402 Transactions, — Miscellaneous, 



We may depend upon it that the movement in England is full of 

 vitality, and will grow to large dimensions. England's industrial supre- 

 macy depends upon her furnishing her artizans with a proper technical 

 education, which they have hitherto lacked, and she cannot afford to let that 

 education be either imperfect or confined within a limited circle of students. 

 The Government have taken the matter in hand, and in 1880 appointed a 

 Royal Commission, which I believe has not yet sent in its final report, " to 

 enquire into the instruction of the industrial classes of certain foreign 

 countries in technical and other subjects, for the purpose of comparison 

 with that of corresponding classes of this country ; and into the influence 

 of such instruction on manufacturing and other industries at home and 

 abroad." 



England, it must be remembered, although of all countries the most 

 interested in the technical education of artizans, has been the last to take 

 up the subject. Technical schools have existed in Germany for a long 

 period ; indeed, the system recently inaugurated in England is, I believe, 

 modelled upon the Bavarian system. France possesses several good 

 technical schools, the principal one, viz., the School of Arts and Trades at 

 Paris, having been founded so far back as 1857. Switzerland has also a 

 fine Polytechnic School in Zurich, which in 1879 was attended by as many 

 as 1,000 students. Sweden is also well supplied in this way, there being 

 technical schools of various grades, so as to suit different classes of work- 

 men, the course of instruction being expanded or contracted with the object 

 of meeting the pecuniary means and leisure times at the disposal of the 

 persons attending the classes. Even in Russia, which is commonly 

 supposed to be backward in educational appliances, technical education 

 has not been forgotten. There is a large technical school at Moscow, while 

 in some of the Government factories classes have been formed under the 

 auspices of the Government for the purpose of furnishing technical instruc- 

 tion to the artizans. The proprietors and directors of some of the larger 

 factories on the Continent have opened technical classes for the benefit of 

 the hands in their employ; in fact, throughout the Continent, wherever 

 manufactures are carried on to any extent, means of some kind exist for 

 giving to artizans and apprentices to trades a special training suited to 

 their ordinary avocations, and calculated to enable them to perform their 

 daily tasks with an amount of intelligence and skill which cannot be 

 expected from workmen who have not enjoyed the advantage of a technical 

 education. 



The Continental Governments recognize what the New Zealand Govern- 

 ment, fairly zealous as it has shown itself in the promotion of new 

 industries, has overlooked, viz., that if manufacturing industries are to 



