THE INTELLECTUAL EFFECT OF MANUAL TRAINING.
Intelligence is the Basis of Character. -- The more Practical the
Intelligence the Higher the Development of Character. -- The use of
Tools quickens the Intellect. -- Making Things rouses the Attention,
sharpens the Observation, and steadies the Judgment. -- History of
Inventions in England, 1740-1840. -- Poor, Ignorant Apprentices become
learned Men. -- Cort, Huntsman, Mushet, Neilson, Stephenson, and Watt.
-- The Union of Books and Tools. -- Results at Rotterdam, Holland; at
Moscow, Russia; at Komotau, Bohemia; and at St. Louis, Mo. -- The
Consideration of Overwhelming Import.
The quality of all civilizations depends upon intelligence and
character, or morality, in the order stated; for morality springs from
intelligence, not intelligence from morality. This is an axiomatic
deduction of historic analysis.[2] Nor would it be difficult to prove
that practical intelligence is more conducive to a high development of
morals than mere theoretical intelligence. For is it not true that the
nations most skilled in the useful arts are most highly cultured in
morals? And if it be true, it constitutes a potential argument in
support of joining to intellectual instruction in the schools a course
of training in the elements of the useful arts. And of the fact which
forms the basis of this argument there is a logical explanation.
[2] “But if we contrast this stationary aspect of moral truths with
the progressive aspect of intellectual truths, the difference is,
indeed, startling.... These are to every educated man recognized and
notorious facts, and the inference to be drawn from them is
immediately obvious. Since civilization is the product of moral and
intellectual agencies, and since that product is constantly changing,
it evidently cannot be regulated by the stationary agent; because when
surrounding circumstances are unchanged, a stationary agent can only
produce a stationary effect. The only other agent is the intellectual
one, and that this is the real mover may be proved in two distinct
ways: first, because being, as we have already seen, either moral or
intellectual, and being, as we have also seen, not moral, it must be
intellectual; and secondly, because the intellectual principle has an
activity and a capacity for adaptation which, as I undertake to show,
is quite sufficient to account for the extraordinary progress that,
during several centuries, Europe has continued to make.”--Buckle’s
“History of Civilization,” Vol. I., p. 130. D. Appleton & Co., 1864.
Nothing stimulates and quickens the intellect more than the use of
mechanical tools. The boy who begins to construct things is compelled at
once to begin to think, deliberate, reason, and conclude. As he proceeds
he is brought in contact with powerful natural forces. If he would
control, direct, and apply these forces he must first master the laws by
which they are governed; he must investigate the causes of the phenomena
of matter, and it will be strange if from this he is not also led to a
study of the phenomena of mind. At the very threshold of practical
mechanics a thirst for wisdom is engendered, and the student is
irresistibly impelled to investigate the mysteries of philosophy. Thus
the training of the eye and the hand reacts upon the brain, stimulating
it to excursions into the realm of scientific discovery in search of
facts to be applied in practical forms at the bench and the anvil.
The history of invention and discovery in England affords a striking
confirmation of the truth of the proposition that mechanical
investigation, with tools in hand, stimulates the intellectual faculties
to the highest point of activity and excellence. The germs of nearly
all the great inventions in mechanics, the benefit of which the world is
now enjoying in such ample measure, are directly traceable to the
workshops of Great Britain during the period 1740-1840.
England had then no popular system of education, and the apprentices in
her shops were poor, obscure, and, at the start, illiterate. But to
those poor apprentices the honor of the great inventions and discoveries
of that age is almost wholly due. And it is a notable fact that in the
struggle to invent tools and machines, to master the art of mechanism,
to steal from Nature her secret forces, and harness and use them for the
benefit of man, the toiling workers not infrequently became highly
educated, intellectual giants, familiar not alone with special studies,
but masters of many branches of learning.
In 1770 the Russian Government, aware of the inferiority of English
iron, and deeming Russian iron essential to England, directed the price
of iron for export to be raised three hundred per cent. This arbitrary
act stimulated invention. Henry Cort, the son of a brick-maker, entered
upon a series of experiments, with a view to the improvement of English
iron. They occupied several years, and were of a very expensive
character--so expensive as eventually to bankrupt the man who made them.
They were, however, so successful as to constitute a splendid epoch in
the history of metallurgy. In 1786 Lord Sheffield declared that Cort’s
improvements in iron, and the steam-engine of Watt, were of more value
to Great Britain than the thirteen colonies of America; and in 1862 it
was estimated that those improvements had added three thousand million
dollars to the wealth of England alone, to say nothing of the rest of
the world of iron manufacture throughout which they had been applied.
But the only estate secured by this great man as a reward of his genius
and a life of toil, as his biographer pathetically remarks, was “the
little domain of six feet by two in which he lies buried in Hampstead
churchyard.”
