j6 Appendix I 



dividuals from the lower ranks. The upper 

 middle classes are the result of a severe 

 selection of capacity, and, later, of inter- 

 marrying, under conditions which seem no 

 longer possible. Think of the number of 

 men who rose through sheer ability in the 

 early days of railway engineering, of modern 

 manufacture, and even of modern science, 

 and compare their number with the output 

 now ! The Whitworth scholarships have 

 done excellent work, the County Council 

 scholarships fair work, in drawing out ability 

 from the masses. But I believe each time 

 the net is cast the harvest is less profitable. 

 There are marked exceptions, but my own 

 experience as a teacher is that the average 

 County Council scholar is now intellectually, 

 and very often physically, not up to the level 

 of the average middle-class student ; so it 

 comes about that a good draughtsman has 

 been turned into a poor engineer, a fair com- 

 positor into a very minor man of letters, an 

 excellent clerk into a second-rate schoolmaster. 

 ' I repeat again what I have said previously : 

 throw the net as widely as you can if its 

 meshes are not too small drain all the 

 capacity and ability you can from the ranks 

 into commission. But the middle classes 

 form a caste into which the bulk of the abler 

 stocks in the community have already drifted. 

 By downward selection and by emigration of 

 their ne'er-do-well members, by intermarriage 

 and by recruiting from below, the charac- 



