consultation with the chairman of the Drawing Committee, I will endeavor to comply with your wishes. My own reputation professionally is at stake in this matter. I was called to my position here in city and State to organize a plan of instruction, and see it carried out in the schools. The progress made in the lower grades of schools now makes it possible to put the higher grades and evening schools into their proper places in the educational chain. It never has been possible before, because the pupils have not until now been prepared to take the more advanced instruction. But I think that, if you will allow me to cooperate with you, we shall be able next year to begin the crowning of the fabric, and thus carry out the decisions of the school committee with reference to the high schools. I have perfect faith in the wisdom and the practicability of the proposal, and those of you who do not at present share with me in this faith will grow into it. And, as perpetual growth is the sign of the living teacher, I take the liberty to hope that we may all live forever. IV.-EXTRACTS FROM ADDRESSES BY PROFESSOR WALTER SMITH, DELIVERED AT MONTREAL AND QUEBEC. INTRODUCTION. In the spring of 1882, Professor Smith, his official relations to the public schools of Boston and the Massachusetts Normal Art School, having ended, as has been before related, had assumed the principalship of the "Conservatory School of Fine Arts," a department of the "New England Conservatory of Music," a large incorporated institution situated in Franklin Square, Boston. At this time he was applied to, to deliver a series of addresses in the Province of Quebec. These were afterward published.* The introduction to the official pamphlet, which is here quoted in full, details the circumstances of their delivery and publication: The Council of Arts and Manufactures of the Province of Quebec, being anxious to bring before the public and those engaged in teaching the best thought of modern times on the subject of industrial drawing, made an arrangement with Prof. Walter Smith [who is an artist trained at South Kensington, for twelve years head master of the Leeds School of Art, England, for eleven years State director of art education in Massachusetts, and now principal of the New England School of Fine Arts, Boston, United States] to give a series of addresses to the public and to teachers in Montreal and Quebec upon such phases of the general question as he deemed of most importance. They were delivered during the months of April and May, 1882, were well attended and enthusiastically received. Reports and abstracts of these addresses appeared in the newspapers, but as the speeches were generally extemporaneous, only abstracts were published. A desire having been expressed by teachers and others that the addresses might be preserved in a permanent form, the Council determined that the best record which could be obtained by them should be made available. A matter of so great importance as industrial art education is, deserves to be seriously considered by all who are anxious for the material and industrial development of the country, and though the records of these speeches are imperfect, they yet embody the leading ideas which inspired them, and the reports which were published have been revised in type by the speaker for this pamphlet. In order to preserve the practical advice given concerning teaching (of which no reports were made) Professor Smith has, upon our request, furnished us with a copy of the notes from which he spoke, covering instruction during twelve years of school life, and these notes have been printed as received from him; the Council venture to hope that they will be found of practical use and direction to teachers. Teachers of public schools and others interested in this subject may obtain a copy of this pamphlet on application to S. C. STEVENSON, * Technical education and industrial drawing in public schools. Reports and notes of addresses delivered at Montreal and Quebec, by Prof. Walter Smith (South Kensington, England), Principal of the Conservatory School of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass. Reprinted by the Council of Arts and Manufactures of the Province of Quebec, under whose auspices the addresses were delivered at the request of teachers and others. Montreal Gazette Printing Company, 1883. pp. 99. There was also an edition in French for teachers using that language. The papers reprinted are placed in the order of their delivery in Montreal, and repeated in Quebec. 1. Industrial drawing. 2. Technical education. 3. Teaching drawing. 4. Household taste and principles of industrial design. 5. Notes and suggestions for teachers. MONTREAL, January, 1883. These lectures, addressed to the teachers of Quebec, naturally have many points in common with those delivered to the teachers of the several grades of the Boston schools, reprinted in this Appendix; the differences are of interest as showing the ready adaptation of the speaker to different surroundings. From the second lecture on "Technical education; its position in a public system of education," the following paragraphs, showing how essential it is that the germs of such training shall be planted in the elementary public schools, and further how futile is private effort to establish the educational machinery of a whole people, are as applicable in the United States as in Canada, while the recital of the work of Prince Albert, in inaugurating the successful movement of industrial art training in England is full of interest. * The public day schools offer to all the benefits of a general elementary education, available to all, and to a general degree enjoyed by all. Academies and colleges and the schools of religious bodies continue this general education of the wealthier classes, until the universities and the medical, theological, and law schools complete their opportunities for a technical education to fit them for the professions and practical life. The general elementary education is to develop natural faculties, and give a broad basis for the future superstructure, the special education in which the individual is taught to apply what he has already learned in a particular direction. The public day schools do the first for all, and the higher schools