The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-07-12
PRESIDENT LUTHER

Address on Trades Schools.
 President Luther in his address said: The trade school is frankly vocational. It fits men to earn living in some specific way, and to render to the state the indispensable service of the skilled workman. It takes the place of the old apprentice system. Two genera tions ago the youth who wished to learn trade was bound out as an apprentice He learned his business by working at it under the direction of older workmen. The process at best was slow and wearisome, and practic- ally, it is no longer in use. To-day there are few apprentices and such as may be still found are learning very little. The labor unions restrict the number of apprentices to limits gro- tesquely below obvious needs. The boys suffer from the jealousy, i'll will, and incompetence of those who are supposed to teach them, and from the greed of employers who try to get a mans work out of them for boys wages.
 There seems good reason to believe that in the near future the tendency from the trades to the clerical and of flee work may cease and be reversed.
 But we cannot train those who must do the work in this country during the next thirty years. We have no means for doing this. The amount of poor, mean, disreputable work now foisted on the public and paid for by the public is itself an indication of the worse conditions which may be expect cd unless some radical improvements | be undertaken at once. It Is amazing that we should take so much pains and spend so much money in training boys and girls in our ordinary school curricula, and then turn them loose without the slightest knowledge how to do one single thing as the world wants | 1t done. The German people know bet ter than this.
 What we need is an awakening of the general public to q realization of the danger we are in, Trade schools manned by competent instructors, whose sole business it is to instruct, exacting a standard so high that merican workmanship shall again be- come matter of national pride; trade schools maintained by public funds and free as other public schools are free-these may solves this great and pressing problem. A bright boy can probably learn more in two years in a trade school than in four years of apprenticeship, simply because those over him are interested in nothing but his progress.
 But I advocate the establishment of lpublic trade schools as necessary to Industrial success, necessary to the continuance of national prosperity, necessary to the reasonable efficiency land happiness of the generation which | is about to crowd ours off the stage, lessential to the development of the best in American manhood,
 ITHH AGRICULTURAL QUESTION. Authorities Differ-Other Speakers
 Following the plan of Tuesday the various departments of the convention held sessions at the conclusion of the general session. In the department oi
 rural education two papers were read
 on the topic, Have the Principles o1 IAgriculture a Legitimate Place in the
 Curricula of the New England Public
 Schools?" The speakers were Mason
 s. Stone of Montpelier, Vt, and Will
 liam P. Brooks of the Massachusetts
 Agricultural station, Amherst Mass Superintendent Stone spoke in favor oi
 the science, and said that agriculture finds a legitimate place in the public schools of New England, while MT
 Brooks said we should not teach how to SOW, to reap and to blow in tho
 public schools, and that as bread,
 winning pursuit he would not advocat,
 agriculture as a part of the schoo
 ourrieulum. He said it was well tt
 keep scholars interested in agriculture
 but not to take it up as a course.
 Other addresses were made by w A. Baldwin of Hyannis, Mass, and H
 D. Hemenway of Westchester, Conn. } Among the speakers in the depart
 ment of home and school were Arthu D. Call of Hartford and Miss Mary M , Abbott of Watertown.
 Mir. Mccall spoke on "The School
 and the Public" He said in part:
 "The public schools of this oountr, 1 lare highly specialized forms of dele
 gated influence and authority. Collect lively, the constitute the most uniqu
 depression of cooperative effort in tn history of the race, Here are bOO,O ,OC
 persons teaching 20,O0o,00O others at a annual public expense of $500, ,000, ,oO0- p is a colossal proportioned affair. A 2 first the relation of the public to tn schools was the relation of cause | e effect. At present the interesting 1T f luences between the public and tn
 schools constitute a complex situation {; needing constant study and attention f "The public wants serviceable eff !, leiency. Give this to the boys an