128 



NA TURE 



[February 4, 1892 



Regent Street Polytechnic. 



Spent by Mr. Quintin Charity Commissioners 



Hogg ;^ioo,ooo alone ;^3-500 



Spent by Charity Com- 

 missioners 11.750 



People's Palace, Mile End A'oail. 

 Given by Drapers' I Draper'sCompany'alone;^7,ooo 



Company alone ... ;^55,ooo | Charity Commissioners 

 Given by Charity I alone' 3.5oo 



Commissioners alone 6,750 | 



Technical and Recreative Institute, Neiv Cross. 



Given by Goldsmiths' I Goldsmiths' Company ;^5,ooo 



Company ;t^70,ooo | 



(Representing a total expenditure of nearly ;^25o,ooo. ) 



Other contributions to 

 polytechnics in Lon- 

 don by Charity 



Yearly endowments of 

 Charity Commission- 

 ers to other technical 

 institutions in Lon- 

 don ;^3.200 



Commissioners ... /"d.ooo 



Totals from the above sources alone : 

 ;^379,5oo I 



;^32,5oo 



Large as are these sums, they are, however, even small com- 

 pared with the amount raised by Mr. Goschen's beer and spirit 

 tax, which it has been decided shall be used for the public 

 benefit, and not for the benefit of the publican. The counties 

 and county boroughs of England now receive nearly three- 

 quarters of a million sterling per annum, of which the whole may 

 be devoted to technical education. The majority of the counties 

 and county boroughs propose to utilize this magnificent oppor- 

 tunity and devote to technical education the entire sum allocated 

 to them, while the remainder use at least a part for this purpose. 

 Middlesex and London, however, stand alone, and employ their 

 whole yearly grant of ^^163,000 for the relief of the rates, on the 

 plea that they consider that the City Companies are well able to 

 look after the technical education of London. 



Besides this spirit duty, ic6 towns are levying rates in aid of 

 technical education under the Technical Instruction Acts of 

 1889 and 1891, the number of these towns having increased by 

 twenty in the last seven months, showing how rapidly is this 

 desire for technical education spreading throughout Great 

 Britain. 



In addition to the sums contributed for technical education 

 by the City Companies, collegiate bodies, and private persons 

 who have the practical education of the nation at heart, the 

 following represent, as far as I have been able to ascertain, the 

 amounts that it has been already decided shall he. actually spent, 

 yearly, on technical education in England alone, exclusive of 

 Scotland, Ireland, and Wales : — 



Received from the Customs and Excise duties ... ;^5oo,ooo 



It ,,^ Rates 18,046 



Given by the Charity Commissioners ... ... 20,550 



^538,596 



The yearly amount that will be actually raise^ under the 

 Technical Instruction Acts will be far larger than the ;^i8,046 

 stated above, for this represents only the sum of the amounts 

 raised in the very few towns who have already made returns. 



Hence the total sum to be spent in England alone oh so-called 

 technical education amounts to certainly over ;^6oo,ooo per 

 annum. 



As the teaching of electrical technology has been started, in 

 some form or other, in nearly every important town in Great 

 Britain, there is no occasion for me to advocate, as I did in this 

 room ten years ago, that a student of electrical engineering should 

 have an education in applied science ; but what I desire to most 

 strongly urge on you to-night is, that it is your bounden duty 

 to see that some portion of the vast sum that is about to be 

 spent on the education of the people is used to give such a 

 training to your workmen as shall really benefit your industry. 

 For otherwise there is a great fear that most of the money de- 

 voted to electrical teaching will either be frittered away on the 

 natural loadstone, rubbed amber order of instruction so dear to 



NO. II 62, VOL. 45] 



the hearts of the school-men, or on semi-popular lectures de- 

 scribing in a bewildering sketchy fashion the whole vast field of 

 electrical engineering. 



