TECHNICAL EDUCATION FOR QUEENSLAND. 793 



:been thought that the estabhshment of such schools would benefit 

 England; but Germany established those schools in order to rapidly 

 ■create a large number of skilled artisans at a time when the corre- 

 sponding industries did not exist in the country. Men were sent to 

 England to learn trades, and they came back to their own districts to 

 teach their count lymen in schools erected for the purpose. It should 

 also be remembered that the present position of the steel trade of 

 ■Germany is largely the result of their having more modern equip- 

 ments, as is only natural in the case of people recently entering into 

 a new field of industry. The converse holds good in the supply of 

 'electricity". The price of electricity is far higher in the United States 

 and in Germany than in England, for the simple reason that the 

 German and American towns are supplied from plants which were, in 

 inost cases, laid down in the early nineties, while the British towns 

 are supplied from modern plants of greater efficiency, and purchased 

 at half the price. The trade schools just i-eferred to served their 

 purpose admirably, but at present the complaint arises at Crefeld and 

 such places that the trade schools, although more magnificently 

 endowed than ever with apparatus and machinery, are not attended 

 by more than 2 per cent, of the young workpeople. This result is to 

 be traced to the same causes which have led to the decay of the 

 apprenticeship system in England. 



At the outset it will be well to recognise that certain events have 

 •taken place in the industrial world which have permanently altered 

 the demand for skilled labour, and affected the opportunities for 

 acquiring skill and technical knowledge; and, in shaping our methods 

 of technical instruction, we must remember that: — 



Firstly, the apprenticeship system has bi'oken down under 



modern shop-methods ; 

 Secondly, the use of special machinery in every trade has 

 depreciated the value of the skill which it was the chief 

 object of that system to impart; and 

 Thirdly, the conditions of every trade, its processes, its raw 

 materials, its products, are changing so rapidly that no 

 trade can at the present time be learnt, in the same sense 

 as it was possible to learn a trade in olden times, when 

 the changes took place more s.lowly. 



Taking the above matters in their oixler, and co;isidering first 

 the causes which have contributed to the failure of the old apprentice- 

 ship system, ^ve find that chief among these is the fact that it no 

 longer confers on the employee the same benefits as of old. Up to the 

 end of the eighteenth century the skilled tradesman who had served his 

 time to a recognised trade or craft was in a strongly protected position. 

 No man could come into his district and compete with him, as we 

 see from the tale of .Tames Watt's sufferings when he came to London 

 thinking that the guilds would let him woi'k there. This condition 

 of things was i-apidly altered under the new school of ideas arising 

 out of the French Revolution, and the process was completed by the 

 advent of the steam engine and the railways, with their resultant 

 methods of manufacturing in centralised factories; but the industrial 

 supremacy of Britain and the strong organisation of the great trades 

 unions kept up the value of skill until the general use of special tools 



