quite humble origin have advanced themselves in trade, even to
becoming Lord Mayor of London. Could not a poor lad do in the
nineteenth century what Whittington did in the fourteenth? Could he
not tie up his belongings in a handkerchief and make for London, where
the streets were paved with gold, and the walls were built of jasper?
Well, you see, in this matter of the poor lad and his elevation to
giddy heights there has been a little mistake, principally due to the
chap-books. The poor lad who worked his way upward in the nineteenth
century belonged to the bourgeoise, not the craftsman class. While his
schoolfellows remained clerks, he, by some early good fortune--by
marriage, by cousinship, was enabled to get his foot on the ladder, up
which he proceeded to climb with strength and resolution. The poor lad
who got on in earlier times was the son of a country gentleman. Dick
Whittington was the son of Sir William Whittington, Knight and
afterwards outlaw. He was apprenticed to his cousin, Sir John
Fitzwarren, Mercer and merchant-adventurer, son of Sir William
Fitzwarren, Knight. Again, Chichele, Lord Mayor, and his younger
brother, Sheriff, and his elder brother, Archbishop of Canterbury,
were sons of one Chichele, Gentleman and Armiger of Higham Ferrers in
the county of Northampton. Sir Thomas Gresham was the son of Sir
Richard Gresham, nephew of Sir John Gresham, and younger brother of
Sir John Gresham, also of a good old country family. In fact, we may
look in vain through the annals of London city for the rise of the
humble boy from the ranks of the craftsmen. Once or twice, perhaps,
one may find such a case. If we consider the early years of the
nineteenth century, when the long wars attracted to the army all the
younger sons, it does seem as if the Mayors and Aldermen must have
come from very humble beginnings. Even then, however, we find on
investigation that the city fathers of that time had mostly sprung
from small shops. They were never, to begin with, craftsmen, and at
the end of the century any such rise was never dreamed of by the most
ambitious. The clerk, if a lad became a clerk, remained a clerk: he
had no hope of becoming anything else. The shopman remained a shopman,
his only hope being the establishment of himself as a master if he
could save enough money. The craftsman remained a craftsman. And for
partnerships there were always plenty--younger sons and others--eager
to buy themselves in, or there were sons and nephews waiting their
turn. No son of a working man, or a clerk, could hope for any other
advancement in the City than advancement to higher salary for long and
faithful service.
Once more, then, the situation was this: To him who could afford to
earn nothing till he was two-and-twenty, and little till he was
five-and-twenty, and could find the money for fees, lectures, and
courses and coaches, everything that the country had to offer was
open. With this limitation there was never any country in which prizes
were more open than Great Britain and Ireland. A clever lad might
enter the Royal Engineers or Artillery with a tolerable certainty of
being a Colonel and a K.C.B. at fifty; or he might go into the Church
where if he had ability and had cultivated eloquence and possessed
good manners, he might count on a Bishopric; or he might go to the
Bar, where, if he was lucky, he might become a judge or even Lord
Chancellor. Unless, however, he could provide the capital wanted for
admission, he could attain to nothing--nothing--nothing.
What became, then, of the clever lad? In some cases he became a clerk,
crowding into a trade already overcrowded. He trampled on his
competitors, because most of them, the sons and grandsons of clerks,
had no ambition and no perception of the things wanted. This young
fellow had. He taught himself the things that were wanted; he
generally took therefore the best place. But he had to remain a clerk.
Or, more often, he became a teacher in a Board School. In this
capacity he obtained a certain amount of social consideration, a
certain amount of independence, and an income varying From £150 to
£400 a year.
Or, which also happened frequently, he might become a dissenting
minister of the humbler kind. In that case he had every chance of
passing through life in a little chapel at a small town, a slave to
his own, and to his congregation's, narrow prejudices.
