He was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, the oldest in a family of six sons and one daughter of Thomas and Amanda (Ruch) Foster. His father, a descendant of Reginald Foster, who came to Ipswich, Massachussets, from Ipswich, England, in 1638, had moved to Pottsville from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His mother was descended from George Ruch, a Palatine German who came to America in 1733.
Young Foster was educated in Pottsville public schools and, after serving as a lieutenant during the Civil War, at the Eastman Business College, Poughkeepsie, New York. (1864 - 65).
The remedy, he felt, lay in better education, and in 1881 he started a local Mining Lyceum, began publishing a series of booklets on the practical techniques of mining (the first--The Mine Foreman's Pocket Book, adapted from an English manual--eventually went through eleven editions), and established the weekly Mining Herald "to instruct the miners in the safest and best ways of mining coal. "
By 1891, deciding to capitalize on the need for specific instruction, he had worked out a full coal-mining course, most aspects of which were to be taught by mail, supplemented by classroom instruction in surveying and mapping.
Settling in fast-growing Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, in the heart of the anthracite coal-mining area, Foster and Boyer started in 1870 the Weekly Herald and in 1875 the daily Evening Herald.
This was a time of discontent among the miners, during the depression of 1873-79.
Foster vigorously opposed the lawless activity of the "Molly Maguires, " but he championed many of the miners' causes, supporting the Greenback party at a time when it had a strong labor following and helping to secure legislation establishing the Ashland (or "Miners") State Hospital in the anthracite area (1879).
Foster's greatest concern, however, was with the loss of life in coal-mine explosions. This concern was sharply intensified shortly before 1881 when three mining officials--all close friends of his--were killed in such an explosion.
The remedy, he felt, lay in better education, and in 1881 he started a local Mining Lyceum, began publishing a series of booklets on the practical techniques of mining (the first--The Mine Foreman's Pocket Book, adapted from an English manual--eventually went through eleven editions), and established the weekly Mining Herald "to instruct the miners in the safest and best ways of mining coal. "
He was also influential in obtaining the passage of a state mine safety law in 1885. The new law required mine foremen and inspectors to pass qualifying examinations in a number of technical subjects.
From the beginning a prominent feature of the Mining Herald had been a "Question and Answer Department, " and Foster now found himself flooded with problems of arithmetic, mensuration, and formulas.
Moving to nearby Scranton in 1888, he established there the Colliery Engineer and continued his question-and-answer column.
By 1891, deciding to capitalize on the need for specific instruction, he had worked out a full coal-mining course, most aspects of which were to be taught by mail, supplemented by classroom instruction in surveying and mapping.
Since many of his students could not afford the time or money to come to Scranton, Foster developed an alternative, which proved to be a pioneer step in visual education. Through carefully simplified texts, in which the use and operation of every part of surveying instruments was illustrated and explained, he found that his mining students could learn all they needed to know by mail.
This technique of breaking down complex material into simple, graphic texts was the key to much of Foster's later work. The "Colliery Engineer School of Mines, " begun in 1891, was the first of what were later named the International Correspondence Schools. It was an immediate success. Within a year he had enrolled over 500 students from twenty-nine states and three Canadian provinces.
Foster quickly added new courses and "schools, " both at the professional and at the trades level, employing expert writers and illustrators to plan them.
By 1906 thirty-one schools were teaching some five hundred subjects ranging from engineering and architecture to plumbing and window trimming and, by Foster's own account, the International Correspondence Schools had received $29, 000, 000 in fees from over 900, 000 students.
Foster's innovation came at a time of great expansion in the technical fields and when there was a dearth of facilities for self-education. But no small part of his success (and his subsequent downfall) was owing to his instinct for promotion. He estimated that only about a quarter of his students enrolled on their own initiative in I. C. S. ; the rest were attracted by inspirational advertising and personal solicitation (he maintained a large staff of regional salesmen) and, once enrolled, were encouraged by individual attention and a lenient installment-plan system of fees to complete their courses. Foster had a fertile imagination combined with boundless enthusiasm that had once, in 1886, led him off on a gold prospecting expedition to Honduras.
When he incorporated the International Correspondence Schools in 1901, he also incorporated a holding company, the International Textbook Company, and through it, apparently as a result of his own poor financial judgment and the influence of stock promoters who gained his confidence, he eventually built up a $100, 000, 000 pyramid of some twenty varied interests, including railroads and real estate ventures.
Foster died in Scranton at the age of ninety-three and was buried in Forest Hill Cemetery there.
He also established a large stock sales department to sell stock to his students. For a time, as the I. C. S. continued to expand, he was able to pay quarterly dividends of ten per cent. But World War I brought a drop in enrollments, and Foster found himself overcapitalized. Scranton banks came to the rescue with a substantial loan, but only on the condition that Foster surrender financial control; and though he was offered the post of chairman of the board, he chose to resign altogether. Thereafter he opened offices of his own in Scranton and for ten years wrote salesmanship and personality development courses for such clients as the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Though no longer under his control, the enterprise he had founded and developed continued to prosper, a significant and in many ways a unique venture in education.
In 1869 Foster had married Fanny C. Millet, by whom he had two sons, Joel and Jeremiah, and three daughters, Amanda, Mary, and Emma. After Mrs. Foster's death, he married Blandina Harrington of Philadelphia. They had one child, Thomas Jefferson.
