2i 4 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



ham and Macclesfield (thanks in great measure to 

 their local Schools of Art) we no longer rely on 

 France for designs." 



From a Report which has lately been issued as the 

 result of an inquiry into the present condition of 

 French chemical industries, it would appear that the 

 position of the French manufacturers as regards the 

 appreciation of scientific education is, to say the least 

 of it, no further advanced than is the case in England, 

 and it also appears that the progress in France is much 

 behind that of Germany. 



A writer in Nature who signs himself " W. R." on 

 this point remarks : "To add insult to injury, the red 

 trousers, so conspicuous in the French army, were 

 designed originally to encourage the cultivation of the 

 madder plant ; the plant is commercially as extinct as 

 the dodo, and the trousers are now dyed with artificial 

 alizarin supplied from Germany ! SacrJ nom de 

 tonnerre ! " 



The effect of the publication of the Report of the 

 Commission was largely to stimulate public interest in 

 the question of technical instruction as affecting the 

 progress of British industries. Numerous visits have 

 since that time been paid by industrial and educational 

 experts both to America and the Continent, and these 

 have chronicled the great changes which have taken 

 place in the last twenty years. More remarkable 

 probably than the European progress is that made in 

 the United States, which since my visit in 1884 has 

 undergone what may be called a revolution. The 

 results of this progress have been satisfactorily dealt 

 with by many inquiries, but by none more efficiently 

 than by the Commissions organised by Mr. Mosely. 



From these recent inquiries it is clear that, in spite 

 of what has already been done, much remains for us in 



