England and to some extent in the United States, a falling back in the standard of manufactured products, and decline of trade in them, in favor of those countries in which, as in Germany, excellence and attractiveness in the executed work are recognized as entitled to equal consideration with the capitalist's desire for immediate profits and the workman's championship of "organized labor."
This tendency—for it is still, happily, in the United States a tendency rather than an accomplished fact—has been recognized most quickly by others than the parties who should seem to be most directly interested; and the efforts to counteract it have led to the establishment of several technical and art schools, either as university departments or on independent footings, some of which have proved themselves very efficient.
It has also engaged the attention of a number of manufacturing establishments and other corporations employing large bodies of workmen, who have had the sagacity to perceive that their permanent interests were identified with their turning out the best products. Among these was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, which in 1881 commended to Dr. W. T. Barnard, assistant to the president, a proposition for the establishment of a technical school for scientific and mechanical instruction, to examine into and report upon. Without waiting for his full report, the company, under Dr. Barnard's management, made a start of such a school in 1885, in connection with its shops at Mount Clare. Dr. Barnard's report has just appeared, and covers a wide ground, including a sketch of the effects of technical education in Europe; a review of its progress and present status in the United States; discussions of the need of more thorough and extended technical instruction in Baltimore, and of the advantages which the Baltimore and Ohio Company, together with other railway interests, would derive from a thorough system of this character; and a programme for inaugurating systematic technical instruction in the service of that company.
To prepare himself more thoroughly for his work, Dr. Barnard, besides studying the subject in books, made personal examinations of the principal existing technical schools in the United States and Europe. The result of this investigation was so to impress him with the vital importance of technical education to the industrial and commercial interests of the United States in general as well as with the particular concerns he at first had in view; and also with the almost universal ignorance of its potency displayed by those whom it would most beneficially affect, that he has deemed it a duty to make his report one that would be generally useful.
"In Europe," says the author, "the necessity of technical education for industrial laborers, felt and freely acknowledged many years ago, was forced into prominence through the increasing rivalry between manufacturers and other producers competing with like articles
