Excerpt from Annual Report of the Department of Education, for the Year Ending November 30, 1928, Vol. 1: Issued in Accordance With Section 2 of Chapter 69 of the General Laws The beginnings of public recognition of the problem lie much further in the past. The General Court of 1870 enacted a law (chapter 248) requiring the establishment of evening classes in industrial and mechanical drawing in towns of ten thousand population. (fifteen such classes so established in seven cities of the State became in 1908 State-aided vocational classes.) In 1872, legislation was passed (chapter 86) permitting any town or city to establish vocational classes. Apparently no municipality in Massachusetts stood ready at that time to embark independently on so far-reaching an experiment. Springfield, inaugurating its Evening School of Trades in 1898, has the distinction of being the first and only city to avail itself of the permissive law. Evidently the time was not ripe, in those late decades of the nineteenth century, for the establishment of a general system of vocational education. However, the Opinion of educators and industrialists was moving towards it. The law of 1894 (chapter requiring manual training in every school system representing a population of or more, was the answer of the school to a vaguely felt need; Only one year later (chapter 475, Acts of 1895) the Legislature gave blanket authorization for the establishment of a textile school in any city having spindles. In Lowell, Fall River, and New Bedford, such schools were almost im mediately established. These are now conducted as State institutions, and conse quently, like the Massachusetts Agricultural College (established in 1863) and the Massachusetts Nautical School (dating from do not form a part of the pres ent State-aided vocational school system. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.