I i gTwv i t«^y^ m jV ^•"♦'l "i>^ / . rv ■s-v >?^.. ♦ ^^^ ^ ^i^ .; t' ' v^ mull mmmUt iito«8 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWNENT FUND THE GIFT OF mtnvu 1U. Sage 1891 The London Chaaber of Coaaerce. (INCORPORATED.) AT A CONFERENCE ON COMMERCIAL EDUCATION HELD (By permission of the Corporation of the City of London) In the Council Chamber op the Guildhall, KING STREET, CHEAPSIDE, E.G. ON FRIDAY, THE 8th JULY, 1898, AT 10.30 A.M. SIR ALBERT K. ROLLIT, D.C.L., LL.D., M.P. {President of the London Chamber of Commerce, and Chairman of its Commercial Education Committee), IN THE CHAIR. > ♦♦♦<- LONDON : -WATERLOW AND SONS LIMITED, PRINTERS, LONDON WALL, E.G.- 'M< ^^ Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032188777 IN DBX. PAPERS. Commercial Education in Secondary Schools — Rev. C. W. Bourne Dr. Wormell ... Continuation Schools and Evening Classes — Dr. Garnett ... The General Organization of Foreign Higher Commercial Education — C. A. Barlow The German Ideal of Higher Commercial Education, as exemplified in the Leipzig MERCiAL College, L. Magnus — (Communicated by Sir P. Magnus) Tertiary Schools of Commerce for England — H. Macan The Organization of Higher Commercial Education — Professor Hewins Resolutions passed by the Conference COM- pages. 8 II 25 38 47 60 68 78, 80, 81, 82 SPEAKERS. Armstrong, Professor Barrington, Sir V. H. B. Bond, E., M.P. ... boulton, s. b. Bourne, Rev. C. W. Brereton, C. Brown, G Brook, J. A. Brigg, Alderman, M.P. ... Crosier, E. J. Debenham, F. Dixon, V Easterbrook, J. ... Ede, Rev. W. M. Eve, H. W. Fowler, Rev. Canon GoRST, Sir John, M.P. Hemelryk, p. E. J. Howard, D. Hooper, G. N. Hutcheson, J. M. Jones, Principal J. V. pages. pages 73 Knox, G. W. S8 K. ... 82 Leighton, R. L 16 33 Magnus, Sir P 19 36 Ogilvie, Professor 34 78 Pym, G., M.P 35 60 Redmayne, J. S 81 24 Reynolds, J. H 31 78 RoLLiT, Sir A. K., M.P. 5, 25. 78, 82 16 ROWLETT, W. T 80 82 Robertson, Rev. Dr 75 23 Samuelson, Sir B. 57 77 Scott, Dr. R. P 56 22 Somerville, a. a. 15 17 Spicer, a., M.P 18 ... 15 & 20 Simpson, R. 77 ... 76 & 78 Wertheimer, Professor... 54 7 Whittington, Rev. Prebendary 21 S3 Willans, J. W 55 24 Williams. Col., M.P 37 79 Wood, A. A. 32 80 YOXALL, J. H., M.P 20 82 a2 OPENING The Chairman : Sir John Grorst, my Lords, Ladies and G-entlemen, — This Conference has. been called by the London Chamber of Com- merce for the consideration of the subject of Commercial Education, by which we mean the greater and more general adaptation of our educational system to commercial ends and to the purposes of modern business life, the increase of facilities for training for' trade, and the fuller recognition of the necessities which surround men and women in this working-day world, without, at the same time, surrendering that general education which we recognise as the necessary basis of all public instruction, or sacrificing the means and instruments of intellectual discipline, which we believe can be furnished by almost any subject if properly taught. (Hear, hear.) I think I may congratulate the Chamber and the country upon the response which has followed that invitation in this very numerous and representative gathering. We have here, and I am sure we accord him a most hearty welcome, the Vice-President of the Council, our Minister of Education. (Cheers.) We have representatives of State education ; we have statesmen of aU political parties and of high educational authority ; representatives of the municipalities, including borough and county councils, and municipal, technical and other institutions ; of the school boards ; of the City companies, which, not only in London, but throughout the country, have rendered so much aid, and which, we hope, will render more ; and of our secondary and technical schools — in all, some four hundred public institutions and individuals — an assurance, I venture to think, of thoughtful and deliberate consideration of this great educational problem, and of combined practical effort, with a view to its successful solution by uniting commerce with culture. (Hear, hear.) The London Chamber of Commerce was impelled, when it took the initiative in commercial education some ten years ago, by practical experience of the condition of affairs in the City of London. It was struck by the paucity and inadequacy of the means for commercial education, and the want of adaptation of existing means to the ends in view ; and it found, by systematic enquiry, that our City ofiices were crowded with foreign clerks, while, at the same time, there was not only a desire, but a demand, for the services of our own countrymen, provided they had the neces- SPEECHES. sary qualifications. (Hear, hear.) I also think those who have taken an interest in this subject have gradually realized some of the chief causes