youth, and by giving counsel to legislators and executive officers of every department of the Government, in concert with our already established National Academy of Sciences.

Washington urged the creation of a National University, a primary object of which should be the education of youth in the Science of Government. Jefferson, also, urged the foundation of "a National Establishment for Education," and John Stuart Mill has said: "National institutions should place all things that are connected with themselves before the mind of the citizen in the light in which it is for his good that he should regard them."

Experience at home and abroad shows that systematically conducted schools of art, and trade schools, are vastly more efficient and economical in the education and training of youth than the best-managed mill or workshop. Every operation can there be taught, and the learner made perfectly familiar with each detail, without causing the inconvenience and pecuniary loss which are sure to come with such an attempt in the shop.

Very much such a complete system of technical science of instruction and of industrial education has been incorporated into the continental educational structure, and there places before every child in the land the opportunity of giving such time as the social position and pecuniary circumstances of its parents enable them to allow it to devote to the study of just those branches which are to it of most vital importance, and to acquire a systematic knowledge of the pursnit which surrounding conditions or its own predilections may lead it to follow through life, and to attain as thorough a knowledge and as high a degree of skill as that time, most efficiently disposed, can possibly be made to give him. There is here no waste of the few months, or years of, to him, most precious time, which the son or the daughter of the humblest artisan can spare for the acquisition of a limited education. Every moment is made to yield the most that can be made by its disposition in the most thoughtfully devised way that the most accomplished artisans and the mos; learned scholars, mutually advising each other, can suggest. day in such schools as those here described is of more value to the youthful worker than a week in the older schools, or than a month in the workshop or the mill. Thus, while the fact is recognized that a general and a liberal education is desirable for every citizen, the no less undeniable fact is also recognized that few citizens can give the time to, or afford the expense of, a symmetrical general course, and that the interests of the individual and of the State

One

unite in dictating the provision of such systems and means of industrial education and training.

It is in consequence of the adoption of an intelligent and extensive system of the character of that which I would propose for our own country, that it has become now generally admitted that Germany is the best educated nation of the civilized world. (There is danger that the United States may, with reason, be reckoned the worst.) Germany is gaining a better industrial position daily; our own country is retrograding in all that tends to give manufacturing pre-eminence, except in the ingenuity, skill, and enterprise of its people; and the one great, the vital, need of our people is a complete, efficient, and directly applicable system of technical instruction and of industrial training, if they are to avoid the successful and impoverishing competition of nations which have already been given that advantage by their statesmen and educators a generation earlier. The question whether this comparison shall remain as startling and as discreditable to the people of the United States in future years as it is to-day, is to be settled by the ability of our people to understand and appreciate the importance of this subject, by the interest which the more intelligent classes may take in the matter, and upon the amount of influence which thinking citizens and educated men, and the real statesmen among our legislators may have upon the policy and the action of the General and the State Governments. The promptness and energy which we may display in an effort to place ourselves in a creditable position among educated nations, will be the truest gauge of the character of the people of the United States. Judged by her progress in this direction, Europe is far in advance of us in the most essential elements of modern civilization. There, instead of standing aloof from each other, and instead of forgetting, as is too frequently the case in our own country, those great facts and those imperative duties which every statesman does, and which every citizen should, recognize, the governing and the educated classes, have worked together for the common good, and have given Germany, especially, a vantageground in the universal struggle for existence and wealth which is likely, in the future, to enable that country for many years steadily to gain upon all competitors.

Our own work, thus far, has been desultory, sometimes ill-directed, and rarely thorough or systematic. Our " technical-schools," so-called, are often modified trade schools, and our few trade schools frequently aspire to the position of polytechnic schools, and both

classes are confounded in the minds of very many, even in the profession, and their work is seldom done with that maximum efficiency which can only come of intelligent organization and definite aims and fields of work. So it happens that while the system of general primary education is more widely spread and more effective than in any country in the world, and while we have a larger number of schools, in proportion to population, than perhaps any other country, we are nearly destitute of trade schools, and have extremely inadequate provisions for industrial education of any kind and for any class of our people.

