TECHNOLOGICAL SCHOOLS. 541 
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such education would be, per annum, about 50 cents per inhabitant additional to the 
present school tax, and in the shops of these schools something less than $100 per 
student, and under $300 per annum per student. for total costs of hicher education 
The actual number of schools of the highest class in this country, 
schools which are neither technical universities nor colleges, but, usually, 
either schools of restricted curricula, as engineering schools, or single and 
narrowly limited departments of colleges of general and mainly liberal 
learning, is about fifty. The number of real trade schools, prepared to 
give proper training, scientific and practical, in any one trade, is un- 
known to statisticians, but they are exceedingly rare, and a thoroughly 
representative trade school, like hundreds of those scattered all over 
Europe, is unknown. We have perhaps a dozen good manual-training 
schools in the larger cities ; but we have no system of carefully organized, 
complete, and well-sustained schools of either class, supported by nation, 
by state, by city, or by any form of public or private permanent, system- 
atic effort.  “‘Such is the intimidating comparison, also, of the con- 
dition of our country, and the more enterprising and wisely governed 
countries of Europe. The latter have had two generations the start of us, 
and only the extraordinary natural advantages of our country, and the 
more extraordinary general intelligence and enterprise of its citizens, can 
possibly prevent this disadvantage under which we labor telling fatally 
against us in the course of time, when the inevitable competition of the 
world shall affect us.” * 
On the other hand, every State is doing more, and seeing more each 
gear of the duty before it and its importance, and the State universities 
and the independent colleges and schools are feeling their way constantly, 
hough slowly, toward the solution of this tremendous problem. Our 
people are peculiarly well fitted to benefit by the opportunities which may 
be thus offered, and to secure, in the interim, those kinds of training and 
those forms of knowledge which are the essential basis of the as yet in- 
complete technical system, and to compete with other nations at this dis- 
advantage. The freedom of our institutions has engendered freedom of 
vill and of intellectual action ; and the free action of a thousand minds, 
untrammeled though untrained, preserves us against dangerous rivalry 
from the better schooled but intellectually enslaved masses of the world 
outside. What will be the final outcome of the changes which are now 
slowly evolving an educational system in this country, and at the same 
time giving freedom and stimulus to European peoples, no one can pre- 
Jict. It can only be hoped that we may, in good time, have our own, 
and an ample and efficient, “complete and perfect,” system of education 
of our people for the life and the work of our people. At the moment, 
we have no system of suitable education of the nation; but we are making 
some progress toward the production of what is needed. 
k Reports of the Director of Sibley College.