Or, he might go abroad, to one of the Colonies. Earlier in the
century, between the years 1850 and 1880, many poor lads had gone to
Australia or New Zealand and had done well for themselves, a few had
become millionaires; but by the year 1890 these Colonies, considered
as likely places wherein it young man could advance himself, seemed
played out. Working-men they wanted, but not clever and penniless
young fellows.
He might, it has been suggested, go into the House. There were already
one or two workingmen in the House. But they were sent there
especially to represent certain interests by working-men, not because
their representative was an ambitious and clever young man. And the
working-man's member, so far, had advanced a very little way as a
political success. It was not in Politics that a young man would find
his opening.
This brings us to the one career open to him--he might become a
Journalist. It is an attractive profession: and even in its lower
walks it seems a branch of literature. There is independence of hours:
the pay depends upon the man's power of work: there are great openings
in it and--to the rising lad at least--what seems a noble possibility
in the shape of pay. Many distinguished men have been journalists,
from Charles Dickens downward. Nearly all the novelists have dabbled
with journalism; and, since all of us cannot be novelists, the young
man might reflect that there are editor, sub-editors, assistant
editors, news-editors, leader writers, descriptive writers, reviewers,
dramatic critics, art and music critics, wanted for every paper. He
could become a journalist and he could rise to the achievement of
these ambitions.
At first he rose a very little way, despite his ambition, because in
every branch of letters imperfect education is an insuperable
obstacle. Still he could become news-editor, descriptive reporter,
paragraph writer, and even, in the case of country papers, editor.
Sometimes he passed from the office of the journal to that of one of
the many societies, where he became secretary and succeeded in getting
his name associated with some cause, which gave him some position and
consideration. Whether he succeeded greatly or not, his whole object
was to pass from the class which has no possible future to the class
for which everything is open. His sons would be gentlemen, and if he
could only find the necessary funds, they should make what he had been
unable to make, an attempt upon the prizes of the State.
This was the situation at the beginning of the last decade of the
nineteenth century. It is summed up by saying that all the avenues to
honour and power were closed and barred to the lad who could not
command a thousand pounds at least. Let us pass on.
Most thoughtful people have considered the growth and development of
the great educational movement whose origin belongs to the nineteenth
century; whose development so profoundly affects the history of our
own.
It began, like the spread of scientific knowledge, and the reforms in
the Old Constitution, and everything else, with the introduction of
railways. Before the end of the century the country was covered with
schools, as it was also covered with railways. There was hardly a man
or woman living when the nineteenth century ended who could not read;
there were few indeed who did not read. But the school course
naturally taught little beyond the elements and was already completed
when the pupil reached his fourteenth year. He was then taken from
school and put to work, apprenticed--set to something which was to be
his trade. Clever or stupid, keen of intellect or dull, that was to be
the lot of the boy. He was set to learn how to earn his livelihood.
About the year 1885 or 1890--no exact date can be fixed for the birth
of a new idea--began a very remarkable extension of the educational
movement. It was discovered by philanthropists that something ought to
be done with the boys after they had left school. The first intentions
seem to have been simply to keep them out of mischief. Having nothing
to do the lads naturally took to loafing about the streets, smoking
bad tobacco, drinking, gambling, and precocious love-making. It was
also perceived by economists about the same time that unless something
was done for technical education, the old superiority of the British
craftsman would speedily vanish. It was further pointed out that the
education of the Board Schools gave the pupils little more than the
mastery of the merest elements, the tools by means of which knowledge
could be acquired. In order, therefore, to carry on general education
and to provide technical training there were started simultaneously in
every great town, but especially in London, Technical Schools,
'Continuation' Classes, Polytechnics, Young Men's Associations and
Clubs, Guilds for instruction and recreation--under whatever form they
were known, they were all schools.
Then the young working lad was invited to enter himself at one of
these places, and to spend his evenings there. 'Come,' said the
founders, 'you are at an age when everything is new and everything is
delightful. Give up all your present joys. Send the girl with whom you
keep company, night after night, home to her mother. Put down your
cherished cigarette, cease to stand about in bars, give up drinking
beer, go no more to the music-hall. Abandon all that you delight in.
