years' schooling. The average earning power of each person in Massachusetts is 73 cents per day, while for the country at large it is only 40 cents." This result has been reached by the independent calculations both of Dr. Harris, the U. S. Commissioner of Education, and of Mr. Wadlin, former chief of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mr. Hill points out that this daily wealth producing power of 33 cents per capita in excess of the average of the nation means $100 a year per capita and $275,000,000 a year more than it would yield if the per capita production of the state were no greater than the average per capita of the country at large.

To show what can actually be accomplished there is no better model than the Agriculture Experiment Stations of the United States. Their annual cost, about a million dollars, brings a direct return of a hundredfold and more in economic value measured in mere dollars, but indirectly their results are just as valuable. These stations-fifty-six in number, including all the states and territories, Hawaii and Alaska-do not prosecute their work in the ordinary academic manner, but in the interest of the agricultural industry. Yet many interesting features are developed, investigations made and discoveries announced that would honor any postgraduate scientific investigator. Their work may lead in various channels; the creation of a new wheat that may increase the harvest of the world; the development of an ear of corn to be the best food for man and beast; the enrichment of a fruit; the curing of disease in plant or animal; the adaptation of a new grass or fruit from a foreign land; the reclamation of vast stretches of arid

land; the betterment of a strain of cattle; an improvement in dairy methods; improved food for cattle, sheep and hogs. The results are becoming annually more important not only from a scientific point of view but in an enormous increase in national wealth.

THE FUTURE.

Technical education will do much towards diminishing the number of weaklings in society; the weaklings in thrift who produce pauperism; the weaklings in morals who are responsible for most of the crimes against society; and the weaklings in intellect who fill the asylums for the insane and the feeble-minded. These weaklings need less justice and more nurture. When they have broken the laws, justice imprisons them. The fundamental educational principle of the twentieth century-the education of all the people for the work of the people-will seek out these weaklings and train them to be useful instead of harmful to society. In the ordinary industrial callings the demand for technical education will exceed any bounds which we can now conservatively put upon it. Only those who make a study of the subject can realize what innumerable subjects are coming under the dominion of training. Even the Chinese, when they make railroad concessions to foreigners, insist that schools for the instruction in railway science shall be established for their benefit. In Europe there are two schools, one in Aschaffenburg, Germany, and the other in Brussels, Belgium, to teach automobilism, and a third will be opened in October at Vienna, Austria.

There can be no permanent advance for any people

except it is based on the Gibraltar of technical education. The education of the people is the building up of the nation. There should be less education for intellectual gymnastics and more training for usefulness; less of the older idea of the three R's for all, with high culture for the wealthy, and more attention to the systematic instruction of the people in the work of the people. We should estimate rightly the value of the industrial unit-the man-and make him as efficient as possible, as a man, as a citizen, and as an industrial producer. The relations which the technically trained man will bear to the great political and industrial changes are many and important. The coming era of industrial regeneration will be the result of a more accurate knowledge of science and a closer application of its principles; the engineer will be the missionary. The mechanic, the trained artisan, the technical man, and the scientific farmer will be the pioneers. The welfare of the future will be industrial and political, rather than military. Already we see the signs. barous idea of depleting conquered lands or dependent colonies for the benefit of the conquering nation is yielding to the more civilized idea of internal improvements, with material advantages to both parties. Because Spain plundered her colonies and refused to advance with the age of science, she is no longer a factor in Western civilization. The world will become an industrial battlefield. The diplomat will become more and more a high-grade commercial agent; the military leader will be a preserver of law and order, rather than a destroyer of life and property; and the engineer will be their chief executive in adapting the forces of nature

The bar

The great change in eco

to the convenience of man. nomic and industrial life of the twentieth century will be the work of the engineer.

The conditions which will beset the engineer of the twentieth century will be exacting beyond anything we now know. The importance of a strong foundation in scientific principles cannot be overestimated, for scientific principles are only the laws of nature. These principles cannot be learned readily after a man has begun his life work. His whole energy will then be devoted to applying these principles correctly, not in acquiring them laboriously. It will be a prime necessity for the technical college of the future to lay these foundations broad and deep. It will be regarded as a weakness for a college to teach its students only the knacks of the profession, only just enough to be an ordinary draftsman, a tolerable surveyor, or first-class linesman.

The technical graduate of the twentieth century will be marked by certain characteristics which are too rarely found in men trained in the colleges of literature and arts. Among these are directness of purpose, intellectual accuracy and clear thinking. The student of science and technology is trained in the realm of realities, where to commit error, to act without purpose, or to think vaguely are seen at once to be fruitful of harm. Economic and industrial needs will bring education from the cloistered lecture room into the open air of the laboratory. Technical education will have a practical, helpful bearing upon the problems of life. No longer will the seclusion of the scholar be a mark of honor. Education will be found at the bench, by the forge, in the shop, the laboratory and the drafting

room, as well as in the library. The lesson to be taught will be how to apply scientific ideas to the solution of problems actually arising in the struggle to bring the forces of nature under the sway of man.

The technical college in which the future engineer is to be trained has several important characteristics to maintain. First, to educate scientifically and technically those who shall lead the march of the coming civilization in industrial lines; second, to educate the public to a true sense of the value of applying scientific principles to industrial processes; third, as the university has for one of its functions the extension of human knowledge in any and all lines, so the technical colleges will recognize that the investigation of questions relating to applied science is within their own sphere of usefulness. While the university asks no questions about the usefulness of the information gathered within its walls, the technical college must make its investigations in fields that are distinctly useful.

The most significant tendency which an observer of educational progress sees to-day is that of specialization. The time is fast approaching when it will be recognized that merely a general education, whether on classical or scientific lines, is not alone a suitable preparation for life. Not that culture is less desirable than formerly, rather it is more desirable, but above this general substructure must be placed a technical education which will give that special application to some calling which the coming age will demand. Colleges which devote their attention solely to general cultural training will become of less importance. The institutions now known by various titles as technical colleges,