780 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 411. 



very much indeed, but there are others. 

 AVhen I attended this college in winter I 

 was allowed to work in the Lagan Foundry 

 in summer. In Japan the advanced stu- 

 dents did the same thing; they had their 

 winter courses at the college, and the sum- 

 mer 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 en- 

 trance to works, and, besides, a 3'ear 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 

 recognized 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 

 that training in the principles underlying 

 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 manufac- 

 ture, but I think that every engineer sees 

 the necessity for reform in many of our 

 ways, and especially in this of ediication. 

 People talk of the good done to our work- 

 men '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 were quite out of date.f In fact, we have 



* It was the idea of Principal Henry Dyer. 



t Not only is there an enormous improvement 

 in the use of limit-gaiices and checking and tools. 

 and the careful calculation of rates of doing work 



all got to see that there is far too much 

 unskilled labor among workmen and fore- 

 men and managers, and especially in own- 

 ers. There may be some kinds of manu- 

 facture so standardized that everything 

 goes like a woimd-up clock, and no thought 

 is needed anywhere; biit certainly it is not 

 in any branch of engineering. Many en- 

 gineering things may be standardized, but 

 not the engineer himself. Millions of 

 money may build up trusts, but they will 

 be wasted if the unskilled labor of mere 

 clerks is expected to take the place of the 

 thoughtful skilled labor of owners and 

 managers. I go further, and say that no 

 perfection in labor-saving tools will enable 

 you to do without the skilled, educated, 

 thoughtful, honest, faithful workman with 

 brains. I laugh at the idea that any coun- 

 try has better workmen than ours, and I 

 consider education of our workmen* to 

 be the corner-stone of prosperity in all 

 engineering manufacture. It is from him 

 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 



by various tools and general shop arrangement, 

 but attention is being paid to the comfort of 

 workmen. There are basins and towels, and hot 

 and cold water for them to wash in. In the old 

 days it would have been called faddy philan- 

 thropy. 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 

 for a penn}^ Will this really pay? Some clever 

 hard-headed men of my acquaintance say they 

 already see that it does pay very well indeed. 



* The old apprenticeship system of training 

 men has broken down and this is the cause of 

 most of our industrial troubles. An apprentice- 

 ship system suited to modern conditions is de- 

 scribed fully on pages 68-88 of ' England's Neglect 

 of Science.' 



