TRAINING THE NATION'S WORKERS
Meyer, Ernst C.
TRAINING THE NATION'S WORKERS A Plea for the Extension of Industrial Schools in the United States. Germany's Rise in World Commerce due to Her System of Developing and Conserving Her Labor...
...From these schools the German youth emerges with a broad and solid foundation of useful general knowledge...
...Education Within Reach of All THE boy or girl who belongs to the first humble class will complete the compulsory common school education from six or seven to fourteen years...
...The result is the solution of the secret of the present industrial ascendency of the German Empire...
...Forty years ago the two great national heroes of the Empire gave dramatic expression of two great ideas which were destined to ripen into the mighty fruit of today...
...profits are measured in fractions...
...Competition is keen to the point of danger...
...The study of German includes incidentally penmanship, history, geography...
...the sculptor is to learn how to chisel for us statuary that reveals a classic taste for the beautiful...
...Fine evidence- of the value placed upon industrial education in that country...
...The great secondary industrial school founded at Chemnitz as far back as 1838, and preparing for engineering, mining, commerce, and certain general trades, is today attended by nearly 6,000 students...
...The mission of these splendid institutions is the dissemination of a broad and deep expert knowledge of conditions in the commercial world...
...Untiring energy and large means no longer suffice to hold world markets at a profit...
...In our own country we can hardly speak of such a system at all and are only today taking the first steps towards a coordination of such schools as we have to the system of general education...
...Today she stands in the front rank, irresistibly expanding her markets, resourcefully exploiting her commodities, feared as a competitor...
...He does not even complete the common school, but about his tenth year leaves it for a six year's course in a "real" school, plus three years of apprenticeship work or a nine year's course in an "ober-real" school...
...Truly wonderful is the work that has already been accomplished in Germany by these schools...
...Let us not only educate labor...
...Bismarck told the German people that the nation that has the schools has the future...
...drawing is early given a practical turn...
...your battle is but half won, without industrial insurance...
...America far Behind, but Awakening GOMPARE with this grand system our own hampered attempts...
...Commercial continuation schools, as distinguished from the general industrial TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL, STUTTGART continuation schools, where emphasis is placed on book-keeping, stenography, commercial arithmetic and geography, and allied branches, are found in all cities of any importance...
...arithmetic emphasizes book-keeping, checks, drafts, loans, interest, discounting...
...The vase, the candlestick, the lamp, the table, tie dress pattern, the engraving, are all to have the delicate lines and the artistic forms of modern art...
...In 1871 Prussia contributed not quite 300,000 marks towards the maintenance of technical universities...
...Your work is but half done...
...Germany in the Lead WE are at once impressed with the striking contrast in the status of industrial education in this country and in Germany...
...Prussia alone, has today nearly 2,000 of them with an annual attendance of about 250,000...
...Before coming to the University of Wisconsin as Assistant Professor of Political Science, he was stationed successively at Chemnitz, at Dresden, and at Sonneberg as United States Consul...
...What once was made simple, dur-able, and serviceable is to be so produced that it possesses, in addition to these necessary qualities, the attraction of things beautiful...
...How are we to account for the change...
...The instructional force consists quite generally of the common school teachers, who thus are already more or less familiar with the special needs of many of the students...
...Their rise, strongly favored by the far-sighted policy of the Kaiser, was contemporaneous with the commercial ascendency of Germany during the last few decades...
...If lasting benefit is to come to a nation they must be scrupulously preserved...
...These schools meet on week-day evenings and sometimes on Sunday mornings in the ordinary school houses, or in some other convenient public buldng, or even in private rooms kindly dedicated to the purpose...
...Some continuation schools also do more advanced work, including physics, chemistry, algebra, geometry, trigonometry...
...He is eminently equipped to enter the classrooms of the great industrial universities where in the course of three or more years he is to specialize and arm himself for future leadership in some field of industrial activity...
...These teachers receive very important assistance, however, from artisans, mechanics, architects, and engineers, who are frequently called in for practical demonstration and explanation...
...Therein lies the secret of their greatness...
...Chemnitz and Soyineberg are great industrial centers...
...She stands foremost among all nations in the conservation of the economic life of the industrial man through the supplementation of industrial education by industrial insurance...
...Tbe third set, the industrial universities, are attended by the mot favored thousands who can spend all their time up to twenty-ens or twenty-two or twenty-three years to acquire the best industrial education the world commands...
...We are only opening our doubting eyes...
...In this atmosphere, consecrated to the solution and industrialization of the boundless secrets of nature, we find the scientific searcher, from sunrise to sunset, bending over his pot of chemicals...
...Meyer investigated the German method of training working-men and wrote about it in the consular reports.—Editor's Note...
...We have but a scattered and incomplete series of industrial schools, organized here and there by some great minds, often maintained only under difficulties, compelled to justify their existence, fighting against heavy odds of popular indifference and state neglect...
