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2015" It is as singular as it is regretable that boys.must commit
some offence against society, before society will trouble itself with
providing for them an industrial training."—Michael Davitt.

AND

nical

Education;

AN ADDRESS

D E LI YE HE D IN THE ROTUNDA, BEFORE

THE SATURDAY CLUB,

ON JANUARY 23rd, 1886,

by

FRITZ SCHUMANN,

president of

the dublin society of lithographic artists and writers, etc.

DUBLIN:

FORSTER & CO., Ltd., CITY PRINTING WORKS
18 to 21, William Street.

1886.

PRICE THREE P1N6E,

To be had of all Booksellers.

REEVES, Publisher, 185, Fleet-st., LONDON",u So long as the production and distribution of wealth is conducted upon
the false and vicious principle of 'individual competition,' of isolation, and
antagonism. So long as this master evil—this very essence of barbarism—shall
remain, it is in vain to expect any material improvement in the condition of
mankind. What are its results to-day in those countries deemed most civilized?
For the masses—incessant life-consuming toil; and, in return, an insufficient
supply of even the commonest necessaries of life, the most stolid ignorance, and
forced criminality. When thrown out of employment, during the oft-recurring
periods of agricultural or commercial depression, their only choice is between
the workhouse, the goal, and the grave. In its ignorance, society is expending
much more in the maintenance and punishment of its paupers and criminals,
than would suffice to put in operation a system which, within a short period
would gradually, but most certainly, not only banish pauperism and crime by
annihilating the causes of both, but place all classes in a far better condition
than has yet been enjoyed by any. No one having thoroughly investigated this
subject, will deny that we have the power, were it properly organized, to pro-
duce an abundance of physical wealth, under circumstances which would afford
ample leisure and opportunity for the entire population to be trained to superior
habits and manners, to acquire the most useful and agreeable knowledge, and to
cultivate and enjoy the most refined tastes; in short, to become highly intelli-
gent, virtuous and happyo5'-- William Pare.

" The tendency of the existing arrangement of things as to wealth, is to
enrich a few at the expense of the mass of the producers; to make the poverty
of the poor more hopeless, to throw back the middle classes upon the poor, that
a few may be enabled, not only to accumulate in perniciously large masses, the
real national—which is only the aggregate of individual—capital, but also, by
means of such accumulations, to command the products of the yearly labour of
the community."—■William Thompson*

" Every one being set to do that for which he is best fitted, all the duties of
society will be performed better than they are at present,, This principle
necessitates that the distribution of employments be made according to the
abilities of men."—St. Simon.

"If the choice were to be made between Communism, with all its chances,
and the present state of society, with all its sufferings and injustices ; if the
institution of private property necessarily carried with it, as a consequence^
that the produce of labour should be apportioned as we now see it, almost in an
inverse proportion to the labour—the largest portions to those who have never
worked at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so on
in a descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work grows harder
and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labour
cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the necessaries of life—
if this or Communism were the alternative, all the difficulties, great or small5 of
Communism, would be but as dust in the balance,5'—J oh n Stuart Mill.

$1Ina world where everyone lives on the products of labour, it is a matter
of simple justice that everyone should do his share. The man who does not
work lives upon the labour of his neighbour. He gets food, clothing, shelter,
comforts, and luxuries, for which he renders no equivalent. The idle man is a
thief and a robber, shirking his share of the world's work. Somebody gathers
his food, makes his clothes, builds his house, supplies his wants, and he does
nothing in return."— Dr. Ta L. Nichols.

ic The right of the strongest—the only right acknowledged by savage man-
appears to be still the fundamental character of all ' civilised5 states. The
wandering savage asks no other title to his neighbour's produce than his own
superior strength or capacity to take it. The civilized man acts precisely,
though disguisedly, on the same principle. Their means are different, but the
objects and end are the same. VYhat the savage or uncivilized man does indi-
vidually and directly, by the exercise of mere personal prowess, the civilized
man (so-called) does, collectively and circuitously, by cunningly-devised insti-
tutions."—-Bronterre CBrieiio" It is as singular as it is regretable that boys must commit some offence
against society before society will trouble itself with providing for them an
industrial training."—Michael Davitt,

TECHNICAL EBffilpM;

AN ADDRESS

DELIVERED IN THE ROTUNDA, BEFORE

THE SATURDAY CLUB,

ON JANUARY THE 23r,D, 1886,

BY

FRITZ SCHUMANN,

PRESIDENT OF

THE DUBLIN SOCIETY OF LITHOGRAPHIC ARTISTS AND WRITERS, ETC.



