The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-08-13
TRAIN THE HAND
Our Industrial Progress
Just Beginning.
In Manufacturing and industries North
Carolina Should be The Massa-
ChusettS of the South.
BY PRES. GEORGE T. WINSTON.

BY PRES. GEORGE II. WINSTON.
The greatest need of our State is in
dustrial skill and efficiency. Wonder
full progress has been made along
these lines during the last thirty years
Few, if any, of the older States have
developed manufactures, and improved
land values, during this period, to a
greater degree than North Carolina.
This very development however,
| serves better than argument to en-
phasize our need of still larger and
liner skill and training. We rank
among the poorest States in the Union.
Ours is the lowest per capita of
wealth. And, yet our learned profess
sions'' are al crowded. Our mental
and moral culture are of a high order.
We have plenty of well trained, pow
9rful intellects, plenty of strong char
acters, plenty Of individualism and
self-reliance. But we have little pow
er of cooperation and very dearth
of skilled labor. Our fingers, hands,
and eyes, are quite unframed; and our
minds look upon industrial and manu-
al training as decidedly inferior to
mental, both in power and in respecta-
bility.
Our industrial progress has only be-
gun. We are but a step removed from
unskiled labor. Competition Will soon
destroy our profits in the manufac-
ture of coarse products, Unless we
advance, we shall fall back where we
were a generation ago. The remedy
s still greater skill, more efficient Ia
Dor, larger use of machinery, in
creased diversification of industries,
and a partnership of mind and
hand, working together intelligently.
skilfuily, Zealously, and in full SYM
path.
To secure these results our State
needs universal industrial education.
Our youth should be taught to labor,
and to labor skilfully Too long we
have bulded exclusively on brain Gull
ture. We followed the example of
the world; but we are now clinging to
that example after the world has re-
jected it, The result is a greater
chasm between brain power and hand
power in North Carolina than proba-
bly, elsewhere on the globe inhabited
by the English race.
This is the age of the engineer.
Farming, manufactures, transporta-
ton, sanitation, war, commerce, all
rest upon the work of the engineer.
The problems of the age are no longer
purely mental and speculative but al
most entire industrial The foremost
nations are those that exercise mastery
over the forces of nature; those that
most utilize the visible forces of ma
ture in the production and exchange
of wealth; that invent and employ
tools and machinery; that create new
forces and powers, thus increasing and
multiplying natures stock. France
and Germany, England and America
are producing annually more wealth
and eXerting annually more power
over human affairs than all the rest
Of the world combined. They are do
ing it by an irresistible combination of
head and hand, overpowering and
dominating the nations and races that
employ only the head, as we'll as those
shat employ only the hand. New
York and London rule the world; not
by craftsmanship, but by statesman
ship directing power. For centuries
the statesman has dreamed of a canal
between the Atlantic and the Pacific;
but the problem Of it's construction is
one of engineering, rather than of
craftsmanship. The civilization of
Africa, the Characterization of Asia, the
AngliciZing of Central and South
America are problems which VIII be
solved mainly through industrial
agencies by machinery, applied
science, and the various lines of en-
cheering. Sanitary engineering Will
make life in the tropics possible for
the English race; commercial and .in-
dustrial engineering will make the
great English race masters of the
mines, the fisheries, the plantations,
the quarrieS, the forests, and the COM
merce Of Asia, Africa and South
America.
What we need in North Carolina is
more skill, more practical knowledge,
more business enterprise, more ma
chinery and tools, more steam and
electricity, more labor-saving inven-
tons, instead Of muscle and drudgery.
The time will come when all these
things will be necessary, in order that
we may maintain ourselves in the
fierce Industrial war which awaits us.
We can make ourselves the most indie
pendent, the wealthiest, and the hap
piest State in the Union if we will only
fit our youth by proper education to
utilize the almost infinite resources
and powers with which the God of
nature has blessed our State.
We have eight principal sources or
wealth:
First the soil and it's crops; second,
forests; third, mines; fourth, fisheries;
fifth, water front; sixth, health and
pleasure resorts; seventh, climate;
eighth, population.
[ cannot, in the space assigned me,
consider in detail all these resources.
I believe | can safely say that the
sum total of wealth potentialities con-
tanned in these eight factors is not
surpassed by those of any State in the
Union.
North Carolina should be the Massa-
chusetts of the South. Her College of
Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. rival
ing the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, should train annually for
the service of the State and the de-
velopment of its resources. thoroughly
equipped engineers, (civil. electrical.
sanitary, mining, mechanical and
architects, chemists agri-
culturists and horticulturists. By the
side of this great college should stand
a school for the manual training OF
skilled Workmen--carpenter brick
layers plasterers, mechanics, machin-
lists, electricians, boiler and engine
tenders, dynamo tenders dairymen,
florists, gardeners and stock raisers.
When this is done, we will say OF
North Carolina, not that she fills every
blank in the cencus table. but that
she produces a greater variety of raw
and manufactures it into
more valuable products than any
State in the Union; and that her peo-
ri r,f a1ft1