354 THE TRADES SCHOOL IN THE TRANSVAAL. , 



The Trades School is a pubHc investment for national ends 

 called into existence b}^ national competition for national gain 

 and for precedence in national life. It finds its justification in 

 the fact that it will add to the producing power of the nation to its 

 own lasting benefit. Possibly these are sordid motives enough ; 

 to me they are redeemed l)y a conscious sense of patriotism 

 through the spirit of race preservation underlying them. In 

 South Africa we may divide this national competition into two 

 classes (a) the importation of the higher skilled artisan class and 

 (b) the advance of the coloured races in skilled handicraft. Now 

 nol)ody but a madman would attempt to stop the influx of virile 

 white peoples into a country situated as South Africa is. It is 

 easy to see that the existing white inhabitants would find it diffi- 

 cult to maintain that high level as a race to which evolution has 

 l:)rought them if that influx were to cease. But it is our bounden 

 duty to see that the colonial-born are not drowned in the process ; 

 that is to say, to see that they are not swamped l)y a su|)erioi"' 

 attainment in the new-comers. To deal with the new-comer by 

 l)lacing acti\e or passive restrictions upon him is artificial and 

 cannot last. Again, whether it benefits the indi\i(lual immigrant 

 or not, is not a matter which a Colonial Government should 

 inquire into; its business is to bring about the \vell-l)eing of the 

 country in general and as a whole. Incidentally indeed, and 

 almost invariably immigration does compass the good of the 

 immigrant, since he may "break his birth's invidious bar" and 

 rise to an eminence otherwise unobtainable, but. after all. such 

 consef[uences are but fortunate happenings by the way ; they are 

 neither its purpose nor its justification. It is necessary to see that 

 the Colonial-born are supplied with the means of attainment 

 which have l^een available to the Colonist from oversea, in order 

 that the industrial progress of the country as a whole may be 

 assured, and the natural, almost only possible, way is by indus- 

 trial education within the country itself. I submit the trades 

 school as one small, but none the less essential, link in the chain of 

 technical education, not alone because similar institutions exist 

 on the Continents of Euro])e and America, l)ut because the 

 special and economic conditions in this country demand it. (15). 

 By the training which it is proposed to give in these schools, a 

 part of the male population will be placed on the way to skilled 

 craftsmanship which will be the most natural way of reducing 

 the importation of skilled contract labour. It will, of course, be 

 a considerable time before this country can reach the level of 

 manufacture attained by America or even of New Zealand in 

 its one liranch of agricultural machinery, luit the inventive genius 

 exists in the people, and, given adequate direction, it will develop, 

 and the need for the importation of any but the branch expert 

 will gradually diminish as this country becomes more able to do 

 its own work with its own hamls. I now come to the coloiu- 

 question as it affects the artisan ; and here I would urge those who 

 have not done so to read at least Cha])ter I of the Indigency Com- 



