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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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Industrial Universities for the People 40^ For even though knowledge may exist, it is perfectly powerles8 until properly applied, and we have not the means of applying if What sort of generals and soldiers would all our national sciene6 (and art) make if we had no military academies to take tha* knowledge and apply it directly and specifically to military life' Are our classic universities, our law, medicine, and divinitf schools adapted to make good generals and warriors? Just afl well as they are to make farmers and mechanics, and no better.-"" Is the defence, then, of our resources of more actual consequent than their production? Why then should the state care for t h | one, and neglect the other? According to recent publication only 1 in 260 of the popula1" tion of our own state are engaged in professional life, and no* one in 200 in the Union generally. A great proportion even o* these never enjoyed the advantages of our classical and profe^" sional schools. But there are in the United States 225 principsr universities, colleges and seminaries, schools, &c, devoted to th e interest of the professional classes, besides many smaller one£> while there is not a single one, with liberal endowments, designed for the liberal and practical education of the industrial classed No West Point as yet beams upon the horizon of their hope; tru& as yet, our boundless national resources keep us, like the childref1 of Japhet emigrating from the Ark, from the miserable degrade tion and want of older empires; but the resources themselves li e all undeveloped in some directions, wasted and misapplied ii1 others, and rapidly vanishing away as centuries roll onward* under the ignorance or unskillfulness that directs them. We, th£ members of the industrial classes are still compelled to work em* pirically and blindly, without needful books, schools or means, bf the slow process of that individual experience that lives and die? with the man. Our professional brethren, through their universities, schools, teachers, and libraries, combine and concentrate the practical experience of ages in each man's life. We need th£ same. In monarchial Europe, through their polytechnic and agri' cultural schools, some successful effort has been made, in som£ departments and classes, to meet this great want of the age. But in our democratic country, though entirely industria*
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