DUBLIN:

FORSTER & CO., Ltd., CITY PRINTING WORKS,

18 to 21, William Street.

1886.

)"We are obliged to act, so far as our power reacheth, towards
the good of the whole community. And he who doth not perform
the part assigned him, towards advancing the benefit of the whole, in
proportion to his opportunities and abilities, is not only a useless, but
a very mischievous member of the public; because he takes his share
of the profits, and yet leaves his share of the burden to be borne by
others, which is the true principal cause of most miseries and mis-
fortunes in life.''—Swift.TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

TECHNICAL EDUCATION is the latest remedy brought
forward to better the condition of the workers in this
icountry. We are told that the Irish workman is under
educated, and that if we want to keep trade in the country the
jworkers must have Technical Education. A good many other
causes have been given for the decline of manufacturing
Industry in Ireland. Dan. O'Connell, in a speech which he
delivered in the House of Commons, in February, 1838,
^scribed the cause to " trade-unionism." " Combination," said
Sie " was driving trade out of Dublin and other places in Ireland.
In Bandon a cotton factory was established, which was likely
to give employment to many persons in that neighbourhood.
The proprietor fitted up his machinery, and had received several
orders —When that was known to the workmen, they turned
out for higher wages. The proprietor remained long enough
to complete the orders he had got, but then gave up the
business, and thus that neighbourhood lost an outlay in wages
of <£11,000 or <£12,000. With respect to the City of Dublin,
he was sure he did not overstate the matter when he said that
tyages to the amount of £500,000 a- year were withdrawn from
it, in the manufacture of almost every article of consumption.
In the foundry trade alone not less than £10,000 or £11,000
ri-year was sent out of Dublin, which would have been retained
if the system of combination did not exist. Not very long ago
^here were four ship-builders, in extensive business, in Dublin,
/there were at present not one, and if a vessel coming into the

port required repairs, she was cobbled up in such a way as to

{ \

i

4

enable her to get across the channel, or to get down to Belfast,
where she could ,be thoroughly repaired. What was the cause
:oC;fch% Ttf, lyase, that when there was any business so as to
glfe" emplojm<3£tt,to ihe workmen, they at once turned out for
Mgher:^i^e^/« > we find a great capitalist and politician
like s$ir Tiomas .Brassy, in his book 011 " Work and Wages,"
THe power of combination has been proved, by
experience of its results, to be at least as much for the advantage
of the masters as the workmen." Then we were told that
there was too many of us, that if half the workers left the
country, there would be plenty of work, and better wages for
those who remained behind. This remedy was, unfortunately
for this country, tried, and with results familiar to alL It is
now—especially since the publication of Henry George^s
" Progress and Poverty,'5—generally understood that " Labour
is the source of all wealth," and that the more workers a country
has, the richer it is, and will be. Now, the emigration remedy
is condemned. Another remedy, and one of which, in my
opinion, there is expected too much, is "Legislative Inde-
pendence," and I regard it as a hopeful " sign of the timesto
see the President of the " Artizans* Protective Association," af;
their meeting last week, state that " the Irish Party seemed t<p
consider Home Eule the panacea for all grievances, and a kind
of patent medicine for everything." In connection with thi,s
remedy, and no doubt in order to get possession of it as soon as
possible, Mr. Parnell, in his Mansion House speech, a fe
months ago, recommended " Protective duties on English and
foreign manufactured articles." I said " Technical Education ,J
was the latest remedy, and it furnishes us with another instance
of the saying that " the Utopias of yesterday are the realities of
to-day," for like the English Socialist, Robert Owen, by tho
establishment, in the beginning of this century, of his celebrated
" Institution for the Formation of Character," at New Lanark,;
gave the first impulse to infant schools, reformatory education,!
shortening of the hours of labour, co-operative associations,!
temperance societies, and reformatory prison discipline; so did5

the French Socialist, Cabet, in his "Voyage- en Icaria,"
foreshadow " Technical Education." " All the Icarians," he
says, " without distinction, receive the same general and
elementary education, including instruction in all the elements
of science and human knowledge, In this elementary education,
which lasts up to the age of eighteen, all pupils acquire also a
knowledge of drawing and mathematics. The Icarian schools
also give them a general idea of all arts and handicrafts, of
raw materials, tools/ and machines. The Icarian education
joins, however, practice to theory, and teaches the children the
handling of the various tools—of the plane, the saw, the file, the
chisel, etc.; and in this way the youths are imperceptibly
introduced to and become expert in all the various occupations
to which they will be called when leaving the educational
establishments of the State."

