XVII TECHNICAL EDUCATION 439 



carrying out undertakings of this kind, which at 

 first, at any rate, must be to a great extent tenta- 

 tive and experimental, by private effort. I don't 

 believe that the man lives at this present time 

 who is competent to organise a final system of 

 technical education. I believe that all attempts 

 made in that direction must for many years to come 

 be experimental, and that we must get to success 

 through a series of blunders. Now that work is 

 far better performed by private enterprise than in 

 any other way. But there is another method 

 which I think is permissible, and not only permis- 

 sible but highly recommendable in this case, and 

 that is the method of allowing the locality itself 

 in which any branch of industry is pursued to be 

 its own judge of its own wants, and to tax itself 

 under certain conditions for the purpose of carrying 

 out any scheme of technical education adapted to 

 its needs. I am aware that there are many extreme 

 theorists of the individualist school who hold that 

 all this is very wicked and very wrong, and that 

 by leaving things to themselves they will get 

 right. Well, my experience of the world is that 

 things left to themselves don't get right. I be- 

 lieve it to be sound doctrine that a municipality 

 and the State itself for that matter is a corpora- 

 tion existing for the benefit of its members, and 

 that here, as in all other cases, it is for the majority 

 to determine that which is for the good of the 

 whole, and to act upon that. That is the principle 



