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which, together with the seven millions central aid now granted, would provide for some time to come for that educational expansion which Sir John Gorst tells us is so essential-'if we wish to give to the children an education anything like that which is given by our rivals in France, and Germany, and the States, and elsewhere '-but of provision for which, curiously enough, we saw but very little in the lately deceased measure upon the back of which is inscribed Sir John's name. We could do very well, I say, with this five and a half millions of local aid for education, and in securing it we could easily, by a material extension of the areas of collection, equalise the burden as it at present exists.

And this brings me to a consideration of the grossly unfair incidence of the local rate where now levied. Let me levy an imaginary School Board rate of a penny upon a variety of boroughs and rural School Board areas taken at random. In London a penny rate brings in for School Board purposes, roughly, 140,000l.; in Liverpool, 13,2001.; Manchester, 11,980l.; Birmingham, 9,000l. ; Leeds, 5,660l.; Sheffield, 4,820.; Bristol, 4,000l.; Newcastle, 3,9301.; Cardiff, 3,560l.; Nottingham, 3,240l.; Brighton, 2,866.; Portsmouth, 2,680l.; and Leicester, 2,650l. (It would be an interesting study to compare these varying amounts with the Board School needs of each of these great centres, but that is scarcely my present purpose.) I come at once now to some strikingly different incomes from the self-same penny. At Jacobstow, in Cornwall, a penny rate realises 10l.; at North Tamerton (Cornwall), 10l.; Lanlivery (Cornwall), 61. 5s.; Rhoscolyn (Anglesea), 5l. 168.; Maes Mynis (Brecon), 6l. 158. ; Kirkbride (Cumberland), 8l. 118.; Clayhanger (Devon), 7. 14s.; Ashen (Essex), 6l. 38.; Keinton Mandeville (Somerset), 4l. 188.; Barnardiston (Suffolk), 31. 188.; and so on.

Of course it is at once admitted that the educational needs of the great urban centres quoted are not to be compared with those of the small rural districts mentioned. But it is suggested that there is a far greater disproportion between the proceeds of a similar rate levied in these various localities than there is between their actual educational requirements.

Naturally, we get the sequel to this absurd restriction of the areas over which the local school rate is levied in the heavy burden cast upon many of the rural districts. The following little table may be left to tell its own tale. It should serve, in its way, as a rebuke to those wealthy Londoners especially. who are always bewailing their hard fate in having to pay more than Mr. Forster's three pence in the pound.'

PARISH SCHOOL BOARDS IN ENGLAND AND WALES, OUT OF A TOTAL
OF 2,271, ISSUING PRECEPTS OF

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I might also go on to point out that the present system throws, in the rural districts levying an education rate, in many cases a much greater proportion of the cost of education upon the locality, as compared with the share borne by the Central Exchequer, than is the case in the great urban centres. For instance, take London. For every 1. we in London get from the Central Exchequer we have to spend 17. 9s. from the rates. This is noisily objected to just now, especially by the West End section of the community, as casting too severe a burden on the locality.

But what about Great Bentley in Essex, where for every pound received from the Central Exchequer they had to raise last year over 14. locally. Look at the following list and strike your own comparisons between the amounts raised locally and centrally respectively, remembering also that, in all probability, contiguous with these parishes are others that raise little or nothing locally for their schools.

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I have taken only two of the first three counties in the alphabetical list, but they will serve. Berkshire, the second of the first three counties, furnishes no example in the above list; I put the whole county in instead. It received last year 9,0371. 7s. 8d. from the Central Exchequer, and had to raise in return from local School Board rates 18,011l. 8s.!

Well, now, I can restate my case in the form of three queries. Why should not every ratepayer, urban and rural, take his share in the local support of education? Why should not this local support be equalised in such a way as to render the incidence of the burden fair and equitable throughout the country? And why should not all public elementary schools be adequately and fairly financed, not only out of the central but out of the local purse as well?

The last query, of course, raises questions of vital moment in connection with the management and control of the schools, the powers of managers over the appointment of teachers, and the character of the religious instruction imparted to the children. But if the friends of Denominational schools are prepared to go into the question of the local support of education, prepared indeed to urge the claims of their schools upon the local purse—as so many of them are so strenuously anxious to do-it seems to me that the immediate and

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ultimate effects of the policy may be contemplated with complacency by those who desire to perfect and popularise elementary education throughout the country.

