“Instruction and practice in the use of tools, with such instruction as may be deemed necessary in mathematics, drawing, and the English branches of a high-school course. The tool instruction as at present contemplated shall include carpentry, wood-turning, pattern-making, iron chipping and filing, forge-work, brazing and soldering, the use of machine-shop tools, and such other instruction of a similar character as may be deemed advisable to add to the foregoing from time to time, it being the intention to divide the working hours of the students, as nearly as possible, equally between manual and mental exercises.”
From the first annual catalogue, under the title “Building and Equipment,” we extract the following:
“The school building is beautifully located on Michigan Avenue, and contains ample accommodations, in rooms for study and work, for several hundred pupils.
“The equipment in the mechanical department consists mainly, at present, of twenty-four cabinet-makers’ benches; bench and lathe tools of the best quality for seventy-two boys; twenty-four speed lathes, twelve-inch swing, thirty inches between centres; a fifty-two horse-power Corliss engine, twelve-inch cylinder, thirty-six inch stroke; two tubular boilers, forty inches in diameter, fourteen feet long. The Corliss engine, boilers, and lathes were made especially for the school.
“A very valuable scientific library of nearly five hundred volumes, the property of the American Electrical Society, has been placed in the school. To this library, which is particularly rich in works pertaining to electricity and chemistry, but which contains also cyclopedias, dictionaries, and other works of reference, the pupils have access.
“The Blatchford Literary Society, an organization of pupils for improvement in composition, debate, etc., has lately had a handsome donation of money for the purchase of books to be placed in their alcove in the school library. Several periodicals are regularly placed on the library tables through the generosity of the publishers.
“By the kindness of Dr. Wm. F. Poole, librarian, pupils are able to obtain books from the Chicago Public Library on unusually favorable conditions.”
Thus the Chicago Manual Training School, a practical school, a school of instruction in things, a school after Bacon’s “own heart,” sprang from the brains of a number of plain, practical business men, full-armed, as Minerva from the brain of Jupiter.
The Trustees were fortunate in securing Dr. Belfield for the directorship of the school. Before the introduction of the new education to this country, eleven years ago, while Russia was struggling with the problem of tool practice by the laboratory method, Dr. Belfield urged the need of manual training in the public schools of Chicago, in which he was a teacher. He was met with derision; but the president of the Board of Education of Chicago and the superintendent of schools are now advocates of the new system of training.
In conclusion we present the following extracts from the inaugural address of Dr. Belfield, delivered before the Chicago Manual Training School Association, June 19, 1884, as embodying the results of his experience and observation as to the value of the new system of training: