THE typical American boy, at some period in his life, has a taste for
the mechanic arts. Before he is out of pinafores, he surreptitiously
lays hold of edged tools, and with unlimited self-confidence tries to
make something. If his success lies chiefly in the direction of making
pieces of furniture and bric-à-brac, and the covering of his juvenile
apron with gore, followed by a tableau in which a shrieking youngster,
an angry sire, and a sympathetic mother are about equally prominent,
the effect is merely to determine the amount of the boy’s grit, and
to prepare the way, in the battles of the future, for the survival of
the fittest. While a certain number of the pinafored experimenters,
pensively regarding healed gashes and flattened thumbs, will ever after
sedulously avoid contact with chisels and hammers, the plucky boys,
who form the majority, will hardly wait for the shedding of belladonna
plasters, and the bleaching of gory aprons, before seizing upon the
instruments of their discomfiture, with a firm determination (founded
on the boyish belief in the intelligence and moral responsibility
of inanimate objects) to let those tools know that they know how
to handle them without getting hurt. After various efforts for the
mastery, the implacable foes of the unskilful juvenile, such as the
hatchet, the saw and the hammer, will shake their sides in malignant
laughter over the final discomfiture of a second installment of the
rising generation, and will own themselves partially subject to the ten
and twelve-year-old veterans who have come triumphantly through the
struggle, and can use such tools as happen to fall into their hands
with a more or less murderous degree of execution. To this large class
of boys, intrepid, ambitious, industrious, and full of manly instincts,
America looks for its inventors, its engineers, architects, designers,
skilled artisans, and most successful business men in every walk in
life. They constitute, in fact, what may be termed the “Honorable Guild
of Amateur Artisans,” and it is for the benefit of the members of this
juvenile guild that “A Boy’s Workshop” is sent forth, with the best
wishes of its editors and publishers.
It will bring to thousands of lads just such information in regard
to the first steps in the mechanic arts as they most need, and will
enable them, with little other direction, if wisely encouraged by their
elders, to so develop whatever mechanical ingenuity they may possess,
as to make it easy to determine whether they shall ultimately join the
ranks of those wholly devoted to the useful arts, or continue to be
amateurs, using to good advantage whatever skill they have acquired in
connection with other occupations.
But the parents and instructors of boys have no less reason than the
boys themselves for awarding to this book a cordial welcome. In neither
home nor school is adequate attention now given to the training of
the hands to skill in the use of any of the tools employed in the
industrial arts. It need hardly be stated that every boy should have
at least a little training in this direction, while to thousands, such
training is an essential part of their equipment as bread-winners and
as useful citizens. “A Boy’s Workshop” is calculated to meet a need in
this important respect, and on this account alone, is worthy of a place
in the library of every home and school.
The desire to turn the energies of hands and brain upon constructive
work, is worthy and honorable. Let it have proper encouragement. We
have too little of the industry which follows habits well formed, and
too little of the thrift which follows skill. Society, the State, and
the nation have need of the boy who has a workshop. May every boy who
wants one, have one, and God bless him!