The school is called upon to provide the education necessary for the artisan, and this it can do better than the practice of an industrial art alone, because it can arrange such a gradation of tasks as will insure the most rapid and permanent acquisition of skill and mental power. The school can give manual training without interrupting the general education of the youth. As dexterity in some lines is easiest acquired in youth, it can insure this without the waste of mind and body involved in child labor. The school, furthermore, can constantly relate the precepts of the arts to the principles of the sciences on which they rest and can add to this an artistic education which will awaken ability beyond that which any training in the workshop or factory can evoke.
Professional and Technical Education is of a more advanced order, and therefore not only requires more expensive equipment so that it is limited to a relatively small number of institutions, but is divided into professional courses corresponding closely to the professions and to the customary groupings of productive industries. This branch of education requires little explanation, let alone defense, in this country. It is the earliest form of education for industry to be developed here and it has passed beyond the experimental stage.
Of professional schools there were but two in this country at the time of the declaration of independence, and these were both medical schools. In 1899 the Commissioner of Education reported 917 professional schools, including schools of theology, medicine, law, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary science and training schools for nurses, having a total attendance of 65,152.
As an illustration of a technical school we may cite the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, N. Y., one of the first of its kind in this country. It was founded in 1824 and, because of its early start and high rank, has exerted a great influence upon American railway engineering. The Philadelphia Textile School, the New York School for Carriage Draftsmen, the Michigan Agriculture College and the School of Mines of the same state are institutions of this class, as are the many polytechnic, mechanical and agricultural schools of the country, and schools of forestry, architecture, etc.
Through the liberality of the federal government many excellent agricultural colleges now exist in the United States, but a wonderful future lies before our agriculture when it shall be thoroughly permeated by the modern scientific and system-loving spirit, and its various branches shall follow the dictates of science, under the guidance of trained men. This the recent history of the dairy industries amply proves. The mineral industries of this country have been conquered by scientific experts within the past fifteen years, and the recent improvements in smelting and refining are due to men from the universities and schools of mines. The manufacturing industries of this country in a like manner need and can greatly profit by a steady supply
