1 8 Industrial Training and Technical Education. 



because they had never received any definite training, and that 

 this truth had never permeated the brains of Enghsh legislators 

 or, if so, had received Httle support. I had the good fortune 

 to know the late Sir Edwin Chadwick in England, and after- 

 wards the late Sir John Lentaigne in Ireland, and through 

 them learned the justice of my conclusions. I then visited the 

 greater part of the Industrial Schools and Reformatories in the 

 United Kingdom, besides a large number of the ordinary ele- 

 mentary and workhouse schools, and studied the returns and 

 results. I found that the percentage of those who went to the 

 good from institutions in which trades and industries were 

 taught largely exceeded in proportion all other elementary 

 schools ; for instance, boys thoroughly well taught, as they 

 teach at Artane near Dublin, commanded wages on discharge 

 varying from £\ to ^3 per week. 



In some Institutions the boys were only taught industries 

 which would produce money for their support while in the 

 Institution, and were of no direct use to them on discharge, 

 except, and please mark this, that it taught habits of industry 

 and the consciousness that if a man will not work neither 

 shall he eat. The same experiment was tried amongst enlisted 

 boys in the army, and it was found that a boy taught to be 

 a saddler or tailor or carpenter soon became a non-com- 

 missioned Officer and artificer, and was eventually discharged 

 with a good pension and trade at his back ; whereas the 

 man who had not been taught any special industry, was 

 on discharge, in comparison nowhere. These views were 

 pressed with a weight of evidence before a Commission ordered 

 by Lord Cranbrook when Secretary for War, but very limited 

 results came of it for reasons it is unnecessary to dilate upon 

 here. Sufficient to say that they in no way controverted the 

 conclusion arrived at. Being then younger and more sanguine, 

 I looked to the Elementary Education Act to inaugurate a 

 system more breadwinning in its effects than that which pre- 

 vailed — and does unfortunately prevail still — but with all the 

 pressure that could then be brought to bear our hopes were 

 doomed to disappointment. The Government of the day, like 