of what I may call this congestion from the Continent. (Laughter.) Among them have undoubtedly been the greater attention given to commercial methods of instruction abroad than in our own country; the neglect of the means and methods of modern commercial transactions ; and the greater cultivation abroad, and the comparative want of cultivation at home, of the chief instruments of international trade, and especially the study, colloquially, of foreign languages. (Hear, hear.) In consequence of this the London Chamber has done its best, under some difficulties, both by teaching and example, by lectures and classes, by scholar- ships and prizes, to influence public thought and to supply the want that has been so generally felt ; and I am happy to say that to-day there has, at least, been some improvement in the supply of qualified clerks in our City, and that there has been and is no difficulty whatever, but the contrary, in obtaining remunerative employment for those who have taken the steps necessary to qualify themselves for business life. (Hear, hear.) But perhaps, Ladies and Gentlemen, the best result of what has been done has been the focussing of public attention upon this great question ; the improvement of the teaching and curricula in nearly all our metropolitan, and many provincial, schools, and the prospect which, thanks to the co-operation of the London County Council and its Technical Board, now presents itself of having in the City of London that commercial college which we have proposed, and one which promises to be, at least, an approach to similar institutions which exist in so many centres of trade upon the Continent. (Cheers.) In this national need. Ladies and Gentlemen, as too often, we are behindhand ; and, perhaps, one of the most useful features of to-day's programme will be that in which you will be told, by high authority, what has already been accomplished on the Continent. And I may say, from per- sonal knowledge and observation, that it is difficult to realise the importance of this question unless those who are interested in it have visited, as I have done, such institutions as the higher Institutes and Schools of Commerce in Paris, founded, in a very large measure, by the Chamber of Commerce of that city, and similar institutions in Bordeaux, in Genoa, where the Royal School of Commerce is the result of the combined action of the State, the Municipality, the Province and the Chamber of Commerce, and elsewhere, and the University of Commerce, of which you will hear something, which has been established in Leipzig ; and I venture to hope that this experience will not be without its effect upon those discussions which are shortly to take place in relation to the foundation of a teaching university in London, and that this, the greatest of all commercial cities, will, at last, possess a many-sided University, wide and practical in its. character, and recognising applied science, economic science and commerce, not only for its diplomas, but even among its faculties, and one in which the highest and best training and in- struction wUl be placed at the service of the City and the nation. (Loud cheers.) Ladies and Grentlemen, this much may be said to have been accomplished ; but this Con- ference is required in order that it may lead the way, after common deliberation, to combined and practical effort. We hope that its chief results will be to avoid some mistakes made in other branches of education by co-ordinating our plans and procedure, so as to escape a waste of both means and work ; to enable us to establish .some common principles of joint action ; to arrive at some general idea of what the course and standard of instruction ought to be, and to declare more definitely what we ought to aim at, and how it can best be accomplished. (Hear, hear.) To-day, those who are able to speak with authority on these subjects meet together, and we trust that the out- come of theii' deliberations will be some general guidance for the community on this important subject, and rapid and effective action towards the objects we have in view. The Conference will, we trust, consider education from the point of view not only of educationalists, but also of men of business. (Hear, hear.) We hope that commerce will say what it wants, or, rather, demands, and that the experts will tell us how this demand can best be met, not necessarily by supplanting, but rather by supplementing, the educational machinery we already possess, and by the adaptation of existing, no less than new, means to the purpose in view, and so how best to justify the State, the City, and municipal and other authorities in rendering the necessary financial aid in the interest of the whole community. (Cheers.) And it is right, I think, that this educational revival should