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they had given as much attention to their men, and we might 
depend upon this, that in the long run of all machines it was the 
human machine that best paid for the labour and pains expended 
upon its improvement. 
The skilled workman produced something of greater value out 
of the same material than could be produced by the unskilled 
workman and with less waste of material, and such a man’s 
worth could not be tested by the wages he received. The 
artistic designer, whether in textiles or any decorative industry 
gave to the raw material and to the labour of many others its 
selling quality. In all operations which had a scientific basis, 
the man who united superior theoretical knowledge with business 
capacity increased the demand for the labour, skilled or unskilled, 
of all who might be employed in a given factory. Thus I have 
found British machinery turned to more profitable account in 
foreign factories and workships than in our own, and have 
been driven to the conclusion that this result has not been due 
to the long hours and low wages of foreign operatives, but to the 
employment of persons trained in technical schools, who have 
been more successful than our own in the blending of beauty 
with utility in their productions. In the competition for the 
world’s trade, which yearly grows keener, in my opinion we can 
make no greater mistake than to leave to foreigners some of the 
best paying branches of the fancy trades in which there is 
most scope for talent and skill, while we expend our energies 
almost exclusively upon the constant struggle to make cheap 
commodities still cheaper. 
In going through the Board of Trade returns, and tracing our 
imports of manufactures to their sources, I have found in most 
instances, not in all, that had we paid the same attention as our 
rivals to the sound instruction of all our people, to the teaching 
of drawing, science, and handwork in our day schools, to the 
application of art and science to our manufacturing industries, 
we should have been paying for the instruction of our own 
people with the money or money’s worth which we had sent 
abroad for the enrichment of our rivals. In textiles we imported 
in 1887 of the value of about twenty millions, deducting yarn 
and certain imports influenced by cheapness, of which about ten 
millions were in silk goods. There are technical schools in all 
the Continental silk centres; and Switzerland and Germany, 
where the best of these schools exist, are said to have ruined 
the trade of Spitalfields and Coventry, not because they have paid 
lower wages, but because of the greater beauty of their designs 
and their acquired excellence of the manipulation and dyeing of 
the fabrics. In woollens and worsteds, as also in fancy jute 
goods, the French and Germans have greatly surpassed the 
manufactures of this country in the attractiveness of their designs, 
