TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 91 



drawing, I would try to secure him an apprenticeship to 

 some trade in which those powers would have applica- 

 bility. Or, if he chose to become a teacher, he should 

 have the chance of so doing. Finally, to the lad of 

 genius, the one in a million, I would make accessible the 

 highest and most complete training the country could 

 afford. Whatever that might cost, depend upon it the 

 investment would be a good one. I weigh my words 

 when I say that if the nation could purchase a potential 

 Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at the cost of a hundred 

 thousand pounds down, he would be dirt-cheap at the 

 money. It is a mere commonplace and everyday piece 

 of knowledge, that what these three men did has pro- 

 duced untold millions of wealth, in the narrowest eco- 

 nomical sense of the word. 



Therefore, as the sum and crown of what is to be 

 done for technical education, I look to the provision of 

 a machinery for winnowing out the capacities and giving 

 them scope. When I was a member of the London 

 School Board, I said, in the course of a speech, that our 

 business was to provide a ladder, reaching from the 

 gutter to the university, along which every child in the 

 three kingdoms should have the chance of climbing as far 

 as he was fit to go. This phrase was so much bandied 

 about at the time, that, to say truth, I am rather tired 

 of it ; but I know of no other which so fully expresses 

 my belief, not only about education in general, but about 

 technical education in particular. 



The essential foundation of all the organisation 