This system of preparation of every citizen for useful work and a prosperous life being adopted, there remains to be considered what can be done to aid the great industries into the channels of which all this skill and training in the arts and applied sciences is to be directed.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS.

A complete working system of preparation being inaugurated, all is done that can be done for the individual in the endeavor to place him on a fair vantage ground in the struggle for survival which is going on throughout the world. Beyond this, he must trust principally to his own intelligence, skill, industry, and frugality for success in the effort to secure the necessaries and comforts of life, and to acquire luxuries, a comfortable independence in old age, and the means of starting his children on a higher level than that which he has himself reached.

A plan for the encouragement of our industries and to secure permanent prosperity must include a general policy of legislation which shall aid the capitalist to safely invest his funds in manufacturing enterprises, or in agriculture, shall assist the working man and the working woman to find remunerative and permanent employment, shall protect every one in the right to sell his capital or his labor at the best market value, wherever and whenever he chooses to offer it, and to give and to take in fair bargains without let or hinderance.

Such a policy must sustain every good workman in the effort to secure a good price for his labor, and every employer against every attempt to compel him to pay good wages for bad work or to surrender the control of his business or his property to any other man. Legislation must be general and must, so far as possible, avoid either direct or indirect interference with the natural currents of

trade. It must facilitate, not obstruct, natural industrial movements. The welfare of the people, and not of any class, rich or poor, must be studied.

The fruit of such a system as I have outlined will be fully seen only when all our labor is skilled and intelligent; when all our directors of labor are familiar with the science of their art, and when our men of science are all men applying science.

Renan, in his autobiography, expresses his conviction that succeeding generations will be taught principally natural sciences, for the reason that the truths learned in their study have more importance to mankind, and have a deeper interest than the facts of history or the accumulated stores of general literature.

Men of Science and Men of Art, too, are becoming known and acknowledged as of most importance to mankind, and as the principal reliance of the race in its terrible struggle against poverty, disease, misery, and death. The influence and the power of men who devote themselves to the study of the phenomena of nature, and of those who make useful application of a knowledge of nature's facts, laws, and forces, must inevitably and continually increase so long as civilization shall continue to advance.

The world will finally reward most nobly those who thus most nobly strive to forward its highest aims.

THE RAIL CAMBERING ARRANGEMENT OF THE LACKAWANNA IRON AND COAL CO.

BY

W. K. SEAMAN, SCRANTON, PA.

THE subject of the treatment of steel rails, after they leave the rolling train, is one which has, perhaps, received more of the attention of rolling-mill engineers than any other detail of their manufacture; and the fact that so many diverse means are at present used, is sufficient evidence that none has, as yet, been made wholly satisfactory.

The rail as delivered from the rolling train is substantially straight; but if it now be simply allowed to cool, it assumes a curve, due to the lack of symmetry of its section and its consequent unequal cooling.

To correct this result, the prevailing practice is to give it, by some means, a contrary curve while still hot, so that it will, in cooling, approximate the straight form. Whatever "kinks" may then exist, are taken out by the cold-straightening presses or "gags."

Regarding this latter process I quote from a paper read before the Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain, by Capt. Wm. R. Jones, of the Edgar Thompson Steel Works, as follows:-" The present plan of straightening by presses is certainly a barbarous one, and will, sooner or later, be superseded by passing the rail through a series of rolls."

All experts are, I believe, agreed that this cold-straightening process is essentially bad; any treatment which contemplates a reduction of its necessary amount is, therefore, worthy of attention.

The "kinks" in a cold rail are traceable to two general causes: 1st, unequal heating and cooling; and 2d, to imperfect mechanical manipulation of the product after it leaves the train.

The first of these causes it is practically impossible wholly to over

come.

In the design to be here exhibited, the writer has endeavored fully to meet the second, and, further, to produce a series of machines, thoroughly mechanical in detail, no more liable to excessive wear and repair than other rail mill machinery, and capable of being