Daily Los Angeles herald., 1878-03-20
Indussrial Education = Conssttu-
tfonnl Convention.


Indussrial Education = Conssttu
tionni Convention.
Machinery runs the world. Ag'
riculture feeds 1t, and the two
clothe it. Manual labor performed
in obedience to scientific laws
applied science-is indispensable
to the attainment of the highest re-
suits in both agriculture and me
chanics, and 1t is demanded by the
age in which we live. A proper
system aims at dual education
concurrent education of hand and
mind-for the real purposes of life
Eighty per cent of all boys must
ultimately depend upon their own
productive labor for their means ol
livelihood, and the State must de.
pend upon the same labor for hel
prosperity. At present not five pei
cent. of them are being educated
with reference to these require
ments. Boys and girls are being
educated away from the industries
instead of toward them.
In our own country alone there
are thousands of hungry mouths
and idle hands, and millions of va
cant acres, capable of feeding and
clothing a hundred millions of peo-
pie. II society cannot in some way
connect these idle hands and
hungry mouths with the vacant
acres, then we have a faulty civil
ization, which finds is paternity
in our educational system.
It costs more to run the peniten-
tlaries, work-houses and jails, and
to protect society against the
crimes of its own children, than it
would to educate them to indus.
tria! pursuits-making each, as a
rule, honest, Industrious and pro-
ductive. Hoodlums are not to
blame for being hoodlums. Society
is the author of their crimes and
ought to be, and is, punished fol
educating them in that man.
ner. This question goes
to the foundation of our
social and political life. 1t
overshadows the question of cor
porations, freights and fares, cor
ruption in office and land monop-
oily. 1t involves our form of gov
ernment in the near future. A
proper education will correct social
and political abuses. Without this
the Democratic party, the Repub-
lican party, the Granger party and
the Labor party will come te
naught in California. Practica
neutrality-suspicious. and me-
chanics-should be made part ol
our school system, from the Kin
dergarten to the University. II
there is any old fogy who wakes up
from a Rip Van Wrinkle sleep, and
cries "impracticable," we recon.
mend him TO write to President
Runkle, of the Massachusetts,
School of Technology, or to the
Moscow school which turned out
the men who carried Russia
through Turkey, and which furn-
ished the system for the Massachu-
setts school. While in the vein he
may also address President Ander-
son, of the Kansas State Agricul-
tural College. He will be benefited
by the opinions of these gentle
men.
Boston-the hub-the sun of our
civilization-bowed, at the Centen-
nial, with profound respect and
appreciation, before the Russian
exhibit Of schools of Technology
and President Ruukle i'm mediately
Incorporated the system into hi
school, which is in part supported
by the Morrill, bill endowment
fund. The tools, wise, forge ant
lathe, were added, and the boys
were put to work. OF the fruits Of
the experiment he says: at was
the most astonishing educational
product l have ever seem" He
further says, in substance, that the
process can be attached to any
school at trifling expense. Inves-
tigate the schools of Europe and
the Eastern States-those schools
that have not been "gobbled up"
by University grandeur and exclu.
siveness, and there is but one over
whelming response on the question
OF the practicability and utility o
this Improved scheme of education
But perhaps it is useless to give
light to blind man.
We should furnish the boys a
chance to make well trained farm
ers and mechanics of themselves
to acquire love for the cultivation
OF the soil-to acquire a taste and
desire to own and cultivate twenty
or forty of those vacant acres. We
should offer them some additional
inducement by exempting 20 acre
farms from taxation for twenty
years, when resided upon and cul-
tivated by their owners, and thus
invite the boys to go from their
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