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gent farmers are the best citizens. Such a school is not a utopian dream since one has been conducted for a number of years with great success by von Fellenberg at Hofwyl in Switzerland. The conditions here assure us that a school of this type would meet the needs of America.

The interest in this report centers about the fact that it describes so clearly the kind of school that seemed to be needed in the country at that time. The Fellenberg school at Hofwyl, which is here mentioned as the best model to follow, derived its methods from Pestalozzi, whose educational principles are these: 1. An all-round training must be given. 2. The nature of the pupil must determine all the details of his education. 3. "Work in general is the surest of all exercises for the attention, and man is much more truly educated through that which he does than through that which he memorizes.” Knowledge without the ability to apply it is a "fearful lot for a human being." 4. The method of learning must primarily be based upon the analysis of experience. "Put the student on the road which the discoverer of the subject himself took and had to take." 5. "We get our knowledge by our own investigation and not by endless talk about the results of art and science." 6. Organization and correlation of experiences are necessary.

The Buel report closes with the words: "The Honorable Stephen van Rensselaer has offered a gratuitous deed of lands required for the use of the institution." The State legislature was, however, not yet ready to take so progressive a step, and the proposed bill was not passed. The next year van Rensselaer wrote to the Rev. Samuel Blatchford:

I have established a school at the north end of Troy ... for the purpose of instructing persons who may choose to apply themselves in the application of science to the common purposes of life. My principal object is to qualify teachers for instructing the sons and daughters of farmers and mechanics ... in the application of experimental chemistry, philosophy, and natural history to agriculture, domestic economy, the arts, and manufactures. From the trials which have been made by persons in my employment . . . I am inclined to believe that competent instructors may be produced in the school at Troy, who will be highly useful to the community in the diffusion of a very useful kind of knowledge, with its application to the business of living. Apparatus for the necessary experiments has been so simplified . . . that but a small sum is now required as an outfit for an instructor in the proposed branch of science; consequently every school district may have the benefit of such a course of instruction about once in two or three years, as soon as we can furnish a sufficient number of teachers. I prefer this plan to the endowment of a single public institution, for the resort of those only whose parents are able and willing to send their children from home or to enter them for several years, upon the Fellenberg plan. It seems to comport better with the habits of our citizens and the genius of our Government to place the advantages of useful improvement within the reach of all.

The founder also directed

that with the consent of the proprietors, a number of well-cultivated farms and workshops in the vicinity of the school be entered on the records of the school as places of scholastic exercise for students, where the application of the sciences may be most conveniently taught.

The details of organization of the school were entrusted to Amos Eaton, a graduate of Williams College who had done graduate work in science under Silliman at Yale. The methods which he employed differed from those of other schools in three important ways:

(1) The pupil is given the place of the teacher in all his exercises. Being under the necessity of relying upon his own resources and of making every subject his own, he becomes an adept as a matter of necessity. (2) In every branch of learning the student begins with its practical application, and is introduced to a knowledge of elementary principles from time to time as his progress requires. By this method a strong desire to study an elementary principle is excited by bringing his labors to a point where he perceives the necessity of it, and its direct application to a useful purpose. (3) Corporal exercise is not only necessary for the health of students, but for qualifying them for the business of life. . . . Such exercise as running, jumping, climb ing, scuffling and the like are calculated to detract from that dignity of deportment which becomes a man of science. Therefore . . . such exercises as land surveying, general engineering, . . . examining workshops and factories, watching the progress of agricultural operations. .. are made the duties of students' for a stated number of hours on each day.

Prof. Eaton was always very insistent that this method of instruction was

not Fellenbergian, nor Lancastrian, but purely Rensselaerean. The Rensselaerean scheme for communicating scientific knowledge had never been attempted on either continent until it was instituted at this school, two years ago. Many indeed mistook it, at first, for Fellenberg's method; but its great superiority has now been satisfactorily tested by its effects.

It is perfectly clear that the Rensselaerean method, with its marked emphasis on motivated self-activity in achieving the mastery of things, was very different from the method in common use in the schools and colleges, with its enforced repetition of words and phrases. A careful analysis shows, however, that it differed from the method of Fellenberg only in the means that were employed to attain the ends described by the educational principles of Pestalozzi.· Both aimed to give an all-round training in harmony with the nature of the student. Both sought to accomplish this by practical analysis of experience, personal investigation, and correlation. Both were thus striving, each in its own way, to give concrete expression to the same ideals of education for use.

