svii TECHNICAL EDUCATION 439 



is the best way of obtaining them? I must con- 

 fess that I have a strong prejudice in favour of 

 carrying out undertakings of this kind, which at 

 first, at any rate, must be to a great extent tenta- 

 tive and experimental, by private effort. I don't 

 believe that the man lives at this present time 

 who is competent to organise a final system of 

 technical education. I believe that all attempts 

 made in that direction must for many years to come 

 be experimental, and that we must get to success 

 through a series of blunders. Now that work is 

 far better performed by private enterprise than in 

 any other way. But there is another method 

 which I think is joermissible, and not only permis- 

 sible but highly recommendable in this case, and 

 that is the method of allowing the locality itself 

 in which any branch of industry is pursued to be 

 its own judge of its own wants, and to tax itself 

 under certain conditions for the purpose of carry- 

 ing out any scheme of technical education adapted 

 to its needs. I am aware that there are many ex- 

 treme theorists of the individualist school who hold 

 that all this is very wicked and very wrong, and 

 that by leaving things to themselves they will get 

 right. Well, my experience of the world is that 

 things left to themselves don't giet right. I believe 

 it to be sound doctrine that a municipality — and 

 the State itself for that matter — is a corpora- 

 tion existing for the benefit of its members, and 



that here, as in all other cases, it is for the majority 

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