The need of Technical Schools was generally admitted at
both of the meetings held in the Exhibition Building for the
purpose of establishing such a school. We heard several
speakers declare that u it was essential, in order to develop
the industrial resources of Ireland, that a school of technical
education be established in Dublin." That " it was absolutely
necessary if the artizans of Ireland were to maintain or advance
their position in trade," That" there was nothing so much wanted
for the artizans as a scheme of Technical Education, if they were
to be able to hold their own with artizans of other countries, which
certainly they were not at present." Sir Thomas Esmonde went
so far as to preach state-socialism. " It was the right," he said,
" of the artizans to be instructed by those who reapod the fruits of
their industry. They had a right to demand that they should
be educated by the State, and they should insist upon that
right." Father Behan was in the same boat, and as a good
Radical thought " prevention better than cure." " It was better
for the Government to build technical schools and teach the use
of tools than to manufacture criminals, through ignorance, and
then build jails for them." The question for our debate to-night
is " Do we want Technical Education ?" And I may at once say6

that I am in favour of it, and why, because I do not believe in the
permanency of the present mode of production, for profit and not
for use, with its direction and monopoly of instruments of labour
in the hands of a small class, and labour itself treated as a market
commodity. "Were it not for this, I should almost endorse the
opinion of Sir Thomas Brassey, who tells us that 44 Technical
Education is comparatively unimportant to the workman who
has merely to superintend the motion of the machine/' It was
by the introduction of manufacture on a large scale, with the
aid of machinery and the consequent division of labour, that
men became reduced to a mere wheel in the machine. Before
that time every workshop was a technical school, and there was
no need for the apprentice to learn his trade outside the shop.

Lithography, as an industry, being quite of modern date,
at the time I was apprenticed to it (some 25 years ago) it was
not subdivided as now. We were taught all its branches. By
that process you may turn out more of a whole man, and less of
a bit of machinery; but what is wanted in the labour market
of to-day is not men but hands (a, to me, detestable term) ;
specialists are wanted and produced, and of what use is technical
instruction to a specialist ? I know of one firm in Paris,
where one set of men, the whole day, the whole week, and year
after year, do nothing but engrave on a stone the small round
dots you see on a map, and which represent towns and villages;
another set of men (I ought to say hands) do nothing but
engrave the mountains; another set nothing but the sea and
rivers, another set only the lettering, and so on. I am told
that the boot trade in Northampton is divided into thirty-six
specialities, and so in all trades. Surely, if ever labour was
intended as a punishment (which I do not believe), the curse
has now been fulfilled. Productions in those Hells of Reality
called Factories, and nine or ten hours in them every day in the
year, and well may Mr. William Dillon, in his"Dismal Science,"
ask, "Whether it be not an obvions fact that the average of
human happiness is far higher amongst the laziest populations
of Spain or Southern Italy, than in the great industrial centres7

of England V} Well may it arouse a Ruskin. Listen to Mm—
"And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing
cities, fiercer than their furnace blast, is $1Hip-very deed for
this, that we manufacture everything tfheFe-eXae,pu^ ; we
blanch cotton, and strengthen stqelj |refine- isugar, and
shape pottery, but to brighten, to slrengftlien, to ^efiii^ oi* to
form a single living spirit, never enter^ iiafc' o#r estimate of
advantages. And all the evil to which that cfiy Purging our
myriads can be met only in one way; not by teaching or
preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery,
and to preach to them if we do nothing more than preach, is
to mock at it. It can be met only by a right understanding,
on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for
men, raising them and making them happy, by a determined
sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to
be got only by the degradation of the workmen, and by equally
determined demand for the products and results of healthy and
ennobling labour."

