Famous Givers and Their Gifts

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Most interesting to me of all the departments of Pratt Institute are the machine-shops and the Trade School Building, where boys can learn a trade. "The aim of these trade classes," says Mr. F. B. Pratt, in the Independent for April 30, 1891, "is to afford a thorough grounding in the principles of a mechanical trade, and sufficient practice in its different operations to produce a fair amount of hand skill." The old apprenticeship system has been abandoned, and our boys must learn to earn a living in some other way. The trades taught at Pratt Institute are carpentry, forging, machine-work, plastering, plumbing, blacksmithing, bricklaying, house and fresco painting, etc. There is an evening class of sheet-metal workers, who study patterns for cornices, elbows, and other designs in sheet-metal. Much attention is given to electrical construction and to electricity in general. The day and evening classes are always full. Some of the master-mechanics' associations are cordial in their co-operation and examination of students through their committees. After leaving the Institute, work seems to be readily obtained at good wages.

Mr. Pratt wished the instruction here to be of the best. He said, "The demand is for a better and better quality of work, and our American artisans must learn that to claim first place in any trade they must be intelligent.... They must learn to have pride in their work, and to love it, and believe in our motto, 'Be true to your work, and your work will be true to you.'"

The sons of the founder are alive to the necessities of the young in this direction. If it is true that out of the 52,894 white male prisoners in the prisons and reformatory institutions of the United States in 1890 nearly three-fourths were native born, and 31,426 had learned no trade whatever, it is evident that one of the most pressing needs of our time is the teaching of trades to boys and young men.

Mr. Charles M. Pratt, the president of the Institute, says in his Founder's Day Address in 1893 concerning technical instruction: "Our possible service here seems almost limitless. The President of the Board of Education of Boston in a recent address congratulated his fellow-citizens upon the fact that Boston has her system of public schools and kindergartens, and now, and but lately, her public school of manual training; but what is needed, he said, 'is a school of technical training in the trades, such as Pratt Institute and other similar institutions furnish. I sincerely trust that the next five years of life and growth here will develop much in this direction.... We are willing to enlarge our present special facilities, or provide new ones for new trade-class requirements, as long as the demand for such opportunities truly exists.'"

One rejoices in such institutions as the New York Trade Schools on First Avenue, between Sixty-seventh and Sixty-eighth Streets, with their day and evening classes in plumbing, gasfitting, bricklaying, plastering, stone-cutting, fresco-painting, wood-carving, carpentry, and the like. A printing department has also been added. This work owes its inception and success to the brain and devotion of the late lamented Richard Tylden Auchmuty, who died in New York, July 18, 1893. Mrs. Auchmuty, the wife of the founder, has given the land and buildings to the school, valued at $220,000, and a building-fund of $100,000. Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan has endowed the school with a gift of $500,000.

Mr. Pratt did not cease working when his great Institute was fairly started. He built in Greenpoint, Long Island, a large apartment building called the "Astral," five stories high, of brick and stone, with 116 suites of rooms, each suite capable of accommodating from three to six persons. The building cost $300,000, and is rented to workingmen and their families, the income to be used in helping to maintain the Institute. A public library was opened in the Astral, with the thought at first of using it only for the people in the building; but it was soon opened to all the inhabitants of Greenpoint, and has been most heartily appreciated and used. Cut in stone over the fireplace in the reading-room of the Astral are the words, "Waste neither time nor money."

When Mr. Pratt made his first address to the students of Pratt Institute on Founder's Day, Oct. 2, 1888, his birthday, taking the Bible from the desk, he said, before reading it and offering prayer, "Whatever I have done, whatever I hope to do, I have done trusting in the Power from above."

Before he built the Institute many persons asked him to use his wealth in other ways; some urged a Theological School, others a Medical School, but his interest in the workingman and the home led him to found the Institute. He rejoiced in the work and its outlook for the future. He said, "I am so grateful, so grateful that the Almighty has inclined my heart to do this thing."

On the second and third Founder's Days, Mr. Pratt spoke with hope and the deepest interest in the work of the Institute. He had been asked often what he had spent for the work, and had prepared a statement at considerable cost of time, but with characteristic modesty he could never bring himself to make it public. "I have asked myself over and over again what good could result from any statement we could make of the amount of money we have spent. The quality and amount of service rendered by the Institute is the only fair estimate of its real value."