The Irish standard., 1905-01-14
Says Public School Education There is Far
Ahead of Ours Because of Its
Practical Character.
Not University in This Country That Does
Not Get Its Fine Instruments From
Paris or Berlin.

tricity, and Italy is getting what the
French have POLITICALLY named white
coal'-watcr power, with which to
generate electricity-Italy is giving
evidence Of another renaissance.
But look at American boots and
Shoes, is shouted. Granted our sup
eriority in mining machinery; granted
our superiority in boot and shoe max
ing; granted all the facts which the
advocates Of our superiority are able
to advance; and the principal fact II
not disturbed, viz, that we are fur be-
hind Europe in large number Of in
dustrics in which skill and expert
knowledge count for great deal. We
raise something like seven-eighths of
the worlds raw cotton, and yet we i'm
port cotton textiles of all kinds for
millions of dollars.
"Thcre is not university in this
great land that does not have t. send
to Paris or Berlin for its fine instru-
ments. Thousands of the men that
are making the republic first among
productive nations came to us from
the British Islands or from some part
of continental Europe, Ericsson,
Pupin, Stcinmetz, and many of the
leaders of our great industries give
evidence of this.
Now, the fact is, our education.
along Industrial lines, has been as
abominably bad as ignorance, stupid
ity, greed, and Indifference could make
1t. For long time we did nothing in
our schools to develop the native
genius that had beapmu proverbial,
Year after year we were willing to
work along inferior lines, making
coarse grades, importing expert labor.
when we needed such, from Europe,
and common labor from Canada, con-
tincntal ana insular Europe The stu
dent or sociology who will cut down
deep into American society, will find
lamina after lamlna of different peo-
pie. Among the working classes he
Will find, at the bottom the early set
tiers, then English, then Scorcn and
Irish, then French Canadians, and now
Italians, Greeks, Armenians. and fifty
other nationalities recruited from the
lowest lamina of European society.
But | will be told that Boston has its
Massachusetts School Of Technology:
Worcester its Clark University;
brooklyn its Pratt's; New York City
Colonel Auchmutty's School; Yale.
Sheffield; Cornell it's Sibley Institute.
etc, etc.
"But what of these? For whom
were they built, for whom were they
intended? Who was able to take ad-
vantage of them? Were they part OF
the public school system? By no
means. Not nearly so much as were
Harvard, Yale, and Brown proper.
= y # For long time we were
told that we were better off and smart
or than others, even though we had no
technical schools; now we are told, be-
cause Mr.. Mosely and his Commission
have said so, that our schools are .
nearly perfect. Many and many a
time writer's and speakers were forced
to advance argument after argument
in favor of Industrial and Industrial
art education, so as to keep alive the
fires from which the torches in the
technical schools of every state Of tho
country were afterwards to be lighted.
Every one will remember that it was
often urged that the decision in regard
to such schools must not depend upon
what we are or upon what we have
done without such an education sys-
TEN, but upon that what we would
have done and where we would be to-
day had we had such system"
Professor Monaghan quotes the re-
port of Colonel Frank II. Mason, our
consul general to Berlin, on the mar
velous success Of Germany in the de-
partment of chemical manufacture
Professor Justus Won Liebig began the
organization of chemical study and re-
search in Germany, and from the tech
meal schools and laboratories of that.
country have come between six and