Still I am in favour of Technical Instruction as I am in
favour of all secular instruction. We want more positive
science and less speculative theories. A thorough knowledge
of our own bodies, and of our surroundings would be more
useful than all the history of the laws, customs, and superstitions
of the Jewish people who lived some thousands of years ago, and
with which our children now are crammed in the schools.

To come to the Prospectus at present before the public, I
think that one of the best and most important rules therein is
that an examination has to be passed in order to gain admission
to th© schools. For if it be true, as stated by Mr. Arnold
Graves (and I have not seen it contradicted) that 80 per cent,
of the boys in the National Schools are withdrawn before they
have mastered reading, writing, and arithmetic (and do not
let us forget that those are the mere tools with which to gain
knowledge) then the technical schools would soon influence
and alter this truly deplorable state. Another wise step on
the part of the committee is expressed in their desire to induce8

tlie employers to send their own children to the schools, and
there to be taught side by side with the children of artizans.
By that n^eaiis Jirienclly intercourse would be established. I
know fj?Qifi/e:xg^iBnc4 that one good thing in the compulsory
military ft&ryice \oi3: tbhfe paatinent, is the bringing men from
different c^E&ses. ^ogethef on an equal standing. The less
e&ucated 6«g^iir0tb^ Jlte daily intercourse with the better
educate^/ ill ^durtfar^ / they gain in sympathies, and both in a
better understanding of their fellow men. It has been said
(and I believe it) that by the, of late years, so fashionable
, pastime of " slumming" the rich have been the greatest
gainers.

What I do not agree with in the prospectus, is that
apprentices should be taught in the evening after having
worked ten or eleven hours during the day. The employers,
most of them not themselves knowing their trade, being mere
buyers and sellers of labour, and as such not able to teach,
should, by the trade unions, be compelled to send their
apprentices for two hours in the forenoon, and two hours in
the afternoon to the technical schools.

A Eoyal Commission now sitting upon " Trade
Depression," has submitted questions to be answered by the
secretaries of the trade unions. One of those questions was
relating to apprentices, and I have just seen the answer of
the secretary of the London Society of Compositors; he says—
" One of the first considerations with an employer who takes a
lad as an apprentice should be his aptitude for the business;
but, unfortunately, in too many cases this important phase of
the question is entirely ignored by the manager or overseer,
who is usually responsible for such matters. Formerly when
employers had in every case a thorough technical knowledge
of their trade, considerable care was exercised with respect to
the tuition of apprentices. Now, however, employers are
frequently non-practical men, who take little or no interest in the
details of their business, and more particularly is this the case
with firms who have availed themselves of the provisions of the9

Limited Liability Acts. The employer who takes a lad as an
apprentice undertakes a very grave responsibility, and if as
much care were now taken as formerly in training apprentices,
the necessity for technical education would be reduced to a
minimum. So important a matter is this, that in our opinion,
the Legislature should be asked to impose a very heavy penalty
upon an employer who fails to carry out his contract with an
apprentice. Formerly an apprentice was placed under the
care of a journeyman, who was responsible to the employer for
his proper tuition, and who was remunerated for the extra
trouble and loss of time occasioned. At the present time,
however, apprentices are too often left to pick up their trade
the best way they can, being used by many employers solely
for the purpose of profit, and kept to the purely mechanical
portion of trade, instead of being thoroughly taught the
various technicalities connected therewith, by which means
alone they can become thoroughly competent workmen." No
doubt similar answers has come from most trades, if they have
taken part in the farce called "Boyal Commission," for as Mr.
Philip Callan pointed out in advocating the Irish labourers'
cause in the House of Commons—you have had plenty of
Royal Commissions, but we still find the labourers in their mud
cabins. Forty-four years ago a similar " Commission" sat
upon the ''housing of the poor," and still they left enough hovels
for Mr. Davitt to write letters to the Evening Telegraph about.

