educational
system in the Fatherland to-day, it would perhaps be the highly
specialized condition of the technical schools.

In approaching our problem we naturally ask ourselves the question as to
how far the industrial progress of a country is influenced by technical
education. In no time as in our own has so much stress been laid upon
the commercial side of our existence. New trades, new industries are
springing up; specialization is becoming more far-reaching and more
firmly established than ever before; competition is becoming keener;
the application of science to the arts is more varied.

In this latter field we find Germany in the very fore front, she having
developed along these lines to a greater extent than have many of our
nations. Illustrations of this application lie all about us,--in the
bettered transportation facilities by railroad and by ocean vessel; in
the more improved bridge and building construction; in the methods of
water supply and drainage; in modes of heat, light, and ventilation; in
electric vehicles, sound transmitters, labor-saving machinery; in finely
adjusted instruments that bring far away worlds almost within reaching
distance; in these and a thousand other ways is made manifest the result
of the application of science to the arts. Germany is taking a prominent
part in this warfare for industrial supremacy, and that she expects her
technical schools to be largely instrumental in answering many of the
problems of the present and the future cannot be doubted, especially
when one is made aware of the diversity and extent of the schools of a
technical character scattered over the Empire.

It will be readily understood from the foregoing how difficult a matter
it is to make any one classification that will cover in an adequate
manner the various types of existing institutions. Frequently a school
is found which in some respects is distinctive. To place such a school
in this or that category would of course do violence to the
classification, while to form a new class only serves to further
complicate and bewilder. Again, various of the institutions mentioned
may offer such a differentiated schedule or be made up of so many
parallel departments as to entitle them to admission into two or more of
the classes given.

Another point of difficulty lies in the fact that the term "technical"
would in Germany be somewhat more sweeping than with us in America. We
do not class technical training wit