15 
is paid. However diverse the faculties of the children may 
be, they are all crammed, or rather they must all pass through 
one groove, and the individuality of the child, instead of being 
stimulated and developed, is suppressed. 
Ag most of us spend our lives in dealing with material things 
it is surely worth our while to study things and_the practical 
contact with material forces. That should be included in the 
instruction which every child receives at an elementary school. 
Until that is done the school training of the children, with all 
its superficial show and cleverness, will not help them in the 
selection of the calling in which each child may be most 
appropriately employed. Seeing that the workingman’s child 
goes to work at a very early age, its training should as far as 
possible be of the character which will be immediately useful 
to it. 
In my plea for useful education, I am sure that I can claim 
the sympathy of all employers who have to face the world’s 
competition, but more especially of all leaders of labour. No 
man has more to gain than the labouring man by a sound 
education, and no man has more to lose through the lack of it. 
To raise the standard of our men is to raise the character and 
stability of the nation. 
When the Royal Commission on Technical Instruction was 
appointed in the year 1881, and during the three following years 
in which they were prosecuting their inquiries, there was great 
depression in several of the industries of the United Kingdom, 
There were many who believed that our industrial difficulties 
were mainly caused by foreign competition, and that the artisans 
in other countries were more favourably circumstanced than 
those of our own country. But when compared with his 
continental neighbour, the English workman stood on firm 
vantage ground in all conditions except one, and that was 
education. In public recognition of the vast importance of this 
question and its practical administration, we are seriously behind 
those nations whose industrial and material progress in recent 
years has been most remarkable. It is only by the unity of the 
masses that this great hindrance can be overcome and a 
thoroughly national system of education carried into effect 
throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. In the first place, 
in the leading countries abroad elementary education was 
practically free, and the poor man struggling with a small 
family had no need to be concerned about the raising of the 
weekly school-pence. Again, while children were taken from 
school at the average age of twelve, in those countries they 
continued at school till fourteen, getting more instruction in 
quantity and of a quality greatly superior. There was great 
neglect in the teaching of drawing and elementary science in our 