To come back to our Prospectus. I do not see why the
raw materials should not be supplied by the schools, instead of,
as proposed, by the employers, and returned to them as a
finished article. The prospectus says that the articles should
not be sold in the market. Are we to understand that the
schools intend to instruct and educate the employers also, and
to adopt a mild and pleasant method, make them presents of
the articles to keep, gaze upon, and admire. I should think
it a more sensible plan that the articles be publicly exhibited
for a few days every six months, then the best of them retained
in an industrial museum, and the rest either disposed of on theio

Art Union principle or given to ornament our bare and
ngly school-rooms. That apprentices receive instructions in
that trade only in which they are occupied during the day,
or bound to, I do not consider a wise plan. Few boys are
now put to the trades for which they are best fitted. A
boy may in his factory very soon learn to become a mere wage-
earning machine; the Technical School should give him an
opportunity of becoming a mcm} by bringing out his
capacities and individuality. In connection with those
schools, or as a separate undertaking, I should like to see
established in Dublin an 6t Industrial Society," or Club.
Members to consist of both employers and employed, of men
and women of all classes over eighteen years old. This
society to hold an exhibition, for two or three evenings every
month, of works produced by its members, or in their work-
shops. The exhibitors to attend and explain, or, as the case
may be, to lecture upon the subject of Exhibit, Invention, or
Improvement. The society to have a good reading-room, with
all trade papers, art, and industrial publications in the English,
French, and German languages. This society to have a fund,
subscribed to by voluntary contributions, gifts, bequests, and
legacies, and for the sole purpose of assisting young artizans
to travel and work in foreign countries, such artizans to be
selected by vote in the trade-unions, or through having shown
superior talent and progress in the Technical Schools, or other-
wise having qualified themselves. In return they should send
the society a report of what they had seen and learnt in their
trade, once every three months, and if satisfactory they could
be kept abroad for a longer period by additional grants.

The Promoters of the new Technical Schools consists
chiefly of employers, a Lord So-and-so, and an Earl This-and-
that, and a small sprinkling of working men. Men like
Dowden, Ingram, Mahaffy, and Ball, are wanting there.

John Stuart Mill, in his principles of Political Economy,
and long before he declared himself a Socialist, told us that
" the present mode of production had divided the producers11

into two parties with hostile interests and feelings, the many
who do the work being mere servants, under the command of
the one who supplies the funds, having no interest of their
own in the enterprise, except to earn their wages with as little
labour as possible." Does this account for the rather luke-
warm reception the project has met with from the side of the
workingmen ? for I have heard of no meetings called by the
trade-unions to discuss it, or other steps taken by the workers ;
or is it that the Irish workingmen have been used so long to
the flatterings of the politicians, that it rather startles them to
hear that they have anything to learn ?

Even Michael Davitt admits that the employers would
profit more by the scheme than the artizans; and I agree this
time with Mr. Davitt, for I have seen the results of technical
education where it has been applied for a longer period on the
continent; and it would, perhaps, be more modest on my
part, simply to relate what I have seen there, than to attempt
to criticise or to add suggestions to the Dublin Prospectus.
My native land—Denmark, has only two millions inhabitants,
and an area of 15,000 square miles of land, far inferior to the
land in this, by mother Nature so richly endowed country.
Denmark has no rivers (waterpower), no coals (steampower),
no metals, and still it is a very wealthy country; it can afford
to indulge in such rather costly luxuries as a prolific royal
family, a court, and ambassadors at all the courts of Europe,
not to speak of the maintaining of a standing army, a navy,
fortifications, etc.

The Freeman's correspondent who attended the Medical
Congress, held in Copenhagen the year before last, told you
that when he dined with the King of Denmark, all the plate
was of pure gold. Dr. Quinlan, in lecturing for the Royal
Irish Academy, has described the wealth contained in its
Museums and art-store houses. Sir David Wetterburn (a
much travelled M.P.) says : " The Danish nation is small as to
numbers, but it has been prolific of distinguished men, parti-
cularly of authors, and the Danish literature, in verse and in12

prose, may claim to rank with the literature of languages
spoken by the leading races of modern times.5' Canon Bagot
has travelled through that country, and studied butter-making,
and I think he has benefitted his country more this way than
by any imaginable number of sermons he possibly could have
preached. Denmark is especially an agricultural country, one
half of its population being engaged in agricultural pursuits,
and as early as 1769, we find embodied in a Danish law the
declaration that " the best spur to agricultural industry and
progress is the feeling that a man is bestowing his labour on
his own land." But, as we all know, land in itself is of no
value, but for the labour bestowed upon it, and in accordance
as that labour is intelligent, or in other words, as science is
applied to agriculture, will the returns from the land be.
Denmark is well stocked with excellent primary and agricul-
tural schools, and as it has been said about the Franco-German
war, that it was the German schoolmaster who won their
battles, so, I think, it may with truth be said, that it is the
Danish schoolmaster who has won a place for Danish butter on
the English market—for, as you know, the Danish farmer with
his poorer soil and worse climate, can produce the finest butter,
and get the best prices for it, and not alone in England, but even
here in butter-producing Ireland. I call this our second invasion.