And come to us. After working all day long at your trade, come to us
and work all the evening at books.'
A strange invitation! To forego delights and live laborious evenings.
Stranger still, the lads accepted the invitation. They accepted in
thousands. They consented to work every evening as well as every day.
The inducements to join were, in fact, artfully devised with a full
knowledge of boys' nature. What a boy desires, over and above
everything else, more than the company of a girl, more than idleness,
more than gambling, more than beer-drinking, more than tobacco, is
association with other lads of the same age. These Polytechnics or
Institutes or Clubs gave him, first of all, that association. They
provided him with societies of every kind. They added recreation to
study; pleasure to work. If half of the evening was spent in a
classroom, or in a workshop, the other half was passed in orderly
amusement. There was, moreover, every kind of choice; the lad felt
himself free, there were, to be sure, barriers here and there, but he
did not feel them; there was a steady pressure upon him in certain
directions, but he did not feel it; in some there were
prayer-meetings; the boys were not obliged to go, but some time or
other they found themselves present. Then there were some who wore the
blue ribbon of temperance; nobody was obliged to assume that symbol,
but somehow most of them did, without feeling that they had been
pressed to do so. For the very work and life and atmosphere of the
place into which beer was not admitted gave them a dislike for beer,
with its coarse and rough associations. Insensibly the boy who joined
was led upward to a nobler and higher level.
The motives which were strong enough to persuade a working lad to work
on, over hours, may he partly understood by considering one of these
Institutions--the largest and the most popular--the Polytechnic of
Regent Street, called familiarly the Regent Street 'Poly,' with its
thirteen thousand members. Take first its social side, as offering
naturally greater attractions than its educational side. It contained
about forty clubs. The new member on joining was asked in a pamphlet
these three questions:
1. 'Do you wish to make friends?'
2. 'Are you anxious to improve yourself?'
3. 'Do you seek the best opportunities of recreation in your leisure
hours?'
Observe that the serious object is placed between the other two. What
the Poly lads said to the new member was: 'Come in and have a good old
time with us.' It was for the good old time that the new member
joined. Once in he could look about him and choose. The Gymnasium, the
Boxing Club, the Swimming Club, the Roller-skating Club, the Cricket,
Football, Lawn Tennis, Athletic, Rowing, Cycling, Ramblers and
Harriers Clubs all invited him to join. Surely, among so many clubs
there must be one that he would like. Of course they had their showy
uniform, their envied Captains and other officers, their field days,
their public days, and their prizes. Or there was the Volunteer Corps,
with its Artillery Brigade, and its Volunteer Medical Staff Corps.
There was the Parliament, conducted on the same rules as that of the
House of Commons. For the quieter lads there were Sketching, Natural
History, Photographic, Orchestral, and Choral Societies. There was a
Natural History Society and an Electrical Engineering Society. There
were also associations for religious and moral objects; a Christian
Workers' Union, a Temperance Society, a Social League, a Polytechnic
Mission, and a Bible Class. There were reading-rooms and
refreshment-rooms; in the suburbs there were playing-fields for them.
Up the river was a house-boat for the Rowing Club, the largest on the
Thames. Add to all this an intense 'College feeling'; an ardent
enthusiasm for the Poly; friendships the most faithful; a wholesome,
invigorating, stimulating atmosphere; the encouragement always felt of
bravo endeavour and noble effort, and high principle--in one word the
gift to the young fellows of the working class of all that the public
schools and universities could offer that was best and most precious.
Such an institution as the Polytechnic--mother and sister of so many
others--was a revolution in itself.
But for the second question: 'Are you anxious to improve yourself?'
What answer was given? Strange to say the answer was also very
decidedly in the affirmative.
