sons would be gentlemen, and if he
could only find the necessary funds, they should make what he had been
unable to make, an attempt upon the prizes of the State.

This was the situation at the beginning of the last decade of the
nineteenth century. It is summed up by saying that all the avenues to
honour and power were closed and barred to the lad who could not
command a thousand pounds at least. Let us pass on.

Most thoughtful people have considered the growth and development of
the great educational movement whose origin belongs to the nineteenth
century; whose development so profoundly affects the history of our
own.

It began, like the spread of scientific knowledge, and the reforms in
the Old Constitution, and everything else, with the introduction of
railways. Before the end of the century the country was covered with
schools, as it was also covered with railways. There was hardly a man
or woman living when the nineteenth century ended who could not read;
there were few indeed who did not read. But the school course
naturally taught little beyond the elements and was already completed
when the pupil reached his fourteenth year. He was then taken from
school and put to work, apprenticed--set to something which was to be
his trade. Clever or stupid, keen of intellect or dull, that was to be
the lot of the boy. He was set to learn how to earn his livelihood.

About the year 1885 or 1890--no exact date can be fixed for the birth
of a new idea--began a very remarkable extension of the educational
movement. It was discovered by philanthropists that something ought to
be done with the boys after they had left school. The first intentions
seem to have been simply to keep them out of mischief. Having nothing
to do the lads naturally took to loafing about the streets, smoking
bad tobacco, drinking, gambling, and precocious love-making. It was
also perceived by economists about the same time that unless something
was done for technical education, the old superiority of the British
craftsman would speedily vanish. It was further pointed out that the
education of the Board Schools gave the pupils little more than the
mastery of the merest elements, the tools by means of which knowledge
could be acquired. In order, therefore, to carry on general education
and to provide technical training there were started simultaneously in
every great town, but especially in London, Technical Schools,
'Continuation' Classes, Polytechni