and professional schools do the second for some-the well-to-do and the wealthy. But where is the secondary school which does for the mass of the people known as the artisan and laboring classes what the university, college, or professional schools accomplish for the upper classes? Can we afford to break off the education of the mechanic and laborer when as a mere child he leaves off his day-school instruction? What does a boy of fifteen know, if he then leaves school and goes to work? He is simply then the raw material of an educated man, and if there are no further opportunities given to him to continue his education, even whilst pursuing his work, he will never become in any sense an educated man. Yet it would be untold wealth to the country, and of indescribable benefit to him, if he could have as good a chance to continue his education from the general to the special or technical, that the young doctor, lawyer, and clergyman, already possess. PRIVATE EDUCATIONAL EFFORTS UNEQUAL TO PUBLIC NEEDS. We are assembled in Mechanics' Hall, and mechanics' institutes, young men's institutes, evening drawing schools, and some technical classes have long existed in the several provinces of this Dominion, and have doubtless here, as elsewhere, done great good. But permit me as one who has watched this great question in another country similarly circumstanced to this, to say to you with all frankness and good intent, that these private or semi-public organizations will not provide a national remedy for a national deficiency. The question is too great, the matter at stake is too important to trust it to the efforts, usually feeble and often intermittent, of the few. Mechanics' institutes did great work in England, though for a long time they were considered failures, because they did not attract and hold vast numbers of young men in their science and art-class rooms. They begin in the middle of the educational fabric, supplying a secondary education before a sound primary education in public schools was obtainable by all. But in another sense they always succeeded, for they demonstrated the need of a national and well organized system of public instruction, and prepared themselves to follow it up by technical education, as soon as the artisan and laborer were prepared by general knowledge to be so instructed, and now they are being successful, their class-rooms are filled, and the unskilled English artisan is rapidly following the dodo and other extinct creatures, and the English mechanic is an educated man. S. Ex. 209-37 THE EXAMPLE OF ENGLAND COMMENDED. The same thing is not true of the Dominion as was true of England when Lord Brougham and Dr. Birkbeck originated mechanics' institutes, for Canada justly prides herself on her public school systems. But it is true that the schools of design and evening classes now in existence here are not as widely successful as they will be when the Dominion Government takes up this question of technical education, and takes it up in the same way the home Government did after the Sadowa of English competition with the world in skilled manufactures, which happened in 1851, at the first great exhibition in London. The prosy board of trade in London had been appealed to in 1836 by the English manufacturers to establish schools of design to elevate the products of English mills, and create a corps of skilled designers. Notice that the movement came from trade and commerce, not from artists and teachers.* It was not a sentimental demand from theorisers, but a practical request from business men. In 1851 there were 19 schools of design in operation, and the concours of the world showed what they were worth as agencies for the elevation of public taste and the promotion of good design. Nineteen schools teaching, and teaching very imperfectly, a few thousand workmen, in a population of many millions, could not be expected to have done much, and it was proved they had done comparatively nothing. Then the British manufacturers were worsted and humiliated by French taste and skill. Then was Waterloo avenged in London, and the sword, which failed to do its horrible work at Mont. St. Jean, turned into the plowshare and pencil at Hyde Park was triumphant and victorious. With bowed head and a sense of national humiliation the English critic pursued his way through the French department, recognizing superiority in skill and beauty on all hands, to what he had seen in his own section of the display, and willing, like a true man, to acknowledge it and help to place a laurel wreath of victory on the brow of the nation which had not always triumphed over his people. In the mind, however, of the true patriot it is as honorable to recognize defeat and applaud the victor as it is to strive for peaceful mastery in future contests, for no one but the blind bigot, who is not fit to be a leader of men, ever shouts, "My country, right or wrong." ." That is not a form of mind to be trusted which shuts its eyes and crows when badly beaten, or continues on the wrong road, the road to perdition, simply because it is already on the journey. No. Led by that great man, Prince Albert the Good, the consort of our beloved Queen, the nation went to work to remedy past deficiencies, to provide for a national system of education in elementary art and science, and to sustain the civilization of the country at its weakest point. WHAT ENGLAND ATTEMPTED. Every child was to be taught how to draw; every talented boy or girl was to have a chance; every stray genius was to be carefully husbanded; every mechanic to be given the choice of whether he would spend his evenings profitably in a school of art and science or waste it at street corners or even in more pernicious surroundings; and the master-pieces of the world's concours were purchased and kept in London as nest eggs for future use. Thus practical men laid hold of a practical question, not by sighing or waving the Union Jack, as sham patriots would, but by the first steps in the path which led to future triumphs, when real patriots could float the flag of conquest over a thousand seas of industry, without shame and with becoming pride-and that day has arrived. And so to-day in Canada we want to recognize that in this young country, one which is an infant giant, looking forward