556 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
beratory wherein he may use kilograms, and vary his trials at will with 
little cost. But when a blast furnace is turning out a hundred tons of 
iron in a day, to supply pressing orders, it will not do to change at pleas- 
ure the charges and the blast. It is not strange that owners and managers 
of large works have a horror of what they call experiments, for experi- 
ments have too often been made ut once with the large apparatus, without 
first testing, at little risk, in the working laboratory. But, in fact, with- 
out rightly conducted experiments there can be but little learned and but 
little progress made in the arts. Experiments should be enccuraged, but 
not on the ruinous scale. 
But it is hardly necessary at this late day to bring forward many illus- 
rations and labored arguments to show the advantages of object teach- 
mg, and laboratory practice, and shop-work, and field exercises. For it 
seems to be very generally felt now that besides the long-established labor- 
atories of analytical chemistry, those of physics, and biology, and me- 
chanical engineering, and civil engineering, and metallurgy, and indus- 
trial chemistry, are essential for the professional schools. Certainly those 
hat have in faith provided themselves with these most fully are having 
.he largest attendance and are otherwise the most successful. 
The development of laboratories and the evolution of the best possible 
courses of instruction require much money and thought and time. It is 
but thirty years since ways were first devised for class work in physics. 
Metallurgical laboratories are hardly twenty years old. The mechanical 
are of very recent origin, and industrial chemistry has not got far beyond 
the beginning. There has been rapid and highly commendable progress 
.n some lines, but even our best-furnished institutions cannot claim that 
their equipment is full, or that their instruction approaches very closely 
jo the ideal. By far the larger part of our schools are quite insufficiently 
andowed, and the newer methods of instruction have vastly increased 
their wants. They heroically do all they can with their means, and 
accomplish much, but are forced to send out their students into the world 
without having reached the highest standard. 
Capitalists who are to draw leaders of industries from the technological 
schools should see to it that these schools are furnished with all needed 
facilities for instruction. They should lend a helping hand and a help- 
ng purse, and not stand aside and expect perfect men to be made with 
‘mperfect means. 
Respecting schemes of study there is great diversity of opinions, so 
chat it is impossible to make out one that will fully satisfy everybody. 
Those that are actually followed are the results of many compromises. 
What proportion should general studies bear to the special, professional 
branches 7 What subjects can be abridged or omitted with the just expec- 
cation that the student will of himself take them up in after life ? How 
many studies can the average student carry on advantageously at one