RAILWAY SCHOOL AT BRESLAU.

By Dr. HILSCHER.

[From the Oesterreichische Eisenbahn Zeitung, No. 9, 1898.]

On October 4, 1897, under the control of the royal railway directorate, a railway school was opened at Breslau, which is intended to provide candidates seeking appointments as secretaries and superintendents in the traffic and goods departments with a practical education, and to teach them also as much theoretical railway science as possible. Civil supernumeraries and candidates for posts in the railway offices are obliged to attend the courses, while this is optional for men residing in Breslau who have recently been appointed and wish to prepare for the examinations for the posts of secretary, traffic or goods superintendents, or for those who desire to attend some or all the courses of lectures.

Disregard of instructions given by the teachers will be considered as equivalent to disobedience to a superior officer.

Officials selected by the railway directorate deliver the lectures, and one of them has been specially chosen to manage the school. The teachers meet together to discuss the interests of the school and to suggest what improvements are advisable. At the end of a school year a report is sent to the royal railway directorate, in which the teachers express their opinion as to the result of the teaching, the discipline, attendance at the courses, the use made of the library, and as to any alterations they deem advisable in the organization of the school.

The lectures take place between 8 and 11 a. m. on three days in the week, two classes being held, if necessary, from the beginning of October to the end of March. The pupils are not made to write papers, but now and again oral examinations are held to find out whether the courses are being properly followed and understood.

The courses are as follows:

1. Constitutional law of the state and the empire, organization of the departments of the state and the empire, executive government of the Prussian state railways, internal regulation of the offices: Thirty lectures.

2. Principal provisions of the law of procedure, of the law as to the tutorial functions and jurisdiction of the administration, discipline, law, and the regulations applying to officers and employees: Fifteen lectures.

3. Geography: Ten lectures.

4. Officers' benevolent institutions: Ten lectures.

5. Workingmen's benevolent institutions: Twelve lectures.

6. Political economy: Ten lectures.

7. Cashier's department: Twenty lectures.

8. Account keeping: Twenty lectures.

9. Arrangements as to fares and freight rates for and additional pay to the train staff: Six lectures.

10. New lines (laws dealing with railway undertakings, preliminary works, compulsory purchase, survey, regulations as to construction): Seventeen lectures. 11. Stores department: Eight lectures.

12. Workshops department: Six lectures. 13. Audit department: Nineteen lectures. 14. Rates department: Fifteen lectures. 15. Customs and taxes: Fifteen lectures.

16. Utilization of rolling stock: Eight lectures.

Obviously it is not yet possible to predict how far this school, which has been organized on novel lines, will come up to what is expected of it. Its special object is to prepare candidates for examination, and there is little doubt that this end will be attained when we consider that attendance at the school will be obligatory and that in Germany departmental regulations must be obeyed.

As for its producing traffic engineers by teaching as much theoretical science as possible," this can hardly be expected, for nobody becomes an engineer by virtue of simply knowing the laws and regulations as to construction.

Nevertheless, it is a matter for congratulation that Germany, too, has realized the necessity of special teaching for railway men, and that the initiative in this matter has been taken by the only properly authorized body, namely, the State.

CHAPTER XVIII.

UNIVERSITY EXTENSION IN GREAT BRITAIN.

By HERBERT B. ADAMS,

Professor in Johns Hopkins University.

957

"Promote as an object of primary importance institutions for the increase and diffusion of knowledge."-George Washington.

"Universities are, in their first function, places and centers of research. They are designed to add to and augment the fund of knowledge. They have also the other functions of diffusing and distributing knowledge."-John Morley, at Newcastle, September 22, 1887.

"The higher education of citizens has become an urgent need of the modern democratic state."-M. E. Sadler.

"A man needs education not only as a means of livelihood, but as a means of life.”—G. J. Goschen, D. C. L., M. P.

"We advocate education not merely to make the man the better workman, but the workman the better man."-Sir John Lubbock.

"A mere system of popular lectures has no right to the name of University Extension. The business of a university is to promote sound and thorough study and to make thinking men of its alumni. The business of University Extension is the same, the difference is only in the field of operation. * * * I am persuaded that if the University Extension movement loses its character as a student-creating movement and comes to be regarded as a scheme for popular lecturing it is doomed as University Extension; it will fritter itself away without leaving any deep or permanent mark upon the higher educational system of the country."-R. D. Roberts, at World's Congress on University Extension, Chicago, 1893.

"If the Extension lectures had effected nothing more than what is universally admitted they have effected-raised the standard of popular lectures throughout England-they would have justified their institution."-J. Churton Collins, 1899.

"Education of the People is the first duty of Democracy."-Jules Siegfried, President of French Committee, social economy group, Paris Exposition, 1900.

958