Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
The Polytechnic Institute
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Brown Lester, Michael Renner, Christopher Flavin Conway, Kathleen He, Yuanyuan Boyce, Pauline Bierman, Andrew |
| Copyright Year | 1888 |
| Abstract | EVERY middle-aged inhabitant of the British Islands must recall more than one occasion when the mind of our country has been strongly stirred on the question of national defence. The adverse evidence of an expert, a rousing article in a newspaper, has often awakened general anxiety of more or less continuance, and followed by more or less adequate results. But it is far more difficult to awaken any widespread concern on behalf of those great abiding national interests which it is our charge and heritage to defend. And yet there are signs of no uncertainty which must to all thoughtful and instructed minds, from many directions, suggest the question whether that industrial leadership which has hitherto made our small and crowded country the world's workshop, and almost the world's mart, is not slipping from us. This is a question not of more or less wealth or luxury, but of very livelihood to the masses of the people under the special conditions of our national existence. If work ceases to come to a workshop, there is nothing for it but prompt dispersal of the workmen. All authorities seem agreed that the population of five or six millions inhabiting England and Wales in the time of Queen Elizabeth represents pretty nearly what their areas can sustain as agricultural, self-supporting countries. But the population of England and Wales alone was shown by the census of 1881 to have reached nearly twenty-six millions. So that seven years ago there was in the southern half of Great Britain an excess of twenty millions above what the country could reasonably support, except as a community of artificers and traders, and general carriers, by import and export, of the world's merchandise. It needs only a glance into past history to see that this, while an enviable position for a nation while prosperity lasts, is practical extinction when the channels of commerce are turned, or lost advantages have transferred production to new centres. Macaulay's fancy picture of the New Zealander sketching the ruins of St. Paul's from the broken arches of London Bridge seems of very little concern to the present citizen, whose ears are deafened with the ceaseless roar and traffic of the streets. And yet precisely that doom of silence and decay has befallen many a proud mother-city of which now “even the ruins have perished.” It would far exceed present limits to show in detail how many articles of our own immemorial production we ourselves now largely import, because the foreign workman produces them better, or produces them at less cost. The evidence will be fresh in the recollection of the readers of this journal. Neither can they fail to recall with what persistence we have pointed out the remedy. There is but one real remedy: the better training of the workman; and—if we may be allowed to say it—of his employer too. Everyone who, without prejudice, has opportunity to watch a fair specimen of the British workman at his work must admit that the raw material is as good as ever it was; that in the quantity and quality of the work he can turn out in a given time, few of any nationality can equal, and non surpass him. But in the training he receives, and in the opportunities of his receiving it, there is much left to be desired. And, meantime, there is not only the grave fear, but, in many branches of industry, the accomplished fact, that other nations may and do oufstrip us in the race. |
| Starting Page | 73 |
| Ending Page | 73 |
| Page Count | 1 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1038/038073a0 |
| PubMed reference number | 17755611 |
| Journal | Medline |
| Volume Number | 38 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.state.tn.us/ecd/pdf/greenhouse/referen.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://engineering.nyu.edu/files/Self-Study_Design.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1038/038073a0 |
| Journal | Nature |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
