I speak to-night to the Georgia Teachers' Association, and the subject I have to present by invitation is "The Place of Technological Schools in the Work of Education."

I may be indulged in saying that I am sensible, to the highest degree, of the honor to myself involved in the occasion. And yet the occasion has in it so much of significance and responsibility as to almost forbid the indulgence of what might otherwise be a positive pleasure.

In the very rare nature of the case an audience of teachers listening to a teacher, like a congregation of preachers listening to a preacher, must of necessity be the most critical of audiences. Not in the objectional sense, as when the critic steels himself against the influences of the occasion and the purpose of the speaker, but in the higher and better sense that he seeks to know the real value of what may be said and catch as fully as possible whatever inspiration there may be in the thoughts presented.

My subject, too, gives me no little concern. It is not in the least extravagant to say that no one branch of education has excited within the last decade or two so absorbing an interest and provoked so wide a discussion. It has been the war cry of opposing factions in an honest contest for the truth. It has been viewed in almost every conceivable aspect and bearing. Writers and speakers have approached it from high philosophic grounds and have worked their problem from above downward--from generals to particulars. They have discussed its merits from within outwards, and denied or admitted its value from the standpoint of utility. Inductive methods and deductive methods have probed and sounded it until to those who have followed the drift of the discussion the subject has lost the charm of novelty.

I repeat, that before such an audience and with such a theme I may well hesitate. I sincerely trust I may have your earnest attention, and that you may accord me at least the credit of speaking as one of the great body of teachers, honestly striving to do his part in the work of education.

I have spoken of the Place of Technological Schools in the Work of Education.

Have Technological Schools such a place? The best answer that can be given to this question is a brief glance at the history of such schools.

The Technological School is the product of the present century. The nearest approach to it in the previous century was the famous Ecole Polytechnique at Paris. This school, however, while it embraced something of constructive art, was essentially a military school. Napoleon was accustomed to say of it that it was the hen that laid the golden eggs. Its purpose was to train engineers, and of these it gave to Napoleon not a few whose services in field and march could have been ill spared by the man of destiny.

To France, however, belongs, I believe, the honor of having established the first school which clearly comes within the scope of the present conception of the Technical School. This was the school founded in 1802 at Chalons, the object of which was to train foremen and workmen of special skill, founders, blacksmiths, machinists and finishers. Later, schools of the same character and grade were established at other points--Angers in 1811 and that at Aix in 1843. In 1829 was established in Paris the celebrated Ecole Centrale, a scool which embodies more than any other of its age in France the modern conception of the technical school. It embraces courses in mechanics, civil engineering, chemistry, metallurgy and architecture. Its courses cover three years of attendance, and its requirements for admission include the elements of physical science and mathematics through descriptive and analytical geometry.

There has been an increasing demand in France for such schools, and they have multipled in large variety to meet special needs for wood and iron workmen. Paris alone has over one hundred art schools free to both resident and foreign pupils.

Germany has at least eight technical schools of the grade of the Ecole Centrale with a course of four years and having requirements for admission which reach beyond the average attainments of the best American colleges at the end of the sophomore year, with the omission of Greek.

Switzerland has one such school at Zurich; Italy three, one at Milan, one at Turin and one at Naples. At Berlin is a monster establishment erected and equipped at a cost of over two and a quarter millions of dollars and with accomodations for four thousand students.

As long ago as 1806 Germany founded its first technological school at Augsburg, since which time schools of this character have multiplied in that country with wonderful rapidity, until it is almost impossible to count those which are distinctly technical and stand separated from the university. In many instances the teaching coincides with that given in the university, the cheif distinction seeming to be in the arrangement of courses of instruction and in the admission of students who have not had a preliminary classical training. Engineers of every description, architects, builders, and manufacturing chemists find in these schools the scientific and technical training which the lawyer and physician, and in some instances the industrial chemist seek in the university.

At Berlin, Vienna and Munich, the university and the polytechnic school co-exist, and in certain cases in which a very special training is required to fit a student for his career, after spending three or four years at a polytechnic school, he passes on to another institution, such as a dyeing school, where his studies are further specialized with a view to his future work.

In England the tendency is growing to associate technical training with university education. Of the more recently erected English colleges, the Owens College at Manchester, is the most important, combining the facilities of a university with those of a technical school. Yorkshire College, at Leeds, has a special school for teaching weaving and dyeing. Similar institutions exist at Birmingham, Newcastle, Sheffield, Nottingham, Dundee, Cardiff, and elsewhere. University College and King's College, London, is each an example of the combination referred to. The Royal School of Mines, is another.

