New-York tribune., 1907-10-14
PUBLIC OR PRIVATE TRADE SCHOOLS.

Opinions OF representative leaders OF organ
ized labor. gathered by the National Society
for the Promotion of Industrial Education, are
generally in favor OF trade schools part Of
the public school system maintained at public
expense and conducted under public control
and about as generally are opposed 10 such
institutions under private control, or, at least,
| under the direction Of private corporations or
manufacturing concerns. This recognition of
| the desirability, we might say the necessity,
of industrial education is gratifying. We have
long believed, and have frequently urged In
these columns, that an extended and compre-
hensive system OF practical instruction and
training in the mechanic arts would be one
of the most effective agencies for the promo
tion Of individual self-support and for success
full competition with other Industrial lands.
Many thoughtful and benevoently disposed
persons will, however, fail to be convinced that
private trade schools are perncious, or that the
whole work of industrial education should be
added to our public school system. which In
some respects is already overexpanded and
overburdened. They will, rather, hold that
large industrial establishments are the very
best places for trade schools, since they have
at hand, ready for use, equipments which 1t
would be practically impossible to duplicate in
public schools and which could be even re-
motely Appropriated only at great cost. Many,
If not most, OF the great trade schools In which
Europe so decisively surpasses America are
maintained and directed by private corporations
The animus of organized labor against private
industrial schools seems to oe at least in part
indicated In the phrase used by one of their
opponents who denounces them as "scab hatch
cries" IF by that it is meant that thoroughly
educated artisans inclined TO hold aloof from
trade unions, there is thus presented an indict
ment of the unions which may be unintentional
but which is certainly significant.
There are also those who will dispute that It
is either the duty or the right OF the public
school system to engage in specific trade in
struction. The schools, they argue, are sup
ported by the whole community, and therefore
their work should be confined TO such instruc-
ton as is common to all. They should give in
structon in the three RS and other funda-
mental branches because those are things
which all need to learn, and they may properly
give certain amount Of manual training, for
the sake of the exercise which is essential to
health and because all persons need to know
how TO use their hands to a certain extent. But
1t is held that there is no more reason why the
public should pay for educating one boy SIS a
carpenter than for educating another as
lawyer, and that it is no more the function of
a public school to turn out bricklayers than
portrait painters.
1t will not answer to say that professional
students are better able TO pay for instruction
than artisans, or that the promise of remunera-
ton in the profession is so much greater than
that in the trade as to warrant the spending of
money on the education more than on the
other. If those things were true they would
not justify class discrimination In public
schools; for, If carried to their logical extent,
they would indicate the exclusion from public
schools of all who were able TO pay for private
instruction. But they are not true. 4 large
proportion of students in medical, law and
other professional schools are as poor as the
artisans in trade schools. and many of them
have to support themselves by manual labor
while they are pursuing their studies. AS for
after remuneration. we are inclined to think
that large proportion Of lawyers and physi.
aiAas ana the majority of preachers.apd teach