Mar. 9, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NE^VS. 



229 



TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 



Abridgment of Paper Read at the Society of Arts 

 BY Mr. Swire Smith on the Technical Education 

 Bill. 

 It is a remarkable fact that, although for ages past it 

 was considered necessary that our professional classes 

 should go through prescribed courses of scholastic 

 training in order to prepare them for their subsequent 

 occupations, there was no such appropriate training con- 

 sidered necessary or offered to the commercial and in- 

 dustrial classes of the United Kingdom. For our law- 

 yers, doctors, divines, literary men and others, the pub- 

 lic schools and universities of the country, with their 

 magnificent endowments — intended in many instances 

 for the education of the poor — have supplied great 

 opportunities and advantages of special training, but 

 there have been no schools until recently, either public 

 or private, which offered, even in a remote degree, 

 scholastic training suited to the requirements of the 

 engineer, merchant, manufacturer, farmer, or skilled 

 artisan, the men upon whom the development of the 

 resources and the material prosperity of the country 

 really depended. 



And in most instances, when the necessity for such 

 training was urged, its advocates were denounced as 

 men who would degrade education into mere utili- 

 tarianism. It has only been since a number of rude 

 blows have been struck at our commercial supremacy 

 by some of our highly-trained manufacturing rivals in 

 other countries, and since our great agricultural industry 

 has been almost paralysed by the competition of the 

 outsider, that public attention has been drawn to the 

 question of education in its relation to the industrial and 

 commercial requirements of our people. In fact, it may 

 be said that it is almost entirely in its relation to foreign 

 competition, both as to manufactures and agriculture, 

 that the question of technical instruction has been 

 brought to the front in this country. 



A Royal Commission was appointed, and in proceeding 

 with our enquiry, we considered it necessary to inform 

 ourselves as to the nature and extent of the foreign 

 competition from which the several industries in this 

 country were suffering, and in order to satisfy ourselves 

 upon all points of detail, we visited the leading indus- 

 trial districts in the United Kingdom ; we inspected 

 factories and workshops, and received evidence from 

 representative men in each industry as to the causes 

 which, in their opinion, promoted or retarded the pros- 

 perity of the many branches of British commerce. We 

 also visited many of the schools and classes in this 

 country, in which the theoretical training of employers, 

 foremen, and workmen had been received. 



Having ascertained the origin of the various foreign 

 manufactured products which were displacing those of 

 the United Kingdom in our own and neutral markets, 

 we visited the manufacturing countries of Europe, and 

 through the courtesy of foreign employers, inspected 

 many of the great industrial establishments of our com- 

 petitors. With all the details of the processes of manu- 

 facture before us, we traced, as far as possible, each 

 advantage of our rivals in superiority or cheapness to its 

 source. We visited the schools in which employers, 

 foremen, chemists, designers, and art workmen had 

 received their theoretical instruction, and, as bearing 

 indirectly upon our inquiry, we took every opportunity 

 of obtaining information as to the rates of wages and 



hours of labour, the influence of piecework, division of 

 labour, protective duties, the military systems, and other 

 conditions which, in each Continental state, more or less 

 affect the cost of production and the quality of the manu- 

 factures. 



Our inquiry showed very clearly that the modern 

 manufacturing systems of every country are modelled 

 on those of England. In many instances we found that 

 factories had been designed and furnished throughout by 

 English machine makers, while many foreign manu- 

 facturers had been taught their trades by Englishmen. 

 All the best machinery that we saw was English, or had 

 been copied from English, and this applied to most ot 

 the machine tools in foreign workshops. 



In matters of organisation, labour-saving appliances, 

 etc., our imitators have followed us so closely that the 

 best continental factories approach very nearly to our 

 own. The proportion of modern new works to the 

 whole in each industry is greater in Germany and some 

 other countries (particularly in the United States and 

 Canada) than in England, where there are many large 

 establishments in which large fortunes have been made, 

 but which are not equipped in the best and most econo- 

 mical style for the competition of to-day. In the out- 

 ward conditions apparent to the eye the advantages of 

 economy of production often appeared to be in favour 

 of the foreigners, but in nearly all the cases in which 

 we were enabled to sift the evidence, the real advantages 

 were on the side of this country. There were impor- 

 tant exceptions to this rule, and in noting the rapid strides 

 that have been made, and taking account of the long 

 hours and the low wages of continental operatives as 

 compared with our own, it did seem that in the pro- 

 duction of staple goods and metal work of various 

 kinds, we are within measurable distance of being 

 equalled, if not surpassed, " all along the line " by our 

 most advanced rivals, assuming that other existing con- 

 ditions remain unchanged. 



This country, as everybody knows, has made its wealth 

 and formed its "connexion" by the manufacture and 

 export of " goods for the million." We have never been 

 famed in the past for the artistic qualities or taste of our 

 machine-made productions, and in truth, in the prosperous 

 times some years ago, there was but little temptation to 

 trouble about the making of new patterns so long as the 

 machinery could be kept going at a profit on the old one?. 

 But a change of immense importance has come, as I will 

 briefly explain. The English foremen who accompanied 

 English machines to other countries first taught the 

 foreign manufacturers and operatives to make such goods 

 as were being made in English factories, viz., the goods 

 for the million. Favoured by cheap labour, long hours, 

 and heavy protective duties, each country began to supply 

 its own markets with the products which had hitherto 

 been imported from England. It has been said that for 

 every English machine that was started in France, 

 Germany, Belgium, Austria, Russia, and in the United 

 States and Canada, a similar machine employed in 

 England on goods for those countries was displaced. By 

 such means we lost some important branches of our 

 export trade in common staple goods, of the value of 

 many millions of pounds sterling annually, and this fact 

 in itself accounts for much of the commercial depression 

 from which this country during recent years has so 

 seriously suffered. 



It is, however, in our import trade that our weak 

 points as manufacturers are most seriously exp ose d. 



