The Present Need of Establishing Industrial Schools
By A. W. Spaulding
In recent labor at camp-meetings for our young people, to get them to be not merely good, but good for something, educational workers found conditions that suggest the above title. Stress was constantly laid upon the thought of salvation for service, of our indebtedness to God, to sinners about us, to the heathen, and to the cause and institutions of God. While some seemed to feel lightly the claims for service, and were content to remain in positions in the world, an encouraging majority presented themselves to the Lord for work. Some of these were ready to engage, and did engage, in personal work immediately—holding prayer circles, pitching tents, getting acquainted with shy and lonesome strangers, sawing lumber and driving nails, showing cheerful unselfishness in the dining hall, and helping acquaintances to take their public stand for Christ. Others, fearful of themselves, required to be led slowly toward the ideal of Christian helpfulness. Some fell back. But it was evident that there is the greatest need of Christian training. Many of the brightest young people were greatly in need of a better knowledge of the common branches; nearly all needed a thorough experience in serving from unselfish motives and in daily giving of energies to the work. Of the two hundred young people present, about nine tenths professed faith in Christ before the close of the meeting; and of these about one hundred and forty, as discovered by actual census taking, either were already-workers or desired preparation for work. Nearly one hundred wished to get this preparation. Some of these volunteered for the canvassing work and nurses' training, but a large number were left who wished to enter school at once. Then difficulties presented themselves. A few saw their way clear, and decided to come. The majority, however, found one or more of these difficulties in the way:— - No money to pay board and tuition.
- Parents wanted help on the farm, and preferred paying children to paying hired laborers.
- One or more parents opposed to the truth, and if able to pay children's way, would not.
- Others dependent upon their labors for support.
The second difficulty named was in most cases simply a parent's selfish withholding of his children from the work of God for personal gain, but the other three resolved themselves into the lack of money. Now it is doubtless true that there is enough gold buried among our people to educate every child, but this gold is not to be gotten by easy placer-mining. For the most part it is stamp-ore, buried deep in lodes of indifference, and it takes the skilled labor of experts to locate and extract it. When it comes to the practical problem of helping our youth to get an education, it seems that only a limited dependence can be placed upon the aid of our well-to-do members. And whatever other thoughts this condition suggests, there comes forcibly to mind the idea that in the providence of God this is intended to bring about the more practical training of our youth for missionaries. These youth who stood up to offer themselves for service and better preparation, were more than half of them blocked by circumstances. If there were schools where they could go and earn their entire way while studying, they declared they would be willing to go, not with the idea of getting out of them all they could, but of giving their time, energy, and thought to the building up of those schools, thus putting themselves into the work of God while becoming more efficient, no less than when they should be commissioned to some recognized position in the cause. Here and there are found such schools, which have proved themselves practical and influential, but they are only here and there. Here is an army of recruits, bright,23eager, and promising great capability. How long shall we continue to send them back to the shop, the farm, the office, the secular school, to lose their consecration and their power, all because we do not provide the facilities that would enable them at once to enter the work? There is, it is true, more than one way to solve the problem, at least in one of its phases. The plan devised by our publishing houses, of giving scholarships to those who will sell books to a stated value, provides a way for some to attend school, while at the same time it gets our literature before the people. In its incipiency the plan seems to be working well, and it is encouraging to see many taking advantage of it. Yet the practical worker who comes into contact with our young people knows that it does not help all. They who embrace the opportunity are those who have either natural boldness, or senior encouragement, or that intense earnestness which no doubt all should have. Yet we need not condemn the timid farm boy or country girl who shrinks from facing a world of terrors, but who is willing to endure no less in a more secluded way. And we need not scorn the fearful ones whose souls have not yet been waked to the heroism they may hereafter show. The twelve were not all Peters. And besides, the value of industrial training is not limited, nor indeed measured at all, by its providing a means for literary culture. Its educational value, we are told, is not less than that of the schoolroom, and it may be doubled if to this generation it is not greater. When we consider what power is added to the missionary, at home or abroad, by his being able not merely to talk, but to accomplish much with his hands, and when we shall have learned what soul-building industrial training in connection with spiritual study is able to do, we shall agree that every school must be broadly industrial. Humble schools, established where needed, with facilities for industries adapted to the location, would solve the problem. A small herd of good cows in a dairy country, tools and draft animals for market-gardening where there is a good market, tools for woodwork where any phase of this can be made profitable, or facilities for some one or more other simple trades or occupations that may be found advantageous in different localities,—these, with men and women competent to lead in teaching whole-hearted devotion, personal independence, and necessary literary accomplishments,—what a revolution a score or a hundred of such schools would work now, and increasingly with the years! And which is wiser, more sensible, in consideration of the kind of workers needed in God's cause, to invest money in scholarships which are eaten up with the giving, or in enterprises which maintain themselves while giving a more valuable training to those who receive their benefits, is an easy problem for the man of business. The years of prosperity we have had for some time will not last much longer. Soon there will come crashes in moneyed circles, failures of banks and commercial concerns, then stringency and distress everywhere. Who then will feel ready to give for the establishment of the needed institutions, or for the training of workers? Who will be successful in winning scholarships by the sale of books in a money-tight market? In times of the greatest distress we may have to do whatever we have failed to do under favorable conditions. The signs of the times point the necessity for wise, judicious, but instant moves to provide schools which will meet the needs of the present hour, and more emphatically the needs of the near future. I have given actual figures, obtained in one conference. Does it seem a light thing to turn back into the world over fifty young people who might within a few years be multiplying one thousand per cent what is now invested in them? “One dollar now is worth ten dollars in the future.” And these fifty young people are not all there are, nor half there are, of the same class in one conference. We may exhort and expect them to be strong under their present circumstances; but few of us realize the tremendous pull upon them of worldly companions, worldly ambitions, or unchristian homes. The annual revivals at camp-meeting will mean little—they may come to mean worse than nothing—if we do not sensibly and determinedly take steps to keep these young people in the work and give them a chance to fill and swell the thinning ranks.