234 THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE v 



dispensable, to those who undertake the business 

 of teaching. But when the well-trained men are 

 supplied, it must be recollected that the profession 

 of teacher is not a very lucrative or otherwise 

 tempting one, and that it may be advisable to offer 

 special inducements to good men to remain in it. 

 These, however, are questions of detail into which 

 it is unnecessary to enter further. 



Last, but not least, comes the question of pro- 

 viding the machinery for enabling those who are 

 by nature specially qualified to undertake the 

 higher branches of industrial work, to reach the 

 position in which they may render that service to 

 the community. If all our educational expendi- 

 ture did nothing but pick one man of scientific 

 or inventive genius, each year, from amidst the 

 hewers of wood and drawers of water, and give 

 him the chance of making the best of his inborn 

 faculties, it would be a very good investment. If 

 there is one such child among the hundreds of 

 thousands of our annual increase, it would be 

 worth any money to drag him either from the 

 slough of misery, or from the hotbed of wealth, 

 and teach him to devote himself to the service of 

 his people. Here, again, we have made a begin- 

 ning with our scholarships and the like, and need 

 only follow in the tracks already worn. 



The programme of industrial development 

 briefly set forth in the preceding pages is not 

 what Kant calls a " Hirngespinnst," a cobweb 



