the vast gain in the conditions of material welfare in the United States, names seven, and assigns the third position in importance to the “systems of common schools which are now extending throughout the land.” The tendency to be guarded against is that in education as applied to the whole mass of the people, what is desirable and charming and decorative be not put before what is absolutely useful; not to take the garnish first and leave the solid meat to take care of itself. When it comes to deal with the large masses of the community who must work, and to whom it is, so to speak, a matter of life and death, the question to be considered is whether they shall work well prepared with the utmost assistance which the accumulated knowledge and skill of the community can give them, or whether each man shall be left to fight his own way and learn his own industry for himself. The country wants more handicraftsmen, the school produces too many scriveners. The country is crying out for skilled laborers, and the school sends it clerks or would-be gentlemen of leisure. The farmers and working men want wives who can make a home neat and happy, and who understand the wise economy of limited resources, and the school sends them women fit only to be governesses. The system of education in the United States sends too many boys into trading, teaching, the professions, or “living by their wits.” They imbibe a spirit that shuns what are termed the “humble callings,” and crowd, at starvation wages, the occupations of the counter and desk. They grow up to feel and believe that the bread which has been gained by the sweat of the brow is less honorably earned than that which is the product of mechanical quill-driving. Therefore the United States have a plethora of men who, as described by President Garfield, are “learned so-called, who know the whole gamut of classical learning, who have sounded the depths of mathematical and speculative philosophy, and yet who could not harness a horse or make out a bill of sale, if their lives depended upon it.” There is need of a public education that, while it gives to the mind fleet and safe modes of reasoning, shall at the same time, in a corresponding degree, develop a clear sight, a firm arm, and a training suitable for the various trades and occupations which are essential elements of a prosperous national life. The utility of such acquirements is not their chief virtue; it is their permanence in the mental armory, for eyes and hands not only respond to cultivation as readily as brains, but the trained eye and skilled hand do not slough off their acquirements like the weary brain. All through the United States scientifically and technically trained foreigners, fresh from their “_realschulen_,” are pushing out classically-educated young men from their desks and stools and taking the places of profit which belong to them by national inheritance. American spirit, capacity, and energy are unrivalled, and require only