THE PLACE OF RESEARCH IN EDUCATION. 339 



the country, devoted to what we are now pleased to call 

 technical education, the results will be disastrous. 



Let us consider what has been and is being done. 

 Until about twenty years ago, besides our Universities, the 

 three London Colleges and Owens College, Manchester, 

 the country had little to boast of in the way of institutions for 

 higher learning to which those who had left school could re- 

 sort; but then important University Colleges were founded in 

 rapid succession in a number of the chief provincial towns. 

 Meanwhile the educational fever spread to London, and 

 there assumed an extremely acute form under the name of 

 Technical Education. The City and Guilds of London 

 Institute was founded, and built first the Finsbury Technical 

 College, and later the Central Technical College at South 

 Kensington, besides establishing an Art School at Lam- 

 beth ; and by taking over, fostering and largely extending 

 the system of Technological Examinations initiated by the 

 Society of Arts, the City Guilds Institute exercised an ex- 

 traordinary influence on the establishment and conduct of 

 evening classes for instruction in technical subjects through- 

 out the country. A further development of the same spirit 

 has led more recently to the erection here, there and every- 

 where throughout London of Polytechnics, etc., and of a 

 large number of technical schools of various degrees of 

 importance in the provincial towns. 



Why, it maybe asked, all this educational activity, and why 

 especially did the cause of technical education so suddenly 

 spring into "prominence ? The answer is, you know, be- 

 cause the conviction arose that our manufacturing industries 

 were being seriously threatened in consequence of our 

 failure to sufficiently avail ourselves of scientific aid, and the 

 greater appreciation by foreigners of the services of scien- 

 tifically trained workers. Because a feeling was abroad 

 such as was graphically expressed by Huxley in a remark- 

 able letter to the Times at the close of 1886 in which he 

 pointed out that we had "already entered upon the most 

 serious struggle for existence to which this country has 

 ever been committed," adding "the latter years of this 

 century promise to see us embarked in an industrial war 



