Fieldwork

“ The man in the planning room, whose specialty under scientific management is planning ahead, invariably finds that the work can be done better and more economically by a subdivision of the labor; each act of each mechanic, for example, should be preceded by various preparatory acts done by other men. And all of this involves, as we have said, "an almost equal division of the responsibihty and the work between the management and the workman." ”

“ The labor system must likewise be made to contribute its share to the leading purpose, it should have in common with other departments, of developing in the student correct habits of observation and investigation, and he should be made to trace, in every detail of farm-work, illustrations of the principles taught in the class-room, so that he may acquire a proper appreciation of the intimate and legitimate relations of practice and science. ”

“ In mining, as in other departments of engineering, we find in the schools the same growing appreciation of the value of training at once broad, thorough and practical, and the same preference for the university-trained engineer in preference to the untrained craftsman. ”

“ While the students are at work upon the land and in erecting buildings, they are taught, by competent instructors, the latest methods of agriculture and the trades connected with building.
There was in constant operation at the school, in connection with thorough academic and religious training, twenty-eight industrial departments. All of these teach industries at which our men and women can find immediate employment as soon as they leave the institution. ”

“ More and more there is demanded, in those who are called to important positions in the forestry service, the most thorough academical education, and one now has very little chance of gaining a high position in the management of the government forests who has not had a complete university education. ”

“ Art, technique, skill of head and hand immediately find a wide field of activity. All departments in the building of machinery, in the fashioning of tools, in architecture and in the branches of work connected with the internal equipment of houses have the amplest opportunity. ”

“ The national institutions for education should, indeed, have farms and workshops; but the foremost object of these should be, not to afford simple employment to young men, but to give them, in connection with their studies in the sciences, what may be called laboratories, where they can see science applied in as practical a manner as possible—laboratories, whether field or shop, where they can see sciences limited by the necessities of practice. ”

“ After the department of research has advanced any discovery far enough to make it applicable to ordinary agriculture, its practicability in regard to profit-making, etc., will be tested in the department of farms before any new method is commended to the farmers. ”

“ The industrial training which can be given by the A. M. A. schools is necessarily limited, both by financial and other considerations, not only in extent but also in variety. The ways in which we can wisely make effort seem to be as follows: 1. Agriculture, which is to be, after all, the occupation of the great majority of the people for whom we are laboring. ”

“ It is a favorite simile among writers on education that the mind is not unlike a field, and that the steps of instruction answer to the successive stages of the farmer's work. First there is the preparation of the soil, then come the planting, the cultivating, and in due time the harvest, the mill, and the market. Two of these steps, the preparing and the applying, concern us here; the work of presenting and elaborating is a theme by itself, and has been treated in a separate chapter. ”

“ Of course such a system of grading as I have described would have been impracticable applied to the small industrial concerns of your day, in some of which there were hardly enough employees to have left one apiece for the classes. You must remember that, under the national organization of labor, all industries are carried on by great bodies of men, many of your farms or shops being combined as one. ”

“ Like every other employment, too, it is subdivided into a great number of different branches, each of which affords occupation to a peculiar tribe or class of philosophers; and this subdivision of employment in philosophy, as well as in every other business, improves dexterity, and saves time. Each individual becomes more expert in his own peculiar branch, more work is done upon the whole, and the quantity of science is considerably increased by it. ”

“ Merely to add, to the millions now intelligently practising these arts, a few more intelligent farmers or artisans each year, would be a wretchedly inadequate return for these endowments. The places for imparting the simple, usual practical education for agricultural and mechanical pursuits are the millions of farms and workshops in the country. ”

“ In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments and tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last forever without repairing; all the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think fit to choose, and increase a hundredfold more than they do at present, with innumerable other happy proposals. ”

“ Opportunities for employment are ordinarily found in three main directions—in educational institutions, in the federal and state geological surveys, and in private organizations. Connection with the United States Geological Survey excludes participation in private work, and in recent years even in teaching. ”

“ If a man can spare the time a course of lessons at some accredited school of mines will be, undoubtedly, the best possible training; but if he asks what books he should read in order to obtain some primary technical instruction, I reply: First, an introductory text-book of geology, which will tell him in the simplest and plainest language all he absolutely requires to know on this important subject. ”

“ The colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts are making commendable advance in their appointed province. Great industrial interests are beginning to acknowledge the benefits received from their researches and from the trained experts they are sending out. ”

“ This specialization, or intensification, of agriculture makes a new demand, upon those who pursue it, in the way of mental and business training. This training is being furnished by a multitude of agencies, and the younger generation of farmers is taking proper advantage of the opportunities thus offered. ”

“ The division of a given job into its proper elementary units, before beginning the time study, calls for considerable skill and good judgment. If the job to be observed is one which will be repeated over and over again, or if it is one of a series of similar jobs which form an important part of the standard work of an establishment, or of the trade which is being studied, then it is best to divide the job into elements which are rudimentary. ”