But to come to Technical Education in Denmark.
As far back as 1771, in the Regulations of the Royal
Academy of Arts at Copenhagen, we find the following
paragraph: " All our subjects shall be entitled to be
taught gratuitously at the Royal Academy. Nobody,
whatever be his station in life must be refused admittance.
In order that the good taste and the right foundations of
drawing may be spread, not alone amongst the artists, but
also amongst those artizans who want a knowledge in draw-
ing, we desire that all trade-masters residing in our Royal
capital, and who cannot do without drawing, shall urge their
apprentices to visit the Academy diligently." And the
master's did avail themselves of this invitation for already13

the next year 291 apprentices received instructions at
the Academy, and in four years their numbers had nearly
doubled. In 1807 an Institute for metal-workers was
founded. The Technical Institute was established in 1S43.
In 1868 a "New School for Handicrafts" was opened, and at
the present moment Copenhagen, a town of 250,000 inhabi-
tants, has four technical schools. The provincial towns have
not been left in the cold, for sixty-eight towns have technical
schools. In building such schools no less a sum than 618,000
crowns (a Danish crown being worth about Is. l|d.), has
been spent during the last six years. All those schools
receive help, both from the State and the Town Corporations.
When I visited Copenhagen last summer I stopped before a
splendid palace—and was told it was the New Technical
Institute. To build it the State had helped with 100,000, and
the Corporation with 94,000 crowns. This Institute receives
every year from the State 20,000, and from the Corporation
10,000 crowns; about 31,000 crowns are received in school-
fees; its total receipts last year being a little over 102,000
crowns. Last year 1,971 artizans and apprentices (401 of them
free), were taught there by sixty teachers.

As I told you, Denmark has neither rivers, nor coals, nor
metals, yet in Bond Street, and in Piccadilly in London, you
will find " Danish Bazaars," stocked with Danish terra-cotta,
porcelain, goldsmith's works, pictures, and other works of
Danish art and industry. The Great Northern Telegraph
Company, with cables round the world, and stations in Eng-
land, France, Kussia, China, and other lands, is a Danish
Company, with head-quarters at Copenhagen. We build all
our printing machines ourselves, and export; we have large
shipbuilding-yards, large breweries and distilleries, many
paper mills, large tramcar, pianoforte, and furniture establish-
ments ; and one large steam ship company at Copenhagen has
no less than eighty-two steamers, who plough the seas between
all civilised countries, except Ireland. Now, to what causes
would you ascribe all this, but principally to education, and to14

technical education. But, I will you tell what we also have in
Copenhagen, as an outcome of education. We have a Socialist
paper, with a daily circulation of 22.000 copies. We have
also, in spite of all our education, at the present moment in
Copenhagen alone, between 12,000 to 14,000 workers out of
work. Think of it, 14,000, many of them technically educated
artizans. I hold in my hand an open appeal to the public for
help, signed by sixty-four trade society officers. It says—
" In many trades there are more men out of work than in
work." Account for this !

From Denmark I could lead you through the factories
and technical schools of Germany, Switzerland and France,
countries in which I have travelled and worked for years;
but my time will only allow me to point to one more instance
of the fact I wish to impress upon you, and it is that education
makes men unwilling to live a life of degradation, misery,
and slavery.

Chemnitz is one of the principal industrial towns in
Germany; with suburbs, it has about 200,000 inhabitants.
Hosiery and woven fabrics are the principal industries. In
this town, as in all Germany, compulsory education has been
at work for many years; no child can leave the schools before
fourteen years old. It has three technical schools. The
Higher Weaving School, erected by the Corporation, the
Agricultural School, and the Technical Institute. This last
erected by the State,; at a cost of £82,000, and principally
maintained by the State. Mr. Falkin, an English manufacturer,
residing at Chemnitz, stating that it has destroyed the
manufacture of gloves in Nottingham, and is slowly under-
mining the hosiery trade, asks what it is that has enabled the
weaker race to take the bread out of the mouths of the stronger,
and to compete with fchem in the markets of the world ? and
thinks that the answer will be, to a great extent, in the
educational advantages of the people of Chemnitz.

