NATURE 
Se 
SEPTEMBER 25, 1902| 
a show of knowing something about it, and he is usually called 
an engineer. 
Standardisation in an industry usually means. easier and 
cheaper and better manufacture, and a certain amount of it 
must be good even in engineering, but when we see a great deal 
of it we know that in that industry the true engineer is 
disliked. I consider that in the scholastic industry there has 
been far too much standardisation. Gymnasien and poly- 
technic systems are standardised in Germany, and there is a ten- 
dency to import them into England ; but in my opinion we are 
very far indeed from knowing any system which deserves to be 
standardised, and the worst we can copy is what we find 
now in Germany and Switzerland. What we must strive for is 
the discovery of a British system suiting the British boy and 
man. The English boy may be called stupid so often that he 
actually believes himself to be stupid ; but of one thing we may 
be sure, he will find in some way or other an escape from the 
stupefying kind of school work to which the German boy 
submits. Andif it were possible to make the average English 
boyjof nineteen pass such a silly school-leaving examination as the 
German boy,' and to pass through a polytechnic, I am quite 
sure that there would be little employment among common-sense 
English engineers for such a manufactured article. But is it 
possible that British boys could be manufactured into such obe- 
dient academic machines, without initiative or invention or in- 
dividuality, by teachers who are none of them engineers? No, 
we must have a British system of education. We cannot go on 
much longer as we have done in the past without engineering 
education, and, furthermore, it must be such as to commend 
itself to employers. Of my Finsbury students I think I may say 
that not one failed to get into works ona two or three years’ 
engagement, receiving some very small wage from the beginning, 
and without paying a premium. To obtain such employment 
was obviously one test of fitness to be an engineer, because ex- 
perienced men thought it impossible. One test of the system 
was the greater ease with which new men obtained employment 
in shops which had already taken some of our students. It is 
certainly very difficult to convince an employer that a college 
man will not be a nuisance in the shops. In Germany and 
France, and to a less extent in America, there is among em- 
ployers a belief in the value of technical education. In England 
there is still complete unbelief. I have known the subscribers 
of money to a large technical college in England (the members 
of its governing board) to laugh, all of them, at the idea that 
the college could be of any possible benefit to the industries of 
the town. They subscribed because just then there was a craze 
for technical education due to a recent panic. They were 
ignorant masters of works (sons of men who had created the 
works), ignorant administrators of the college affairs and 
ignorant critics of their mismanaged college. I feel sure that 
if the true meaning of technical education were understood, it 
would commend itself to Englishmen. Technical education is 
an education in the scientific and artistic principles which govern 
the ordinary operations inany industry. It is neither a science 
nor an art, nor the teaching of a handicraft. It is that without 
which a master is an unskilled master; a foreman an unskilled 
foreman; a workman an unskilled workman ; and-a clerk or 
farmer an unskilled clerk or farmer, The cry for technical 
education is simply a protest against the existence of un- 
skilled labour of all kinds.* 
1 The following is, I understand, a stock question at certain gymnasien : 
“Write out all the trigonometrical formula you know.” I asked my young 
informant, ‘‘Well, how many did you write?” “Sixty-two,” was the 
answer. This young man informed me that a boy could not pass this 
examination unless he knew “‘a// algebra and add trigonometry and a// 
science.’ Strassburg geese used to be fed in France; now they are fed in 
Germany. German education seems to be like smothering a fire with too 
much fuel or wet slack which has the appearance of fuel. 
2 I have pointed out how natural it is that business men should feel some- 
what antagonistic to college training. Poorly paid, unpractical teachers, 
with no ideas of their own, have in the past taught in the very stupidest 
way. They have called themselves ‘“‘scientific’’ and ‘‘ theoretical” till 
these words stink in the nostrils of an engineer. When I was an apprentice, 
and no doubt itis much the same now, if an apprentice was a poor work- 
man with his hands he often took to some kind of study which he called the 
science of his trade. And in this way a pawkiness for science got to be the 
sign of a bad workman. But if workmen were so taught at school that they 
all really knew a little physicai science, it would no longer be laughed at. 