The young fellows were anxious to improve themselves. Now, mark the
difference between these working lads and the boys from the public
schools. Had such a question been put to the latter their answer would
have been a contemptuous stare, or a contemptuous laugh. Improve
themselves? They were already improved. They were so far improved that
nine-tenths of them were contented with the moderate amount of
knowledge necessary for the practice of their professions. If one
became a solicitor, a doctor, a schoolmaster, a barrister, a
clergyman, it was sufficient for him, in most cases, just to pass the
examinations. Then, no further improvement for the rest of their
natural life. But these others, who had everything to gain, whose
ambitions were just awakening, who were just beginning to understand
that there was every inducement to improve themselves, joined the
classes, and began to work with as much zeal as they showed in their
play.
What they learned concerns us little. It may be recorded, however,
that they learned everything. Practical trades were taught; technical
classes were held; there was a School of Science in which such
subjects as chemistry, physics, mathematics, mechanics, building, were
taught. There was a School of Art, in which wood modelling, carving,
and other minor arts were taught, as well as painting and drawing.
There was a Commercial School for Arithmetic, Book-keeping, Shorthand,
Typewriting; French, German, etc., were taught; there were Musical
Classes, Elocution Classes, a School of Engineering, a School of
Photography. Enough; it will be seen that everything a lad might
desire to learn he could learn and did learn.
But the Polytechnic was only one of many such institutions. In London
alone there existed, in the year 1893, between two and three hundred,
large and small; there were nearly fifty branches of the University
Extension Scheme; the Continuation classes were held in many Board
Schools, while of special clubs, mostly for athletic purposes, the
number was legion. As for the numbers enrolled in these associations,
already in 1893, when those things were all young, one finds 13,000
members of the Regent Street Poly, 4,000 at the People's Palace; the
same number at the Birkbeck; the same at the Goldsmiths' Institute; at
the City of London College, 2,500; and so on. Of the Athletic Clubs
the Cyclists' Union alone contained no fewer than 20,000 members.
Figures may mean anything. It is, however, significant that in a
population of five millions which gives perhaps 700,000 young men
between fifteen and twenty, of whom about 100,000 were below the rank
of craftsmen and 100,000 above, there should have been found a few
years after the introduction of the system about 70,000 youths wise
enough and resolute enough to join these classes.
It must be owned that only the more generous spirits--the nobler
sort--were attracted by the Polytechnics. They were a first selection
from the mass. Of these, again, another selection was made--those few
who studied the things which at first sight appeared to be least
useful. Everyone who knew a craft could see the wisdom of acquiring
perfection in his trade; everyone who was a clerk, or who hoped to
become a clerk, could see the advantage of learning shorthand,
book-keeping, French and German. What did that boy aim at who studied
Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, matriculated and took his degree at the
London University, then an examining body only? Why did he learn time
things? He did not learn them, remember, in the perfunctory way in
which a public-school boy generally works through his subjects; he
learned as if he meant to know these subjects; he devoured his books;
he tore the heart out of them; he compelled them to give up their
secrets. He had everything to get for himself, while the public-school
boy had everything given to him.
When it was done, when he had acquired as much knowledge as any
average boy from the best public school, when he had read in the Poly
Reading Room all that there was to read, what was he to do? For when
he looked about him he saw, stretching before him, fair and stately,
the long avenues which led to distinction; but before each there was a
toll-gate, and at the gate stood a man, saying, 'Pay me first a
thousand pounds. Then, and not till then, you shall enter.'
Alas! and he had not a sixpence--he, or his parents. And so perforce
he must stand aside, while other lads, without his intellect and
courage, paid the money, and were admitted.
