We had, before the war, the system of apprenticeship as practised to a great extent in Europe to-day. Its almost total extinction is laid at the door of concentrated, and still concentrating, capital, aided by improved machinery.

Some may argue that our improved machinery has the tendency to combine capital. This may be true in some measure; but, upon second thought, it will become clear to an impartial thinker that the protective tariff is the chief cause, as is evidenced by its baneful results—the trusts.

Under this new order, the shoemaker has no need of apprentices. The Northern shoe-factory, which employs cheap foreign labor at labor-saving machines, takes away his trade. He has, of course, a few customers for hand-made shoes, but his principal occupation consists in mending the poorly made shoes of the factory. He needs no apprentices for that, but, in order to make a comfortable living for his family and give his children the benefits of an education, he must charge big prices; and I venture to predict that the time is not far off when it will be cheaper to the consumer to buy a new pair of shoes from the factory than to have the old ones half-soled and otherwise repaired by the shoemaker of his town. This holds good in regard to other trades, and the question arises: What condition are we drifting into?

The indications are that we shall have in the near future a manufacturing class, a farming class, and a floating class. This floating class deserves our serious consideration. It consists of a large body of men and women, shiftlessly changing from the merchant class to the professions, and from the professions to the merchant class.

Our educational system helps to increase the confusion. Starting out with the intention of making the schools of the country the foundation of a substantial education in the elementary branches, our educators have allowed themselves to be carried away—through sheer enthusiasm, no doubt—from that simple and substantial basis of operation; and we have to-day, as the necessary result, the most complicated, absurd, and absolutely useless educational system in the world.

There is no branch of human knowledge that is not taught in the public schools of the country; and the most remarkable fact about it is that one solitary teacher is supposed to understand and to be able to teach this endless variety of branches.

For whose benefit is such an education intended? For the large floating population of the country; for the boys and girls whose parents have no positive intentions as to their children's future career.

In conversation with a public-school teacher I asked why he taught geometry and trigonometry in the school. "Well," he said, "it is of not much use, and takes valuable time from the rest of the scholars; but some of the patrons wish to have their children study it, because they might have future use for it."

When a few others wish Latin, German, or French taught, the teacher immediately undertakes it, while the great mass of the pupils are actually starving for the most elementary knowledge of the common-school branches.

We have, in consequence, a class, composed principally of young men, who have no education especially suited to any definite trade or profession. This class is constantly growing, to the detriment of the country. The trades are driven to the wall by combined capital, and there is literally nothing to do for many of our young men except to stand in a store as clerk or bookkeeper. Farmers' sons starting out in life with a shallow education received from a shallow system look with aversion upon the occupation of tiller of the soil, and, deluded by the education received at the country school-house into the belief that the world lays at their feet, go from one profession or trade to another, never satisfied, never of any account, and never successful.

If a freer trade has a tendency to break up trusts and combinations of capital, it will, in consequence, distribute the industries of the country more evenly among the people, and, by giving employment to our young men at home, will give them a definite aim in life and do away with the silly demand for a university education in a common public school.

Emil Ludwig Scharf.