an we thought practically
possible. Our tract advocated the abolition of all School Boards, but
anticipated, incorrectly, that those of the twenty or thirty largest
cities would be too strong to be destroyed: and whilst insisting that
the public must find all the money required to keep the voluntary
schools in full efficiency, we only proposed that this should take the
form of a large grant by County Councils and County Boroughs, whilst Mr.
Balfour was able to make the Councils shoulder the cost.

How far the draughtsmen of the Bill were influenced by the Fabian scheme
cannot here be estimated, but the authorities at Whitehall were so
anxious to see it that they were supplied with proofs before
publication; and the tract when published was greedily devoured by
perplexed M.P.'s.

It must be recollected that the whole complex machinery of educational
administration was in the melting-pot, and nobody knew what was to come
out of it. It had been assumed by nearly everybody that education was a
department of local government which demanded for its management a
special class of representatives. The Liberal Party was attached to
School Boards, because their creation had been one of the great party
victories of Mr. Gladstone's greatest Government, because they embodied
a triumph over the Church and the virtual establishment of nonconformity
in control of half the elementary schools of the country. Socialists and
the vague labour section took the same view partly because they believed
theoretically in direct election for all purposes and partly because the
cumulative vote, intended to secure representation to minorities, gave
them better chances of success at the polls than they then had in any
other local election. The Board schools, with ample funds derived from
the rates, were far better than the so-called voluntary schools; but
more than half the children of the nation were educated in these
schools, under-staffed, ill-equipped, and on the average in all respects
inefficient. Every year that passed turned out thus its quota of poorly
educated children. Something had to be done at once to provide more
money for these inferior schools. It might be better that they should be
abolished and State schools everywhere supplied, but this was a counsel
of perfection, and there was no time to wait for it. Then again the
distinction between elementary education for the poor, managed by School
Boards and by the voluntary school authorit