...It is safe to say that practically every trade known to industrial life can be thoroughly learned at no great distance from the student's home...
...The "real" schools offer a broad, liberal and practical education along general lines...
...Hand in hand with the development of this magnificent system of industrial schools went also the development of those institutions which are necessary for the conservation of the industrial man...
...And for all branches of industrial education she is today contributing over six million marks...
...the painter is to learn how to reproduce: the wonderful harmonies of nature...
...Thus, Saxony, with an area not one-ninth that of the state of Wisconsin, can boast of no less than fifty of such commercial schools...
...This is the day of commercialism...
...The architect is to learn how to build structures whose exteriors and interiors present the harmonious blending of well-conceived art...
...She does not neglectfully expose labor to the ravages of disease...
...Protection of German Industrial Worker BUT Germany did not confine her efforts at increased industrial efficiency to industrial education...
...Excellent trade schools are found in every locality having an important manufacturing industry...
...Industrial Art Schools THE advanced industrial art schools, ranking also as universities, as their name indicates, aim at the utilization of art in industry...
...The possession of such knowledge has become indispensable today...
...universities...
...In Germany we have a well-worked-out and universal system with opportunities for all from the lowest to the highest, an intimate part of the whole system of education, with liberal support from state and citizen...
...Foremost among the industrial universities are the commercial high schools, the industrial art schools, and the technical high schools...
...During this time Mr...
...She is not only a model in industrial education...
...He is to learn how to make his work beautiful and armonious...
...in the field of higher industrial education fall the great industrial universities, the so-called "high schools," or Hochschulen, standing on a par with the great German universities: the forest academies, the mining academies, the agricultural high schools, the industrial art schools, the commercial high schools, and the grandest of them all, the technical high schools...
...In short, the artisan in any, trade is to be more than a mechanical producer of useful com-modities...
...Where any trade cf importance nourishes in the locality emphasis is generally placed on elementary preparation for that trade, though special trade schools are found everywhere...
...The other classes of secondary schools are likewise found everywhere...
...In Germany the great system of industrial schools from the lowest to the highest, constitutes an important part of the flesh and blood of the system of general education, every part of the one intimately correlated to the corresponding part of the other...
...Technical Universities GROWNING the system of industrial schools stand the unrivaled technical high schools or universities...
...The boy who aims so high does not, as a rule, step on from the secondary to the higher schools as he did from the primary to the secondary schools...
...Their pre-eminent mission for the enrichment of commerce and industry, for the production of things, convenient and com-fortable, for the creation of a greater,security of life and.pns erty, is enveloping these institutions in a halo of public esteem, which is eclipsing even the historical prestige of the ancient classical universities, Originally designed to develop in the student manual dexterity and skill in execution these schools have developed into institutions wherein is fostered primarily, an earnest pursuit of science for science's sake...
...The ancient classics gave way to the more realistic and useful education from which the schools derived their name...
...It is not sufficient that labor values should only be created...
...Emperor William I, with a vision of prophecy, announced to his subjects that the future of the German Empire lies in the seas...
...While in Germany industrial schools are accorded universal approbation and enjoy the enthusiastic support of the government, both state and city, of trade organizations, and of individuals, to the extent of many millions of marks annually, with us the idea of trade schools is in many quarters still ridiculed as akin to that of the dress suit mechanic...
...Germany today stands foremost among all nations in this conservation of the life and the health of the industrial man through efficient sanitary administration and the regulation of occupations in the factories and the mines...
...These, "real" schools and the gymnasia, are the great secondary training schools in the German system of general education...
...Germany has already grown powerful in conquest...
...Astounding has been the development of industrial education during this period of less than forty years...
...We are beginning to realize that after all every child is not going to be educated into a doctor, or a lawyer, or a minister...
...The Berlin-Charlottenburg institution alone, with an attendance of overl 5,000 and a corps of instructors numbering more than 400, housed in a magnificent structure, is not unlike our own great state...
...competitors are no longer local, or national, but international...
...Just as our hearts are united in this great cause of industrial education, so let us join in one grand army, every individual a standard bearer, and fight for the conservation of the life and the health and the homes of that great body of American workers upon whom rest the burdens of many lives and the future of our country.—Address delivered before the National Convention of the Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education at Milwaukee, December S, 1909...
...Germany's Rise in World Commerce due to Her System of Developing and Conserving Her Labor Resources By ERNST C. MEYER PROFESSOR MEYER writes about Germany's system of industrial education from first-hand knowledge...
...The course of instruction includes German, arithmetic, and above all, drawing...
...Industrial education for girls ends with these secondary schools...
...Recognizing the inadequacy of such a preparation, and yet the necessity of earning bread at fourteen on the part of many children, the states of Germany, in whose hands individually, as in our own country, the administration of education rests, have generally required by law attendance at a continuation school for one or more generally two years...
