Meantime, social problems press for a solution, a solution here and now. Our social problems cannot be settled as those of Europe have been, for two hundred years, by emigration. We have no Columbus, and if we had such an explorer, there is no new hemisphere for him to discover. The lesson of all history is, that selfish people cannot dwell together in unity. The struggle to secure more than a fair share of the products of the labor of all is sure to end in a quarrel; the quarrel ends in a revolution, and the revolution, under the glare of flames, drowns in blood the records of civilization. But in America the man must live with his fellows. As Mr. Henry D. Lloyd well says, in “Lords of Industry,” “Our young men can no longer go West; they must go up or down. Not new land, but new virtue must be the outlet for the future. Our halt at the shores of the Pacific is a much more serious affair than that which brought our ancestors to a pause before the barriers of the Atlantic, and compelled them to practise living together for a few hundred years. We cannot hereafter, as in the past, recover freedom by going to the prairies; we must find it in the society of the good.” [98]
[98] North American Review, June, 1884, p. 552.
If we are to find freedom only in the society of the good, we must create such a society—a society free from selfishness; for to the stability of society public spirit is essential, and with a pure public spirit selfishness is at war. Hence, in a system of education like the prevailing one, which promotes selfishness, the germs of social disintegration are present, and, from the beginning, the end may with absolute certainty be predicted. It follows that any hope of social reform is wholly irrational that does not spring from the postulate of a complete educational revolution.
[E30] The speculative habit has so debauched public sentiment in England and America that distinguished authors hesitate not to give free expression to a feeling of contempt for the ancients because of their failure to engage in colossal swindling operations, as witness the following:
“The charges of fraud [in the Attic courts], which are many, are of the vulgarest and simplest kind, depending upon violence, on false swearing, and upon evading judgment by legal devices. There is not a single case of any large or complicated swindling, such as is exhibited by the genius of modern English and American speculators. There is not even such ingenuity as was shown by Verres in his government of Sicily to be found among the clever Athenians.”—“Social Life in Greece,” p. 408. By the Rev. J. P. Mahaffy, F.T.C.D. London: Macmillan & Co., 1883.
[E31] “On all hands of us, there is the announcement, audible enough, that the Old Empire of Routine has ended; that to say a thing has long been, is no reason for its continuing to be. The things which have been are fallen into decay, are fallen into incompetence; large masses of mankind, in every society of our Europe, are no longer capable of living at all by the things which have been. When millions of men can no longer by their utmost exertion gain food for themselves, and ‘the third man for thirty-six weeks each year is short of third-rate potatoes,’ the things which have been must decidedly prepare to alter themselves!”—“Lectures on Heroes,” p. 157. By Thomas Carlyle. Chapman & Hall’s People’s Edition.
“Change the sources of a river, and you will change it throughout its whole course; change the education of a people, and you will alter their character and their manners:”—“Studies of Nature,” Vol. II., p. 575. By Bernardin St. Pierre. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1846.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE MANUAL ELEMENT IN EDUCATION IN 1884.
The Kindergarten and the Manual Training School one in Principle. — Russia solved the Problem of Tool Instruction by Laboratory Processes. — The Initiatory Step by M. Victor Della-Vos, Director of the Imperial Technical School of Moscow in 1868. — Statement of Director Della-Vos as to the Origin, Progress, and Results of the New System of Training. — Its Introduction into all the Technical Schools of Russia. — Dr. John D. Runkle, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recommends the Russian System in 1876, and it is adopted. — Statement of Dr. Runkle as to how he was led to the adoption of the Russian System. — Dr. Woodward, of Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., establishes the second School in this Country. — His Historical Note in the Prospectus of 1882-83. — First Class graduated 1883. — Manual Training in the Agricultural Colleges — In Boston, in New Haven, in Baltimore, in San Francisco, and other places. — Manual Training at the Meeting of the National Educational Association, 1884. — Kindergarten and Manual Training Exhibits. — Prof. Felix Adler’s School in New York City — the most Comprehensive School in the World. — The Chicago Manual Training School the first Independent Institution of the Kind — its Inception; its Incorporation; its Opening. Its Director, Dr. Belfield. — His Inaugural Address. — Manual Training in the Public Schools of Philadelphia. — Manual Training in twenty-four States. — Revolutionizing a Texas College. — Local Option Law in Massachusetts. — Department of Domestic Economy in the Iowa Agricultural College. — Manual Training in Tennessee, in the University of Michigan, in the National Educational Association, in Ohio. — The Toledo School for both Sexes. — The Importance of the Education of Woman. — The Slöjd Schools of Europe.