The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-02-08
Letters to The Editor.
INDUSTRIAL TRAINInu.
The One Great Need of the Hou,

The One Great Need of the Hour. Editor The Advertiser:
 We mourn the death of the Christian gentleman, the estimable citizen, the dis tinguished scholar and worthy President whose superior tact and administrative gifts have contributed so nobly to the success of the Alabama Polytechnic h. stitute at Auburn. We knew pr. Broun but to love him and esteem more and more his kindly feelings. his pure life and noble manhood. For twenty years his best effort has been put into our school. His life sn strong impress has gone out in its splendid scholarship into all lands. His part Is well done, but we are left to face the breach created by his death and in 1t to meet the greatest educa- tional want of our beloved State. The school was created primarily to meet an industrial want-to give actual training in the line of the varied industrial voca- tions so our young men, equipped with the skill here supplied. could go forth from its halls into every avenue of en- terprise and organize and bring to sue cess the varied and manifold industries needed in our country.
 The school has given scientific training but not industrial skill. The students have learned theory but not practice. They have learned how to do from books and professors, but not to do from lead CTS willing to show them how. The lec- ture room is efficient, but the workshop Is largely wanting, The head is we'll trained but the hand remains untutored. With all the splendid mental discipline supplied in the college the industrial skill of the students sent forth is deplorable. As rule 1 doubt if the students sent forth could put up saw mill if they had one or saw up log If the mill was up; or tan half of goat hide. nor make it into a shoe If tanned: or make a wag- on spoke or panhandle or produce the wagon or brooms if they had the mate rial; or put up a carding machine, a Snin6la lnOm aifher if had
 or establish a printing office or set a stick of type if furnished with the out fit, or successfully run a dairy if they had the necessary resources. In equip ment in the actual arts of industry they are deficient The little training supplied in these departments in the institution is good as far as 1t goes but it stops short of effectiveness in meeting the real want of supplying skill to do real work. This skill is learned only after leaving college in hard experience had in being fitted into a successful job. The prime want of the State is trained young men to en- ter as skilled leaders into the various in- dustries and organize them and give oth- CTS training in them. This will call for the workshop alongside the lecture room; the actual industry coupled with scien- tific laws. the practice In actual work with the theory upon which it is based. Theory without practice. science without demonstration. the calling without the work. teaching how to do without doing II IS al ldlluIG. uc LII Ol enter pIlSG in the State and the universal job hunt ing by our young men is the result of their inefficiency In industrial skill. The schools are not imparting 1t and as mo- vices thev are cast adrift.
 The skilled labor in what few industries we have is mostly drawn from abroad. Our graduates. if they work at all. must enter as subordnates owing to the fail- ure of our schools to give them skill.
 We recently visited a town in North Alabama where foreigners were manu- facturing hickory and oak timber into spokes and other material for vehicles. and shipping it in car load lots to St. Louis and Illinois, and selling 1t at whole sale; also cedar into lead pencil timber and shipping 1t abroad All over the State we are buying Northern and Wes- tern wagons and buggies and foreign lead pencils. made of our own timber grown in our valleys and upon our mountain sides and paying the freight both ways on them. We buy our shoes from the North, made from our own hides shipped raw from our slaughter pens from our own doors. We buy our own cotton in cloth made outside the