In 1715 Sheffield contained two thousand inhabitants, of whom one-third
were beggars. Its manufactures consisted of jews-harps, tobacco-boxes,
and knives. Sheffield is now the chief seat of the steel manufacture of
the world. The initial step in this great transformation scene was taken
by Benjamin Huntsman. He was born in 1704, and bred to a mechanical
calling. The early years of his life were spent in the occupation of
clock making and repairing. He was shrewd, observant, and practical, and
he gradually extended the scope of his profession to repairing, and
finally to making hand-tools. In this branch of his trade he detected
defects in the German steel in common use. He removed from Doncaster to
Sheffield, and there in the privacy of his cottage studied metallurgy,
and for years labored in secret over the furnace and the crucible. His
numerous failures were subsequently found chronicled in masses of metal,
in various stages of imperfection, buried in the earth. But when he
emerged from his long seclusion he offered to his fellow-mechanics a
piece of cast-steel so hard that they declined to work it. He sent the
product of his works to France, and the French knives and razors made
from it and imported into England drove the Sheffield cutlery from the
market. Then the Sheffield cutlers sought to have the export of steel
prohibited. Failing in that they stole Huntsman’s secret. This was
possible, since the process had not been patented. The story of the
theft is told in a little work entitled “The Useful Metals and their
Alloys.” It is in substance that one Walker, an iron-founder, “disguised
himself as a tramp, and feigning great distress and abject poverty,
appeared shivering at the door of Huntsman’s foundery late one night
when the workmen were about to begin their labors at steel-casting, and
asked for permission to warm himself by the furnace-fire.” He was
permitted to enter, and when he left he carried away the secret of the
inventor of cast-steel.
Huntsman was a member of the Society of Friends, and it was doubtless on
that account that he declined a membership of the Royal Society tendered
to him in honor of his great discovery or invention of cast-steel.
David Mushet’s discovery of the extraordinary value of black-band
iron-stone in 1801 made Scotland a first-class iron-producing country;
and Neilson’s invention of the hot-blast in 1828 revolutionized the
processes of iron manufacture by vastly cheapening them. Both these men
sprang from the labor class, and both were self-educated. Through almost
superhuman efforts they rose from poverty and obscurity to fame.
Mushet’s “Papers on Iron and Steel,” in the language of Smiles, “are
among the most valuable original contributions to the literature of iron
manufacture that have yet been given to the world;” and Neilson was made
a member of the Royal Society in recognition of his distinguished
ability and the great services he rendered in the cause of the useful
arts.
George Stephenson rose from the coal-mine to the summit of renown as a
theoretical and practical mechanic. While employed in various collieries
as “fireman” and “plugman,” he acquired a thorough knowledge of the
engines then in use, taking them apart, repairing, and putting them
together again. At eighteen years of age he could not read. In the
course of two years attendance at night-schools he learned to read,
write, and cipher.[3] Continuing to work in collieries, he employed his
leisure hours in studying mechanics and engineering, and in mending
clocks and shoes. When thirty-one years of age he was appointed
“enginewright” at Killingworth Colliery, at a salary of £100 a year.
From this point of time dates his career as an inventor. His first
locomotive was completed in 1814, and the “Rocket” made its trial trip
in 1829. During the intervening fifteen years Stephenson was largely
engaged in the engineering department of railway enterprises as well as
in the prosecution of experiments for the perfecting of locomotive
engines. The most eminent engineers of the time doubted the
practicability of the locomotive, and continued to recommend stationary
engines, while Stephenson was leading up to the “Rocket.” The success of
the “Rocket” made its inventor the most famous mechanic in the world.
For the next fifteen years he was the leading spirit in all the great
railway enterprises of England, besides being called repeatedly to
Belgium and Spain as consulting engineer. He was offered a fellowship of
the Royal Society, also one in the Civil Engineers’ Society, also
knighthood by Sir Robert Peel. All these empty honors he declined. “I
have to state,” he said, in reply to a request for his “ornamental
initials,” “that I have no flourishes to my name, either before or
after, and I think it will be as well if you merely say George
Stephenson.” He may justly be styled the founder of the existing railway
system of the world, which undoubtedly exerts more influence upon
civilization than any other one cause or set of allied causes; and to
have risen from the humblest station in a colliery to the dignity of
founding such a system is sufficient evidence of a gigantic intellectual
growth.
[3] “In conclusion, we are of opinion that special instruction which
can be applied to the material would be at once more fruitful in good
results and more attractive if the pupil could go from the class-room
to the workshop (laboratory) to practically demonstrate the theories
to which he has just been listening. In support of this opinion we
might add the observations made in our own evening-schools, where the
most noteworthy and rapid progress is made in those cases where the
pupil has occasion to put into actual practice on the material itself
the instruction which he has received in the drawing-class.”--“Report
of Committee of Council of Arts and Manufactures of the Province of
Quebec, created to Inquire into the Question of Practical Schools.”
