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INTRODUCTION
The typical American boy,
at some period in his life, has a taste for the mechanic arts. Before he is
out of pinafores, he surreptitiously lays hold of edged tools, and with
unlimited selfconfidence tries to make something. If his success lies
chiefly in the direction of making pieces of furniture and bric-a-brac, and
the covering of his juvenile apron with gore, followed by a tableau in which
a shrieking youngster, an angry sire, and a sympathetic mother are about
equally prominent, the effect is merely to determine the amount of the boy’s
grit, and to prepare the way, in the battles of the future, for the survival
of the fittest. While a certain number of the pinafored experimenters,
pensively regarding healed gashes and flattened thumbs, will ever after
sedulously avoid contact with chisels and hammers, the plucky boys, who form
the majority, will hardly wait for the shedding of belladonna plasters, and
the bleaching of gory aprons, before seizing upon the instruments of their
discomfiture, with a firm determination (founded on the boyish belief in the
intelligence and moral responsibility of inanimate objects) to let those
tools know that they know how to handle them without getting hurt. After
various efforts for the mastery, the implacable foes of the unskilful
juvenile, such as the hatchet, the saw and the hammer, will shake their
sides in malignant laughter over the final discomfiture of a second
installment of the rising generation, and will own themselves partially
subject to the ten and twelve-year-old veterans who have come triumphantly
through the struggle, and can use such tools as happen to fall into their
hands with a more or less murderous degree of execution. To this large class
of boys, intrepid, ambitious, industrious, and full of manly instincts,
America looks for its inventors, its engineers, architects, designers,
skilled artisans, and most successful business men in every walk in life.
They constitute, in fact, what may be termed the “ Honorable Guild of
Amateur Artisans,” and it is for the benefit of the members of this juvenile
guild that “A Boy’s Workshop ” is sent forth, with the best wishes of its
editors and publishers.
It will bring to thousands of lads just such information in regard to the
first steps in the mechanic arts as they most need, and will enable them,
with little other direction, if wisely encouraged by their elders, to so
develop whatever mechanical ingenuity they may possess, as to make it easy
to determine whether they shall ultimately join the ranks of those wholly
devoted to the useful arts, or continue to be amateurs, using to good
advantage whatever skill they have acquired in connection with other
occupations.
But the parents and instructors of boys have no less reason than the boys
themselves for awarding to this book a cordial welcome. In neither home nor
school is adequate attention now given to the training of the hands to skill
in the use of any of the tools employed in the industrial arts. It need
hardly be stated that every boy should have at least a little training in
this direction, while to thousands, such training is an essential part of
their equipment as bread-winners and as useful citizens. “A Boy’s Workshop”
is calculated to meet a need in this important respect, and on this account
alone, is worthy of a place in the library of every home and school. (
The desire to turn the energies of hands and brain upon constructive work,
is worthy and honorable. Let it have proper encouragement. We have too
little of the industry which follows habits well formed, and too little of
the thrift which follows skill. Society, the State, and the nation have need
of the boy who has a workshop. May every boy who wants one, have one, and
God bless him!
HENRY RANDALL WAITE.
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