clothing works. Why should the education department decline to take steps to safeguard the interests of teachers when the House had determined that it would secure the payment of fair wages under Government contracts? They could do it by simply inserting in the code conditions as to the payment of grants. They could lay down that grants should be withheld where salaries were not suitable and sufficient, where extraneous tasks were compulsory, and where unreasonable and capricious dismissals had taken place. This view might seem to be new at present, but as time went on it would cease to be new. The education department would have to yield on these points as other departments had yielded on the labor question.

THE SUPERANNUATION QUESTION.

In other departments public servants who were in direct relation with the Government received superannuation allowances or pensions, but in the case of the teachers there was only the most meager provision for a limited number. Eleven months had passed since the last debate, when a favorable statement was made, but nothing had been done to realize it. Still the bulk of aged and infirm teachers had nothing to look forward to but charity or the workhouse. That meant a waste of educational resources. The teacher past work still "lags superfluous on the stage," and that involved a waste of money and of the time of the scholars. The State did not get what it supposed it was paying for, and thus the question became an economical one as well as a sentimental one. But even the sentiment ought to have some weight, for here you had men and women who had worked out their lives for a mere pittance; they had done valuable work, contributing to diminish pauperism and drunkenness and to empty prisons, and their reward was that some of them got pensions of £25 a year, and the bulk of them had not even that prospect. The teachers had intimated their willingness to accept the minimum scale of allowances proposed by the department; less than was proposed by the select committee, less than was given in the civil service, less than the police scale, and less than the county council scale; but this minimum, so accepted, was still withheld. Why, he did not know. The sum required was from £30,000 to £35,000 a year, and in the first five years it would not be over £100,000. He did hope the right honorable gentleman would be able to hold out a hope that something would be done. He believed that money ought to be given to voluntary schools, but when it was given it ought to be on condition that the full benefit of the extra grant should go to the underpaid teachers. [Schoolmaster, July 18, 1896.]

CHAPTER IV.

EDUCATION IN CENTRAL EUROPE.

Articles on education in central Europe published in previous reports.

Page.

75

150

1889-90 295

549

PUBLIC INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN BERLIN.

When the old Trade Institute of the city of Berlin was changed into an industrial academy, and later was transformed into what is now known as the Polytechnicum of Charlottenburg, there became apparent a gap between the public elementary school work and the technological education, as well as a gap between school and practical life. It has always been well understood in Germany, that the education supported by the State and general taxation must not be special education, but aim at general culture. In other words, public education can not prepare for any particular profession, vocation, or occupation; it is intended to lay the foundation for a general culture desirable for all citizens of the State. While thus any special preparation for the trades, or for commerce, or for the higher professions is excluded from institutions that offer education gratuitously, on the other hand there has arisen a difficulty which makes the establishment of trade and industrial schools a necessity. The labor unions, prompted by self-interest, frequently prohibit their members from engaging apprentices; naturally then their number is very small, hence very few chances are offered for the learning of trades. The great extension of mechanical contrivances and machines of all kinds has liberated much human power that was formerly engaged in mere mechanical performances. Hence the labor of the hand has become much more complicated, much more difficult to learn, and, therefore, also needs much more careful study and exercise. All these causes combine to necessitate the establishment of a number of special schools, and the city government of Berlin, fully aware of the changed conditions of labor, liberally provided for them. But it must be well understood that all the trade schools and institutions for the preparation of skilled laborers in Germany have this one characteristic feature, to wit, that they bestow less attention upon manual labor and more to the underlying principles and the knowledge skilled labor presupposes. This is the reason why drawing, mathematics, the sciences of physics and chemistry, and the like are taught in trade schools. The shop work, so often spoken of, and held up as models of imitation in this country, is comparatively very limited and confines itself to mere application of principles learned during lessons. It seems as though these German trade schools carefully abstain from coming into competition with the labor market.

A recent report of the superintendent of public schools in Berlin, privy councillor, Dr. Bertram, states that the sum of 542,445 marks was spent in the year 1895. Of this sum 86,159 marks were contributed by the State of Prussia; 325,401 marks by the community; 16,565 marks by trade unions, societies, mercantile firms, etc., and the board of trade contributed 4,000 marks; while 110,320 marks, or about one-fifth of the sum total, were paid in the form of tuition fees. To this sum total of 542,445 marks ($129,102) must be added various donations in form of

tools and other things, such as material, for which no correct estimate can be made. While this money is spent entirely in the interest of schools preparing for skilled labor, there must be mentioned also the fact that 337,560 marks ($80,339) is expended by the city for so-called "continuation or supplementary schools," in which industrial education is a very essential feature. These latter-named schools offer postgraduate instruction to boys and girls who have gone through the eight years' course of the elementary school. Most of these supplementary schools offer gratuitous instruction, but not all. Though Berlin is a metropolis of large size, it seems remarkable that it should pay about $200,000 per year for purely industrial education.

How this sum is distributed, and for what purposes it is used, can be seen from the following statements taken from Dr. Bertram's report. The great variety of trade institutions and their scope appear to cover up the fundamental idea, but careful observation reveals it. It is this: The city authorities desire to give young men of aspiration who are desirous of gaining knowledge, as well as persons of more advanced age, opportunities for the development of their special talents and skill that can not, in the nature of the case, be found in the workshop or the factory.

It is the desire of all concerned in this department of education that the student should not engage in actual practical work for pay, and to put the instruction in close contact with the circumstances or occupations of the learners. Moreover, and this appears to us here in America the more important and nobler object of the schools, the entire range of instruction in these trade and industrial schools tends to unify several branches of labor and to prevent too much specialization. Apprentices and young beginners are very apt in our modern time of application of machines to learn to work mechanically. Specialization is going so far that the workman is often degraded to an assistant of the machine, instead of the machine being his assistant. A few grips, a few touches, a few motions, are all the man has to do, and he loses his respect for the dignity of labor and can not see all the bearings of a single trade. These industrial schools lift the young man to a higher standpoint, from which he can view all the bearings of his trade and its organic combination with other trades.

In accordance with this central idea the choice of courses of instruction is left free to the student, and a systematic, rigid course of study is introduced only in cases where experience has proven incontestably in certain trades that such a course is profitable. The authorities also desire to interest and solicit the active sympathy of trades unions, societies, and experts, by offering for every trade that kind of instruction which is apt to supplement its practical application by theory. The eminent success of the royal art schools and industrial museums is ed by employing the graduates of these institutions as teachers in

ele on such schools in last year's annual report.