GEORGE V. CRESSON COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

This concern, which manufactures iron work, such as hoisting engines, cranes, etc., and thus has an excellent opportunity of utilizing the apprenticeship system, employs a supervisor of apprentices, who engages the boys throughout the works. The system in vogue. here is in a way along the same lines as that in vogue at the General Electric Company.

In the machine shop the apprentice is placed for two years in what is called the manual training school, which forms a special department planned for this particular purpose, under the sole charge of one instructor. The boys are moved from machine to machine, but before being assigned to a new machine they are, if required, to instruct a new boy coming on. After two years the apprentice is assigned to the main shop and placed under a regular foreman. He is transferred from position to position in the shop, and if he shows a liking for any particular machine or work he is allowed to finish his term on that. The works have a school connected with the shops. In this school are taught mathematics and drawing during working hours. The boys are divided into two classes, with mathematics in the morning for one class, drawing in the afternoon for the other, alternating each day during the week. The term in this school lasts from September 1 to May 1. The company encourages outside study by giving the boys home work, which counts in their general average at the end of the term. The superintendent, in the course of this investigation, stated very frankly that he had adopted the General Electric Company's idea, with certain modifications. He is very particular in the sort of entrance examination which he gives. There is also required a physical examination. The shop instructor is a practical man who was himself an old-time apprentice; the school instructor is taken from the engineering department. In order not to break into the regular factory work the school classes are held the last hour of the morning and the first hour of the afternoon.

The company has taken great pains to study carefully the various apprenticeship systems, and believes that the one which has been adopted is the best for its business. It believes that a better public school system would result from a return to fundamentals, including the teaching of subjects in a more practical way.

YALE AND TOWNE MANUFACTURING COMPANY, STAMFORD, CONN.

For a number of years this company has educated apprentices in the trades of tool-making, metal-pattern making, and blacksmithing. In addition to this it has given a few young men an all-round mechanical business training. Up to quite recently they were educated in the shops, working along as regular journeymen and being under the

charge of various foremen, which was a method similar to the old apprenticeship system, except that an apprentice instructor was delegated to have general oversight of the work of the apprentices. This plan did not prove satisfactory to the company, as the boys did not receive the amount of education which was believed to be necessary to obtain the best results.

The company makes a "specialty" and must have skilled men, so recently it has installed a "training room," where apprentices are under the immediate supervision of the director, who devotes his entire time to the work. This idea was taken from the General Electric Company's training room.

Each apprentice is required to pass a preliminary examination in order to ascertain his fitness and general education. He then enters the training room on three months' probation, and during this time his habits and aptitude are very carefully watched. The term of apprenticeship is four years, two of which must be spent in the training room. At the end of the second year the apprentice is transferred to the shop, and remains under the supervision of the director until the end of his term of apprenticeship.

Parts of machinery from the regular shops are sent to the training room and the boys work on them there. This means that the boys are engaged on the regular product and receive varied training. The company has found it impracticable to lay out a definite time schedule. in advance for each kind of machine for each apprentice. This is due to the fact that the boys differ considerably in aptitude, some requiring nearly double the time that others take in learning a given operation.

THE ALLIS-CHALMERS COMPANY.

The Allis-Chalmers Company, at its Bullock Works, Cincinnati, Ohio, conducts a graduate student system, the purpose of which is to educate young men to successfully fill positions which develop from time to time in its sales, erecting, and engineering departments. The company cooperates with the University of Cincinnati, as described hereafter.

This system embraces three different courses, namely, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and mining engineering. Each course covers a period of two years (5,500 shop hours) and the students' work is so arranged as to give them the best possible experience and training which the large facilities at hand afford.

The company are builders on a very large scale of a complete modern line of machinery as follows: Steam engines, pumping engines, gas engines, blowing engines, hoisting engines, air compressors, steam turbines, hydraulic turbines, air brakes, electrical machinery of all kinds; flour mill, sawmill, and transmission machinery; crushing

and cement machinery, mining machinery, etc. This scope of manufacture offers exceptional opportunities to the student who desires to procure the necessary shop training to qualify for the higher positions that are offering in the engineering field.

To be eligible to the graduate course an applicant must be a graduate of a school of technology. The rates of wages paid to the student are as follows: For the first 1,375 hours, 15 cents per hour; for the second 1,375 hours, 18 cents per hour; for the second 2,750 hours, 20 cents per hour.

In addition, at the end of the entire term of service, for the faithful performance of his duties throughout the course, the student is paid a bonus of $100, which is prorated in case the student is permitted to shorten his course to enter the company's regular employ. No bonus is paid to the student who, before the end of his course, leaves the company's employ, either on his own volition or at the instigation of the company for misconduct or unsatisfactory progress.

The students ordinarily serve the regular shop time of the company's works, which consists of fifty-four hours per week. All overtime actually worked by the students is counted on the course and paid for at the same rate proportionately as journeymen employees are paid for overtime, i. e., for every hour overtime served by students they are paid in wages for an hour and a half.