Russia has two schools which have long been famous, and which have furnished the models upon which many others have been organized. That at Moscow and that at St. Petersburg, which, in addition to the training they give to the vast numbers of students in attendance, furnish the standards and tests to which contracts for government supplies must be brought, and which supply the country at large with the best classes of machinery.

Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and Holland have schools hardly inferior to those mentioned, indeed, in some instances, superior; and even Spain and Portugal have laid claim to renewed respect from sister nations by commendable advances in this line of special education.

In this country the idea involved in technical education has found expression in forms and institutions now almost innumerable. Leaving out of the list the military and professional schools, such institutions as the Columbia school of Mines at New York, the Sheffield school at New Haven, the Rensselaer at Troy, the Institute of Technology at Boston, the Stevens Institute at Hoboken, the Worcester Free Institute at Worcester, the Rose Polytechnic at Terre Haute, the Washington University at St. Louis, the Tulane University at New Orleans, the Industrial Institute for Women at Columbus, Miss., the annex of a mechanical department at Vanderbilt, and other universities, the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical college, and last, but let us hope not least, the Georgia School of Technology, now in its first year, are instances of the gradual but sure shaping of the general idea underlying the technical school.

Add to these the various agricultural and mechanical colleges which have multiplied almost without number, and we have this idea further emphasized. In the light of these facts it is safe for us to assume that schools of Technology have a place.

And not only have they a place in fact, but back of this we must see the sentiment which made the fact possible. Not every educational enterprise, intrinsically meritorious though it may be, is feasible. The agricultural college is not a new idea. It is within the memory of some who bear me to-night, that this type of education, conceived by wise men and sustained by earnest efforts seemed doomed to failure. To give currency to an idea or permanence to an institution needs something more than the recognition of its necessity and the forecast of its value to future generations. Along with such intuitive recognition by the few and the most strenuous advocacy of its claims, there must come the response of public recognition and approval. Great ideas, whether in individuals or nations, or the race, are of slow growth--they are not to be forced. When once the seed has found its habitat and, under favoring conditions of warmth and light, it has struck its roots downward and lifted the branches upward and outward, growth seems easy and life assured. It is not extravagant to affirm that no movement in education within the entire history of education has met with such universal recognition and welcome as has this one of technical education of high grade. At another time it would be an interesting inquiry to look into the philosophy of this general sentiment of approval and endorsement. But such inquiry would be apart from our purpose now. I cite it to show that the technical school has a place, not a temporary and insecure place, but one imbedded in the convictions of men of all grades of culture and all modes of thinking, a place in which it is destined to abide through time and from which it will send forth streams of influence irresistible in their depth and sweep, to change the types of nationalities and mould anew the civilizations of the world.

Having seen that the place of Technological Schools is not one held on sufferance and by grace, let us inquire into the right and title by which this place is held. And I think we shall find that this right is an inherent one and that the title is unassailable.

In the first place, then, such schools hold their place and will continue to do so, because they are schools in the highest and best sense--because they educate.

Let us look for a moment into what a school of this character proposes to teach. The course of study in the technical school, as determined by long experience and in all countries, is substantially the same. It is about as follows: Mathematics--beginning with algebra and geometry, passing into trigonometry, then into analytical geometry, thence into the calculus; these and theoretical and applied mechanics.

Physics, embracing elementary principles and their applications, the solution of a large variety of problems, laboratory practice.

Chemistry--elementary principles, with constant laboratory practice and analytical work, its applications to the arts and industries.

Language--the mother tongue, with full training in the literature of the language and with a view to its accurate and elegant use. This with a knowledge of one or more modern tongues besides the mother tongue.

Drawing, both free hand and mechanical, including perspective, orthographic and isometric projection, shades and shadows.

Geology and Mineralogy as far as practicable, and particularly in their relation to mining industries.

In all three studies special reference is had to their practical bearings, and the general idea which obtains in the workshop, namely, constant and familiar contact with implements and apparatus and the solution of practical problems, is embodied and emphasized.

I do not think I could do better than give here, as a summary of the objects and methods of technical schools, the principles set forth by Prof. Thompson as those of one of the oldest and most popular of the schools of this country. The Worcester Free Institute appeared to our law-makers, under the report of the commission sent North and West some years ago, to embody the best conception of industrial education.

"This institution was organized under the influence of a belief that after all that has been done in technology, there is still need of a system of training boys broader and brighter than "learning a trade," and more simple and direct than the so-called 'liberal education;' that while the boys should be thoroughly trained in all the essentials of a polytechnic course, they should also find a workshop open where they could get all the essentials of a trade, so that upon graduating they should have sufficient knowledge of machinery and handicraft to enable them to earn a living while pushing their way up to the highest positions for which nature and their training had qualified them. It was held that not the least important of their qualifications for high positions is a good experience of the lower positions.

