Men who
employ forty boys will not generally undertake the responsibilities
involved in receiving them as bound apprentices for a term of years.
To remedy all these evils, Major Smith proposes to add to the College
a Manual Labor Department, in which the elder boys shall acquire the
rudiments of the arts and trades to which they are destined. This will
alleviate the tedium of the College routine, assist the physical
development of the boys, and send them forth prepared to render more
desirable help to their employers. The present Board of Directors
favor the scheme.
In one particular the College has fulfilled the wishes of its founder.
He said in his will,
"I desire that by every proper means, a pure attachment to
our republican institutions, and to the sacred rights of
conscience, as guaranteed by our happy Constitution, shall
be formed and fostered in the minds of the scholars."
Three fourths of the whole number of young men, out of their time, who
were apprenticed from Girard College, have joined the Union army. We
must confess, also, that a considerable number of its apprentices,
_not_ out of their time, have run away for the same purpose.
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