The year 1824 witnessed the inauguration of another enterprise that has been of far-reaching usefulness to technical education. Samuel V. Merrick, a young man, 21 years of age, "without a mechanical education, with scarcely a mechanical idea," became the

owner of a workshop. He realized that "without knowledge he could not succeed; and that as a mechanic he was socially degraded, for in those days people despised mere mechanics." The mechanics on the other hand, refused him membership in their mutual benefit association, because he was confessedly not a mechanic. Although in 1816 Count Rumford had endowed at Harvard a chair in "the application of science to the useful arts," and although that same year the University of Pennsylvania had "created a new department to be devoted to the study of natural science," Merrick was unable to get the kind of instruction he needed.

In this dilemma he decided to establish a new institution that would meet his own needs. A similar effort had been made the previous year by Prof. Keating, who held the newly established chair of "chemistry in its application to agriculture and the mechanic arts" at the University of Pennsylvania; but this effort had failed. Fortunately, Keating and Merrick combined forces, and this combination of Merrick's need with Keating's knowledge proved effective. The Franklin Institute began its long career of usefulness. One of its first students, a bricklayer named Thomas U. Walter, became architect of the dome of the Capitol at Washington. Merrick himself became the first president of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

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The objects of the institute were the promotion of science and the useful arts

First, by the delivery of lectures on the arts and the application of science to them; second, by the formation of a library of books relating to science and the useful arts, and the opening of a reading room; third, by the examination of all new inventions and discoveries by a committee of learned and honorable men; fourth, by the publication of a journal to contain essays on science and art, specifications of English and American patents, etc.; fifth, by holding exhibitions of American manufactures and awarding medals to worthy workmen; sixth, by building a hall for the meetings of the institute and the use of the members; seventh, by collecting machines, minerals, materials, etc., used in the mechanic arts; eighth, by the establishment of schools in which should be taught architecture and mechanical drawing, chemistry applied to the arts, mechanics, and, if possible, of a high school for giving young men a liberal and practical course of education.

The Journal of the Franklin Institute was started in 1826. In it were published regularly the specifications of American patents until the Patent Office commenced to issue reports. It contains the only complete list of American patents since 1825. In 1820 the Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of New York opened its apprentice school and library. The Maryland Institute of Baltimore (1825) and the Ohio Mechanics, Institute at Cincinnati (1829) are other similar schools of this period. At this time (1827) the public schools reached the low-water mark of their efficiency, and various movements aimed at their reorganization were set on foot.

During the first 25 years of the nineteenth century progress consisted in the achievement of the ideals that developed during the previous century through trade journals and magazines, county fairs, and several schools for training in the mechanic arts. The conception that training in agriculture and the mechanic arts should be elevated to the rank of a liberal and fashionable study had also taken shape and specific suggestions as to how this might be done had been presented to a number of State legislatures in the hope of securing public support. The young Nation had also finished its apprenticeship to foreign masters and achieved industrial independence. A national individuality was beginning to appear with well-defined attitudes and interests.

Chapter IV.

INDUSTRIAL REORGANIZATION.

The first important new project that gave opportunity for free expression of the national temperament was the building of the railroad. In 1812 John Stevens, of Hoboken, the engineer whose son later founded Stevens Institute, had presented to the New York State commissioners complete and detailed specifications for building and operating a steam railroad from Albany to Buffalo. Stevens later demonstrated that his plan was practical by building a steam locomotive that carried six passengers around a circular experimental track at the rate of 12 miles per hour. But his suggestion was laughed out of court as visionary by such keen and progressive lawyers and diplomats as De Witt Clinton, Gouverneur Morris, and Robert Livingston. The Erie Canal was built and opened for traffic in 1825. Seven years later the steam locomotive "De Witt Clinton" made its celebrated trial trip over the new line from Albany to Schenectady.

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, incorporated in 1827, began operations with horses for motive power. The line happened to pass through some property owned by Peter Cooper, then proprietor of an iron mill near Baltimore. Cooper had a vision of what might be if steam were used in place of horses. He also realized that the success of the road meant an enhanced value for his property. With characteristic American and engineering spirit, he determined to prove that locomotives could be made to do the work. His experimental model, the "Tom Thumb," built with crude tools, with rifle barrels for fire tubes in its boiler, weighed about 1 ton and developed about 1 horsepower. On one of its early trips, while Cooper was driving it, it fell in with one of the regular trains drawn by a "splendid gray horse." A race ensued in which Cooper slowly gained the lead until the belt on the blower broke; the steam pressure fell, and the horse won. None the less, he had demonstrated that the iron horse was practicable.

The directors of the South Carolina Railroad, then building, were debating this same problem and had made estimates on the relative cost of horses and of steam. Their chief engineer, Horatio Allen, who had visited England and studied Stephenson's engines, succeeded in

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