THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE : A PROGRAMME. 745 



struction in the special branches of such applied science and art, as 

 technical education proper. (3) Instruction of teachers in both these 

 branches. (4) Capacity-catching machinery. 



A great deal has already been done in each of these directions, 

 but much remains to be done. If elementary education is amended 

 in the way that has been suggested, I think that the school-boards 

 will have quite as much on their hands as they are capable of doing 

 well. The influences under which the members of these bodies are 

 elected do not tend to secure fitness for dealing with scientific or tech- 

 nical education ; and it is the less necessary to burden them with an 

 uncongenial task as there are other organizations, not only much better 

 fitted to do the work, but already actually doing it. 



In the matter of preliminary scientific education, the chief of these 

 is the Science and Art Department, which has done more during the 

 last quarter of a century for the teaching of elementary science among 

 the masses of the people than any organization which exists either in 

 this or in any other country. It has become veritably a people's uni- 

 versity, so far as physical science is concerned. At the foundation of 

 our old universities they were freely open to the poorest, but the 

 poorest must come to them. In the last quarter of a century, the 

 Science and Art Department, by means of its classes spread all over 

 the country and open to all, has conveyed instruction to the poorest. 

 The University Extension movement shows that our older learned cor- 

 porations have discovered the propriety of following suit. 



Technical education, in the strict sense, has become a necessity for 

 two reasons. The old apprenticeship system has broken down, partly 

 by reason of the changed conditions of industrial life, and partly be- 

 cause trades have ceased to be " crafts," the traditional secrets whereof 

 the master handed down to his apprentices. Invention is constantly 

 ehanging the face of our industries, so that "use and wont," "rule of 

 thumb," and the like, are gradually losing their importance, while that 

 knowledge of principles which alone can deal successfully with changed 

 conditions is becoming more and more valuable. Socially, the " mas- 

 ter " of four or five apprentices is disappearing in favor of the " employ- 

 er" of forty, or four hundred, or four thousand "hands," and the odds 

 and ends of technical knowledge, formerly picked up in a shop, are 

 not, and can not be, supplied in the factory. The instruction formerly 

 given by the master must therefore be more than replaced by the sys- 

 tematic teaching of the technical school. 



Institutions of this kind on varying scales of magnitude and com- 

 pleteness, from the splendid edifice set up by the City and Guilds In- 

 stitute to the smallest local technical school, to say nothing of classes, 

 such as those in technology instituted by the Society of Arts (subse- 

 quently taken over by the City Guilds), have been established in vari- 

 ous parts of the country, and the movement in favor of their increase 

 and multiplication is rapidly growing in breadth and intensity. But 



