THE PRACTICAL MAN AS AN OBSTRUCTIVE. 37 

 THE PEACTICAL MAN AS AN OBSTEUCTIYE. 1 



By F. J. BKAMWELL, C. E. 



IN" prosperous times those engaged in manufactures are too busy- 

 earning and saving money to attend to a reorganization of their 

 plant ; in had times they are too dispirited and too little inclined to 

 spend the money, that in better times they have saved, in replacing old 

 and wasteful appliances by new and economical ones, and one feels 

 that there is a very considerable amount of seeming justification for 

 their conduct in both instances, and that it requires a really compre- 

 hensive and large intelligence and a belief in the future, possessed by 

 only a few out of the bulk of mankind, to cause the manufacturer to 

 pursue that which would be the true policy, as well for his own in- 

 terests as for those of the community. But there is a further and a 

 perpetual bugbear in the way of such improvements, and that bugbear 

 is the so-called " practical man," and he was in my mind when, in 

 previous parts of this address, I have hinted at the existence of an 

 obstacle to the adoption of improvement. 



I do not wish the section for one moment to suppose that I, brought 

 up as an apprentice in a workshop, and who all my life have practised 

 my profession, intend to say one word against the truly practical man. 

 On the contrary, he is the man of all others that I admire, and by 

 whom I would wish persons to be guided, because the truly practical 

 man is one who knows the reason of that which he practises, who can 

 give an account of the faith that is in him, and who, while he possesses 

 the readiness of mind and the dexterity which arise from long-con- 

 tinued and daily intercourse with the subject of his profession, possesses 

 also that necessary amount of theoretical and scientific knowledge 

 which would justify him in pursuing any process he adopts, which in 

 many cases enable him to devise new processes, or which, at all events, 

 if he be not of an inventive quality of mind, will enable him to appre- 

 ciate and value the new processes devised by others. This is the truly 

 practical man, about whom I have nothing to ' say except that which 

 is most laudatory. But the practical man as commonly understood 

 means a man who knows the practice of his trade, and knows nothing 

 else concerning it; the man whose wisdom consists in standing by, 

 seeing but not investigating the new discoveries which are taking place 

 around him ; in decrying those discoveries ; in applying to those who 

 invent improvements, even the very greatest, the epithet of " schemes ; " 

 and then, when he finds that beyond all dispute some new matter is 

 good and has come into general practice, taking to it grumblingly, but 

 still taking to it, because if he do not he could not compete with his 



1 Extract from the opening address of the chairman of the Mechanical Section of the 

 British Association, at Brighton. 



