THE INDUSTRIAL VALUE OF TECHNICAL

TRAINING.

SOME OPINIONS OF PRACTICAL MEN.

THE

PREFATORY NOTE.

HE subject of technical education will probably soon engage the attention of Parliament, as the Government has undertaken to deal with it during the present session.

I have, therefore, as President of the National Association for the Promotion of Technical Education,* willingly acceded to the request of the committee, that I should write a few words of introduction to a series of statements collected by our secretaries, which may serve to clear up some points which have been raised with reference to this important question.

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE PROMOTION OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION. President: Lord Hartington, M.P. Treasurer: Sir John Lubbock, M.P. Secretaries: Sir Henry E. Roscoe, M.P., Mr. Arthur H. D. Acland, M.P. Assistant Secretary: Mr. Llewellyn Smith, 14 Dean's Yard, Westminster, S.W. The Association for the Promotion of Technical (including Commercial and Agricultural) Education aims at encouraging those educational reforms which will improve the capacity, in a broad sense, of all those upon whom our industries depend. Its object is not to interfere with the teaching of trades in workshops, or with industrial and commercial training in the manufactory and in the warehouse. It desires (1) To develop increased general dexterity of hand and eye among the young, which may be especially useful to those who have to earn their own livelihood, and at the same time improve rather than hinder their general education. (2) To bring about a more widespread and thorough knowledge of those principles of art and science which underlie much of the industrial work of the nation. (3) To encourage better secondary instruction generally, which will include a more effective teaching of foreign languages and science, for those who have to guide our commercial relations abroad, and to develop our industries at home. With these and similar objects in view, the Association desires to bring about an improved organization of the industrial education of both sexes in accordance with the needs of various districts. One of its main purposes is to stimulate public opinion by encouraging consultation and discussion between the representatives of various localities on the subject generally, and on any legislation that may be proposed, by conferences and meetings in various towns and villages: and by the diffusion of information in a cheap and popular form. The association wishes, where it can do so, to make better known the work of existing institutions, and to act in harmony with all those who are interested in bringing about more effective progress in a matter of the utmost importance to the country.

My own interest in this subject arose from circumstances which directed my attention to certain points which appeared to me to be of the highest importance. These were the prevalence of complaints, in many branches of our industries, of the increasing severity of the competition of foreign countries, the comparatively large progress which had been made in the development of the technical and manual training of the industrial population of other countries as compared with what had been attempted in our own, and, lastly, the eagerness with which large numbers of persons seemed to have taken advantage of any facilities, in this direction, which private or philanthropic exertions had placed within the reach of the people.

The Association has not sought to impose upon the country any exact imitation of anything which prevails in other countries. Its main purpose has been to call attention to, and to promote discussion on, the subject, and one of its first objects, in the attainment of which it may claim to have been partly, though not fully, successful, has been to reduce into more definite form that somewhat vague demand for technical education which has been expressed in the country for several years past.

Lord Armstrong has lately written two articles on the subject in another Review. While I fear that we cannot claim him as an advocate of an extension of educational agencies which would make some scientific and technical instruction accessible to large classes of the people in a degree which has been found practicable in other countries, and is certainly widely desired in our own, there is much in Lord Armstrong's articles with which we are in accord. Nevertheless we have had frequent evidence that the opinions therein expressed have tended to produce a discouraging impression, and, as we believe, to delay the introduction of reforms of the primary education of the working classes, which he is as anxious as we are to bring about.

The subjoined statements, mainly by capable business men, on the bearing of technical training on various industries, will be found, partly to supplement, and partly to modify, the positions which Lord Armstrong took up.

We wish to guard ourselves from giving the impression that the present article touches more than a small part of the objects we are seeking to attain. Any one who will read the publications of our Association will see that it has always striven to broaden rather than to narrow the aims of the movement for technical education, and we are at one with other educational reformers in insisting that considerable changes in primary and secondary education must precede technical training in the strict sense of the word.

We are most anxious to see a Bill passed this session giving powers to localities to deal with this question. In July last I urged the importance of this matter at the annual meeting of the Associa

tion, and what I said then, I venture to repeat here.

"I trust the

Bill will not be delayed beyond another session, because, while we admit that a great deal is to be done by individual, and specially by local effort, we feel that, legislation having been proposed, the suspense and uncertainty which now prevail have the effect of paralysing that very local effort which we desire to call forth, and the uncertain position in which we find ourselves is delaying in some places the undertaking of all work of this character."

In the present article the educational aspects of the question, which are of the highest importance, have been expressly put aside. The only question dealt with is the possibility of materially increasing the industrial efficiency of the nation by means of technical and scientific training. All that has been attempted in the following pages has been to place before the readers of this Review opinions of some leaders of industry, and we have not appealed either to professional educationalists, or to working men, of whom many are giving the movement their cordial support, and feel its importance quite as keenly as those from whom we quote.

Neither does the article in any way pretend to be exhaustive as regards the industries of this country which may be affected by technical education. It only claims to present a few samples of the opinion on this question of those who have an intimate business knowledge of various important branches of industry.

