r own ideals and have failed to look at the
situation as it actually presents itself. The most noteworthy attempt
has been the movement toward industrial education, the agitation for
which has been ably seconded by manufacturers of a practical type, who
have from time to time founded and endowed technical schools, designed
for workingmen's sons. The early schools of this type inevitably
reflected the ideal of the self-made man. They succeeded in transferring
a few skilled workers into the upper class of trained engineers, and a
few less skilled workers into the class of trained mechanics, but did
not aim to educate the many who are doomed to the unskilled work which
the permanent specialization of the division of labor demands.

The Peter Coopers and other good men honestly believed that if
intelligence could be added to industry, each workingman who faithfully
attended these schools could walk into increased skill and wages, and in
time even become an employer himself. Such schools are useful beyond
doubt; but so far as educating workingmen is concerned or in any measure
satisfying the democratic ideal, they plainly beg the question.

Almost every large city has two or three polytechnic institutions
founded by rich men, anxious to help "poor boys." These have been
captured by conventional educators for the purpose of fitting young men
for the colleges and universities. They have compromised by merely
adding to the usual academic course manual work, applied mathematics,
mechanical drawing and engineering. Two schools in Chicago, plainly
founded for the sons of workingmen, afford an illustration of this
tendency and result. On the other hand, so far as schools of this type
have been captured by commercialism, they turn out trained engineers,
professional chemists, and electricians. They are polytechnics of a high
order, but do not even pretend to admit the workingman with his meagre
intellectual equipment. They graduate machine builders, but not educated
machine tenders. Even the textile schools are largely seized by young
men who expect to be superintendents of factories, designers, or
manufacturers themselves, and the textile worker who actually "holds the
thread" is seldom seen in them; indeed, in one of the largest schools
women are not allowed, in spite of the fact that spinning and weaving
have traditionally been woman's work, and that thousands of women are
at present employed in the textile mills.

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