There was but one outlet. He might become a journalist. He had learned
shorthand, a necessary accomplishment; therefore, he got an
appointment as reporter and general hand on a country paper. Such a
youth in these years of which we write was uncommon, but he very soon
became much more common. The charm of learning was discovered by one
lad after another. The chance of exchanging the craftsman's work for
the scholar's work, never thought of before, fired the brains of
hundreds first, and thousands afterward. Then began a rage for
learning. All those who had abilities even mediocre tried to escape
their lot by working at the higher subjects. It was reproached to the
Polytechnics that their original purpose, to bring the boys together
for common discipline and orderly recreation, and to train them in
their crafts, was departed from, and that all their energies were now
devoted to turning working lads into classical scholars,
mathematicians, logicians, and historians.
Nor was the complaint wholly unfounded. But it was too late to recede.
The boys crowded to the classes; they read and worked with incredible
eagerness; they thought that to be a man of books was better than to
be a man with a saw and a plane. Ambition seized them seized them by
tens of thousands; they would rise. Learning was their stepping-stone.
The recreative side of the Polytechnics was lost in the educational
side. Never before had there been such an ardour, such a thirst for
knowledge; yet only for knowledge as a means to rise. And there was
but one outlet. That, in the course of a few years, became congested.
Journalism, as the number of papers increased, demanded more workmen,
and still more. These young men from the Polytechnic filled up every
vacancy. They had seized upon this profession and made it their own;
those who did not belong to them were gradually, but surely, ousted.
It was recognised that it was the profession of the young man who
wanted to get on. Some there were who affected to lament an alleged
decay; the old scholarly style, they said, was gone; there was also
gone the old reverence for authority, rank, and the established order.
Perhaps the journal, as the new men made it, was above all vigorous.
But it was _true_, which could not always be said of the papers before
their time. From their college--the old Poly--the young men carried
away a love of truth and right dealing which, once imported into the
newspaper press, made it an engine far more mighty--an influence far
more potent--than ever it had been before. There may have been some
loss in style, though many of them wrote gracefully, and many showed
on occasion a wonderful command of wit, sarcasm and satire. But
because the papers were always truthful the writers always knew what
they wanted, and so their work had the strength of directness.
A few, but very few, continued at the work, whatever it might be, to
which they had been apprenticed. Then their lives were spent in a day
of painful drudgery, followed by an evening of delightful study. Very
few heard of these men. Now and then one would be discovered by a
clergyman working in his parish; now and then one emerged from
obscurity by means of a letter or a paper contributed to some journal.
Most of them lived and died unknown.
Yet there was one. His case is remarkable because it first set rolling
the ball of reform, He was by trade a metal turner and fitter; he had
the reputation of being an unsociable man because he went home every
day after work and stayed there; he was unmarried and lived alone in a
small, four-roomed cottage near Kilburn, one of a collection of
Workmen's villages. Here it was known that he had a room which he had
furnished with a furnace, a table, shelves and bottles, and that he
worked every evening at something. One day there appeared in a
scientific paper an article containing an account of certain
discoveries of the greatest importance, signed by a name utterly
unknown to scientific men. The article was followed by others, all of
the greatest interest and originality. The man himself had little idea
of the importance of his own discoveries. When his cottage was
besieged by leaders in the world of science, he was amazed; he showed
his simple laboratory to his visitors; he spoke of his labours
carelessly; he told them that he was a metal turner by trade, that he
worked every day for an employer at a wage of thirty-five shillings a
week, and that he was able to devote his evenings to reading and
research. They made him an F.R.S., the first working man who had ever
attained that honour. They tried to get him put upon the Civil List,
but the First Lord of the Treasury had already, according to the usual
custom, given away the annual grant made by the House for Literature,
Science and Art, to the widows and daughters of Civil servants. This
attempt failing, the Royal Society, in order to take him away from his
drudgery, created a small sinecure post for him, and in this way found
an excuse for giving him a pension.
Then some writer in a London 'Daily' asked how it was that with his
genius for science, which, it was now recalled, had been remarked
while he was a student at the South London Poly, this man had been
allowed to remain at his trade.
And the answer was, 'Because there is no opening for such an one.'