Richard T. Auchmuty

Richard T. Auchmuty rendered a great and practical service to his native city in the establishment of the Trade Schools, which will be his lasting monument.

He was descended from an old and distinguished family; commanded a regiment during the war; and, after its close, having wealth and leisure, began as an architect to consider the question of technical education. He saw the labor field of the United States coming every year more completely into the possession of turbulent foreign laborers; who, by the control of the trade-unions, and by their rules in regard to apprentices, were excluding American-born boys from the trades, and compelling them to grow up in idleness, which inevitably is followed by crime and pauperism. He studied the question in Europe, where every nation has a system of trade schools, whose pupils command journeymen wages immediately after graduation. With infinite care, patience and study; with the most modest, and, at the same time, the most efficient fidelity, he established the New York Trade Schools in 1881, contributing to them $70,000 of his own money; afterwards, with his wife, endowing them with $160,000 in addition; and having developed them and shown their value, he saw them, by the munificent donation of half a million dollars from another member of this Club, [J. Pierpont Morgan,] established upon a permanent foundation. The new departure aroused the ill-will of the old despotism, the trade-unions, who boycotted his graduates, and refused them admission to their ranks; but as an architect, he furnished them work himself, and by courage and persistence won the fight.

He was active in the management of many prominent institutions; was a fine specimen of the old-school gentleman of polite society; and no citizen of his day more richly deserved the admiring and affectionate remembrance of this community.

Henry E. Howland
1894 Century Association Yearbook