Frederick A. Draper

Not every young man has the fortune (or, shall I say, misfortune) to be born with a silver spoon, and has the means wherewith to obtain his education at a technical college. And to those upon whom Fortune has not thus smiled, and yet who desire to advance in the paths of learning, the picture of the student, surrounded by willing instructors and expensive equipment, is an alluring one, well calculated to make the unthinking have envious thoughts and bemoan the fate that forced him to hours of labor rather than study. It is but natural that one wishes for what he has not, and fails to realize the value of that which he has.

And so with the young man who begins his apprenticeship as a mechanic ; he thinks of the greater progress he might make if he could but graduate at a technical school, forgetting that at hand and without cost, he has what no student can get, the instruction of that greater school of "experience" as developed by the stern necessities of industrial progress.

It is well, therefore, for the one whom ambition urges forward, and who, unaided by fortune, must make the fight solely by his own exertions, to consider the nature and extent of the handicap under which he labors, and to determine the ways by which he can overcome the obstacles in his path and eventually reach the place in the affairs of life which he pictures in such glowing colors at the start.

And is the position of the student so greatly superior to that of apprentice? Four years of theory, with hardly enough practice to assimilate more than a small part of the instruction. The real start is made when, leaving college doors behind, the student becomes a worker in competition with other workers ; the stored knowledge must then be drawn upon and used intelligently to keep up in the race. Now, natural ability begins to tell, and when seconded by strong determination and persistent striving for advancement, the years of study return many fold their cost in time and money.

If the student has to travel such a rugged path, how much more difficult is it for the apprentice to succeed. Not so. The latter has many advantages which offset in considerable measure the loss in an educational way. He sees around him operations conducted on a large scale, with varied and perfected machinery designed to produce work of the utmost accuracy at a minimum cost. Results are what count in the shop, and new and better machines replace those that cannot meet requirements of output or quality. The apprentice learns processes, therefore, from simple observation.

He requires no time for instruction in what is fully demonstrated before him. The great lessons of economy

(of time) and accuracy are learned without effort, become a second nature to him, and his reasoning, as he advances in skill, conforms to the necessities of these two fundamental laws of production. It is here, also, that the apprentice meets and masters (or fails) that which the student possesses in abundance, theory. It is quite as necessary for the apprentice to study the theory of his work, the laws of mechanics, as it is for the student to acquire practice, and neither will reach any advancement worth mentioning until this has been done.

The supplementing a day of manual labor with an evening of mental work, will not seem attractive to the young man of social disposition. The theatre, social gatherings and numerous ways present alluring inducements to leave dry text-books behind. And text-books are dry if the mind is elsewhere, but not if an earnest disposition to know them is accompanied by regular hours of study.

As soon as the routine has become fixed, the work will take on a new interest, and in a surprisingly short time the regret will be that more time is not available for reading and study. In addition, the shop work will be found of increased interest, new work will be taken up with intelligence, and soon recognition will be given by superintendent or foreman. The practical value of theory will then be self evident, and the shop-educated workman will be found shoulder to shoulder with the college graduate because both are equally competent, although educated in different ways.

" But how can the apprentice study theory, with no one to direct his study, correct his errors and give needed instruction ? " This is a problem which each one must work out for himself. It must be a very small town in which there is not some one to be found by diligent inquiry, who would quite gladly assist in settling the larger problems ; the smaller ones can nearly always be solved from books to be found in the public library, or purchased for a moderate sum. The accumulation of a select list of technical reference books and treatises will follow as a matter of course.

For self instruction the correspondence school is the nearest to resident instruction which it is possible to obtain, and the courses offered by the larger and better ones are very complete and extensive enough to carry one far on the road to a good technical education. They have an added value, inasmuch as the beginner is more inclined to persist in his studies until regular habits have been formed and possible reluctance been replaced by eagerness and quickened ambition. A good start is everything, and for that reason advantage should be taken of every help which will tend to make first work easier and more inteligible. As the text-books and instruction papers of correspondence schools are written especially for use in home study, they possess advantages over many general treatises, and also have test questions and frequent examinations to determine the thoroughness with which the work is being followed. To one who seeks instruction for its own sake, these correspondence courses are invaluable.

In conclusion, the comparative advantages of the two ways of acquiring a technical education may be summed up as follows:

The student in the technical college acquires an immense stock of theoretical and some practical knowledge, which makes the acquiring of more knowledge easy and rapid.

The apprentice in the shop learns the practical side and sees about him the application of the theoretical principles underlying mechanical operations, which he recognizes when such principles have been learned. To succeed, therefore, the apprentice must learn theory, and when this is done, the application to practical operations will be easy.

The value of such effort on the part of the apprentice should be self evident. The demand for the skilled workman was never greater than it is today. The apprentice is soon the workman, the foreman, the superintendent, the engineer. The reward is assuredly great and easily within the reach of him who will persistently and industriously seek it.