Massachusetts are aroused as to this matter also, but you will perhaps say that New York is but little interested here. Look again at the census, and you will see how wretchedly you are mistaken. The value of the mining products in New York in 1870 was more than half that of the entire gold product of California. Here, too, we must follow up the good work begun by our Chandlers and Raymonds.
Look at Chemistry applied to Manufactures. More and more the chemical laboratory is becoming a great central point in industrial education. Run over but two or three points out of many. A chemical discovery in coloring-matter has given us a substitute for madder, and restored the great area given to cultivation of that material to the increase of material for human sustenance. An apparently trivial application of another chemical principle has enabled Onondaga to purify its product so that it now competes with the world in the purity of its salt for the dairy. Another application has enabled another part of the State to make quantities of steel formerly undreamed of. And all this is but the beginning of the applications of chemistry to increase the well-being of the State and nation.
We must also make provision for instruction in Architecture. Wealth and public spirit—individual and municipal—are now erecting myriads of costly buildings in all parts of our country. The number of uneducated architects is very great—the number of thoroughly prepared architects is very small. Have you ever considered the waste attendant upon this? Every month you hear of some architectural failure that costs life and treasure. To-day it is a church-floor which gives way, and a multitude of children are taken from the ruins mangled and dead; to-morrow it is a whole city quarter swept away by fire, because some half-taught architects knew no other way of producing architectural effect than by piling up combustible ornaments on inaccessible roofs.
Nor is that all. Our people are laying out millions on millions in buildings which within thirty years—in the advance of taste and knowledge—will be eye-sores and must come down. A building erected by a true architect will grow more beautiful for hundreds of years. A building erected by a sham architect will be an incubus in a quarter of a century. People are beginning to see this, and we are endeavoring to prepare men thoroughly to know the best materials, to calculate their strength in construction, and to combine material and construction according to everlasting laws, and not according to some pretty present fashion; and this is the purpose of our School of Architecture.
Look now at instruction in Drawing. The casual visitor to an institution like that established in this State will often say something like this: "I can understand the value of your libraries, collections in natural history, apparatus, models, shops, and lecture-rooms; but what is the use of your great draughting-rooms?"
