Guilds, have been roused to action; by some of them a scheme has been set on foot having for its object the erection and endowment of a vast Technical University, or College, on the Thames Embankment, where scientific instruction shall be given in the arts and manufacturing industries of the country, with especial reference to the development of the taste and skill of the artisan classes. Meanwhile a few of the companies have made a commencement, presumably by way of experiment, in connection with the particular craft which they, at least in name, represent, by giving a stimulus to exertion in some of the towns more directly engaged in the special trade or industry. The shipwrights, not long since, opened an exhibition at Fishmongers' Hall, where examples of the ancient craft of shipbuilding were exhibited; the models there displayed showed almost to perfection the skill, invention, and art which has been attained in this trade. The Drapers' Company, it is reported, have still more recently placed the sum of 1,000l. at the disposal of the Society of Arts for the purpose of promoting and extending this useful work, the plans for the doing of which have not yet, however, seen the light; but it might safely be predicted that, whatever these may be, they will be merely tentative and preliminary, valuable in their way but fragmentary in their character, and transitory in their nature and results.

879. The one great lesson to be learnt is this, that technical education can, at its best, only be supplementary to a something that has gone before, that something being a knowledge of the practical details of the trade which must be obtained in the workshop. With the spread of general education, through the Board schools, the children of the working classes will be better fitted to receive technical instruction than they have been in

the past; their faculties will have become receptive and perceptive to a degree hitherto not known, or known only in isolated cases; by tuition and discipline their native shrewdness and energies will be developed and guided in such a way as to fit them for entering the workshop, where the whole of their previous training may be utilised and made serviceable to an extent not now contemplated.

§ 80. One of the effects of general education will be that the necessity for so long a term of apprenticeship will be lessened; the sharp and active boy who enters the workshop at fourteen will have acquired at eighteen what in former times could scarcely have been obtained at the age of twenty-one, and hence a three, four, or five years' apprenticeship, according to the nature of the trade, will serve the purpose equally as well as the full seven years in the past. It is when he commences to learn the handicraft that the real work of technical education must begin; the youth can only be taught the special scientific principles which appertain to his craft, and their application in the workshop, after he has begun to learn his trade; and this instruction should be continued side by side with the experience gained from time to time in his daily labour. Apprenticeship, in some form or other, will still be needed, nay, is imperative in learning a trade, as nothing can supersede this; technical education will assist in developing and guiding the latent skill and acquired expertness of the boy, and thereby produce a class of handicraftsmen who, in the higher branches of art workmanship, will be second to no class of workmen in any part of the world.

§ 81. The guilds of London, with their vast wealth and historical associations, may well take the lead in this great movement; the initiative, on a large scale, can be theirs; much preliminary work must, however,

be done in order to prepare the working people to receive this instruction, and to stimulate them to seek this valuable and indispensable auxiliary help and training; the subject is surrounded with difficulties; the opposition of some, and the apathy of others, will be obstacles to be overcome, but these are not insurmountable; in order, however, to make any scheme effective and permanent it must have Government aid, and be under executive control, for by no other means shall we be able to reach the furthermost corners of these islands, and bring the blessings of such a beneficent enterprise home to every door.

CHAPTER VI.

II. HOURS OF LABOUR.

III. OVER-TIME.

I. PIECE-WORK.

Piece-work.

§ 1. THERE is, on the mind of the public, a general impression that trade-unions, individually and in the aggregate, are diametrically opposed to piece-work, and that there is a firm determination to 'put it down,' and stamp it out in all the trades of the country. One simple and very obvious fact will show that this conclusion is a false one; it has arisen from popular prejudice, caused by misrepresentation on the one hand, and from inadequate information on the other. There are many trades in which piece-work is the general rule, and the workmen in those trades would as strenuously resist the introduction of day-work, as in other trades they endeavour to restrict piece-work within the narrowest limits. In the tailoring trades, in shoemaking, and in most of the other industries engaged in the manufacture of articles for personal wear, payment by the piece is nearly universal, for the simple reason that one man can do his part independently of another, and is thus responsible to himself for the amount of work to be done and the wages to be earned, and to the master for the quality of the work performed. In the printing trades a good deal of the work is done by the 'piece' for

similar reasons; and the same method is adopted in many other trades, where the payments can be calculated in a fair and equitable manner, and the practice can be easily and methodically carried out. In a speech delivered by Mr. Mundella, M.P. at a meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, on March 20, 1876, he is reported to have said that no less than 90 per cent. of the manufactures of his country was paid for by the piece; a portion exceeding, he stated, that of any other country in the world. Perhaps 90 per cent. may be an exaggerated estimate, although quite unintentional on the speaker's part; there is, however, this much of truth in the statement, namely, that the quantity of work done by the piece is far greater than most people have been led to suppose. This fact was so forcibly impressed on the mind of Mr. Mundella, that he repudiated strongly the assumption that the workmen of all trades were equally opposed to the system of piece-work, and that they resisted it whenever they could do so, no matter how desirable it may be, or how advantageous to the employer in the first instance, and indirectly to the consumer and to the worker.

§ 2. Supposing there to be only 75 per cent. of the ordinary manufactures of the country paid for by the piece, that is a large proportion of the whole; and many reasons can be given why in certain trades piece-work is not feasible, and cannot well be adopted in consequence of the 'complications and difficulties,' as Mr. Brassey calls them, that lie in the way. In the many discussions which have taken place on this subject, it is generally assumed that the only obstacle to the universal adoption of piece-work is the obstinacy of the workmen, and that this opposition is unreasonable and indefensible. The only thing that can be said in favour of such