Small schools are much more
Efficiency suffers from lack of

distress are difficult to keep up. costly per head than large ones. means. In any grant made by the Exchequer to country schools, it would be difficult to defend upon any principle of justice its restriction to those under voluntary management. Two parishes may exist side by side in which there is equal need of additional funds to make the village school efficient. The parish which is under School Board management is probably the poorer of the two, lacking the wealthier residents whose subscriptions help to keep up the Voluntary school. It has greater burdens, for it has to pay for elections and management as well as for schools. It would be impossible to give a grant from the Exchequer to the richer parish and leave the poorer out in the cold. But in either case, unless effective precautions were taken, a grant would do little to relieve the financial difficulties of the managers. It would be swallowed up in relieving ratepayers or subscribers, and there would be nothing left for managers to spend upon the schools. It is indispensable that the additional grant should be under the supervision of some county authority if it is intended that it should reach the schools. But country schools want something much more than money. They want some system of organisation which will enable them to co-operate for common objects. The parish is too small an area to establish alone efficient education. The great success of Board Schools in towns is largely due to the fact that the School Board furnishes a centre of federation for the individual schools. The teachers have the prospect of promotion from school to school. Apparatus, pictures, and books can be transferred. Organising teachers and special lecturers can be employed. Centres for cookery classes, laundry-work, and manual instruction can be formed. Pupil-teachers can be taught more cheaply and more effectively in a common school. There is nothing of this kind in the country. I have heard of places in which confederations for such purposes of rural School Boards exist, but these are exceptions. Church schools dare not federate, for fear of losing their subscriptions. People will subscribe to their own village school who would, it is believed, cease to do so if the school became merged in a diocesan federation. Only a county education authority could form an effective nucleus for common action amongst the individual schools of the county.

But whilst in the country Voluntary schools are every bit as good as, if not better than, Board schools, and, although a little straitened at times for lack of money, are in no danger whatever of extinction, the result of the dual system in the towns has been disastrous to Voluntary schools, and the continued existence of a great many of them is in jeopardy. The Board-school system has spread over most of the towns, and flourishes in them. The Boards have in the rates a source of income which is practically unlimited, and their manage

ment is never stinted for want of funds. Moreover, the rate contribution to the Board school is drawn from the subscribers to Voluntary schools equally with the rest. Thus the supporters of Voluntary schools have to pay twice over. Many of them regard this as unjust; they cannot escape the rate, so they withdraw their subscription. The rate of voluntary subscription per child is far lower in districts which have School Boards than in those which have none. The managers of Voluntary schools in towns want the same things as those in the country-money and organisation-whilst their rivals are amply provided with both. The natural consequence is that, with some conspicuous exceptions, Voluntary schools in towns are generally inferior to Board schools. They have worse buildings, worse apparatus, worse paid head-teachers, assistants with inferior qualifications, and larger classes for these teachers to manage and instruct.

How much more money do the Voluntary schools want, and where is it to come from? The difference between the expenditure of Board and Voluntary managers on school maintenance is in London 258. per child, and in the large towns is, on the average, 128. per child. The first question that arises is, whether this difference can be diminished by curtailing the expenditure of the School Boards. It is said that they are extravagant. They are probably not so economical as they would be if they were responsible for the general finance of their district as well as for its education; but there is little doubt that, on the whole, the ratepayers get excellent value for their money. Increased economy will not do much to bridge over the difference between Board and Voluntary school expenditure. Neither is it possible that the cost of education can be arbitrarily fixed in advance, as some persons have suggested. It depends on the cost of buildings, the price of apparatus, and the salaries of teachers. These are regulated by the law of supply and demand. Salaries, in particular, which are frequently denounced as extravagant, are undoubtedly higher in England than in France or Germany; but as the general level of elementary education amongst the mass of the population of this country is lower than abroad, those who are to be teachers have to be raised to a much greater height above their fellows. They form a class with special qualifications which cannot quickly be augmented, and they command, in consequence, high salaries, without which their services cannot be obtained. It is thus impossible to place a limit on the cost of education. The State may fix its contribution, the power of the School Board to rate may be restricted, but there must be some authority behind whose liability is unlimited if the efficiency of the Board schools is to be maintained. It is contended by some persons that the cost of School-board education might be lessened by restricting it to the teaching of certain subjects, to be called elementary,' and forbidding the Boards to give instruction in any subject not included in the definition. In many places the Boards

have responded to a popular demand for higher education, and have established excellent secondary schools. Until some better public provision is made for secondary education it would be the height of folly to stop these laudable efforts, highly popular among the ratepayers concerned. But whatever reasons may arise hereafter for placing secondary education in other hands, economy is not one of them. The Boards, as purveyors of higher education, allege that they make a profit which enures to the benefit of the ratepayers, and that the general cost of education to them is diminished, and not increased, by their operations. But so long as our industrial population is so inferior in elementary and technical knowledge to their rivals in other countries, any attempt to lower the quality of education is dangerous to our national interests, unless we could persuade other nations to step down to the same low level. There is a competition in these days among civilised nations in education as well as in armaments, and our national prosperity depends upon our keeping abreast of our rivals at whatever cost.

