TECHNICAL EDUCATION AND THE METRIC SYSTEM.
There are, however, several minor suggestions in “Made in Germany,” and I am glad to be able to express my full agreement with what Mr. Williams said about technical education, about metric weights and measures, and about the excessive conservatism of the English people. I agree with him that it is monstrous that English lads should nowadays have no chance of thoroughly learning any trade. The old system of apprenticeship is almost dead, and the modern device of technical education remains a pure farce, mainly owing to the political influence of trade unions. In the same way I agree that it is ridiculous that Great Britain should go on using a clumsy and exclusive system of weights and measures, when the rest of the world is rapidly adopting the almost ideally perfect system invented a hundred years ago by the French. This is a striking instance of the conservatism and self-conceit of the English race, of which Mr. Williams so justly complains. But in this particular case, as it happens, it is not the commercial classes who are to blame. For years Chambers of Commerce throughout the Kingdom have petitioned for the legalisation of the metric system, and yet last Session when a Bill to grant this prayer was at length introduced into the House of Commons by the Government the most audible comment from the assembled wisdom of the nation was a silly guffaw.