Testimony Treasures, Volume 2 - Ellen G. White

Chapter 63
Industrial Reform
Because difficulties arise, we are not to drop the industries that have
been taken hold of as branches of education. While attending school the
youth should have an opportunity for learning the use of tools. Under the
guidance of experienced workmen, carpenters who are apt to teach, patient,
and kind, the students themselves should erect buildings on the school
grounds and make needed improvements, thus by practical lessons learning
how to build economically. The students should also be trained to manage all
the different kinds of work connected with printing, such as typesetting,
presswork, and bookbinding, together with tentmaking and other useful lines
of work. Small fruits should be planted, and vegetables and flowers
cultivated, and this work the lady students may be called out of doors to do.
Thus, while exercising brain, bone, and muscle, they will also be gaining a
knowledge of practical life.
Culture on all these points will make our youth useful in carrying the
truth to foreign countries. They will not then have to depend upon the people
among whom they are living to cook and sew and build for them, nor will it
be necessary to spend money to transport men thousands of miles to plan
schoolhouses, meetinghouses, and cottages. Missionaries will be much more
influential among the people if they are able to teach the inexperienced how
to labor according to the best methods and to produce the best results. They
will thus be able to demonstrate that missionaries can become industrial
educators, and this kind of instruction will be appreciated especially where
means are limited. A much smaller fund will be required to sustain such
missionaries, because, combined with their studies, they have put to the very
best use their physical powers in practical labor; and wherever they may go
all they have gained in this line will give them vantage ground. Students in
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