INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND TECHNICAL 

 EDUCATION : 



A Paper read gth November^ 1^97 1 before the Belfast Natural 

 History and Philosophical Society^ 



By Major-General Geary, C.B. 



Professor J. D. Everett, d.c.l., f.r.s.. President, in the Chair. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, — My friend Mr. 

 Lloyd Patterson will tell you that when he first conveyed 

 to me your kind invitation to lecture to this Society I 

 received his proposal with a feeling akin to dismay. It 

 hardly seemed possible to me to tell you anything which 

 could be interesting to so learned and intelligent an audience. 

 I can only lay claim to having endeavoured to keep myself 

 in some small degree abreast of the progress of the age, and 

 to submit with the greatest deference for your consideration 

 some matters which seem to me not unworthy of deeper thought 

 than in the rapid progress of discovery they are apt to receive. 

 Some 25 years ago, returning to England after a long sojourn 

 in India, I was struck with the difference between the condition 

 of the labouring classes at home and in India ; and observed 

 that, with all their poverty, substantially the contrast was 

 favourable to the Indians. There was more contentment, more 

 cleanliness and sobriety and less brutality amongst them. The 

 very distinctions of caste implied that everyone had a definite 

 calling of some sort — the caUing was not always very remuner- 

 ative — but except in times of distress, of war or famine, and 

 eliminating professional beggars, all managed to get a livelihood, 

 it being remembered that in India this means very little. It 

 struck me, as I became more intimately acquainted with them, 

 that the English paupers were poor and wretched and degraded 