If Voluntary schools are to continue to exist in towns in a state of efficiency at all comparable to that of Board schools, the managers must be provided with means something like equal to those which their rivals enjoy. Whether aid can be accepted without destruction to the religious character of the school from the rates is a question upon which for fifty years the friends of Voluntary schools have been unable to make up their minds. It is impossible to settle such a question in the concluding lines of an article. But it may be useful to state some conclusions which seem to spring from the history of the past, and which must be borne in mind in any solution proposed:

1. An additional State subvention, given in towns to Board and Voluntary schools alike, will not redress the existing inequality in their resources. Whatever is given to the Voluntary schools must

either be withheld from the Board schools or be such as the latter already possess. Whether it is possible to persuade Parliament to give to schools, because they are Voluntary, exceptional grants, which are neither now nor in the near future to be extended to Board schools, or whether, after so many schemes of rate aid have been proposed and none accepted, it is now possible to devise something which Parliament will adopt, are questions for the party politician.

2. The aid must be adequate. It must be sufficient to enable the managers of Voluntary schools to give an education as efficient as that of the Board schools. Any part of the excess of Schoolboard expenditure which is due to extravagance, any saving which can be made in Voluntary schools by reason of unpaid services, may be deducted from the existing difference of resources; but the rest must be made up in full. Some plan will also have to be devised to secure that the aid will go to the school, and not to the subscribers,

otherwise it will be swallowed up by the latter, and the former will be no better off than before.

3. The aid must be elastic. It is impossible to regard the existing cost of education as a maximum which will never be exceeded. If the cost in Board schools increases, the Boards have the rates to fall back upon. The managers of Voluntary schools must have a source of income capable of simultaneous augmentation.

4. The aid must be permanent. Any relief given now to Voluntary schools which might be withdrawn a few years hence will only ensure their destruction. Differential treatment by the Exchequer, unless it is generally accepted, is a perilous expedient. There are so many ways in which a policy of this kind can be reversed—either by cutting off the supplies, or by extending the grants to the Board schools, and thus reviving the present inequality-that its permanence can only be relied on if it is the result of a common understanding.

5. Lastly, the managers of Voluntary schools must make up their minds to accept, along with increased grants of public money, increased public control. If aid come from the State, Parliament is sure to impose conditions with the view of securing the application of the special grant to increasing the efficiency of the schools. If from the rates, the representatives of the ratepayers must have some sort of voice in the management of the schools. The ingenious expedient of the Duke of Newcastle's Commission, to make rate aid a payment for results, is not likely to be accepted now. Payment for results is discredited as mischievous to education. Managers must submit to such conditions as ratepayers may properly require for securing the efficiency of the secular education in their schools; they may have to surrender some part of that independence of management which the Duke of Newcastle's Commission thought so valuable; the only thing which they cannot surrender, and for which they must stand out to the last, is full liberty to teach their distinctive religious doctrines to the children of their own communion. There is no reason from past history to suppose that Parliament will seek to take that liberty away.

JOHN E. GORST.

1896

THE WESTRALIAN MINING ‘BOOM'

BETWEEN the first day of March 1894 and the last day of September 1896 not less than 731 Western Australian gold-mining companies, with an aggregate nominal capital of 75,871,372l., have offered their shares for subscription to British investors. The greater part of these companies to be exact, 423-made their first bow to our public during the last twelve months. One hundred and eighty were floated when the late lamented' boom' in South African mining shares, which I discussed in this Review for October 1895, was in its zenith; and about the same number were children of the spring of the present

year.

To the 80,000,000 Westralian mining shares now in existence the Stock Exchange has long since conceded a special 'market;' and it has even conferred upon these stocks a nickname-the surest indication of importance and popularity. And that 'Kangaroos,' as they were fondly called, could boast of importance and popularity nobody would dare to gainsay. During many months they were the only class of stocks which furnished stockbrokers and company promoters with a living, financial newspapers with advertisements, and dabblers in shares with an opportunity to dabble. When the South African market was in a chronic state of collapse; when Home Railways had been carried to such high prices that nobody could muster pluck enough to touch them; when Argentine stocks had been worked for all they were worth;' and American railways were going to the dogs, along with the Democratic party—when, in short, every department of the Stock Exchange was inactive-Westralians came to the rescue, and the creation and distribution of these shares kept the financial community profitably employed.

I propose to enter presently into a brief examination of the methods pursued in creating these 80,000,000 shares, and particularly of the means adopted to distribute them among the public. I also intend to show how little reason the public have to congratulate themselves upon their new acquisitions. But before I do that I must show what foundation there is for these shares and their market -in other words, what are the position and the prospects of the gold industry of Western Australia, which provides the basis of this gambling mania.