The progressive farmer., 1900-12-18
Living Issues.
THE VALUE OF MANUAL TRAINING.

with its large plantations. its gentle
men of elegant leisure its contempt
for manual labor, its exclusive devo-
ton to agriculture, and its absolute
subsection to the learned profes-
sions. Slavery is abolished and
with it has gone or is going every
thing that was based upon slavery.
The new South demands new
labor, intelligent, skilled labor.
Even agriculture demands it. With
slave laoor it was impossible to have
dairies, stock farms, orchards, truck
gardens-not to speak Of manufac-
lures.
A new education is demanded by
the new S0uth-an education that
fits for skilled labor Our boys and
girls must be taught to produce
something better than the raw ma
terial to spin and weave and dye
cotton instead OF plOwins and chop
ping it; To make furniture and fin
ished building material from our
forests instead of shipping our trees
as timber to develop our mines and
convert our minerals into finished
products; to manufacture goods OF
all descriptions and sell them to the
rest OF the world instead of buying
all that we use and giving away to
others the raw material
New England makes more from
cotton than the entire South, but it
raises not one ounce. We sell those
States raw cotton and they sell US
finished product made with skill,
taste and Judgment.
We sell them the rudest physical
labor They are selling US educated
skill.
We must produce wealth, for with
out wealth we cannot have the COM
forts of life, much less the refine
ments. Wealth means schools, and
churches, and cOmfOrta Die homes,
well furnished and supplied with
music, books and art and wealth
also means public schools libraries,
museums, good roads, good court
houses, comfortable jails and poor
houses thing that goes to
make life agreea ble, refined, and ele.
Vated.
We need manual training and in
dustrlal education in all of our
schools. Not every boy and girl can
learn the languages and philosophy
and history and literature, the
sciences and mathematics, but each
one can learn to do something, to
make something, to create some
thing. Every public school should
train the head and the eye by draw
ing and by the use of carpenters
tools. Such training will arouse and
stimulate many boy and girl who
desires knowledge. Skill will beget
knowledge, certainly d desire for
knowledge.
For 200 years we have had a sys-
tenn of education designed solely to
produce professional men; members
of the learned professions. Result,
we are the poorest State in the Union
and the most iliterate. Our learned
professions are OvercrOwd9d and i'll
paid. The average professionals M IN
earns less annually in North Caro-
lima than the average locomotive en-
gineer. No wonder we are poor
Instead of teaching our children to
become skilled labOrers and thus en-
abling them to follow pursuits both
comfortable and remurerative, we
teach them to perform no labor ex-
cept the rudest, the most Disagree
able, and the most i'll paid.
North Carolina possesses every
element of wealth excepting skilled
labor. She has climate, soil, rain
fall, water-power, proximity to mar
kets both foreign and domestic, min
erals, fisheries, health resorts and
the greatest variety of animal, vege-
table and mineral products. All she
needs is to train her children to de-
velop the wonderful resources that
God has given them. The old edu-
cation will not do this. There is
need of technical, manual, industrial
training in agriculture, in horticul-
ture, in mechanic arts, IN civil and
electrical engineering, in chemistry
and in the textile industry. North
Carolina needs to have manual train
ing in all her public schools and to
have great college OF technology