preters at our embassies in China, Japan, and Turkey. It also contributes liberally toward the support of the Smithsonian Institution and makes arrangements by which its vast collections and libraries are placed at the service of investigators. Congress, also, controls education in the District of Columbia, Alaska, Porto Rico, the Philippines, and Hawaii.

CHAPTER X

FEDERAL GRANTS FOR VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

THE Industrial Movement, already mentioned as becoming active in the early fifties and again after the Civil War, has been intensified and given a new direction by the developments of the past half century. The land-grant colleges, while they have done a superb work, never fully satisfied the ideals of the Industrial Movement, for their efforts were largely limited to the relatively small group of students competent to pursue studies of collegiate grade. The land-grant colleges and the experimental stations did something to bring to the practical farmer the results of modern scientific research in agriculture. In fact, it was, in part, the clear and unmistakable demonstration of practical values that led successive legislatures in the several states to make generous appropriations for the support of these schools. But while no one has ever criticized these colleges with any measure of justification, it is true that there have been many needs and longings which they have not satisfied.

The Centennial Exhibition in 1876, too, revealed the backwardness of the country in respect to vocational education on the elementary and secondary levels, and

led to the establishment of courses in manual training in public schools, the organization of trade schools, and a new emphasis upon "practical" instruction. The great private correspondence schools have been nourished and supported by the longings of those who would be adherents of the Industrial Movement if only they knew that there were such a thing. The success of these enterprises and that of private benefactions such as Cooper Union, and the popularity of university extension work are proof conclusive of the fundamental aspiration of the worker to better his condition.

Contributing to the demand for "practical" education' has been the vast expansion and differentiation of the industrial processes. These require of the workman a highly developed intelligence within a narrow field. For example: while anyone with the necessary physical strength can fill a blast furnace with kindling, coke, limestone, and pig iron, someone must know the proportions and sequence of these ingredients. This knowledge was originally gained by "trial and error" and formulated in empirical rules. Within the past half century, however, science, through careful experimentation, has worked out accurate formulae, and has furnished explanations as well as rules. From the making of soap and the baking of bread to the manufacture of steel girders, the industrial processes have been refined and perfected to the point where each is a distinct field of highly specialized skill and highly technical

1

knowledge. A man may be a very successful soap maker without knowing enough about the blast furnace to make even a respectable failure at operating it.

With a sufficient number of high-grade men to direct the industries, the actual physical work might be done by men who know very little. One of the tendencies of modern industry, indeed, is to keep a maximum number of low-grade employes at work under a minimum of expert guidance. When the particular industry is "slack," the low-grade workmen have no employment and, consequently, no wage. The social consequences are disastrous. Even if industry could be continuously prosperous, its human employes would still have a human life to live, a human destiny to work out, and community, state, and national obligations to discharge. The problem can never, from any angle, be one of dividends merely or chiefly. The individual is more than a cog in the industrial machine; the Nation is more than a mere aggregate of producers, - basic as production is in social life.

Many boys and girls leave school at a very early age to enter upon all sorts of occupations. These boys and girls are not skilled workers; they are merely hands and feet to fetch and carry; — and, unless they are kept mentally alive by something outside their routine work, they may mature physically into manhood and womanhood only to assume the responsibilities of family and community life with the mental equipment and ideals

of childhood or, at best, of early adolescence. They are the most tragic examples of "arrested development," for mental starvation during adolescence condemns them throughout life to a relatively low grade of skill. From the individual, economic, and social points of view it is imperative to keep these young people growing mentally.

A combination of statesmanship, philanthropy, and good "business sense" has fortunately resulted in the organization within the United States of a vast machinery for vocational education that aims to solve this problem. The embodiment of this plan is known as the SmithHughes Act, approved February, 1917. As a bill in Congress, this act was very carefully considered by the education committees of Congress and by a special commission expressly created to study it. It involves many new features, some of which are to prevent abuses that have attended other forms of Federal subsidies and some of which are theoretical ventures in the field of "grants in aid" of education. The main features of the Smith-Hughes Act are set forth below without

comment:

1. The act creates a Federal Board for Vocational Education whose function it is "to make or cause to have made studies, investigations, and reports, with particular reference to their use in aiding the States in the establishment of vocational schools and classes and in giving instruction in agriculture, trades, and indus

H