When a civil or electrical engineer is unsuccessful because he has no business 
habits, he takes to calculation and the reading of so-called scientific books, 
because it is very easy to get up a reputation for science. The man isa bad 
engineer in spite of his science, but people get to think that he is an 
unpractical man because of his scientific knowledge. I do believe that the 
unbelief in technical education so very general has this kind of illogical 
foundation. Four hundred years ago, ifa layman could read or write he was 
NO. 1717, VOL. 65] 
To have any good general system the employers must co- 
operate. Much of the training is workshop practice, ard it 
cannot be too often said that this is not to be given in any 
college. The workshop in a college serves a quite different 
purpose. Now how may the practice best be given? I must 
say that I like the Finsbury plan very much indeed, but there 
are others. When I attended this college in winter I was 
allowed to work in the Lagan Foundry in summer. In Japan 
the advanced students did the same thing ; they had their winter 
courses at the college, and the summer was spent in the large 
Government workshops ; the system worked very well indeed.} 
In Germany recently the great unions of manufacturers made 
facilities for giving a year of real factory work to the polytechnic 
students, but it seems to me that these men are much too old’ 
for entrance to works, and, besides, a year is too short a time if 
the finished product is to call itself a real engineer. Possibly 
the British solution may be quite different from any of these. 
A boy may enter works at fourteen on leaving a primary school) 
or not later than sixteen on leaving a secondary school. In 
either case he must have the three powers to which I have 
already referred so often. It will be recognised as the duty of 
the owners of works to provide, either in one large works or 
near several works, in a well-equipped school following the 
Finsbury principle, all the training in the principles under- 
lying the trade or profession which is necessary for the 
engineer. 
No right-thinking engineer has been scared by the newspaper 
writers who tell us of our loss of supremacy in manufacture, but 
I think that every engineer sees the necessity for reform in 
many of our ways, and especially in this of education. People 
talk of the good done to our workmen’s ideas by the strike of 
two years ago ; it is to be hoped that the employers’ ideas were 
also expanded by their having been forced to travel and to see 
that their shops were quite out of date.? In fact, we have all- 
got to see that there is far too much unskilled labour among 
workmen and foremen and managers, and especially among 
owners. There may be some kinds of manufacture so standardised 
that everything goes like a wound-up ciock and no thought is 
needed anywhere; but certainly it is not in any branch of 
engineering. Many engineering things may be standardised, 
but not the engineer himself. Millions of money may build up 
trusts, but they will be wasted if the unskilled labour of mere 
clerks is expected to take the place of the thoughtful skilled 
labour of owners and managers. I go further, and say that no 
perfection in labour-saving tools will enable you to do without 
the skilled, educated, thoughtful, honest, faithful workman 
with brains. I laugh at the idea that any country has 
better workmen than ours, and I consider education of 
our workmen $ to be the corner-stone of prosperity in all engin- 
eering manufacture. It is from the workman in countless ways 
that all hints leading to great inventions come. New countries 
like America and Germany have their chance just now ; they are 
starting, without having to ‘‘scrap” any old machinery or old 
ideas, with the latest machinery and the latest ideas. For them 
also the time will come when their machines will be getting out- 
of-date and the cost of ‘‘ scrapping” will loom large in their 
eyes. Inthe meantime they have taught us lessons, and this- 
greatest of all lessons—that unless we look ahead with much 
judgment, unless we take reasonable precautions, unless we pay 
some regard to the fact that the cleverest people in several 
nations are hungry for our trade and jealous of our supremacy, 
we may for a time lose a little of that supremacy. In the last 
probably a useless person who, because he could not do well otherwise, took 
to learning. What a man learnt was clumsily learnt; usually he learnt 
little with great labourand made no use of it; therefore reading and writing 
seemed useless, Now that everybody is compelled to read and write, it is 
not a usual thing to say that it hurts a man to have these powers. 
1 lt was the idea of Principal Henry Dyer. 
* Not only is there an enormousimprovement in the use of limit gauges 
and checking and tools, and the careful calculation of rates of doing work 
by various tools and general shop arrangement, but attention is being paid 
to the comfort of workmen, ‘here are basins and towels, and hot and cold 
water for them to wash in. In the old days it would have been called faddy 
philanthropy. Now, owners of works who scorn all softness of heart provide 
perfect water-closets for their men; their workshops are kept at a uniform 
temperature; the evil effect of a bad draught in producing colds, or a bad 
light in hurting the eyes, is carefully considered. In some of these works it 
is actually possible for a workman or a member of his family to get a 
luxurious hot bath fora penny. Will this really pay? Some clever, hard- 
headed men of my acquaintance say they already see that it does pay very 
well indeed 
8 The old apprenticeship system of training men has broken down, and this 
is the cause of most of our industrial troubles. An apprenticeship system 
suited to modern conditions is described fully on pp. 68-88 of ‘‘ England's 
Neglect of Science.’” 
