349 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
Let us fit the young for the work of life! Let us equip them for main- 
taining themselves in honest independence! T rejoice in the fact that 
private beneficence is doing so much in this direction. I have been studying 
the great work just about to be opened here in Chicago under the splendid 
beneficence of Philip D. Armour. I refer to that grandly equipped Tech- 
nical Institute, built from the foundation on the kindergarten, just as 
avery technical school should be; for the kindergarten is the only true 
foundation for the arts and trades. Wealth thas used is the poor man’s 
providence. Wealth thus used keeps healthy, and it keeps the com munity 
healthy. Let us see if this is not so. What has been found in regard to 
several thousand prison convicts in two of the largest penitentiaries of the 
East ? The great, salient, flaming fact is not that they cannot read and 
write ; not that they had not been to Sunday-school ; not that they were 
ntemperate ; but the most common, the most generic fact is that these 
convicts know no trade, most of them being entirely ignorant of all trade 
knowledge. Few if any of our large cities have ever expended a dollar to 
teach a boy a trade. How much does it cost for criminals ? 
Then, again, it has been carefully estimated that seven-tenths of the 
sonvicted criminals of the United States are persons who have never 
learned a trade or followed any industrial pursuit, and a very large pro- 
portion of these criminals are under twenty-five years of age. What a 
suggestive fact! Does not public economy demand that something be 
done to provide facilities for teaching the young industrial pursuits ? 
They cannot become mechanics without the opportunities for learning 
handcraft ; and the training of the hand, as well as of the head and heart, 
should be begun in earliest years. 
Idleness is the devil’s workshop. Children are not depraved. They 
need wise care and training. The prevention of crime is the duty of 
society. Society has no right to punish crime at one end if it does 
aothing to prevent it at the other end. Society’s chief concern should be 
to remove the causes from which crime springs. We may be very eloquent 
in pleading that punishments may be quick, sharp, and decisive ; that the 
gallows may have every victim that it claims by law, and that eternal 
rigilance may be kept on evil-doers. But all this will not avail. 
Ruskin says truly : ‘Crime cannot be hindered by punishment. It will 
always find some shape and outlet unpunishable and unclosed. Crime 
can only be truly hindered by letting no boy grow up to be a criminal ; 
by taking away the will to commit sin, not by the mere punishment of 
its commission. Formation, not reformation, should be the watchword. 
Crime, small and great, can only be stayed by formation—education ; not 
‘he education of the intellect merely, but the education of the head, 
heart, and hand, which is the education of the whole man.” We may 
make laws and constitutions on paper, but character is a. growth, and to 
all growth belongs the element of time. Let the kindergarten become an