Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/248

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236
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ent for their successful operation and development upon intelligent direction and skilled labor, individually organized scientific schools and training-classes in connection with their works. Some of these private schools are equal to or excel in particular features the government and municipal institutions. The conductors of many of them claim that the best results are obtained where intimate relationship between the school and the actual workshop is maintained; thereby facilitating the adaptation of theoretical training to the needs of the pupils and the character of the work on which they are engaged.

The leading merchants and manufacturers of Crefeld, Prussia, affirm that its silk industries largely depend for success on the influence of their technical school, which, among other things, raises the tone and increases the knowledge of rising manufacturers and foremen, and, by spreading technical education broadcast among industrious and ambitious artisans, very materially widens the field from which successful manufacturers and specialists may be chosen. At Mülhausen, Germany, manufacturers go so far as to say that their trade could not prosper without the influence of the textile museum; and citizens look upon the prosperity of the town as a result of what is learned at the technological institutions, whose action has exerted a marked influence in suppressing trade jealousies, which had almost entirely disappeared from the community. The chief hope of Verviers, Belgium, in maintaining pre-eminence in its textile industries, has been publicly acknowledged to rest upon the superiority and not on the cheapness of its productions. "This community has felt none of the evils of the late labor troubles in Belgium." The variety and excellence of the textile manufactures of Chemnitz, Saxony, are accredited by the British Royal Commissioners to the weaving-school; and the appreciation had by the citizens of the place for technical education is attested by the fact that, up to 1883, they had contributed over $440,000 for the support of their industrial schools. So, among the results that have accrued from the operation of the weaving and dyeing schools of Roubaix, France, are less need of supervision, economy in production, fewer mistakes, and more reliable and efficient work.

Of the same order with these facts is the acknowledgment said to be commonly made by the proprietors and managers of mines that young men who have been educated in technological schools heat their boilers better and with less coal than do the other workmen, and that their scientific knowledge enables them to escape many accidents and to avoid stoppage of machinery and repairs. In short, Dr. Barnard observes, "it is the testimony of all who have studied the subject that technical schools, when rightly directed, give wonderful impulses to industrial pursuits, by promoting scientific investigation and methods. Although at first this influence affects only those who attend the classes, it soon makes itself felt throughout the entire body of workmen of the community to which the school belongs, and the increased