earning was discovered by one
lad after another. The chance of exchanging the craftsman's work for
the scholar's work, never thought of before, fired the brains of
hundreds first, and thousands afterward. Then began a rage for
learning. All those who had abilities even mediocre tried to escape
their lot by working at the higher subjects. It was reproached to the
Polytechnics that their original purpose, to bring the boys together
for common discipline and orderly recreation, and to train them in
their crafts, was departed from, and that all their energies were now
devoted to turning working lads into classical scholars,
mathematicians, logicians, and historians.

Nor was the complaint wholly unfounded. But it was too late to recede.
The boys crowded to the classes; they read and worked with incredible
eagerness; they thought that to be a man of books was better than to
be a man with a saw and a plane. Ambition seized them seized them by
tens of thousands; they would rise. Learning was their stepping-stone.
The recreative side of the Polytechnics was lost in the educational
side. Never before had there been such an ardour, such a thirst for
knowledge; yet only for knowledge as a means to rise. And there was
but one outlet. That, in the course of a few years, became congested.
Journalism, as the number of papers increased, demanded more workmen,
and still more. These young men from the Polytechnic filled up every
vacancy. They had seized upon this profession and made it their own;
those who did not belong to them were gradually, but surely, ousted.
It was recognised that it was the profession of the young man who
wanted to get on. Some there were who affected to lament an alleged
decay; the old scholarly style, they said, was gone; there was also
gone the old reverence for authority, rank, and the established order.
Perhaps the journal, as the new men made it, was above all vigorous.
But it was _true_, which could not always be said of the papers before
their time. From their college--the old Poly--the young men carried
away a love of truth and right dealing which, once imported into the
newspaper press, made it an engine far more mighty--an influence far
more potent--than ever it had been before. There may have been some
loss in style, though many of them wrote gracefully, and many showed
on occasion a wonderful command of wit, sarcasm and satire. But
because the papers were always truthful the writers always knew what