"It is the undoubting opinion of the managers of the Institute and of all who have watched its operations that the connection of academic culture and the practical application of science is advantageous to both in a school where these objects are started together and carried on with harmony and equal prominence. The academy inspires its intelligence into the work of the shop, and the shop, with eyes open to the improvements of productive industries, prevents the monastic dreams and shortness of vision that sometimes paralyze the profound learning of the college."

The Worcester School was opened in 1868 with the following principles for its guidance, and so far has seen no reason to depart from them:

1. That all mechanical engineers will find it advantageous to go through a workshop training.

2. This training in the work shop may precede, accompany, or follow scholastic training and theoretical instruction, but for many reasons it preferably accompanies them.

3. The work shop instruction is best given in a genuine manufacturing machine shop, where work is done that is to be sold in the open, market, and in unprotected competition with the products of other shops.

4. That in a course of three and one-half years, working 800 hours the that half year, and 500 hours each year thereafter, a boy beginning without any knowledge of mechanics can acquire skill enough to offer himself at graduation as a journeyman, and will be found, on trial, not inferior to those who have spent the entire time of three and a half years in a regular machine shop.

5. That the work shop practice must be a part of every week's work in the institution; that it shall be momentarily Supervised by skilful men, and that the student must not expect to receive money compensation for his work.

6. That the question as to who among the students shall become a superintendent or foreman or engineer, engaged in designing or drafting machinery, can not be forecast in any school, that being a question to be determined by actual trial only; because the discipline of the judgment by actual practice into which personal responsibility enters is vital and essential to a valid claim to the post of superintendent. Hence it will follow, that while all receive the preliminary training requisite for engineering, many will not attain to it, but all will find a full reward for their time and labor in superior intelligence as workmen--in being masters and not servants of the machines they make or run.

7. A principle announced when the first class graduated, and inculcated upon all subsequent classes, is that the value of the education they have received will show itself in the rate of their advancement, and will be easily detected by their employers, and that they should not be so much concerned in seeking places and about high wages or great positions as about the chances ahead for advancement. Indeed, there might be cases in which they could well afford to wait and work content to earn a bare subsistance, counting themselves remunerated largely in the enlargement of their experience.

Several things urge themselves upon our consideration in view of this statement of the purpose and plan of the technical school.

1. That a very important and prominent object is the preparation it gives to the student for earning a living when he shall have passed beyond a certain stage in his training. This, it must he clearly held in view, is incidental, and yet in thousands of cases it becomes one of the gravest questions, a question not of deliberate choice but of hard, stern necessity.

Poverty and hardship are the rule in the world now as they have always been. Ease of position and freedom to choose the amount of time to be spent in school and college are the exception. The primary object of the system, the highest and best object, is not to leave boys with this bare preparation for earning a living, but that it can furnish thus much to those whom fortune has not smiled upon is no small consideration in making up an estimate of the worth of the technical school.

2. Again it is obvious that the purpose of the system is to furnish the country at large with men who have attained high mechanical skill at the same time that they have been trained in some mental pursuits; in a word, to send forth engineers of a superior class who shall have in charge the superintendence of mechanical plants, the erection of manufactories, the development of mining and other industries. The phraseology of the schools denominates these men mechanical engineers.

I shall not stop to draw the nice distinction often made, and not so often definitely understood, between the civil engineer and the mechanical engineer.

The experience of one of the oldest and best equipped schools of Austria--that at Vienna--is instructive. Baron Von Eybesfeld, minister of public instruction, found a great excess of engineers over the demand. These engineers were trained in the theory of their profession, but with little knowledge derived from actual experience in the workshop. To meet the demand for skilled mechanical engineers, a new order of school was organized in which the workshop practice formed a leading feature. Every piece of the work done in the new school was done with reference to its salability; and Dr. Exner, who had the management of the school, reported that the work sold in the open market brought in returns the first year of a thousand guelden. Since then most schools of this character have multiplied in Austria, where mechanical skill is imparted alongside the training in the theory and principle.

Our own section, the South, presents a striking illustration of the necessity of such training for our engineers of public works. Each year our various institutions are sending out men, thoroughly equipped under the old idea, as engineers, and it is a serious question as to what becomes of them. Now and then we hear of one surveying a new route for a railroad, but more frequently acting in a subordinate capacity to some one who has been more fortunate in his training. The lack of opportunity for the application of their specialty drives them into other callings. How many men do we know, of Southern birth and Southern training, who are superintendents of mills and managers of manufactories or engaged in the development of mining industries?

