The Durham daily globe. (Durham, N.C.) 1889-1894, 1893-02-18
.s TO THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL.

LIZ lCRIS10tO4O N0"A
tinue to put in their time on fraudulent
printing bills and every other kind OF
bill that can be imagined or conceived to
rob the taxpayers for the benefit of a
few scheming politicians and professional
hangers-on, but the industrial school,
which at one time looked as though 1t
might stand some show, appears to have
gone the way of all other attempted meas
ures toward real progress in this state
and been laid on the shelf, there to re-
main until lost and consumed by the dry
rot of neglect and the mildew of time.
In other states the development of in
dustrial education which is now rapidly
going on, promises to do much toward
recruiting the ranks of labor of the higher
class with thoroughly capable men,
while at the same time it viii go far to-
ward removing all cause of complaint
against abuses of the apprentice system
The recent annual report Of the United
States commissioner of labor gives some
interesting facts concerning industrial
training in this and other countries, and
shows that the plan of training young
men in the trades requiring high skill
and knowledge is proving very success
full wherever it has been put in practice
1t is comparatively a new thing in this
country, but there are in the United
States a number OF incorporated manual
training schools of a higher grade and
showing a better quality Of work than
any to be found in Europe. But the
system has been practiced longer, and is
more extensive in Europe than here,
and for this reason the Commissioners
has sought for its results abroad
more than at home. He finds that
the graduates of the industrial train
ing schools of Europe are regarded
by their employers as the equals of the
regular workmen in every respect. In
formation concerning more than 5000
such graduates was obtained, and they
represented 206 different trade schools.
OF this number it was found that more
than 1000 were fully prepared to begin
work at once on leaving the schools
without serving any time as apprentices,
and in most of the cases the employers
preferred the graduates of these schools
TO those who had learned their trades in
the ordinary way.
The prison statistics show that crime
is due more largely to idleness than to
any other one cause. And idleness in a
large majority of cases, is due, more
often than not to the fact that such
offenders have not been trained to any
particular calling, and not kowing how to
do anything will accept the shortest way
out of it by doing nothing at all.
Every day in the year and in every
town in the state We have daily evidence
of the need of a training school. Right
here in Durham there are hundreds OF
boys and girls too for that matter, who
should be learning some useful occupa-
ton and preparing themselves for the
duties of honest citizenship.
There are youthful law breakers who
instead of being sent to Jail to come out
hardened criminals, should be sent to an
industrial school and taught to live with
out stealing.
THE GLOBE believes that an industrial
school in North Carolina would be worth
all the colleges and cheap middlemen as
state printers which could be piled up,
and that the legislature could better
afford to spend some time in thought on
this subject.