A few words have been added at the close of these statements by the secretaries of the Association, but the value of the article. depends on the unanimity of opinion which is expressed to the effect that improved education in various forms has a direct and most important influence on the industrial efficiency of the nation, and it is for the purpose of stimulating and widening this influence that our Association exists.

HARTINGTON.

I.

BY ROTHERHAM & SONS, WATCH MANUFACTURERS, COVENTRY. IN giving an opinion as to the need and value of technical education in the watch manufacture, it is, perhaps, necessary to define what is usually understood by this term among watchmakers. It is the course of instruction pursued in the various schools of horology in Germany, France, and Switzerland.

Briefly stated, the mode of instruction is as follows:-The student is put through a course of geometry and mechanical drawing to enable him to draught correctly the various parts of the watch. The drawing is done on a greatly enlarged scale, and the reason why the

given proportions are adopted are indicated and demonstrated. Immediately following on this class teaching, he is called upon to pass into the workshop, and to make each piece from plain strips of brass and steel, conforming strictly to a reduced measurement and following out the related proportions of the drawing he has just executed in class. This is held to be the most direct way of imparting a just admixture of theoretical and practical knowledge in watchmaking.

Very striking results are to be seen in any of the continental schools of the success of this system of training, both in the excellence of the work produced and in the speed at which the training progresses. The complete course of instruction usually extends to three, and in a few cases to four, years. We see nothing vague in the practice of these schools; no very high ideal of technical education is sought after, and the instruction has a direct bearing on horology, pure and simple.

A careful comparison of these results with those obtained by the seven-years system of apprenticeship, which is the rule for training watchmakers in this country, has gradually led us to the conclusion that it would be beneficial to the trade that similar schools should be encouraged and established in England.

We should, perhaps, here say that our firm has had a somewhat considerable experience of the apprenticeship system, as, up to ten years ago, we always had an average of eighty apprentices under training at one time in the various branches of the business; this average has since fallen to thirty, although the total number of those in our employment is now greater than at any former period. And in view of the radical changes introduced in the processes of manufacture, and of the automatic machinery brought into use during the past ten or fifteen years, it has become clear to us that this method of training is doomed to extinction through unfitness for the altered circumstances.

A point bearing on this subject, and not to be lost sight of, is that, with the altered conditions of life that surround them, lads are not now so disposed to enter into the long service of a seven-years apprenticeship. We can think of no provision so calculated to meet this lapse of the old order of things, and supply the present wants of the trade, as a scheme whereby trained men from such schools as we see working to this end on the Continent should, after a few years of general experience in manufacturing, become foremen in the various workshops, and centres from which technical information may be brought to bear on the general run of workmen whom they control and direct.

Until a year or two ago, only one such school existed in the United Kingdom, and that in London, with a very restricted course of instruction when compared with foreign schools. Latterly one other

has been started in London, and one in Scotland, each in a small way. Since 1887, Coventry has established a Technical Institute, with a horological section. This institute has been started mainly by the liberality of the manufacturers connected with the two old staple industries of the city-i.e., the ribbon and watch trades, both of which are now subject to the keenest of foreign competition.*

It is, of course, a debatable question whether industries strained by a fierce antagonism should be left to fight without the substantial municipal and national support given to these institutions elsewhere. But be this as it may, it is obvious that those who, in a bad time of trade, set to work to start such an institute must have been strongly possessed of a sense of its importance to the industries in which they were engaged.

II.

MR. IVAN LEVINSTEIN, OF I. LEVINSTEIN & Co., CHEMICAL AND COLOUR MANUFACTURERS, MANCHESTER.

PROBABLY in no branch of chemical industry is technical instruction of greater value than in the coal-tar manufacture, with which I am connected, and in no branch has our progress, compared with that of some of our competitors, been more unsatisfactory. For example, the exports of coal-tar products from Germany increased from 195,380 cwts. in 1884, to 319,922 cwts. in 1887, while, as is well known, our exports in these articles have been decreasing. Although this remarkable progress on the part of Germany is, in my opinion, by no means exclusively due to the superior education of their scientific chemists, still the fact is indisputable that greater attention ought to be paid to the training of our young men who desire to enter colour works. Every year a large number of young men issue from our technical schools, who wish to find employment as chemists, the majority of whom are by no means adequately prepared for the purpose. Manufacturers continue to show a preference for German or Swiss chemists, to whom they are often willing to give much higher salaries than to men incompletely trained in our own schools. The whole of the blame of this state of things is not to be laid on our technical schools, especially the best of them; the fault lies to some extent with the parents and advisers of these young men, who, in entire ignorance of what is really required in these days of progress, expect that a youth, having received a mediocre general education and spent two years at a college or technical school, ought at once to be able to earn a livelihood as a chemist in some of our works. We have already far too many of these half-trained chemists. It is not increased quantity but improved quality which we want, and unless *The Institute has, since its foundation, received a generous endowment and gift of land from a prominent citizen of Coventry, lately deceased.