How many others have tried the same methods, but have failed! Why? Because the one thing necessary for success in such work as this—nine parts philanthropic and one part religious—is the magnetic power which we call, in practical work, sympathy, and, in art or literature, genius.
The clergy, with or without this magnetic power, work day and night. Never before has the Church of England possessed a clergy more devoted to practical work. Never before, alas! has the Church possessed so few scholars or so few preachers. Learning, save for a scholar here and there, has deserted the Church of England. Eloquence has passed from her pulpits to those of the Nonconformists. But the clergy work. Unfortunately, the parishes are large; even a district church has often ten thousand people or more, and those mostly poor, so that the struggle would be, if it were not supplemented, almost hopeless.
It is supplemented in many ways. To begin with, in its civilizing work, by the Board-school. The action of the London School Board is always subjected to the fiercest light of hostile criticism, especially that of the ratepayers, who have seen with disgust the rate mounting year by year. There is, however, a consensus of agreement that the influence of the schools has been to humanize the people in a manner actually visible to all. The results are before us. The children of to-day are, it is confessed even by opponents to the policy of the School Board, in every respect better than those of twenty years ago, and this although, despite laws and inspectors, there are still many children who escape the meshes of the school net. The mothers understand that the teachers demand certain things of them; that the children must present themselves with hands and faces washed and with some attempt at neatness in their dress; this gives rise to a certain shame at letting the children go unwashed; perhaps, also, the thought of the school tyranny makes the father remember on Saturday afternoon the responsibility of the children, even to knocking off a pint or so.
As for the children themselves, they love the school and the teachers and the lessons; this part of the day is their happiness. Whether in the after life they will remember much of the scraps they learned—crumbs of knowledge: the historical crumb, the geographical crumb—I know not, but the important lessons of order and obedience are not readily forgotten; they will remain; when these children grow up some of them will perhaps join the company of disorder; but they will be rebels, not untaught savages who know no law.
I have already spoken of the clubs for boys and girls. These clubs are simply invaluable. They take the young people at a time when habits are most easily formed, at a time of life when it is most desirable to give them occupation and pursuits which will take them away from the dangers of the streets.
For the better class of boys, those who should be taught the better trades, especially those which require a knowledge of drawing, designing, or machinery, there are the continuation schools, which are carried on in the evening, and the Polytechnics. A Polytechnic is to the young working lad what a public school or a college is to the upper class. It not only teaches him a trade, that by which he is to live, but it gives him discipline, obedience, responsibility, and the sense of duty. It makes a man of him; it gives him honor and self-respect. There are now lads in the London Polytechnics by thousands; many of them will go out to the colonies; whether they emigrate or whether they stay at home, they will become the very cream and flower of the working-people; they will stand up wherever fate leads them as lifelong champions for soberness and for industry. Not for them will be the wild dreams of anarchy; not for them the follies of an impossible socialism; not for them the derision of religion; not for them the hatred of the rich or the jealousy of class. Not the least among the benefits and advantages of the Polytechnic is the esprit de corps promoted among them; they are as proud of their “Poly” as any lad of Eton or any man of Balliol. And the latest arrival from the place, wherever he goes, is sure to find friends and advisers and helpers among the old boys of his “Poly.”
The Helping Hand in education is of such great importance that one may dwell a little upon the machinery by which a clever and persevering lad may rise from the very lowest levels to any honor or distinction which the country has to offer. It is chiefly the Technical Education Board, a body which has been in existence for some ten years, which supplies the ladders. This Board is empowered by the London County Council to assist in supplying technical instruction to schools and institutions which are not conducted for private profit. The Board spends the sum of £170,000 a year in maintaining and developing classes for technical education. The most important of these institutions are the Polytechnics above mentioned. There are twelve of these in and about London, of which two are in our quarter of East London. The number of students in Polytechnics—all of them, it is needless to say, of the working-class—amounts to 45,000. The cost of maintaining them is £120,000, of which the Board of Technical Education contributes £30,000; a large sum is given by the City Charities Commission, and the rest is given by half a dozen rich City companies. It is evident we have here a very serious attempt at providing technical education for lads who are to become the skilled workmen of the future. Formerly they were apprenticed to various trades; the system of apprenticeship has fallen into disuse; but it is found highly necessary, if this country is to hold her own against foreign competition, to train the lads in workshops and laboratories where they may learn every branch of their own trade. There are excellent and fully equipped laboratories at the People’s Palace and one or two other Polytechnics. As for the trades taught, they are far too numerous to set down. All those trades which are connected with engineering, with metal work, with gold- and silver-smiths’ work, with enameling, wood engraving, bookbinding, decorating and painting, carpentry, furniture- and cabinet-making, and a hundred other trades are taught in these colleges of industry. There are art schools also for the teaching of design, decoration, and all the art requirements of the trades.
For the encouragement of the lads who have left school and are willing to carry on their work the continuation classes were formed. The Technical Board has established a system of scholarships by which a ladder is placed in readiness for any boy or girl who can climb it. There are six hundred small scholarships given every year by examination to boys and girls who have passed the sixth standard in the elementary schools; they are in value £8 for the first year, and £12 for the second year. After two years the second ladder is reached. The student who has shown, so far, that he is able to climb the ladder and would now give further proof of ability, must be under sixteen, and his parents must not be in the receipt of more than £400 a year. He may then gain by open competition a scholarship giving him free education at some recognized college of higher education, together with about £30 a year in money. After three years, if he is able to climb still higher,—the number of competitors now narrows,—he has a grand chance before him; he may win a scholarship giving him free education at any university he may choose, with £60 a year, tenable for three years. There are at present many such scholars in residence at Oxford, Cambridge, and other universities.
In addition to these, the Board gives scholarships for art, for science and technology, for horticulture, for sanitary science, and for domestic economy. Besides this industrial help, the Board provides lectures, especially for clerks, on commercial subjects.
It will be understood that by means of these scholarships a boy may work his way, at little or no cost to his friends, from the position of craftsman to that of a graduate in honors of Oxford and Cambridge. Think what this means! The boy is lifted straight from the life of manual labor, very likely monotonous labor, which is the lot of most, in which he can never attain to fortune, honor, or distinction, to the life of intellectual work; his companions will be those who stand in the very forefront of science, literature, and art. A fellowship at his college will enable him to be called to the bar; he may then aspire, with reasonable hopes of success, to the honors of Queen’s counsel, Judge, Solicitor-General, Chief Justice, or even Lord Chancellor. He may go into the Church, and look forward, if with learning he has acquired administrative power and preaching power, and, let us add, manners, to becoming a bishop; he may remain at the university, a lecturer and teacher of his own subject; he may become a professor of science, or he may become an expounder of history. He may become a physician or a surgeon. He may become a journalist, a dramatist, a novelist, a poet. Whatever line he enters upon, he has climbed, by means of these three ladders, up into the higher ranks, with all that the word means. He has become, if he chooses,—and he cannot help choosing,—a gentleman. The poor lad who climbs up does not always, it is true, become a gentleman. Sometimes there remain still clinging to him certain rusticities; sometimes ancestral traits, such as a thirst for strong drink, seize him. As a rule, however, the lad who has climbed remains, he and his children after him, in the rank, so dear to the British soul, of undoubted gentility. If the sins of the father are visited upon the children, then, surely the achievements and the virtues of the father shall bring their rewards to the children—yea, even unto the third and fourth generation.