hich could offer John nothing but a sneer. These
facts took such a vital hold on me, seeming to reinforce so fully the
thought that the industrial abilities which I had acquired back on the
farm proved of incalculable value to me, that the resolution to promote
industrial education became a fixed part of my educational creed. The
memory of that lesson in educational equity kept the need for industrial
training constantly in my mind, till I had opportunity to give it
expression in the Oyler School."

John bespoke the needs of the community by which Oyler was surrounded.
It was so different from other communities. There were the ugly
straggling factory buildings, the miserable homes, their squalid
tenants, and worst of all there were the rough, boisterous, over-age,
uninterested, incorrigible boys and girls, who flitted from school to
home, to street, to jail, and then, gripped by the infirm hand of the
law, in the form of a Juvenile Court probation officer, or a truant
officer, they came back to school unwillingly enough to begin the cycle
all over again.

"As for discipline," remarked one of the city school officials, "the
school hadn't known it for years, the probation officer couldn't keep
the children in school and the Juvenile Court couldn't keep them out of
jail. Even the majesty of the law is lost on children, you know." The
children taunted the police; the police hated the children; the home
repelled; the factory called, grimly; child labor flourished, and the
school despaired.

II An Appeal for Applied Education

Such were the conditions when Mr. Voorhes became school principal.
Grinding factories, wretched homes, parental ignorance, social neglect,
educational impotence--few men could enter such a field of battle with a
light heart, but Mr. Voorhes did.

What, think you, was his first move? He addressed to the heads of all of
the factories in the neighborhood a letter, suggesting the establishment
of a manual training department in connection with the grade work of the
Oyler School. "As I become more and more familiar with existing
conditions in our school district," he wrote, "I am convinced that a
Manual Training Department would be of vital importance to the school
and to the general welfare of the community. Such departments are being
looked upon to-day as necessary adjuncts to modern school equipment.

"Our school is being drained constantly of its life force by the
adjacent factory demands, and i