“ When a student has completed his formal education in the school system, he will have at the time spent at least one-third of his school hours working on a farm, in a factory, or at some other enterprise. ”

“ However, as the author has found, and doubtless many others actively engaged in the industry have discovered, it is becoming a requisite in the mill that those employed there be possessed of something more than “rule of thumb” systems of working—that careful and intelligent research and investigation is necessary to success in every department. ”

“ Nothing is more needed than the best type of industrial school, the school for mechanical industries in the city, the school for practically teaching agriculture in the country. The calling of the skilled tiller of the soil, the calling of the skilled mechanic, should alike be recognized as professions, just as emphatically as the callings of lawyer, doctor, merchant, or clerk. ”

“ Purchasing departments of great commercial and industrial institutions maintain laboratories for the determination, with mathematical exactitude, of the qualifications and fitness to requirements of all kinds of materials, tools and equipment. And yet, when it comes to the choice of his own life work, the guidance of his children in their vocations, or the selection of employees and co-workers, the average man decides the entire matter by almost any other consideration than scientifically determined fitness. ”

“ There are three collegiate institutions whose diploma admits to the higher service, four are of secondary grade, nineteen give special courses, and the rest treat the subject merely as a subsidiary of a practical education including agriculture, stock-farming and fishery. ”

“ The training, both scientific and practical, which is required for a great master of industry is wide and various. The great movements of industry, like all other great movements, present subordinate phenomena which are apparently opposed to, or inconsistent with their great tendencies and their general character. ”

“ The first Manual Training High School marked that movement. The starting of Trade Schools in connection with certain large industrial plants or groups of plants signally demonstrated an effort to reinstate skill as a distinction of those who had acquired it. ”

“ Let pupils visit some factory and tell what they saw. A shoe shop, a tailor's shop, a blacksmith shop, are simple factories. Discuss other occupations, and let pupils bring pictures of people at work in any of the loading industries.
Most people earn their living by doing some kind of work. We call people's work their occupation. Let us see what are the great occupations of the world.
We all eat food made from plants, and from plants we get cotton and linen for clothes. ”

“ The opportunities offered for useful research and the spread of useful information in regard to the cultivation of the soil and the breeding of stock and the solution of many of the intricate problems in progressive agriculture have demonstrated the wisdom of establishing that department. ”

“ The Department of Elementary Science offers three-year vocational courses in agriculture, horticulture, mechanic and industrial arts, commerce, and domestic economy, from which young men and women can, if they desire, be admitted to the Freshman class of the College. ”

“ The Geological Survey and the Agricultural Department, both included under the Department of the Interior, are rapidly multiplying branches of work that require both the skilled training and ability for original research and accomplishment. ”

“ Putting aside the sciences and their various sub-divisions, upon which there will be examinations as a matter of course, there will be examinations on such practical subjects as earth-work, road- work and railway work, bridge-making, drawing, painting and design, modelling, wood, and copper-plate, engraving and etching, carriage-building, boot, and shoe-making, jeweller's work, tobacco-manufacturing, dress-making, lace-making, bread-making, and a great variety of other subjects. ”

“ This work is carried on at the Laboratory and sometimes in coöperation with the National Forests and district experts. At the Laboratory there is a director and a large staff of technical and scientific men, such as chemists, physicists, and engineers, each of whom is an expert in his particular line of work. ”

“ Of late years even farming has become an occupation in which special knowledge is supposed to have certain advantages. In every kind of practical work specialization, founded on a more or less arduous course of preparation, is coming to prevail; and in this way individuals, possessing the advantages of the necessary gifts and discipline, are obtaining definite and stimulating opportunities for personal efficiency and independence. ”

“ As an old ‘agrimensor,’ I well know that there is no better training for the tyro who can afford the time than to begin field-work without instruments: the use of the latter will be learned in a few days, nay, hours; and even the most experienced prefer, when possible, to go over the ground, and to form a mental sketch before attempting exact topography. ”

“ Applied science—Industry—Medicine.—Science may find its application in two ways, either to things, or to men. Applied to things, it is called industry; applied to men, medicine. There are no special duties concerning industrial pursuits. Engineers, private or in the service of the State, employed in civil or military works, have no other duties then the general duties of functionaries, military-men, employees, etc. ”

“ Sometimes one group will lap over upon another group, in certain kinds of construction work, but even then the branches will hold sharply each to its own.
Civil engineering embraces, roughly, all work in the soil. The surveyor is a civil engineer. ”

“ Its farm machinery building is the largest of its kind. Five professors are in charge, and it is a curious fact, showing how new the New Farmer is, that these professors are obliged to teach without a text-book. ”

“ If the necessary materials are on hand, this is the golden time to start the older and best trained boys on the permanent improvement work outlined for the year, such as fence building, sprouting, clearing of new lands, the construction of conveniences for the school, home or farm, the repair of old, the erection and painting of new buildings and finally, the preparation of the ground and planting of the crops for the next year. ”