TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 579 



position in which they can do the work for which they are specially 

 fitted. 



Thus, if a lad in an elementary school showed signs of special 

 capacity, I would try to provide him with the means of continuing 

 his education after his daily working-life had begun ; if, in the even- 

 ing classes, he developed special capabilities in the direction of sci- 

 ence or of drawing, I would try to secure him an apprenticeship to 

 some trade in which those powers would have applicability. Or, if 

 he chose to become a teacher, he should have the chance of so doing. 

 Finally, to the lad of genius, the one in a million, I would make 

 accessible the highest and most complete training the country could 

 afford. Whatever that might cost, depend upon it the investment 

 would be a good one. I weigh my words when I say that, if the 

 nation could purchase a potential Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at the 

 cost of a hundred thousand pounds down, he would be dirt-cheap at 

 the money. It is a mere commonplace and every-day piece of knowl- 

 edge, that what these three men did has produced untold millions of 

 wealth, in the narrowest economical sense of the word. 



Therefore, as the sum and crown of what is to be done for technical 

 education, I look to the provision of a machinery for winnowing out 

 the capacities and giving them scope. When I was a member of the 

 London School Board, I said, in the course of a speech, that our busi- 

 ness was to provide a ladder, reaching from the gutter to the univer- 

 sity, along which every child in the three kingdoms should have the 

 chance of climbing as far as he was fit to go. This phrase was so 

 much bandied about at the time, that, to say truth, I am rather tired 

 of it ; but I know of no other which so fully expresses my belief, not 

 only about education in general, but about technical education in 

 particular. 



The essential foundation of all the organization needed for the 

 promotion of education among handicraftsmen will, I believe, exist 

 in this country when every working-lad can feel that society has done 

 what lies in its power to remove all needless and artificial obstacles 

 from his path ; that there is no barrier, except such as exist in the 

 nature of things, between himself and whatever place in the social 

 organization he is fitted to fill ; and, more than this, that, if he has 

 capacity and industry, a hand is held out to help him along any path 

 which is wisely and honestly chosen. 



I have endeavored to point out to you that a great deal of such an 

 organization already exists ; and I am glad to be able to add that 

 there is a good prospect that what is wanting will, before long, be 

 supplemented. 



Those powerful and wealthy societies, the livery companies of the 

 city of London, remembering that they are the heirs and represent- 

 atives of the trade-guilds of the middle ages, are interesting them- 

 selves in the question. So far back as 1872 the Society of Arts or- 



