Carl Schurz

“ When the pupil leaves the institute, young though he be, he is no longer an apprentice, but a working man fit for responsible employment. I do not say that he then knows everything which an accomplished workingman should know; but he has a variety of knowledge which the ordinary workingman hardly ever acquires, and he has learned what is important above everything else — he has learned how to learn more. ”

“ In this respect we should not be blind to the fact that the aversion to manual labor among our young people has grown up under the very system of popular education we now have. The impression is spreading among them that education is to teach them, mainly, how to get along in life, and if possible how to get rich without hard work. ”

“ It does not, in teaching, confine him to things which have been made before, but it teaches him to learn more and to find out new things for himself. It opens to him as free and large as possible a view of the field upon which the skilled artizan is to exercise his faculties. Thus it makes manual labor intellectually attractive, and stimulates ingenuity as well as honorable ambition. ”

“ Supplying as far as its influence reaches, a distinct and urgent want of our civilization, it will not only benefit the young men educated under its auspices, but by showing what effects can, by such education, be produced upon a class of people who, so far, have been thought to be especially averse to manual labor as a means of livelihood, it will set an example which cannot fail to attract attention and to find fruitful imitation in a much wider circle. ”

“ But it is also true that our popular school education fails to counteract that tendency, for it does not stimulate the ambition and cultivate the faculties for manual work by appropriate impulse; and, further, that apprenticeship, in the ordinary sense, has lost its best educational features. ”

“ The cause of this phenomenon first suggesting itself, we find, of course, in the fact that human nature generally is inclined to work as little and to enjoy as much as possible; that most people, when they have the choice between the plough or the working bench on the one hand, and an easy chair on the other, will prefer the easy chair, and that especially in a free country, poor people, principally the young, if they cannot in all things live like the rich, want at least as much as possible to look like them. ”

“ For centuries the Hebrews have had the reputation of being generally addicted to the pursuit of trading, large and small, and averse to manual labor. And we all know that reputation not to have been groundless. It might easily be shown how this tendency and habit had naturally resulted from the peculiar situation in human society into which the Hebrews had been forced, and in which they have been kept for many generations, and that the effect of the same causes upon other nationalities would most probably not have been very different. ”

“ How many boys without means are there, who, having learned to write a good hand, think it beneath them to make a living in any other way than with their pens, or having learned to add up sums and to calculate interest, would think themselves degraded if they did any rougher work than mark prices on goods or keep books, and doing this, wear nice clothes and keep their hand white! ”

“ It takes boys still within the ordinary school age. It does not proceed upon the assumption that the elementary branches of knowledge which are taught in the public school have already been mastered. It continues the instruction, filling the gaps without burdening the young mind with unnecessary detail, and adds further instruction in those things which have a direct bearing upon the technical work to be studied. ”

“ That example will be all the more valuable as, in fact, not only among the Jews, but among all classes of people in America, of the younger generation, the tendency to turn away from manual labor and to adopt occupations which appear to open to a man the possibility of living upon his wits, in growing and spreading in an alarming degree. ”

“ And thus it is that the young men, shunning farm and workshop, crowd the cities and haunt stores and counting rooms for employment in constantly increasing numbers, while it is a notorious fact that the American people, the people born and raised upon American soil, turn out so small a proportion of artizans and manual laborers generally, that we have to look in a large measure to foreign immigration to supply that want of society. ”

“ If the Hebrews of this great metropolis, in spite of the adverse hereditary tendency among their people, do succeed in educating among themselves a class of efficient and prosperous artizans, no fair-minded man will find any fault with them for having made this school a Jewish institution. ”

“ But something has recently happened which may be accepted as proof that, if an effort be made to secure to the institute the improvements it needs, that effort will be bestowed upon an object very worthy in itself and exceedingly promising for the future. ”

“ And doing this we must admit that to overcome these traditional habits and inclinations, to make young Hebrews manual workers instead of traders, may indeed require some special inducements of a sectarian character, such as this technical school presents. ”