Mountain Home maverick. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1906-1911, 1909-01-21
CONSERVING HUMAN RESOURCES
The Three FRS" Are Not Enough, -
The Coming Industrial
Training.

to the future prospects OF the Ameri-
can people, now that we have skinned
the cream of our national resources
and are within Is to 40 years of skim
milk, than the lack of thorough in
dustrial training.
When "our fathers brought forth
npon this continent" the wonderful
nation that we see here today they
planned with supreme wisdom for
the educational needs of their day.
The prime needs of those days and
of today was that of serving political
liberty and this was possible only
through an electorate sufficiently edu-
Gated in the "three RS to be able
to read and write intelligently, under
stand what was going on in the world,
and with the aid of the free press,
forever avoid the danger of the plac-
| ing of shackles upon the ankles and
wrists of Liberty. The fruit of their
work is our universal public school
system, system which shall ever
stand as guarding of freedom.
But with the opening of our vast
fuel and mineral resources with the
practical application of steam to all
kinds of mechanism with the inven-
tion of cheap process of manufactur-
ing steel and with the multiplicity
of labor saving devices and Harvesting
of electricity to the commonest needs
of life, an unforeseen era had arisen.
The age of machinery is upon us, and
we as a people have done practical
ly nothing to meet the responsible
ties of world where the liberty con-
serving reading, writing and 'rith-
metic' of our forefathers are wholly
insufficient.
In the United States we train the
children in the three RS and in addi-
ton in the elements of music, art and
other things valuable on the esthetic
side. 1t is splendid thing to give
instruction in music and art. to en-
able the American people to appreci-
ate the adornment of their homes
with good pictures and the enliven-
ment of their lives by strains of mel
! ody. But art and music in the home
cost money and we fail to give in
! struction that will help the young
people to earn enough money to enjoy
the luxury they have learned about in
: school. We get them accustomed
to life's dessert and then furnish them
hardly enough mental equipment to
pay for their bread and butter
Here is the opportunity for perpet-
ual usefulness and here lies the great
work for which the International Cor
respondence Schools were founded.
To appreciate what the l. G. S.
means to the American people, pic
ture yourself. if you will, back in the
days before the nineties in a place al
the foot of the industrial ladder.
You are in the picture, maybe 6
common laborer. You went to school
in your boyhood, it is true, but before
you had got very far. some other boy
put in your head the idea of making
some money for Yourself. Against
. the advice of your parents, or perhaps
through necessity, you broke out Of
: school and "got job where yo'
: could learn little. - You were on
ly boy-you did not know that the
= step of going out so early to learn
little" meant that you would always
! be earning "only little'-tha
:. you had cut yourself off from any
4. great possibilities of usefulness.
: You reach the age of twenty
when suddenly there dawns upon yo'
; the awful fact that the cards are tel
, to one that you can never rise where
= you will be earning more than -
little as compared to the boys VIII
: stuck to school and got some advances
brain training.
, A college education is absolutel,
: out of the question. You try nigh
school for a while and throw that up
:, Perhaps you start to fight the way t.
an education through study of ordi
nary technical books, but you have t
- give that up, because the author
e have figured on having teacher Their
:. :, to teach you the things in the book
: Finally you throw up your hands an
lay aside ambition forever.
!, The inauguration of the opportunit
!, for universal technical education
:" the founding of the great institut
y at Scranton was to hundreds Q
= thousands of ambitious Americas Xix
:, another Emancipation Day.
- Before that Declaration, by Thorn
as j. Foster, of the /. c. S. of II
dustrial independence for all the pee
pie it would have been an irony
have held out before the working ma
the shining hope of lettering his cor
;" dition, which now is inspiring hur
dreds of thousands toward highe
XNkat hum N GOOD could on