...Combine these two ideas: schools, education—commerce, industry...
...in the field of secondary industrial education fall the more advanced trade schools, and the secondary mining, engineering, agricultural, commercial, art, and polytechnical schools...
...commercial calculations have expanded until they have become world operations demanding world knowledge...
...In the German system of industrial education, as elsewhere in educational organization, we can distinguish three great fields: primary, secondary, and higher industrial education...
...They are, as we would expect, located at the large industrial centers: Berlin, Leipsic, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Aix la Chapelle...
...For the attainment of such knowledge Germany has offered to the world her magnificent commercial universities,—offered to the world because a large percentage of the attending students are foreigners...
...Here are made the great discoveries which are annually revolutionizing German methods of manufacture, cheapening the process of production, and forcing German commodities into new markets in all quarters of the globe...
...Training Experts and Specialists WE NOW come to the greatest of all industral schools, the commercial, agricultural, and technical universities, called Hochschulen, and, as already stated, ranking on a par with the German universities...
...To energy and wealth must be added knowledge, —exact, expert knowledge...
...These continuation schools are found everywhere, in all centers of population, large and small...
...In the field of primary industrial education fall the industrial continuation schools and the primary trade schools...
...However, a great awakening to the value of such training is sweeping the country...
...Admission to these schools is rarely from the common schools direct...
...She stands before the world, a far more impressive object-lesson, as a national protector of the industrial worker...
...There are eleven of them today attended by nearly 25,000 students...
...FORTY years ago the German Empire was an almost negligible factor in the field of foreign commerce...
...As a training for the mind, and eye, and manual dex terity, and the development of a keen sense of proportions, drawing is the foundation stone of all industrial training...
...For Greek and Latin were substituted the modern commercial languages...
...The second set is attended I y the better favored tens of thousands who can maintain themselves, or are maintained, for two or three or four years while they complete a secondary industrial education...
...market conditions are complex...
...Let us insure labor against the risks that are not labor's risks but society's risks...
...Even the gardener, hotel-keeper, waiter, brewer, barber, and chimney sweep finds a school open to him...
...The firs set of these schools is attended by the economically least favoed hundreds of thousands of Germany's great industrial arm> -workers who must earn their daily bread while they improve their education at non-working hours...
...From the training of skillful artisans the schools have turned to the training of skillful scientists,—skillful, because they have learned how to carry science into industry, how to transmute theory into practice...
...She does not expose labor to economic destruction through the vicissitudes of sickness and accident and invalidity...
...In at least one case, that of Leipsic, more than one-half are foreigners...
...These secondary schools provide for a two or three and sometimes four years' course of training and are designed to prepare young men and women for those occupations which are of middle rank in industry and for which the training at the highest schools is excessive and at the lowest schools inadequate...
...She was not satisfied merely to develop efficient labor...
...She does not expose labor to unchecked, ruthless exploitation by heartless and soulless corporations or wanton sacrifice of life in factories and in mines...
...She did not stop there...
...Though Germany has achieved greal things in other fields of education, it is the technical universities that form the noblest monument to the deep thought, untiring energy, and unquenchable enthusiasm of German educators and statesmen in the field of industrial education...
...Girls, who do not prepare for factory work by studying a trade, may learn sewing, mending, darning, tailoring, ironing, and cooking...
...Their history dates back for over a century, and is a story of modest begin-ning and growth into educational institutions which are today the acknowledged peers of the historic universities, and which, I firmly believe, will in the future, by virtue of their unwaver-ing pursuit of science and their faithful application of knowledge to industry vindicate their position as the great schools of the age...
...Today she is expending over 1,500,000 marks for the same purpose...
...Here were solved the mysteries through which was perfected an industry which has carried the name of Germany into every country where drugs and chemicals are bought and sold...
...Those who are still in doubt as to the practical value of industrial education, those who require visual proof for conversion, may find it by turning to the German Empire...
...We are beginning to realize that a school can be made a stepping-stone not only to the so-called higher professions, but also to the factory and the mill and the mine...
...The Mission of Commercial Universities WE FIND in Germany today no less than five commercial high schools...
...It is also the day of brains...
...In shop win-dows everywhere the lavish display of countless beautiful eon ceptions of industrial art are eloquent testimony of the effectiveness and value of these great institutions...
...The name and fame of these technical universities have gone out into every country where men are interested in the application of science to industry...
...They teach the method and develop the ability of applying graceful and harmonious forms to practical objects of trade and consumption...
...The more fortunate girls and boys who can continue, step from the primary to the secondary schools, to the advanced trade schools, and to the secondary schools for mining, engineering, commerce...
...quite generally it is only after completion of a one or two year's course in the continuation schools...
Vol. 2 • February 1910 • No. 5
