November 6, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



579 



couragement, but practically very little, 

 and this survives to some extent even to 

 the present day. Some of the foremost 

 employers, however, gave material encour- 

 agement to the formation of classes, insist- 

 ing on their employees attending evening 

 instruction; but conspicuous above all was 

 Mr. Whitworth, who, in 1868, placed in the 

 hands of the department the sura of 100,- 

 OOOf., to be devoted to the creation of 

 scholarships, which were to be awarded at 

 the annual May examinations. The proviso 

 made by him was that all competitors were 

 to have had experience in practical work 

 in an engineering establishment. Such 

 candidates, it was evident, must have found 

 out their own weakness in education, and, 

 by working in science classes, could make 

 up their deficiencies, and the award of 

 these scholarships would enable them to 

 study further. Sir J. "\\Tiitworth was fai'- 

 seeing and almost lived before his age, but 

 the benefits that he has conferred, not only 

 on individuals, but on science and indus- 

 tries, by his generosity will make his name 

 to be remembered for generations to come. 

 To have been a Whitworth scholar gives an 

 entree into various government and en- 

 gineering posts, and we have in the front 

 rank of science men who have held these 

 scholarships and whose names stand prom- 

 inent in the development of engineering. 



Incidentally, I may say that no country 

 but this, for very many years, considered 

 that instruction in science for the artisan 

 was a large factor in maintaining and de- 

 veloping industry. The educational in- 

 terests of the employer and the foreman 

 were, in some countries, well provided for, 

 but the mechanic was merely a hand, and a 

 'hand' trained in merely practical work 

 he was to remain. He could not aspire to 

 rise beyond. We may congratulate our- 

 selves that such a 'caste' system does not 

 exist amongst ourselves. 



For the first twenty-five years of the De- 



partment of Science and Art the grants 

 given by parliament for science instruc- 

 tion were distributed almost entirely 

 amongst those who were officially supposed 

 to belong to the industrial classes, and no 

 encouragement was offered to any higher 

 class in the social scale. 



It would take me too long to show that 

 at first the industrial classes were very shy 

 of seizing on the advantages offered them. 

 Suffice it to say that they had to be bribed 

 by the offer of prizes and certificates of 

 success to attend instruction, and it was 

 not for several years that the evening 

 classes got acclimatized and became pop- 

 ular. 



The evening instruction was then largely 

 attended by adults. That this was the case 

 may be judged by the fact that the average 

 age of candidates who obtained successes 

 in advanced chemistry was about twenty- 

 five and in elementary chemistry about 

 twenty-one. I have alluded to the apathy 

 displayed by employers and by the artisans 

 in the early days of the Department of Sci- 

 ence and Art. The causes which dispelled 

 it in both employers and employed, in re- 

 gard to science instruction, will be found 

 in the following extract from a report by 

 the Department of Science and Art:— 



The Paris Exhibition (1867) caused the work 

 of this country to be brought into close com- 

 parison with that of the rest of the continent, and 

 in many points both of manufacture and of skilled 

 labor it was found that England did not stand in 

 such a good position as she had done a few years 

 back. Dr. Playfair. in a letter to the Times, drew 

 attention to this, attributing much if not all the 

 evil to the deficiency of our technical education 

 among the artisan class. The substance of this 

 letter was taken up by many persons of influence 

 during the autumnal recess, and it led to a sort 

 of educational panic, the cry for technical educa- 

 tion becoming quite the absorbing topic among all 

 circles and forming a considerable portion of the 

 contents of all periodicals. Meetings were con- 

 vened and addresses delivered all over the country, 

 and the question was so much ventilated that im- 



