278 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Mar. 23, iS 



The teaching of drawing, elementary science, and 

 practice in the use of tools in elementary schools will 

 give to all our artisan population the basis of technical 

 instruction. The secondary technical and commercial 

 schools will supply such theoretical training as will mate- 

 rially help the class of superior workmen, designers, 

 clerks, and many employers in overcoming some of the 

 difficulties connected with their earlier industrial expe- 

 riences, besides giving them a wider general knowledge 

 of business. In fact, the day schools, both elementary 

 and secondary, may be compared to nurseries which 

 prepare students, on becoming apprentices, to take up in 

 the evening classes, often of the same schools, the special 

 subjects of science or art connected with their daily in- 

 dustries. Experience has already amply demonstrated 

 that these young men, with nothing to unlearn, can 

 return from the workshop to their familiar class-rooms, 

 and pursue their technical studies with enthusiasm and 

 success altogether unknown to students who have not 

 had the same advantages of preliminary training. There 

 are industries of a highly artistic or scientific character 

 which require special machinery, and for which provision 

 must be made, but to the overwhelming proportion of 

 apprentices the workshop during the day supplies the 

 practice, while the evening class, taught by a practical 

 man, in perfect touch with daily wants, supplies the 

 theory. It is in the combination of science and art with 

 practice which will form the best equipment for enabling 

 our manufacturers and artisans to repel the invasion of 

 the attractive foreign products which fill our shop win- 

 dows, and therefore I believe that in these technical 

 night schools the problem of technical education, so far 

 as the artisan is concerned, will be successfully 

 solved. 



In no country in the world can this system be carried 

 out so thoroughly, so profitably, and so economically, as 

 in England. The technical schools of the Continent, 

 although the fees are usually low and the teaching is 

 often gratuitous, yet demand great sacrifices of time on 

 the part of the students. Many attend at night, but 

 after twelve hours of toil the brain is in no condition for 

 active or enjoyable study. So the best students, fre- 

 quently from eighteen to twenty-five years of age, in 

 thousands of instances sacrifice years of practical labour 

 and wages, in order that they may qualify by daily at- 

 tendance at technical schools to become designers, fore- 

 men, chemists, or superior clerks. Having obtained this 

 knowledge, many of them come over to England, and 

 secure the leading situations for which their school train- 

 ing has qualified them, while our own young men, un- 

 prepared by scholastic training, have to fall behind into 

 the lowlier and less lucrative positions. Those who re- 

 main at home are able to bring their superior training to 

 bear upon foreign manufacturing industries, and thus 

 often give employment to thousands of operatives in 

 making tasteful commodities, whose sale in this and other 

 countries, by depressing the value of our products, takes 

 the bread out of the mouths of English operatives, and 

 steals away the capital of English employers. As was 

 stated by a foreign official, when asked the cost of the 

 technical schools of his country, that he didn't know, 

 and didn't trouble to inquire, for it was England and 

 America that maintained them, by buying the beautiful 

 manufactures and designs which the schools had enabled 

 his people to produce. 



The splendid advantage which our artisans possess 

 over those of all others is this, that they have from six to 



eighteen hours per week more leisure than their rivals, 

 whose competition is pressing us so severely. 



But if leisure be not wisely used it may prove a 

 curse and not a blessing and I regret to say that, at the 

 present time, this advantage is absolutely wasted in 

 hundreds of thousands of instances in this country. There 

 are not a few experienced observers who affirm that, as 

 a nation, we take so much more ease, and demand so 

 much higher pay than our competitors abroad, that we 

 must necessarily be surpassed before long in cheapness as 

 well as in excellence of production. There are others who 

 declare that in the lower wages and longer hours of con- 

 tinental operatives is to be found the secret of our in- 

 dustrial difficulties. To those who have faced the 

 economic facts in the competing countries, the serious- , 

 ness of such conclusions is this, — that if our wages were 

 reduced to-morrow, and our hours of labour increased to 

 the continental standard, and if even, in addition, our 

 manufacturers and artisans were protected by tariff duties 

 on imports, the nation would still go on importing many 

 millions worth of tasteful commodities from France, and 

 Germany, and other countries, simply because we should 

 not know how to make these commodities ourselves. 

 For my present purpose it is sufficient to say that I am 

 less afraid of foreign low wages than of foreign skill, 

 and that we can only retain our leisure by bringing 

 higher skill to our aid in promoting the efficiency as well 

 as the economy of our manufactured productions. 



I have a great respect for the foreign designers,, 

 chemists, art workmen, correspondents, and others, whose 

 employment in this country' has already done so much 

 to rescue some of our manufactured products and our 

 national trade from barbarity. Like the Flemings of 

 old, who taught us our industries, they are almost in- 

 variably good citizens, and men of superior culture. But 

 our position would be healthier, our industrial prospects 

 brighter, and the lives of many of our people would be 

 happier, if these situations were filled by equally capable 

 Englishmen. It is an insult to say that our people 

 are inferior in natural faculties. They are deficient in 

 taste, because in their school instruction the training in 

 taste has not been a paying subject under the Code, as 

 may be shown by the fact that, with all our enlightened 

 efforts, three-fourths of the children attending our ele- 

 mentary schools have received no instruction in drawing ; 

 and yet this subject was properly described by Sir 

 Henry Holland, when he presided over the Education 

 Department, as " the mainspring of a technical educa- 

 tion." You cannot expect art from those who have 

 never learned to draw, any more than you can expect a 

 literary style from those who were never taught to read 

 and write ; and so, with a South Kensington organisa- 

 tion which extends from John o'Groats]to Land's End, 

 only about one per thousand of our population are 

 attending schools of art. The testimony of the most 

 competent judges is clear upon this, that whether in art, 

 science, or technical skill, the Englishman is not sur- 

 passed by the foreigner when his faculties have the 

 advantage of equal cultivation. 



When the Technical Commissioners visited the re- 

 markable educational institutions of Paris, we spent most 

 of our evenings in inspecting free evening drawing 

 schools in all branches of technical art, of which we 

 were told that a hundred were spread over the city sup- 

 ported by the municipality. We saw large placards 

 posted on the walls, signed by the ma3''or, in which he 

 appealed to all young people, as they valued their future 



