FOR some generations there has been cultivated in Sweden, and amongst Scandinavian and kindred peoples, a course of training in personal ingenuity, unknown in most other countries. It does not seem to have ever been persevered in after the manner of trading industry, but as a means of promoting throughout the community a taste and skill for the performance of highly-finished productions in mechanical art, proceeding from the simple to the complex, and resulting in a widely-diffused facility for all kinds of constructive occupations.

Such course or system of training is called Sloyd, and written Slojd. For the majority of English people such a word cannot have a meaning, and cannot appeal with adequate force to popular appreciation. The nearest equivalent in English to the Swedish word Slojd would seem to be Hand-Craft, or mechanical training for the hand, undertaken voluntarily for the satisfaction of acquiring manual skill in general, as distinguished from a handicraft of limited application, pursued of necessity from day to day, rather by routine than by skill.

Hand-Craft is therefore adopted as synonymous in England with the word Slojd in Sweden.

As cultivated in Sweden, it involves all kinds of manual training, and is applicable to highly finished productions in leather, metal, and various other substances, but it suffices, for educational purposes, to limit teaching and exercise to objects made of wood. It must always be borne in mind that Hand-Craft is mainly educational, and is valuable, not for what it produces, but for the training which the production involves; just as the letters of the alphabet, and their accurate use, are the essential preliminaries to literary attainments. It imparts and cultivates mechanical dexterity, just as learning to read and write spontaneously developes mental capacity. Therefore, whoever masters a course of Hand-Craft acquires an aptitude for all kinds of material processes. Such an aptitude, while useful and gratifying to the individual, is of the greatest consequence amongst people so deeply interested as the English are in manufacturing pursuits.

Hand-Craft also has strong claims to be cultivated as a recreation, and experience proves that it may be so regarded, with every prospect of becoming popular as such.

Touching this matter of recreation, and those who have not the faculty for viewing the subject in that light, reference may be made to familiar facts with reference to chess. Perhaps there is nothing that, to the uninitiated, appears more stupid, insipid, and purposeless than the progress of that game. Yet there are thousands, who have so regarded it, who, after being well initiated, have become interested and absorbed by it, to an extent exceeding the possibilities of their original belief.

So it is with Hand-Craft, with this difference, that Hand-Craft, while supplying an incentive to wholesome perseverance, developing into a fascinating recreation, is suggestive at every turn of life-long utility, with reference to an infinite variety of probable subsequent experience. It promotes a delightful consciousness of the merits of neat, natty tastefulness and judgment with reference to every material thing, and trains the mind and the eye, as well as the hand, to perceive and appreciate excellence of design and finish, proportion, beauty, and adaptability of the most familiar appliances.

Training of this kind has, in recent years, been much stimulated by the establishment of an Institute or Seminary for its teaching and cultivation at Naas in Sweden, where very generous accommodation and facilities are provided for the instruction of teachers from all parts of Sweden and the rest of the world. The subsequent mission of each of those teachers is to diffuse the taste and knowledge he has thus acquired amongst his own people on his return to them, or amongst other people where he may find encouragement to settle for that purpose.

Thus have the foundations been laid for this genial drawing out and exercise of latent mechanical genius amongst the people of England. With the object of widening those foundations, these pages have been prepared; primarily as forming a Text Book for Teachers, but also as an incentive to parents, educationists, and statesmen to fortify the rising generation of England against the opprobrium so justly alleged against the English of the present day, that they are behind the rest of the industrial world in those elements of mechanical taste and skill, which are becoming more and more essential to the maintenance of manufacturing and commercial prosperity.

An earnest determination to promote amendment in these respects cannot be better carried into effect than by insisting that Hand-Craft shall be regarded as an essential branch of the Technical Education that is now struggling to assert itself usefully. If such a branch be left out, the mere teaching of routine trade processes will inevitably fail. Such routine processes are many of them in heavy-handed, rough disregard of the nicety, accuracy, finish, and judgment which intelligent exercise in Hand-Craft can alone impart; which is the only reliable basis for the superior mechanical results so much needed.

Hand-Craft in wood is distinguished from carpentry or joinery in many important respects.

There is no division of labour.

Everything produced is the entire work of one operator, for the defects of which he is solely responsible.

This directness of responsibility is one of the great merits of Hand-Craft, being calculated to promote wholesome pride in the excellence of complete work; a sentiment that is apt to be very weak, or totally wanting, where division of labour is much relied upon.

The intellectual faculties are brought into unison with the hand, by knowledge and experience developing together with increasing dexterity.

Genuine respect and sympathy are developed for manual toil by familiarity with its application.

Love of work in general is developed, and a taste for it instilled by practical experience of its utility.

Habits of attention, perseverance, industry, and discipline are formed, cultivated, and unconsciously grafted upon the pupil, by the application necessary to excel.

Independence, order, and cleanliness spontaneously grow and become part of the nature of the operator.

Manual dexterity being thoroughly established, the operator is endowed with the consequent acquired ability for dealing with the practical business of life.

Education being the object that should be constantly kept in view, in the teaching and practice of Hand-Craft, it should be thoroughly appreciated that it is adapted for forming and shaping the entire bent of all the faculties.

The objects recommended to work upon are all small, and are therefore within the capacity of the very young, and of both sexes'.

For the same reason, the eye, the hand, and the judgment are trained to precise form and finish in the minutest details. This is important, for, though it is generally easier to make something large and rough than small and smooth, no one who is incapable of making a small model well can make a large one any better.

Small objects are invariably the best training to work upon, as being certain to inspire appreciation for neatness, exactness, and accuracy.