Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1910-04-25
MANUAL TRAINING
IN THE SCHOOLS
Prof J. A. Wood Receives
Interesting Letter on Its
Usefulness
IS OUR NATIONAL PROBLEM
Says La Porte, Indiana Manufac-
turer Who Outlines
Solution.

Professor J. A. Wood, superintend-
ent of the public schools of this city,
, has received an interesting letter
from the NJ. Rumley Company who
make the machinery which plows i'm
imense tracts of land, and who dis
cuss at length the need of manual
. training for the youth of the land.
Professor Wood has endeavored to get
this kind of training in our schools
! and he said that many points of inter-
est are to be found in this communica-
tion which is as follows:
Dear Sir: A very serious. and I
may almost say threatening, problem
confronts the industries of the United
States. / mean to speak to you and
your associates of this problem in this
letter. Six years of travel and study
in Germany where l saw a wonder
full industrial development, carried by
a nation of highly trained workers, as
well as three years Of practical expert
ence as schoolman and manufacturer
in America, have given me an unusual
opportunity Of gaining an insight into
our present difficulty. Will you give
this matter your earnest considera-
ton, for surely it concerns us all alike.
and we must all work together if a
remedy is to be found.
Four generations ago our forefath-
ers, a few millions in number, scatter
ed along the Atlantic seaboard. had to
their west a vast untouched continent,
rich in timber, ores and soil fertility
beyond anything the white man had
ever found. These vast natural re-
sources were successfully exploited,
our wealth increased as if by magic,
and today our population of ninety
millions has occupied the whole con-
tinent, from ocean to ocean, but not
without leaving its mark on the land
Our timber IS more than half cut, our
ore and coal deposits are beginning to
show signs of depletion, our impaired
soil fertility yields now eighteen and
twenty bushels in place of the forty of
the virgin prairies. Our numbers
continue to increase, and every new
born child brings with it a mouth, but
no natural wealth excepting the labor
power of its hands.
These hands, which skilled and di-
rected by high intelligence, can Gre
ate wealth Of all forms, and hence
forth, we must depend at home and
for export into the worlds markets,
our labor power in place of our nat
ural resources. This means that we
must become predominantly a manu-
featuring and industrial people, a
course upon which We have already
started. We shall be obliged to meet
at first in the worlds markets and
later at home, the products of Ger
many and Japan, those master modern
nations crowded throughout with
surplus of skilled and efficient labor.
We acannot compete with them
through cheap raw materials and a
low cost of living, which are things
of the past in the United States. We
can meet them only by the superior
skill and better training of masses of
American workmen. Where are they?
! In pioneer days, to break the virgin
prairies, fell the forest, and build the
railroads, called for brawn-the mus
cles of millions of arms and hands
AS a modern manufacturing nation,
American supremacy must rest upon
superior factory organization and vast
numbers of efficient workers for every
branch of industry, willing to put in
a full days work for a reasonable
wage, men whose habits and training
from childhood up have given them in
terest and genuine pleasure in their
work.
immigration from England, Nor
way, Germany and Switzerland for
merly brought great numbers of such.
Today, the tide is sweeping from
southern Europe hordes of Latins and
Slavs, without schooling, culture and
without training or skill at any trade.
To them we cannot look for our skilled
factory workers, and perhaps it is well
that we should not What would other
wise become of our boys and girls?
Surely they all could not find places
as clerks in stores, banks and Offices,
as doctors and lawyers. And yet for
this our public school system attempts
to train them all OF one hundred and
twenty-seven who enter, one reaches
college, and for him the entire course
of studies is shaped, leaving the other
one hundred and twenty-six, who drop
out on the way, without any specific
training to fit them for their life's
work as machinists, carpenters, print
ers, telegraphers. And the right kind
of school could have each of them, in