But let me ask you are the workers in Chemnitz, with all
their education, any better off than the workers in Dublin ?15

They are certainly not contented with their lot, for they had,
until it was suppressed by law, their Daily Socialist paper,
the Chemnitz Free Press, and who do you think, they over and
over again sent to represent them in the German House of
Commons—one of their employers, oh, no ! I told you the
workers of Chemnitz were educated. They sent the Socialist
Johann Most. The same Herr Most who, although so ably
defended by A. M. Sullivan, was given sixteen months' hard
labour in an English jail, for having applauded in his Freiheit,
in the German language, the end of Alexander the Second.

The question then before us is, has Technical Education
benefitted those countries in which it has been applied. My
answer is—yes ! but as yet, only a small class—the workers
being no better off than they were before. Karl Pearson,
Professor in University College, London, tells us that " The
workmen of five hundred years ago were better off than are
the workmen of to-day, because the old institutions were more
Socialistic, in other words, society was organised rather on the
basis of labour than the basis of wealth. Society ought to be
one vast guild of labourers, workers with the head and workers
with the hand, and so organised there would be no place in it
for those who merely live on the work of others.-"

To conclude, I am in favour of education for the workers,
because, Educated, they will agitate and organise for the
Socialisation of Land and Water, our common inheritance, left
us by our common mother—Nature. Educated, they will
agitate and organise for the Socialisation of the means
and implements of labour, our common inheritance, left us
from millions of generations behind us, the result of their
labour, not that of the present possessors. Educated, they
will agitate and organise for the abolition of slavery in its
present form, for the abolition of the at present legalised
right of trading in human labour. Educated, they will agitate
and organise for the abolition of all privileges and monopolies,
and for the establishment of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,
upon Earth,16

With the greatest living philosopher, the apostle of
Anarchy, or Liberty (which means the same thing) with
Herbert Spencer, I say—" Education is closely associated
with change, is its pioneer, is the never-sleeping agent of
revolution, is always fitting men for higher things, and
unfitting them for things as they are."

February 10th, 1886,

It is with no small amount of pleasure that I, after composing
my paper, find its argument endorsed in an excellent article in the
February Number of Harver's Maga%inei by Professor Charles H. Ham,
and to which I here wish to draw the attention of those interested in
Technical Education. The Professor says

" The trade schools of Germany, France, and England grew out of
industrial rivalries. They are the product of a stTuggle for com-
mercial, mercantile, and manufacturing supremacy. They have their
root in the merchant's law of necessity-—the necessity of underselling
his rival. Their purpose, for example, in France, is to make a doll
for a cent less than it can be made in Germany, and in Germany to
make a penknife for a cent less than it can be made in France ; and
they have the sanction and support of government, because they
increase the tax-paying capacity of the subject in the exact ratio of
the increase of his productive power.

" Germany has more trade schools than any country in the world,
but her people are thereby neither enriched nor made contented.
Every year large numbers of her labour class bid adieu to the father-
land and flock to these shores, and the drain of the flower of the
labour class of a population is an irreparable loss of national vitality.

'' The trade school at its best is a special school which does not aim
to give a general education, It is hence one-sided. In establishing or
aiding it the state p]aces upon its graduates the brand of inferiority,
since it reserves for the universities and other institutions of learning
its highest honors.

" The trade schools of Europe are perpetuating a system of caste
in education which it is the chief mission of the civilization of this
age to destroy. They graduate carpenters, blacksmiths, and turners,
but they fail to equip men for an equal chance in the battle of life.

" Schools, they should be called, for the promotion of caste, and not
merely the caste of modern Europe, but the more rigid caste of ancient
Egypt, which 'compelled the man to follow the occupation of his
father, to marry within ^is class, to die as he was born,' thus making
of society an organised injustice.

" It is pleasant to turn from the Malthusian theory of the law of
life—that brutal theory which necessitates the starvation of hundreds
of men that one man may be well fed—to the theory of humanity and
gentleness—that bright theory which contemplates the salvation and
elevation of the race through the development of the best aptitudes
of all its members."This book is a preservation facsimile produced for
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