Report on a Developing School, and School-Shops, by a Committee Appointed by the American Social Science Association, and Read at Their Annual Meeting in Boston, Mass., January 10, 1877

Boston: Press of Rockwell & Churchill, 1877. First Edition. Very good. First edition; 9 x 5 3/4; pp. [1], 4-30; blue wraps, printed and ruled in black; two small nicks to bottom edge of front wrap; a bit of wear to tips of spine; minor spotting; in very good condition.The American Social Science Association was founded in 1865 as a society for the study of social questions. The organization would establish the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1898. Its co-founders and leaders included author, abolitionist, and reformer Franklin Benjamin Sanborn and physician, author, and social activist Lucy M. Hall-Brown. With the inustrialization and the demand for skilled workers growing in the post-Civil War years, the society saw the need for establishing developing schools and school-shops, where practical, hands-on learning in various trades and crafts could be implemented, alongside the standard school subjects. To come up with a plan for such schools, the society would appoint a committee, which would read as who-is-who of the times' public figures, including Boston inventor and press maker Stephen P. Ruggles (1808-1880), abolitionist and labor reformer Wendell Phillips (1811 - 1884), mathematician and abolitionist Elizur Wright (1804 - 1885), and others.