From whatever source it is provided, technical education in the United States comes mainly within the scope of two classes of institutions, viz., agricultural and mechanical colleges; although the two are, as often as not, combined under one establishment, and particularly it forms the subject of a national grant.  Indeed, it may be said that the scope of industrial education embraces three classes:  the farmer, the mechanic, and the housekeeper; and in the far West we find that provision is made for the education of these three classes in the same schools, it being an accepted idea in the newer States that man and woman (the housekeeper) are coworkers, and are, therefore, entitled to equal and similar educational privileges.  On the other hand, in the more conservative East and South, we find that the sexes are educated distinct from each other.  In the East, there is generally, also, a separation of subjects.  In Massachusetts, for instance, the colleges of agriculture and mechanics are separate affairs, the students being taught in different institutions, viz., the agricultural college and the institute of technology.  In Missouri the separation is less defined, the School of Mines and Metallurgy being the, only part that is distinct from the other departments of the University.

One of the chief reasons for the necessity for hastening the extension of technical education in America was the almost entire disappearance of the apprenticeship system, which, in itself, is mainly due to the subdivision of labor so prevalent in the manufacture of everything, from pins to locomotives.  The increased use of machinery, the character of which is such as often to put an end to small enterprises, has promoted this subdivision by accumulating workmen in large groups.  The beginner, confining himself to one department, is soon able to earn wages, and so he usually continues as he begins.  Mr. C.B.  Stetson has written on this subject with great force and earnestness, and it will not be amiss to quote a sentence as to the advantages enjoyed by the technically workman.  He says that “it is the rude or dexterous workman, rather than the really skilled one, who is supplanted by machinery.  Skilled labor requires thinking; but a machine never thinks, never judges, never discriminates.  Though its employment does, indeed, enable rude laborers to do many things now which formerly could only be done by dexterous workmen, it is clear that its use has decidedly increased the relative demand for skilled labor as compared with unskilled, and there is abundant room for an additional increase, if it is true, as declared by the most eminent authority, that the power now expended can be readily made to yield three or four times its present results, and ultimately ten or twenty times, when masters and workmen can be had with sufficient intelligence and skill for the direction and manipulation of the tools and machinery that would be invented.”