already to a great place in the future roll-call of nations; we want to remember that there is nothing grows which is not sown; no effect without a cause; that no nation ever became great, wealthy, and strong by accident. We shall reap that which we sow; and if we sow nothing we shall reap nothing, either in the domain of agriculture or in the field of political economy. TECHNICAL EDUCATION AN ECONOMICAL QUESTION. The whole matter of technical education is an economical question; it is not a mere sentiment, but intensely practical. The wealthiest nations to-day are France and England, the two peoples who have done the most for education in art and science. * In this, Mr. Smith gives to "trade and commerce" undue credit for the inception of this movement, so far as he fails to record the fact that a great artist, the late Benjamin Robert Haydon, for thirty years had been agitating for this very movement, and was in close correspondence with Mr. Ewart, M. P., chairman of the committee of Parliament whose report led to government action. The first schools of design failed, because the methods of instruction, claimed by Haydon as essential, were not carried See Paper VI in Appendix A of this Report.-ED. ART REPORT. out. 1 The strongest nations are always, indeed, those who have made the wisest provision for the education of their children to develop in them a skilful, learned, just and fearless manhood; and such nations as do this will never grow old, but preserve a perennial youth of progress and greatness. Perhaps you will say that, being an economical question, it does not belong to the domain of a teacher such as I am. But, I reply, it does belong to me and you and all of us as citizens. It is, I allow, essentially a statesman's question, and that is why in England the greatest modern statesman, Prince Albert, took it up so enthusiastically. Whilst the nomial statesmen and politicians were squabbling about who should vote "in a rotten borough, or so," as Tennyson puts it, he was, in the face of much misrepresentation, quietly laying the foundation for a movement which quadrupled the values and productivity of the manufactures of England; and all this in opposition to levity and misunderstanding, displayed by many in high positions. That is what I consider a statesman's action, as distinguished from the acts of a mere popularity hunter-the far-seeing conduct of a thinker, as contrasted with the trimming of party leaders-working for the good of a nation among those who were always jealous and sometimes hostile. It would cover a man with glory to have done nothing else than create the science and art department of the English system of education, for that has led to a development of her productivity which is simply marvellous, doubled her exportations of valuable manufactures, and quadrupled her wealth and independence. I have watched the unfolding of this wonderful scroll of national history and to some extent had a share in it; am therefore an eye-witness of the transformation brought about in this age by the wise foresight of a true thinker, and it is a rare pleasure to me here this day to bear my testimony to the wealth of evidence which has already placed a national monument in the English capital to the great benefactor who brought all this about. May his memory be ever as green in the hearts of the people as the grass round his mausoleum now is in Hyde Park. "PROTECTION"-HOW TO SECURE IT. We want to-day a statesman who will do for Canada what Prince Albert did for England-develop its natural resources and make skilled its unskilled labor; stop all her importations of manufactures by making her own products superior to any that can be bought outside the Dominion, and though it may not be done in a moment, if the foundations be well and truly laid, there will come a time when the flowing tide of invasion from France and England will be rolled back by native superiority, and the ebb tide of exportation of the products of native skilled labor will succeed. Protection is well enough when it protects. There is need to protect children when growing, and that is why Providence provides them with parents, I suppose. Fiscal laws will, must, ought to protect the industries of a country until they can run alone. But there is a higher, safer, and more unassailable protection than tariffs, and that is superiority to the assailing party. There is no need to protect strong men from weak ones, for when they become men they put away such childish things. And when this nation shall have become strong on its feet, as it must and will, this Chinese wall of protection now built up in the custom houses, will be thrown down from inside, and Canada, resting on her broad lands and in her well-established factories, will open out her gates and say to all who want to trade with her, all nations who long to cross swords with her in the peaceful contests of art and science, “ Come, and come if you dare." A PLEA FOR TECHNICAL EDUCATION. Now, I want to make a plea for education in art and science, which together may be called technical education. Education pays. We recognize this by our public school systems, which provide a general education for the people. We recognize its moral advantages by building churches and keeping up Sunday schools, and we admit its commercial profit by the way in which we require all the more intellectual vocations to teach their members. The very safety of a nation depends upon its skill, not on its natural strength or geographical position, and skill is the result of training, not an endowment of nature. It is the brains of a nation which protect it, not the bricks or granite in its forts, and the gatling gun and rifled ordnance and armor-plated monitors of the skilled nations cannot be successfully met by the flint-guns of our ancestors, nor the good feeling which we ought to have to our neighbors. No country ought to allow itself to be out-educated. There is danger in that direction. Given a healthy, strong man, what can we do with him? That depends on what we have done with him as a child. It is too late to begin when his habits are formed and the natural powers of acquiring new things are dulled by want of use. But we can provide against a repetition of the mistakes made, if by chance we should find |