T. J. MACNAMARA.

P.S. Since the foregoing was written, supporters of Church schools have decided to ask for rate-aid,' but only in districts already rated. This I view as a pure piece of opportunism. My figures, curiously enough, will serve as a striking comment on this policy, which increases the burdens of those who already bear, and perpetuates the repudiation of those who now repudiate. I cannot think that the Government will make such a plan the basis of legislation.

1896

THE COMMERCIAL WAR BETWEEN

GERMANY AND ENGLAND

SOME few years ago the author was rather roughly handled by a portion of the Midland press because he foreshadowed the growing importance of German competition and what this meant to Staffordshire. Recent statistics have demonstrated beyond a doubt that, supreme as Germany proved herself to be in the battlefield when facing France, her victory in the arts of peace is likely to be more far-reaching and complete, and the vanquished in this second combat will not be France but England.

In the war against France the Teutonic legions gathered under the flag of Prussia were splendidly equipped for the campaign, but not more so than are her soldiers of industry to-day.

The main secret of Germany's great industrial progress may be summed up in the words, polytechnic education and philosophic training. The profundity of Germanic philosophy has for long been accepted as an associate of German character.

But this philosophic attribute has generally been considered to be too academic to become of any substantial value to the practical arts and to science involved in the great industrial operations. This impression has proved to be erroneous, for we find that the mental training associated with philosophic study has helped to bring about the formation of the practical philosopher, which more or less perfectly describes the modern German manufacturer, whilst he owes his high theoretic and technical training to the polytechnic curricula which are the envy and the admiration of educational experts.

The training of our Oxford and Cambridge Universities, up to within say twenty-five years ago, was too academic to be of much practical value for the development of the practical art and science. It is not strange therefore that very few of the great advances made in the technical arts by Englishmen were produced by men who had obtained their degrees at our Universities; whereas most of the advances in technical science traceable to a German origin have been produced by Polytechnic and University men.

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The famous Siemens brothers are a characteristic example of the beneficent advantages that the splendid polytechnic training of Germany gives to students who desire or are compelled to prepare for the arena of industrial or commercial combat, and there is little doubt that the offsprings of ingenuity from the inventive brains of the Siemens family would never have reached the eventually perfect maturity they did but for the scientific and practical training the brothers Siemens had received from their polytechnic Alma Mater. To Germans the delights from that heavenly art, music, have not been merely sensuous; in the early part of this century their organ construction was unrivalled, and this industry was a profitable one. So to-day their pianos are for general excellence most remarkable, and their piano manufacturers contribute a massive quota towards the material returns that ever follow the well-directed, competent, and sustained efforts of a rational industry. A nation or race that can produce the galaxy of musicians beginning with Haydn, Handel, and Beethoven, and ending with glorious Wagner, is one to be both feared and respected, and it is not surprising that in the making of the piano for the mass and for the virtuoso the Berlin piano-makers, measured by actual output, are facile princeps. The ability of the Germans as woodcutters has been recognised for centuries, and this ability, which has become almost a generic trait, has enabled them to produce fancy articles of wood that are conqueringly seductive. In fine-art pottery-work the German artist workmen have turned out from the Dresden kilns objects of art that are unsurpassable in beauty of design, form, and colour, and as in the industrial arts associated with musical-instrument-making, generations of practical exponents of a craft have produced men of unrivalled talent, so the wood-carving and pottery art is still held in all its highest perfection by the German artist workmen. In the mechanical arts this hereditary talent is held in the highest degree by the English mechanic, and consequently our English mechanical industries, if properly guided and encouraged, will at least for some time to come be easily able to maintain their position of unrivalled superiority (references in proof of this will be given further on); but, handicapped in the mechanical arts as the Germans undoubtedly are, nevertheless their birthright to a polytechnic training has almost counterbalanced their general disadvantages when compared with English mechanics-a proof of this is found in the inventive creations that are essentially mechanical, and which are of undoubtedly German origin. Instance the Otto Cycle Gas-Engine of Dr. Otto, an invention that almost deserves to rank alongside Watt and Papin's inventions.

The Mannesmann weldless tube, a comparatively recent mechanical and metallurgical invention, is an astonishing example of highly trained German ingenuity.

The Siemens Recuperative Gas Fired Furnace for melting glass

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