The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-10-18

Boston, October 11-When the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology opened the other day the first school that has yet been officially established for gradu- ate students of technologcal subjects, a school whose aims and methods are bound to be interesting to all observers of modern educational tendencies opened with 1t. As they are already found in our big industrial centres the schools of tech nology claim more and more of the pub lies attention every year. They did not originate the condition that has made technical education one of the most prom ising avenues toward useful and profit able career for ambitious young Amer jeans, but they have become the practi- cal, outward expression of that condition
 This condition developed naturally, as most conditions do, from the ability of few individuals to make themselves mas ters of certain technical processes. By means of these processes they increased the productivity of various industries sugar, cotton. beef or what not-and so in the direct working out of the laws of competition, they opened fields that re-
 
 before been necessary. In other words the expert, "the fellow who knows has been a recognized and an inevitable fac tor in d series of operations that now in- clude practically every branch of every day life. Like the little micro-organsms that he has discovered and utilized in so many industrial operations the expert is practically omnipresent; equally behind the clothing we wear, the light that H. luminates our houses, the power that drives our locomotives or transmits our messages, or the water that comes out of our water faucet
 These experts who are sometimes geniuses but more often simply men of trained talent, are nowadays very apt to be graduates of the schools of technology. which have unquestionably played vital part in the rapldity with which scientific research has developed it's many ways of making life not only easier, but safer and more convenient And the supply of train ed men thus created by schools of tech nology went further, as Gen. Francis A. Walker used to say during his presidency of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech nology. and created in turn a greatly n- creased demand for just this kind of expert service.
 Almost everybody, furthermore. has come to recognize the importance of these schools of technology, and to take pride in their achievements, comparing them. with an almost patriotic jealousy. with similar institutions on the other side of the water. and particularly with the Ger man laboratories where special opportun- ities have long been open to students of industrial science, largely through a wise government policy aiming to make that country the centre of modern wealth and progress
 In this development German opinion has frankly admitted that America is her most dangerous competitor. The duel is not one of abstract thought, but of actual practical results-Fhe perfection of manu- featuring and agricultural processes; the prevention of disease and epidemics the lighting of cities and transportation of men and merchandise from one point to another. The race in short seems likely to produce what might be called "sci- entihc commerce. in which eventually every process of manufacture shall be reduced to it's most exact terms of cost and profit and in which the life of man shall be conducted under the most ef- ticient and hygienic eonditio ms. So far America has led In many branches of ap- piled science because of her native moth ! CT wit and Yankee invention, but this con dition, in the opinion of our leading edu- cators, is now ceasing to be sufficient
 New conditions require new methods
 
 inauguration. on this side of the water of the first school of technologieal investi- gation ever established. This school is the new department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, itself the first important technologlcal school in Ameri- ca. and the graduate school of engineer ing research, as the new departmep has been named. has grown naturally but of the great increase during the rece/t years of graduate students who have Teen com ing to the technology laboratories as we'll as out of the opinion of the president and faculty that such school must needs be established if America is to hold her pres ent position in the industrial world. The opportunities which }his new Ameri- can school will offer it's Students are not confined solely to the institute for. as in Germany and elsewhG such opportun- ities are coming. moT and more to rep resent technical instrhction plus local en- vironment The Institute. for example. reaches out into the worlds actual work shops as theA workshops are represented