The students are subject at all times to all shop and office rules. They are required to provide themselves with the ordinary tools necessary for mechanics, such as rules, scales, calipers, etc., or if employed in the drawing office, with a reasonable supply of drawing instruments. If the students so elect, the company will furnish these necessary tools and instruments to them at cost to the company, and deduct such cost from the wages of the students in installments.

The courses involve work progressing at intervals in the various departments as follows:

Mechanical engineering.-Iron foundry, Corliss engine machine and erecting shops, steam turbine machine and erecting shops, gas engine machine and erecting shops, hydraulic turbine machine and erecting shops.

Also when opportunity affords, the mechanical students are, toward the latter part of their course, sent out in the field with experienced erecting engineers to assist in the erection of machinery, during which time a reasonable allowance is made by the company for traveling and living expenses; and such students as qualify for the responsibility are sometimes given full charge of erecting work in the field before completion of their course.

Mining engineering.-Iron foundry, mining department machine and erecting shops, Corliss engine machine and erecting shops.

Electrical engineering.-Commutator department, controller department, assembling department, shop erecting department, testing department.

Students in all three courses engage in the actual work of the various departments mentioned under experienced machinists, and in this way learn to perform the various classes of shop and erecting work in a competent and skillful manner. They at the same time apply their theoretical knowledge to actual practice and become thoroughly familiar with the lines of machinery on which they work.

OTHER CINCINNATI COMPANIES.

The Houston, Stanwood & Gamble Company has an apprentice system with a school of its own, and cooperates with the University of Cincinnati in its cooperative courses, as do several other Cincinnati concerns. These illustrate the system, however.

THE COOPERATIVE COURSES IN ENGINEERING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF

CINCINNATI.

The experience of the great manufacturing concerns and railroad companies as given above exemplifies most emphatically the types of modern apprenticeship systems in which shop work and class-room work are coordinated in such a way as to secure the very highest results in industrial training. Other examples could be given, but enough systems have been described to illustrate the trend in the resuscitation of apprenticeship.

It will be noticed that in nearly all the cases cited the concerns pay the apprentices while in the schoolroom the same as while in the shop. This is an essential feature of the whole modern arrangement and offers an inducement to a high grade of apprentices that does not enter into any other method.

There is going on in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, an experiment that is being watched with great interest by educators, whether they are simply interested in academic work or in industrial training. That experiment is known as the "cooperative courses in engineering" at the University of Cincinnati, established in that university by Prof. Herman Schneider, of the department of civil engineering, and dean of the college of engineering in that institution.

In an address before the Fifteenth Annual Convention of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, in July, 1907, Professor Schneider stated that he began what might be called a pedagogical research into the problem of engineering education six years before the time of his address; that in due course he sifted the problem to three questions: (1) What requirements should the finished product of an engineering school fulfill? (2) Where and how shall we get the raw material to make the required finished product? (3)

Through what processes shall we put the raw material in order to obtain the required finished product?

Professor Schneider carried on his investigations for six years through visits to the largest manufacturing concerns in the Eastern and Middle States in order to obtain from employers of engineers their views on the subject, and he still considers his investigation in progress. The results of all his study, observation, and inquiry culminated in an attempt to make an actual demonstration of a system of education which should be the natural outgrowth of his investigations.

Fortunately for him, opportunity was offered for the experiment at the University of Cincinnati, resulting in cooperative courses in mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering, now in operation at that institution. The courses adopted are so planned that the students taking them work alternate weeks in the engineering college of the university and at the manufacturing shops of the city. Each class is divided into two sections, alternating with each other, so that when one class is at the university the other is at the shops. In this way the shops are always fully manned, and thus the manufacturers suffer no loss and practically no inconvenience by the system.

The length of these courses is six years. The entrance requirements are precisely the same as for the regular four-year courses, and the university instruction under the cooperative plan is just as complete, thorough, broad, and cultural as that in the regular courses; indeed, the university people feel that, as a matter of fact, it is broader and more cultural.

The cooperative students work alternate weeks in the shops of the city throughout the scholastic year, and in the summer full time, but are given several weeks' vacation. The practical work of the shops is as carefully planned as the theoretical work at the university, and in all cases the students follow as near as possible the path of the machine manufactured, from the raw material to the finished product sold. At the Bullock Electric Company, Cincinnati, the students spend the first year in the foundry, the next two years in the graduate apprentice course. A contract is signed in triplicate by the student, the university, and the firm. In all cases the dean of the engineering college and the professor of electrical, chemical, or mechanical engineering, as the case may be, confer with the manufacturers in planning the course of shopwork, so that the young men get a logically and carefully planned shop and business training.

The students are paid for their services on a scale of wages beginning at 10 cents an hour and increasing at the rate of 1 cent an hour every six months. A student's total earnings in the six years will amount to about $2,000.

A comparison of the work of the four-year freshmen who did not take the alternate shopwork with that of the six-year freshmen who