The workmen you employ are of two classes. In the one 

 class is the man who is all day long, say, stamping out iron 

 disks for armature cores, and the boy who, say, feeds the screw- 

 making machine with its proper meals of brass rod. For such 

 work no technical education is necessary ; the workers are mere 

 adjuncts to the machines, to be dispensed with as the machines 

 become more and more perfect. Hence, unless the machine- 

 minder has the ambition and the ability to rise to some less 

 mechanical occupation, his activity, if any be left him after a 

 hard day's work, had probably better be spent in effort of a 

 lighter and more recreative character than would alone be 

 necessary to make him a higher class of artisan. 



For him the polytechnic variety course of instruction is an 

 inestimable blessing, for he can do a little type-writing, learn 

 violin-playing and modelling in clay, attend an ambulance class, 

 recite a poem, and devote the remainder of his leisure to the 

 piano, botany, sanitary science, reading books and learning how 

 to keep them. 



His general interests will be roused, the human side of his 

 nature developed, and during the evening at any rate he may 

 forget that he is the slave of the Gramme ring, or the slave of the 

 electric lamp. 



No wonder, then, that within two months of the opening of 

 the Goldsmiths' Institute at New Cross 4000 members were 

 enrolled. 



But your workmen of the other class must, or at any rate 

 ought to, think. Take, for example, the man engaged in wiring 

 houses, whose work is continually changing, and offering small 

 problems to be solved. Here, common sense — or uncommon 

 sense, if you prefer it — is of great value, and the work, to be 

 good, mtist be done by a man with a knowledge of principles, 

 and not by a mere machine-minder. 



Many joints — bad joints — wires laid 'in cement under mosaic, 

 which cannot be replaced except at vast expense, even although 

 the insulation has rotted away — parqueterie floors nailed to 

 insulated wire — switchboards screwed on to damp walls — lamp- 

 holders that only make contact when the lamps are twisted 

 askew — high-class insulated mains terminating in snake-like 

 coils of flexible wire running against metal in shop windows, 

 under shop fronts — heavy Oriental metal lamps hanging from 

 lightly insulated cord — all this would be avoided, if the work- 

 men had been taught to use their brains as well as their hands. 



Now, do you think that the teaching necessary for this purpose 

 is likely to be given at the ordinary English polytechnic school? 

 In the case of the Goldsmiths' Institute the electrotechnical 

 department has been put under the charge of Messrs. Dykes and 

 Thornton, two diploma students of the Central Institution ; and 

 the fact that these men are, in addition, both employed in 

 Messrs. Siemens's works at Charlton leads one to hope that 

 their teaching, at any rate, will breathe the spirit of the factory. 

 And therefore, if ample funds be forthcoming for keeping the 

 apparatus at New Cross always up to date, so that the meters, 

 the models, the dynamos — not merely now at the start, but three 

 years hence, six years hence — are truly representative of the 

 industry, there will be a fair prospect that the electrical depart- 

 ment of the Goldsmiths' Institute, although but a fraction of the 

 whole undertaking, may really benefit the electrical workmen in 

 the East End of London. 



But my colleagues and I view with considerable apprehension 

 the way in which the present wide demand for teachers in 

 technical schools is being supplied. Several of our own students, 

 for example, tempted by the comparatively high remuneration 

 that is offered, have become teachers in technical schools im- 

 mediately on leaving the Central Institution. In many respects 

 they are undoubtedly well qualified ; but if they had first spent 

 some time in works before attempting to teach technical sub- 

 jects, they would have better understood the wants of the 

 persons whom they have undertaken to instruct. 



No greater mistake can be made than to think that a student 

 who has distinguished himself at a technical college can dispense 

 with the training of the factory, unless it be the opposite mistake 

 of imagining that the factory training is equivalent to or even 

 something better than that given at a modern school of 

 engineering. 



It is the province of the manufacturer to turn out apparatus 

 and machinery as quickly, cheaply, and as well made as is 

 possible ; it is the province of the technical teacher to prepare 



