skilled and intelligent mechanics. While this first-class course would naturally lead up to the second or cadet class, it should provide within itself all the elements of technical instruction necessary to complete a journeyman's education.
2. A second or cadet course, which should also be complete within itself, and should provide such technical instruction in all the departments of railway service as would fit its students for all subordinate positions of responsibility and trust in the service, corresponding to what is known in European schools as the foreman's course of study. This course, while involving more thorough and wider theoretical instruction than the apprentice course, should, to the greatest extent possible, be framed with reference to the practical mechanical operations of the shops and of the service generally.
3. A third or cadet officers' course, the object of which will be to give to those who graduate with honor from the second class (and who have therein shown themselves possessed of ability and educational qualifications above the average) further technical training, of a still higher and more comprehensive type, which, when combined with familiarity with the operations of the various departments of the service, will go far toward qualifying the students of that course for the highest positions in the company's gift. To this end, opportunity should be afforded the pupils of this course, in its last year, to actively participate in the production, care, repair, and improvement of railway plant and in the practical operations of the service. This could readily be done—and with advantage to the service also—by distributing these students among the several departments as assistants, at the same time maintaining their connection with the school for further educational purposes. This course is not yet in operation.
In the apprentice course, school-instruction should be made secondary to shop-work, while in the higher courses shop-work should always be secondary to mental training.
Although these provisions relate especially to instruction in Baltimore, the plan has been drafted in a more general sense, and contemplates the gradual extension of this educational movement over the entire system of the railroad. While Baltimore will always be the center of such a movement, no great difficulty is apprehended in extending the apprentice course, at least, over the entire road, by establishing night-schools for drawing, mathematics, and elementary science, or securing the introduction of the boys into such schools as are already in operation, and the modification of their curriculum in the manner indicated.
Prior to the establishment of school-work at Mount Clare, the Baltimore and Ohio apprentices had neither incentive nor opportunity to develop into intelligent workmen, so that on starting the classes it was with great difficulty and only by absolute compulsion that the attendance of about forty shop-boys was secured. They were, with few ex-
