The New Englander invents normally; his brain has a bias that way. He mechanizes as an old Greek sculptured, as the Venetian painted, or the modern Italian sang. —London Times, after Paris exhibition, 1855
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Turner. This Act provided for the support of state universities for the teaching of agriculture and mechanic arts. In the first disbursements Massachusetts had given its share of this federal grant to a new Agricultural College and to a small Institute of Technology located in a private house on Summer Street in Boston. Undoubtedly, these schools and the attention they were receiving influenced the terms of John Boynton’s letter. As for Emory Washburn, he had for a long time been deeply concerned about the lack of industrial training in Worcester County. No one had been in a better position to know how much this County relied on manufacturing for its subsistence. Inventive genius in this County had ranked high, with Worcester men for several years receiving more patents than any other comparable section of the country. But now that patents were starting to run out and quantity of production was becoming the rule for prosperity, there were all too few capable men who could run and manage the mechanical marvels which had been created. Repeatedly men had come to Mr. Washburn saying, “My son does not want to be a farmer. Where can I send him to educate him?” In a speech before the Legislature Mr. Washburn once re marked that there had always been schools in Massachusetts if anyone wanted “to become a scholar” or if he wanted to “study divinity or medicine or law.” There were schools, he said, for the retarded, the idiot, the farmer, but not for the mechanic. “Scientific schools have been among the last and for a very natural reason. They were not needed.” Suddenly they were needed. Railroads had replaced the canals. An engineer, John Ericsson, had in the previous year built the Monitor and thereby outmoded the navies of the world. A turbine wheel had taken over from the old water wheel, and according to Mr. Washburn, it was producing at least twenty-five per cent more power. The boys by the hundreds had come home from the Civil War unprepared for these changes. The most recent census indicated that there were ten thousand young men between the ages of fifteen and twenty in Worcester County. Where were these boys to turn for occupation? Some of Mr. Washburn’s worry is reflected in the mirror of John Boynton’s letter. With so many influencing factors, it is surprising that the final document speaks as resolutely as it does. There was no hesitation. “The aim of this school,” the words read with finality, “shall ever be . . .” There then followed a paragraph of one hundred and seventyeight words—all in one sentence. The meaning was tucked neatly into one of its first fragments—“those branches of education . . . best adapted to train the young for practical life.” For a hundred years those words have invited and defied definition. In 1865 the “practical” life required the attention of me-