James Watt was an extremely fragile child, and hence unable to join in
the rude sports of robust children. Thus confined within-doors he early
amused himself by drawing “with a pencil upon paper, or with chalk upon
the floor.” He was also supplied with a few tools from his father’s
carpenter’s shop, “which he soon learned to handle with considerable
expertness.” Mr. Smiles, in his biography of Watt, says, “The mechanical
dexterity he acquired was the foundation upon which he built the
speculations to which he owes his glory, nor without this manual
training is there the least likelihood that he would have become the
improver and almost the creator of the steam-engine.”[4] In the
parrot-power of learning or memorizing Watt was a dull boy, and he left
the grammar-school of his native town at an early age, never to return
to the “halls of learning.” But while engaged in humble mechanical
employments he perfected his education, studying after work-hours. He
nearly starved his body, but constantly added to his intellectual
stores. He mastered the principles of engineering, civil and military,
studied natural history, criticism, art, and acquired several modern
languages. In a word, without the aid of the schools, but under the
stimulating influence of mechanical investigation and work, Watt became
an accomplished and scientific man. When nearly eighty years of age he
and Sir Walter Scott met. Referring to the occasion, and speaking of
Watt, Sir Walter is reported to have said, “The alert, kind, benevolent
old man had his attention alive to every one’s question, his information
at every one’s command. His talents and fancy overflowed on every
subject. One gentleman was a deep philologist--he talked with him on the
origin of the alphabet as if he had been coeval with Cadmus; another a
celebrated critic--you would have said the old man had studied political
economy and belles-lettres all his life; of science it is unnecessary to
speak--it was his distinguished walk.”
[4] “I believe that well-advised practice in any of the constructive
arts involving not more than one-third of the student’s time will
yield as much mental improvement as will result if the whole time be
devoted to study from text-books.”--Prof. Wm. F. M. Goss, six years
Director of the Department of Practical Mechanics of Purdue
University.
“And reflect that he will learn more by one hour of manual labor than
he will retain from a whole day’s verbal instructions.”--“The Emilius
and Sophia” of J. J. Rousseau, Vol. II., p. 64. London: 1767.
“The things themselves are the best explanations. I can never enough
repeat it, that we make words of too much consequence; with our
prating modes of education we make nothing but praters.”--Ibid., p.
46.
These examples of remarkable intellectual development in connection
with tool-practice are not phenomenal. From the annals of invention and
discovery numerous instances might be cited in support of the
proposition of this chapter, that tool-practice stimulates intellectual
growth.
In the Artisan’s School at Rotterdam, Holland, an experience of seven
years has demonstrated that “boys who are occupied one-half the day with
books in the school, and the remaining half with tools in the
laboratories, make about as rapid intellectual progress as those of
equal ability who spend the whole day in study and recitation.” The
testimony of Dr. Woodward, director of the St. Louis (Mo.) Manual
Training School, is to the same effect. And in one of his reports he
says, “Success in drawing or shop-work has often had the effect of
arousing the ambition in mathematics and history, and _vice versa_....
The habit of working from drawings and to nice measurements has given
the students a confidence in themselves altogether new. This is shown in
the readiness with which they undertake the execution of small
commissions in behalf of the school.... In fact, the increased
usefulness of our students is making itself felt, and in several
instances the result has been the offer of business positions too
tempting to be rejected.”
Of the results achieved by the Imperial Technical School, Moscow,
Russia, M. Victor Della-Vos, director, speaks with the utmost
confidence. He says, “And now (1878) we present our system of
instruction, not as a project, but as an accomplished fact, confirmed by
the long experience of ten years of success in its results.” The methods
of instruction of the school at Moscow were introduced into all the
technical schools of Russia in 1870.
A similar degree of success has attended the Royal Mechanic Art School
at Komotau, Bohemia. The management says, “The school has shown the most
brilliant proofs of usefulness, and the ends gained have been
acknowledged at home and abroad. One proof is that in spite of the hard
times all the pupils from Komotau have found occupation in different
manufacturing establishments; and another that England, a country
unsurpassed in the manufactures of iron and steel, has already sent some
students to the school.”
If the pupil in the Manual Training School makes as rapid progress
intellectually as the pupil in the public or private school of
corresponding grade, it follows that whatever skill in the use of tools
is acquired, and whatever knowledge of practical mechanics is
gained--these stand for the net gain of the pupil of the new system of
education. But much more follows by implication. For if the few pupils
of the world’s few manual training schools are making equal intellectual
progress with the many pupils of the many schools of the old _régime_,
and making such progress in a little more than half the study-hours, the
consideration of overwhelming import is the loss sustained by the
millions of pupils being trained under the old system.