As further illustration of our poverty in men, it may be mentioned that of the men employed in the workshops of the Georgia School of Technology, the superintendent and three foremen out of four in the several departments had to he brought from beyond the limits of our own State, and not from the South. We did not have the men for the enterprise.

No question touching the matter of education is more vital to the material prosperity of the State and the South in general than the one we are now considering.

We hear much of the material advantages of the South, its genial climate, its sunny skies, its water powers, its rich mineral deposits, ores and coal in convenient proximity, its rich soil and wonderful staple; we congratulate ourselves ever and anon on some new enterprise which marks our material advancement, and yet, when we come to consider the facts as they really exist, we are doing almost nothing in material development as compared with our possibilities and as compared with the advancement made by our Northern brethren. Of the total manufacturing done in the United States, the census of 1880 shows that only nine per cent of it is done in the Southern States. For the full development of the resources so abundant and so varied, special training in the direction of mechanical skill is the demand too obvious almost for statement. But this skill must be allied with knowledge of the forces to be met and mastered, and only in the conjunction of the lecture room and the work shop is such a combination to he found. The engineer, after all, must be distinct and separate from the mere artisan or mechanic. Call him a civil engineer and set him to building highways, railroads, waterworks and sewers, or call him a mechanical engineer and let him deal solely with machines from the original design in the draughting room through the machine shop up to the full operation of the perfected engine; or call him electrical engineer and set him to constructing telegraph line, or chemical engineer and set him to making dye stuffs and supplying the great industrial acids, it all comes to the same thing at last, he is efficient only by as much as he possesses large and accurate knowledge of the principles of the science with which he deals and has learned in laboratory and workshop to verify these principles by actual experiment and observation.

Time and your patience would hardly suffice for even the most striking illustrations of what has been accomplished by trained, skilful hands, under the direction of a well informed mind, and under the quickened perception which comes from dealing with practical issues. The elder Roebling, the architect of the Niagara railroad bridge, and the designer of the great Brooklyn bridge, was a graduate of the Berlin Polytechnic.

The bridge over the Vistula at Warschau was built by a graduate of Carlsruhe. Mr. Ellet, who built the first wire suspension bridge in this country, that over the Schuylkill at Philadelphia, and who first spanned Niagara with a bridge, was a student at the Paris school. The bridge over the Volga was built by English engineers. The latest, largest, and most costly bridge in Russia, that over the Neva, was built by the graduates of the Imperial Technological school at Petersburg, and every piece of iron that entered into this structure was tested in the laboratories of the Imperial school.

Some years ago the Italian government made comparative tests of different armor plates for use on vessels of war, and the plates that best stood the tests and answered the demands of strength and resistance were constructed by Schneider at the shops of the French Technological school a Le Creusot.

Another thing, however, which appears from the summary of the Worcester plan is that this system really educates.

We hear much in discussions on education about the old system and the new--much as to the comparative merits of the education based upon the classics and metaphysics and that which has its foundation in physical science. Time and the occasion forbid that we should enter at length into this discussion. It may he said, however, that much of the controversy on these questions is irrelevant and unnecessary. It betrays a narrow and meagre view of education itself and deliberately ignores facts which themselves set a bound to the processes and plans of education. Already I have indicated that the question often is not how much of language and mathematics and science can one learn in the few years to be employed in the work of mental discipline, but how can the boy best get in some sort of readiness to meet the stern demand upon him, to take his place among the busy breadwinners of the world. Surely no man who has thought over and through these grave questions of opportunity and necessity will regret that modern methods of education have made it possible for a boy to spend his cramped moments in a definite plan with such mental discipline as it allows and bestows, rather than follow a plan the merits of which he can not grasp and comprehend, and which to a large majority of boys is a fearful drudgery.

If the object of education were culture only, and culture for its own sake, I suppose there would be no debate as to the value of the classics and the humanities. Indeed, I will go further, and at least raise the question as to how far these branches of polite and elegant learning may have made possible this later and newer education.

In education as in all things else the age in which we live is one of transition from the old to the new. It is not needful that in our veneration for the old we should despise and reject the new, nor is our appreciation of the new to he measured by regarding the old as wholly vicious and effete. Indeed, the question is not at all which is the best education abstractly considered, but what things are best to be learned under the conditions which exist in modern life, and how may the wise teacher give to the pupil that which will serve him most in his need, and according to his opportunity.

