great
factory, not making _shoes_, but confining himself to the simplest
elements of a shoe, cutting uppers or scraping soles. Moreover, there
is such competition and such depression in the shoe business as make
this trade too unprofitable for prosecution in connection with school
work.

6. _Drawing._--So far, I have been considering only manual training
for boys. But there is one branch of a true industrial training which
knows no sex. It is suitable and, when rightly considered, essential
for boys and girls alike. While visiting the St. Louis Manual
Training School two years ago, I said to Prof. Woodward, "What can we
of the missionary schools, with our financial limitations, do best in
this line of manual training?" He answered, "There is one thing that
you can do in any school: it costs little, needs no special
appliances or plant, and is the fundamental part of any industrial
training, _drawing_." And he was right so far as the utility of the
study is concerned. Drawing, not as a matter of picture-making, but
as a means of systematic training for eye and hand, a training to
accuracy and method, and as a vital help toward foremanship in any
trade, ought everywhere to be held as a necessary element of
industrial education. Some beginning in industrial drawing has been
made in all our institutions. But, in a work like ours, the lack of
special preparation on the part of most teachers, their insufficient
appreciation of and faith in the study, and the lack of close direct
supervision, are serious hindrances to complete success.

The range of industrial work for girls is less wide than that for
boys, and lies chiefly in the zone of home making and keeping.

1. _Sewing_ is the first subject of instruction. The generation of
women who came out of slavery knew nothing, and still know nothing,
of needle-work. And so in all our schools, even the day schools,
classes in plain sewing have long found a place; though of late the
work has been taken up more systematically, all the girls of certain
grades being held to the sewing classes as strictly as to reading or
writing. After plain sewing comes the cutting and making of garments,
the various forms of seductive "fancy work" being almost wholly
ignored.

In our exhibit at the Madison meeting of the National Educational
Association last summer were numbers of aprons, dresses, shirts,
etc., made by pupils, often of the primary grades; and one of the
most noticed specimens