Preference for Practically Trained Men.

As regards the kind of training that will best fit a youth to become the head of an industrial concern, opinions differ widely; but as to the value of the education given in the German polytechnics as a part of the training of engineers, most competent authorities on the Coutinentappear to agree.

It will be found that in every one of the old polytechnics, the notion prevails that if the brain be thoroughly trained, the hands will take care of themselves. This is the old view of higher technology.¹

But it is a fact of the utmost importance that in the polytechnics of Germany, while there is accommodation for 6,000 students, the total attendance is little more than 2,000, and the annual cost to the State of each student exclusive of interest on the capital is $500. This state of things is only partially accounted for by the explanation which is sometimes offered that when these schools were built Germany consisted of several independent states which are now included in the Empire. Reference has already been made to the evidence that the increasing demand for men whose training has been largely practical, to fill stations of trust and responsibility, has lessened the demand for those of high but purely theoretical scientific attainments.

The commissioners found in Germany an excess of one thousand well-trained polytechnic graduates over the demand; and they were informed that the manager of a large engineering works had been so importuned by these young men for employment that he put up a notice in his window, "No polytechnic student need apply." The Baron von Eybesfeld, Austrian minister of instruction, told the writer that the most serious problem in education in that country is to reduce the number of theoretical engineers who, after their long course of study, found themselves not wanted, and to increase the number of men in whose training theory and practice had been so combined that they could meet the great demand Tor those who can put theory and practice together.

A study of the hour plans of the technical schools of all grades shows page 9 that the essentials of the highest polytechnic are the essentials of the lowest trade-school and of all between, but shortened or modified to meet the varying wants and capacities of each grade.

Everywhere drawing, mathematics, and physical science are taught; nearly everywhere language.

In the highest polytechnics, with the notable exceptions of St. Petersburg and Moscow, no handicraft appears on the hour plan; in the lowest trade-schools, the craft and drawing usurp nearly all the time.

There is a constant and apparently irresistible tendency in all the lower schools to pass up into the higher by imperceptible advances. For example, at Chemnitz what used to be the Gewerbeschule has ranked since 1879 as a polytechnic school. But so true is it that a school of the higher education never loses or departs from the cast it receives in the first ten years of its existence, that the old polytechnics, modeled largely after the Ecole Polytechnique of Paris, have so steadily held to the theoretical training of engineers that the times have swept past them. The efforts now making in Austria to remedy this evil are more to the point than any others in Europe, but they are directed towards the artisan rather than the engineer. We will return to this subject later.