Category: Historical Images

Years ago I found it necessary to warn people of certain fallacies and misconceptions. There is less need of warnings to-day, yet there are dangers. Some people still think that manual labor is manual training, just as they probably think that the boy who fetches and carries books in a library is becoming a literary man.

Others think a manual training school should be a factory, and should put its goods on the market. Still others think that the chief product of manual training is found in bits of furniture and knick-nacks which pupils carry home. It is constantly necessary for us to explain that ordinary manual labor is not manual training at all. There is training in mastering the theory and the use of a tool or a machine under the guidance of an expert; but when the mastery is gained, and gained thoroughly, there is no training in its continued use, which is not for education but is for commercial ends.

My usual reply to people who betray such misconceptions is already gray with age, but it may be allowed a positively last appearance here—the more a school becomes a factory the less is it a school. The school should put one article upon the market and that is, boys; and if all the shop exercises of the year were at its close put into a furnace and burned, all the manual training would remain.
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The lathe-feed topic will bear a great deal more stirring up. The product of the lathe is of course not determined alone by the feed employed. It may often occur that one using a fine feed will turn out a quicker and better job than one using a coarse feed upon a similar piece of work. We often hear it remarked that no two men will do a job alike. Certainly not.

Still there is but one best way, and where men differ in practice there is something that one can learn of the other. It will generally happen, perhaps, that even in such a case the advantage is not all upon one side, and in some particulars each may learn of the other. The actual exchange of ideas is always mutually profitable, but there is plenty of gab perpetrated, which involves no transfer of mental currency. The man who says the most is not the man who has the most to say.

A machinist “learning the trade”—and that he always is—finds himself in the position of a young man whom a fond father was sending forth into the world to seek his fortune. “My son,” said he, “no one ever embarked in life under more favorable auspices: you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.”
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I continued thus employed in my father’s business for two years, that is, till I was twelve years old; and my brother John, who was bred to that business, having left my father, married and set up for himself at Rhode Island: there was every appearance that I was destined to supply his place, and become a tallow-chandler.

But my dislike to the trade continuing, my father had apprehensions that if he did not put me to one more agreeable, I should break loose and go to sea, as my brother Josiah had done, to his great vexation. In consequence, he took me to walk with him and see joiners, bricklayers, turners, braziers, &c. at their work, that he might observe my inclination, and endeavour to fix it on some trade or profession that would keep me on land.

It has ever since been a pleasure to me to see good workmen handle their tools. And it has been often useful to me, to have learnt so much by it, as to be able to do some trifling jobs in the house when a workman was not at hand, and to construct little machines for my experiments at the moment when the intention of making these was warm in my mind.

My father determined at last for the cutler’s trade, and placed me for some days on trial with Samuel, son to my uncle Benjamin, who was bred to that trade in London, and had just established himself in Boston. But the sum he exacted as a fee for my apprenticeship displeased my father, and I was taken home again.

Benjamin Franklin (writing about his life in Boston circa 1718)

Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1771 to 1790)

—Jeff Burks

An inquest was held this Friday on the body of a French Artisan who committed suicide under the following circumstances: Mr. John Wilson stated that the deceased had lodged with him for twelve months, and was apparently independent when he took the apartments. Lately he seemed to be pressed for money, and a fortnight ago told a witness he was an artisan who had saved money for the purpose of going into business.

The previous Saturday he brought home two large planks of wood and a large double handled knife, such as is used by tanners for scraping the hair off skins, but no notice was taken of it, the witness thinking it was for model-making.

On Monday his suicide was discovered, his head having been cut off by a guillotine. The two planks had been used as uprights at the top of which the knife had been placed. Grooves had been cut in the inner side of the planks for the knife to run easily and two heavy stones were bound to the upper side of the knife to give it weight.

By means of the pulley he had drawn up the knife and let it fall on his throat, the head being cut clean off. Confirmatory evidence having been given, the jury returned a verdict of unsound mind.

The Illustrated Police News – London 1876

Normally I would not publish material like this, but since Chris insisted on posting the Death by Roubo article last March, it is safe to say that this bridge has already been crossed. I’m not sure what he planned to do with all those leftover pieces of French oak from the FORP… though I have no reason to suspect that he is building his own guillotine. Besides, it is far more likely that Chris will meet his maker by some other means.

The Illustrated Police News (1864-1938) published a weekly penny newspaper featuring sensationalist stories about murder and crime. The illustrations were reminiscent of the 18th century publication The Newgate Calendar, or The Malefactors’ Bloody Register, originally a monthly bulletin of executions, produced by the Keeper of Newgate Prison in London. These tabloids were a popular form of entertainment for the working poor.

—Jeff Burks