X. ITU RE 



[November 2, 1905 



that he had other qualifications for it than this — that the 

 matter was one which interested him intensely. Nearly 

 ten years ago, when the political party to "which he 

 belonged went out of office, he looked about for some- 

 thing to do, and he thought he might as well turn his 

 hand lo the somewhat cobwebbed state of the higher 

 education of this country. After a time he approai hed 

 the Government, and he found them sympathetic, and 

 they had remained throughout that period sympathetic. 

 There were those who said that some time or other they 

 would go out and another Government come in. He 

 hoped in the same way to have a chance of approaching 

 thai Government and trying to persuade it to be sym- 

 pathetic. Why was it that so many people had come 

 together that day — people of different minds but converg- 

 ing upon the same idea — to call for an activity which 

 should be unhasting and unresting, the organisation of 

 the higher science in its application to the affairs of this 

 country? He thought it was because almost every year in 

 an increasing fashion brought us in this nation an awaken- 

 ing. We were not the only nation which had received an 

 awakening. Japan wakened up the nations of the West 

 from their dogmatic slumber not long since, and we had 

 perhaps not even yet assimilated the lesson which that 

 awakening had taught the world. He agreed with Sir 

 Norman Lockyer that that organisation ought not to 

 mean merely science. It ought not to mean merely instruc- 

 tion ; it ought to mean the bringing of method, the bringing 

 of thinking, into the modes of government which applied 

 to our public affairs and which applied to our private 

 industries alike. That was what we wanted, and without 

 that we should fall behind, and that kind of organisation 

 meant science, and it meant education. The Bishop 

 of Ripon alluded to the question of the Poor 

 Law. There was a very interesting pamphlet which 

 was published the other day, and which he commended to 

 all of them who had not read it— the report of the Birming- 

 ham brass-workers on what they found when they went 

 to Berlin to compare the condition of the working men 

 of their own trade with that of similar working men^in the 

 German capital. One thing which they discovered was that 

 in Germany the unemployed question 'had been to a areat 

 extent solved. There were two ways in which they could 

 deal with the unemployed question without solving it One 

 was to do nothing at all, but say that so-called economic 

 laws must work their way. That view, he thought opinion 

 nowadays condemned. But there was another "way which 

 he hoped the nation would condemn just as severely and 

 that was to grant public money in response to any demand 

 which was made by ignorant people without recognising 

 the fact that steps of that kind merely meant that one got 

 a body of honest but weak people who came to depend 

 not on their own exer' ions, but on what the State would 

 ao tor them The brass-workers found organisation. 

 They found that science had been set to work to solve 

 the problem of the unemployed. They found that the 

 unemployed were sifted out by State, municipal, and 

 hv Thf s C f f r ' ta ?u or g anisati °ns directed and employed 

 by the State. They we re sifted into classes. Those who 

 wanted work and could not get it were provided for to 

 almost a complete extent by the cooperation of the Govern- 

 ment and the employers and the municipalities. Those 

 who had not got work and did not want it were put into 

 places which were not prisons, but where they were forced 

 o work for a very moderate wage, which was saved up 

 for them and given to them afterwards. The Birmingham 

 brass-workers came back with the view that the provision 

 tor the German brass-worker was superior to anything 

 even in Birmingham. They were too enthusiastic. He 

 had lived m Germany, and he knew that the things 

 they saw there would never be tolerated in this country 

 From the cradle to the grave the German was ruled. 