Can it be said of the course of study indicated in this paper that it really and truly educates? Two leading ideas lie at the foundation of all education, or, if you please, mind is the meeting ground of two streams, one ever flowing inward and bearing its treasures of thought and knowledge; the other, as constantly flowing outward, and bearing away to other minds the gifts it has received. In what the mind receives are comprehended facts, phenomena, properties, laws; principles, causes; the one class embracing the realm of sense, the other embracing the realm of ideas. In what the mind gives out it uses some language and makes its utterances in these forms which are best adapted to clothe its thought. Articulate speech is but one of the forms in which thought clothes itself. The harmonies of music, the limned landscape, the marble bust, the glorious temple, the stately ship, are but the varied forms in which the artist or builder has voiced for us what nature, or art, or science, or God has spoken to him.

Measured by this simple conception of education, who will say that there is not an education in the constant effort to put into tangible form by hammer and lathe the thought which comes from text book and nature, by spoken word and the mechanism of the universe?

I think enough has been said to show that in the great work of education, so near and so dear to this body of men and women, the School of Technology has a place, and that no mean or unimportant one; that this place, unique as it is and bearing relations of unspeakable significance and value to the prosperity of our common country and the well being of our people, does not antagonize or exclude any other form of education; that it is in harmony with the profoundest philosophy of education, and that, if fostered, it offers to the youth of the land now among us, and to the generations to follow, an education which is not a substitute for something better, but which has in it the promise and potency of a higher civilization than we have yet known, and a broader life than the vast majority of our youth have yet experienced.

We do well to recognize the claims of the boy of to-day in an education which he will receive and which is adjusted to his special needs. To impart to him the power to think along any useful line; to stimulate him to the exercise of judgment and reason; to give him a sense of reliance upon his own strength and resources; to lead him to feel that, the question of a livelihood apart, he has a place in the busy working world; to teach him caution in his undertakings, care in his methods; to impart to him the sweet sense of successful achievement--these belong to the ethical side of the technical school. His intellectual drill and furnishing will come in the study of mathematics, language and science. If time and circumstance favor, add whatever to these is possible of literature or the classics to round out the intellect in symmetry and strength. Fill his heart with high and worthy ambition to wield large and beneficient power over nature and over men.

These principles, I may be permitted to say, have entered into the conception which lies at the foundation of the Georgia School of Technology. By a chain of beneficent providence from the original proposal to found such a school, through the appointment of the committee of practical, earnest men to visit and report upon the best forms of such schools in this country, on down through the appointment of a commission of broad-minded, far-seeing men to have special oversight of its organization and equipment, the history of the school has been marked by a breadth of conception and a liberality of interpretation upon which the State has just reason to be congratulated.

We am building and working not for a day but for the centuries. The stupendous possibilities of this enterprise come over me at times like a vision. Georgia, freed from the grasp and reproach of poverty, lifted upward and onward among her sister commonwealths, enriched not only in her material resources and her mechanical and manufacturing enterprises, but made better and richer far in the intelligence of her sons in the high, true, real culture which must and will come as the fruit of this inspiration to found and sustain a school of technology of the best and highest order.

I read the other day one of the many accounts given us by travellers, of the Spectre of the Brocken. In the Hartz Mountains, the home of many a wild legend and popular superstition, the native guide reserves as the final wonder and charm of his mountain solitudes, a curious spectacle. In the stillness of the evening the traveller is led to an elevated spot and is bidden to mat his eye over the beautiful valley stretched in many a fold and curve below him. While he gazes enraptured upon the scene, there starts out of the many shadows a strangely distinct and complete human form of gigantic proportions. Very few who look upon this sight, it is said, can resist the grewsome feeling akin to awe, as if the old dreams and fancies of the Genii were not, after all, empty vanities. It is only after repeated trials that the observer realizes that each motion of his own is repeated by the spectre, and that he is in reality only gazing upon his own shadow.

This freak of the setting sun casting his slant rays along the mountain sides may serve us with a figure and a moral.

By this new education we have led the boy of to-day to unaccustomed heights. We have bidden him to look below into the broad valleys and beautiful fields of human endeavor. The sun of an old civilization is setting behind him, a civilization of which he, perhaps, could not without experience understand the charm. The mystery of vision is upon him. The shadows are taking shape, and the Titan whose marvelous size fills him with awe is the shadow of himself. As the spectre stretches itself in lengthening and broadening sweep over valley and plain, and to the horizon beyond, it remains with the boy to give substance to the shadow, to fill its darkness with a living light, and to give it power over earth and air and sky.