Correspondence (incoming) - A

II. You are well aware that now it is almost impossible to find opportunities for boys or young men to learn trades, or even to find any but the most menial employments. The trades and factories, especially in cities, are in possession of the "Trade Unions", "Knights of Labor", or other so-called labor organizations, and they, by protests or strikes, dictate how many, and often who, shall be admitted to the shops to learn trades. Then those who are admitted, come out fully imbued with all the fake doctrines taught by ignorant demagogues, and believing in the fake issues raised between capital and labor, and go out to propagate the errors in which they have been indoctrinated. So long as a large portion of our mechanics, - who, by the nature of things, will be aggregated in and around large towns and cities, - are hostile to capital, and are members of these hostile orders, so long cities will be hot beds of communism. The mechanic, simply by virtue of his

being a mechanic, causes a large influence in all these organizations. Now, could there be opportunities for boys to learn trades under more enlightened influences where they could, at the same time, study the underlying principles of Political Economy, especially those parts of it relating to the real relations between capital and labor, and the advantages of cooperative association, [VC?], and where they could be kept free from the influence of unprincipled demagogues and political schemes, a race of mechanics would arise who would wield a wide influence because of their culture, and whose influence would very soon be felt in the right direction. Boys would also appreciate the opportunity of learning a trade where one third of the time would not be wasted, so far as learning the trade is concerned, by being used at the most unskilled part of the labor. It would, perhaps, hardly be practicable to furnish opportunities for all trades, in an Industrial School,

but the leading trades could be provided for, and a few foundation trades taught, from the training in which, a boy could easily acquire any other trade lying in the same direction. As, for instance, all trades in wood-working are nearly allied, as are also those in iron and stone. This, again, involves expense, - expense for shops, power and tools, material, and, for a time at least, expense for the wastage on inferior product; but I believe that this expenditure would produce wonderful results, in an elevated and enlightened public opinion, and in the increase of skilled, and therefore more productive labor. There should be one important change made in the learning of trades. As they are now learned, it often happens that but little hand-skill is acquired; for, because the labor of the apprentice is more productive used in that way, he is kept at the supervision of machinery. While the ability to use machinery is, of course, valuable, it can never be made to take

the place of hand-skill, which must come from work done without the aid of complicated machinery. III. The effort to establish industrial schools or departments in connection with our public schools, has failed of any great success, chiefly from the fact that few teachers are to be had who have both the intellectual training and the hand skill necessary for the heads of such schools or departments. To put a school under two heads, is to create and foster confusion. The Leland Stanford Jr. University can do the country no more useful service than to prepare teachers with such qualifications as are necessary to enable them to give both intellectual culture and hand training. This opens a wide field of usefulness, and in occupying it, the new university would stand alone and could make a name as enduring as human industry.

An industrial school can never hope to supply a very great number of laborers in the various arts and trades, but if it sends out those who are able and willing to teach others, its influence will be multiplied many times in giving skilled labor, and what is of so much more importance to our country, intelligent laborers. In conclusion: the fact that to inaugurate the plans I have thus briefly indicated, involves a very large proportionate expenditure at the beginning, and that the beneficial results can only be forseen by a careful study of the whole matter, makes it probably certain that, for many years, no public appropriation could be secured for these purposes. Legislatures would stand aghast at even the suggestion of such expenditures. The instances are rare indeed, where private munificence is extended in such a way as to be available for a work of this kind. You and Mrs. Stanford stand alone, not in this country only, but in the world,