 Paternal government was exercised over him well aided 

 by what he mi ght, figuratively speaking, call the birch 

 rod. At no point of his existence was he a free man 

 and the result was that in Germany to-day there was 

 something ike a revolt, and an aspiration fof our British 

 freedom. A pamphlet had been published on the Germans 

 and their Fatherland, in which a plea was put forward 

 for the study and imitation of English institutions. It 

 had had an immense circulation in Germany, and ought 

 NO. 1879, VOL 73] 



to be translated into English. The writer advised his 

 readers to go to see Eton and Harrow, where there 

 might not be much learning, but where the boys ruled 

 the school, set up public opinion among themselves, 

 and as a result turned out governors of men and 

 patriots, instead of men who, like the Germans, when 

 they left their country felt in the recollection of their 

 schools that they had left an almost prison life. That 

 great German authority was under the same delusion as 

 the Birmingham brass-workers. He was too enthusiastic. 

 But in that pamphlet the German Emperor was quoted 

 as making the observation that the real truth about the 

 matter lay between the German and the British systems. 

 We had to see how we could get the German faculty of 

 organisation, train people to think more of it, and apply 

 it to the various departments of our affairs. Our execu- 

 tive Government was about as disorganised an institu- 

 tion as anybody could conceive. Suppose they wanted to 

 appoint a man of high scientific mind as an official. They 

 were at once told that it would be against the rules of 

 the department. In vain they would reply they were 

 bringing in a man of science for public purposes ; the 

 answer would be that the Civil Service rules made it 

 difficult to do anything of the kind. Some of them had 

 been trying to impress upon the nation that the organisa- 

 tion of the highest education of the universities ought 

 not to be left to haphazard. He was chairman of a com- 

 mittee which sat last year, and they made a report 

 which had been more lucky than most reports. One of 

 its recommendations related to the grants to the university 

 colleges of this country, and was that a scientific advisory 

 body should be created and put at the elbow of the 

 Treasury to advise it in giving money to the univer- 

 sities. He was glad to say that a sympathetic Chancellor 

 of the Exchequer had adopted that suggestion, and in 

 the course of the winter they would learn who the advisory 

 members were to be. Let them take another department 

 — the Board of Trade. The Board of Trade ought to be 

 a great ministry of commerce. We had a vast home trade 

 ,i- well as a vast foreign trade, and the statistics relating 

 to them should be of the most authoritative kind. There 

 was the same necessity for scientific methods in relation 

 to the Home Office and the departments with which it 

 dealt. For himself he believed that things would not be 

 right until we had a scientific corps under a permanent 

 committee, just as the Defence Committee was under the 

 Prime Minister to-day. He meant a body that would not 

 consist merely of officials of the ordinary kind, but should 

 consist of the most eminent men of science, who would 

 go there because thev were honoured and put on the foot- 

 ing upon which they deserved to be placed, and were 

 recognised as a body of men who would be at the elbow 

 of the department, and could organise the scientific work 

 of the State. He hoped that if they got to that, the 

 example of a Government adopting science would he fol- 

 lowed by the municipalities, as he believed it was going 

 to be followed more and more by our manufacturers. 

 There was great work for that association to do. We 

 lived in a country where science was not so much appre- 

 ciated as it should be. Our people liked to see cash 

 over the counter, and they did not like to wait for 

 deferred payment. But we were waking up, and we had 

 this enormous advantage, that our very individualism had 

 produced some of the finest scientific talent of the world. 

 He did not like to mention men on that platform, though 

 he could do so, whose names ranked with the highest of the 

 world. We had produced, to speak of those who were 

 absent, our Kelvins, our Rayleighs, our J. J. Thomsons, 

 than whom the world had no greater, to say the least of it. 

 He had no doubt that if the British nation were given a 

 chance it could beat the world. But we wanted know- 

 ledge This wis ,1 new- century ; we had a new Sovereign ; 

 we might have a new Parliament ; we should have a 

 new chance. Let us see to it that we used our oppor- 

 tunities. The midnight call had come, let us take heed 

 that we were ready. Knowledge was power. That was 

 the great lesson of to-day. Let us hold to it that know- 

 ledge was power, and that without knowledge there was 

 no real power in these times of intense competition. 



Mr. C. W. Macara fpresident of the Federation of 

 Master Cotton Spinners' Associations) moved : — " That 



