61 
THE INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS BEST 
SUITED TO THE NEEDS OF AN INDUSTRIAL 
URBAN POPULATION. 
By W. FARRER ECROYD. November 4th, 1890. 
An industrial urban population, such as that of Burnley, might 
be usefully divided into two great sections; firstly, employers 
and men of business or independent means ; and, secondly, what 
we generally speak of as the working class. In a condition of 
Society like that existing here, these classes melt into one 
another. We witness every year the rise of those who have been 
working-men into the position of employers, and I regard this as 
a happy circumstance and favourable to the development of 
intellectual pursuits. In both classes there is a great waste of 
resources and an immense loss of the opportunities of an 
inherited and an acquired position. Education may be divided 
into three periods—first, the acquirement of the instruments of 
education during the period commonly called education; next 
the acquirement of education itself; and then there ought to be a 
third into which the education acquired should be brought into 
full play for all the best purposes of both public and private life. 
I would rather see education devoted to the perfecting of plain 
and simple studies than what we are at present tending to, viz., 
a great increase in the number of studies, which involves learning 
of a more shallow and smattering kind. It must not be forgotten 
that business is in itself a great and liberal education to an 
intelligent man. There is a great deal said about technical 
education. Technical instruction is no doubt highly valuable in 
places like Nottingham, Birmingham, Sheffield, or Northampton, 
where they have what might be termed artistic manufactures, 
but in a district like Burnley the factory or workshop is the 
cheapest and best technical school. We cannot convey in an 
artificial school of spinning or weaving in Burnley, education a 
quarter as good as the best fitted up and best regulated factory 
affords, and the workman or the man of business who gets 
thoroughly to understand his own business, will find himself as 
technically educated for the purpose of his own life as he possibly 
can be. Every employer should try to make his factory or 
workshop in the highest degree an excellent and thorough 
technical school for his younger workpeople as far as the 
limits of his own business reach. We are bound to recognise 
the ncble and generous spirit of the elder workpeople of this 
district in imparting the technical knowledge without fee or 
reward to young people coming into the mills or workshops, 
