humphreys, president; Walter C. Kerr, vice-president; Frederick B. Pratt, treasurer; James C. Monaghan, 546 Fifth avenue, New York City, secretary.

The next annual convention will be held at Milwaukee, December 1-3, 1909.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS.

The National Association of Manufacturers held its thirteenth annual convention at New York City in May, 1908, on which occasion its committee on industrial education, Anthony Ittner, chairman, made an extended report dealing with various phases of the subject, which report was duly adopted. The committee noted with satisfaction that at no time had the progress of industrial education been so marked as during the twelve months that had intervened since making its last report. The committee, the report states, was originally brought into being to remedy the conditions prevailing at the time of its first appointment, conditions "the result of which was that in some localities a father was not even permitted to teach his own son a trade and calling in which he himself was engaged." The very positive attitude of the committee in favor of trade schools that will turn out finished journeymen mechanics may be seen from its" conclusions," which run as follows:

And now, in bringing this report to a close, we want still further to empha size what we have iterated and reiterated in our former reports-that it is genuine, practical industrial education that we stand for, an industrial education which will make of the American boy an all-around, full-fledged, skilled mechanic, able to take his place and hold his own alongside of the skilled mechanic having learned his trade in the skilled industries of this or any other country, and to this contention let us dogmatically adhere.

And while we can see the advantages that a trade-school training would be to a young man who is serving an apprenticeship in some of the industries, or to a journeyman who was working at his trade and receiving full journeyman's wages and who might desire to make of himself a more expert and finished workman, we should nevertheless oppose with all our might granting trade-school privileges to such, until every young man who was not serving an apprenticeship or working at his trade as a journeyman had been provided for. * * * The argument that a finished, skilled workman can not be graduated from a trade school must be combated with the utmost persistency, as also the admission into night trade schools of young men serving apprenticeships and journeymen working at their trades, until every young man applying for admission had been provided for. Should it then appear that there were vacancies, there should be no objection to admitting apprentices and journeymen mechanics into night trade schools.

Similar views are expressed in the report of the same committee made at the fourteenth meeting of the association, held in New York City, May 17-19, 1909, and regret is expressed that such organizations as the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education and the Massachusetts State Commission have not taken a more definite and determined stand in favor of complete trade schools. On the other hand, the committee highly commends the action of the National Education Association, which has cordially indorsed (1908) the establishment of public trade and industrial schools of

such a character that "the graduates of these schools may at once. become advanced apprentices or journeymen.'

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FROM THE VIEW POINT OF ORGANIZED LABOR.

The American Federation of Labor, at its twenty-ninth annual convention, held at Denver November 9-21, 1908, adopted the following resolution:

Whereas industrial education is necessary and inevitable for the progress of an industrial people; and

Whereas there are two groups with opposite methods, and seeking antagonistic ends, now advocating industrial education in the United States; and

Whereas one of these groups is largely composed of the nonunion employers of the country who advance industrial education as a special privilege under conditions that educate the student or apprentice to nonunion sympathies and prepare him as a skilled worker for scab labor and strike-breaking purposes, thus using the children of the workers against the interests of their organized fathers and brothers in the various crafts; and

Whereas this group also favors the training of the student or apprentice for skill in only one industrial process, thus making the graduate a skilled worker in only a very limited sense and rendering him entirely helpless if lack of employment comes in his single subdivision of a craft; and

Whereas the other group is composed of great educators, enlightened representatives of organized labor, and persons engaged in genuine social service, who advocate industrial education as a common right to be open to all children on equal terms to be provided by general taxation and kept under the control of the whole people with a method or system of education that will make the apprentice or graduate a skilled craftsman in all the branches of his trade; and

Whereas organized labor has the largest personal and the highest public interest in the subject of industrial education, and should enlist its ablest and best men in behalf of the best system, under conditions that will promote the interests of the workers and the general welfare: Now, therefore be it

Resolved, That the president, in conjunction with the executive council of the American Federation of Labor, be, and is hereby, authorized to appoint a special committee of at least fifteen, to be composed of a majority of trade union members of this convention, who will serve without compensation and incur no expenses other than necessary and legitimate expenditure within the judgment of the president and executive council, to investigate the methods and means of industrial education in this country and abroad, and to report its findings, conclusions, and recommendations to the next annual meeting of the American Federation of Labor.

The committee, as subsequently appointed, includes Charles P. Neill, United States Commissioner of Labor; Representative W. B. Wilson; Rev. Charles Stelzle, superintendent of the department of labor of the Presbyterian Church; Charles H. Winslow, former commissioner of industrial education, of Massachusetts; Mrs. Raymond Robins, president of the National Woman's Trade Union League; James Duncan, vice-president of the American Federation of Labor; John B. Lennon, treasurer of the American Federation of