Industrial Training and Technical Education. 27 



its special museum of objects appliable to its purposes, nor 

 are the local authorities slow to avail themselves of these 

 Institutions, for we find at Nuremburg that the Town Council 

 avail themselves of the advice of the Professor of Architecture 

 and entrust to him the duty of seeing that any modern build- 

 ings proposed for erection shall harmonize with the old. Every 

 encouragement is given by the employers to their workpeople 

 to attend these schools. Perhaps there is nothing so deserving 

 of the attention of English firms as the strenuous efforts being 

 made in Germany and Switzerland to develope their great 

 engineering industries with the evident object of displacing us in 

 the markets. The deputation referred to also reports a visit to the 

 Museum of Hygiene in Vienna, with its appliances for securing 

 health in the dwellings, workshops and tactories. This cannot 

 fail to be both interesting and instructive to the citizens of a 

 town boasting the highest death rate in the United Kingdom. 

 It appears that our rivals the Germans have a complete and 

 well organized system of industrial and technical teaching with- 

 out a break from childhood upwards, and that experimenting 

 and learning are never put aside as done with. Every new 

 method is not only tried practically but subjected to a commer- 

 cial test, and then introduced or discarded as the case may be. 

 Under their system and under ours the question of colonial 

 extension and foreign markets does not require to be fought 

 out by armies and fleets, the battle is being fought out, whilst 

 we are speaking, at home ; and if Germany captures department 

 after department in our home markets, as she has in colouring 

 matters and pharmaceutical products, the rest must follow as a 

 matter of course. The loss we have already sustained is 

 pecuniarily more than equivalent to the loss of much of that 

 territory which in our pride we call Greater Britain, and spend 

 so much annually in money and men's lives to maintain. The 

 value of colonial extension will be very much reduced if the ex- 

 pense is to be ours and the commerce Germany's or some other 

 Power's. Not that I am advocating protecting tariffs; on the 

 contrary let us keep open markets ; but let us be wise enough 

 to keep them by good work and commercial intelligence. 



