As the twentieth century opened, many corporate leaders viewed with dismay the failure of manual training and trade schools to supply an army of skilled workers. Business people especially disliked industrial education programs offered through public school systems, and targeted trade unions and educators alike for criticism. Thomas E. Donnelley of R. R. Donnelley and Sons in Chicago, for example, charged that labor unions gained “representation upon the board of managers (of public schools) for the avowed purpose of seeing that their own monopolistic advantages are not jeopardized.” The chief educational spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) characterized public education as “an incapable, semi-ignorant, headless jumble.” The problem, he claimed, stemmed from the training of “the schoolmaster… [who was] uninformed in the needs and direction of the School of Life.”