TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 773 



of any size in Ireland in -wliich these earnest and energetic women have not a 

 school. 



Even iu respect to butter-making, the capabilities of the country have n ever 

 been properly drawn out, much less in the cultivation of early poultry, early 

 flowers, and early vegetables. Rapid transit once arranged, an immense and 

 unsuspected amount of produce now running to waste might be utilised, and garden 

 ground now idle turned to profit. 



We often hear of the hopelessness of cottage work as against machinery, but the 

 iron hand can never come up with the skilled hand of nerve and muscle in taste, 

 delicacy, and variety of workmanship. The three urgent needs of Ireland to-day, 

 to enable its domestic industries to flourish, are : — 



1. Technical teaching power, for the exercise of which surplus workhouses and 

 convent schools afford facilities. 



2. Organised means of distribution, such as the Home Industries' Association 

 in Dublin is endeavouring to establish. 



3. Arrangements for rapid transit of perishable produce. These three points 

 demand the careful consideration of all who wish to see possibilities of horns 

 industry opened out to Irishwomen of every rank and degree. 



5. Education : a Chapter of Economics. By T. W. Dunn, M.A. 



1. There are no technical schools in Bath. The educational work does not 

 differ from that of most places. Need here, as elsewhere, of ladders to help pro- 

 mising boys from primary to secondary schools. The bearing of such an arrange- 

 ment on economics. ' Tools to the hands of him that can use them.' 



2. The subject is General — the Influence of Education on the Production of 

 Wealth. The Theory of Education is still in the stage of discussion in which 

 inquirers differ. 



o. Of the elements of production, labour, or the labourer, alone directly 

 concerned. 



4. Wider sense of labour : ' hands,' ' managers.' 



5. Tendency to undue subordination of general to technical education. Mis- 

 chievous consequence in schools and in industries. 



6. What the labourer has in common with other labourers is due to general, 

 what he has in difference to technical, training. 



7. Industrial organisation based upon what labourers have in common. First 

 a vtcin, then a workman. 



8. Illustration. Fishermen, single and co-operative. 



9. How far increase of production due to improved character and skill. Vast 

 improvement to be expected from good faith in workmen and a sense of common 

 interest. 



10. Men of science propound lopsided theories of education. Philosopher or 

 man of general culture alone to legislate. 



11. Children work for work's sake, ovplay; boys work in order that they may 

 work, or learn : men work that they may get, ov produce. 



12. Primary schools teach assiduity, or patient persistence in routine and mutual 

 concession or the social faculty. Immense value of these qualities. These schools 

 repress energy and are unfavourable to the artistic spirit. Pla}', or work for its 

 own sake, and the spirit of play in learning, alone teaches the passion for excel- 

 lence. This is seen in the fine arts. Hence the importance attached to organised 

 games in secondary schools. Hence, too, the radical unfitness of utilitarian sub- 

 jects for education and the necessity of distinguishing between education and 

 apprenticeship. Digging and gymnastics, land surveying and mathematics. 

 * Commercial certificates.' 



13. The sciences as subjects of school education. Language and literature the 

 reservoir of traditional and accumulative culture and knowledge, as well as the 

 instrument and cement of social organisation and co-operation. 



14. Industrial order, a picnic from which we all tend to draw out only what we 

 put in. 



