92 TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 



needed for the promotion of education among handi- 

 craftsmen will, I believe, exist in this country, when 

 every working lad can feel that society has done as much 

 as lies in its power to remove all needless and artificial 

 obstacles from his path ; that there is no barrier, except 

 such as exists in the nature of things, between himself 

 and whatever place in the social organisation he is fitted 

 to fill ; and, more than this, that, if he has capacity and 

 industry, a hand is held out to help him along any path 

 which is wisely and honestly chosen. 



I have endeavoured to point out to you that a great 

 deal of such an organisation already exists; and I am 

 glad to be able to add that there is a good prospect that 

 what is wanted will, before long, be supplemented. 



Those powerful and wealthy societies, the livery 

 companies of the City of London, remembering that 

 they are the heirs and representatives of the trade guilds 

 of the Middle Ages, are interesting themselves in the 

 question. So far back as 1872 the Society of Arts 

 organised a system of instruction in the technology of 

 arts and manufactures, for persons actually employed in 

 factories and workshops, who desired to extend and im- 

 prove their knowledge of the theory and practice of 

 their particular avocations ; * and a considerable subsidy, 

 in aid of the efforts of the Society, was liberally granted 

 by the Clothworkers' Company. We have here the 

 hopeful commencement of a rational organisation for the 



* See the " Programme " for 1878, issued by the Society of Arts, 

 p. 14. 