emanate from the City of London— from that City which is the heart of a great commercial empire, and the chief centre of the commerce of the world. We may well paraphrase the observation of a distinguished Frenchman at the Chamber of Commerce of Bordeaux by saying, "The Empire is Com- merce," especially when we remember that the best work and. results in commercial education abroad have been attained by, or in association vidth, the Chambers of Commerce. (Hear, hear.) But, above all, in thanking the Lord Mayor and Corporation of the City for the privilege of meeting in this room, we cannot forget that we do so with the advantage of great and stimulating historical traditions. In this Guildhall we meet under the shadow of that Grresham College which forms one of the great landmarks in the history of education in this country. (Hear, hear.) The time was when England led the world, not merely in her rising commerce, but in commercial education ; when, in the 16th Century, not only that College, but the very lanes and alleys of the City, were crowded with its students. jSTay, more, King Erancis thought the lesson so great and so useful, that he sent over to this country a Eoyal Commission, which resulted in the establishment in Paris of the great College de France. (Cheers.) Such remembrances are inspiring, and will, I hope, influence our debates, and enable us to do something as worthy and fruitful of the education and commerce of the 19th as those earlier efforts were of the 16th Century. (Cheers.) I have only one word. Ladies and Gentlemen, to say, in conclusion, upon our procedure. We have a long, but, I hope, a practical programme before us. We have many who desire to address the Conference, and T hope that those who wish to do so will hand in to me their cards, and I will take the first opportunity of calHng upon them. But we wish to hear so many, that the Committee has been compelled to limit the length of the papers to about a quarter of an hour, and of the speeches to about seven minutes ; and with this object I shall sound two bells, the first of which will be a warning, and the second a command (laughter) ; and I may add that the seven minutes are not necessarily to be occupied by those who speak. (Laughter.) An official report of the proceedings will be taken and published, and it is to be hoped that before the close of the Conference some organized means may be adopted, by at least a general resolution, of making its deliberations not only useftd for thought, but capable of practical and advantageous application. I have now. Ladies and Gentlemen, to ask you to join with me in welcoming to the Conference Sir John Gorst — (cheers) — a statesman who has the courage of his convictions (Hear, hear) and who, in coming here, has rendered one more service to national education, and I am quite sure that the address to which you are about to listen, endorsed as it will be by his high position and authority in Parliament and elsewhere, will not only be useful to the Conference, but beneficial to the cause of national and commercial education. (Loud cheers.) The Eight Hon. Sir John E. Gorst (Vice-President of the Committee of Council of Education) : Mr. President, Ladies and Gentle- men, I have been invited by those who called this Conference to say a few words to the dele- gates before the actual business commences, but not -mih the view of anticipating the dis- cussion in which you wiU be engaged. The practical point of your meeting will be treated by gentlemen who are well qualified to write papers on the various subjects which will be brought before you, and by discussions in which, I have no doubt, those who take part vsdll be persons well qualified, by their know- ledge and their position, to give advice to the Conference. But my part is rather to assure you of the great interest with which a move- ment of this kind is watched by Her Majesty's Government, and by aU those who are interested in the welfare of the country, and to say, per- haps, a few words as to the principles which will underlie your deliberations. We live in an age in which commercial pursuits, like all other pursuits, are open to the competition of the whole world ; and if our country is to hold that position in the world which she now occu- pies, and to which the ability and the industry of her people have elevated her, we must not be content with relying merely upon the capacities of the inhabitants of these islands and the hereditary qualifications which they enjoy, but we must arm them for the battle of life with the same weapons that our competitors possess. (Cheers.) When you talk about the importance of technical and commercial educa- tion to some people, they reply to you by assuring you that Englishmen and Scotchmen have always been distinguished for their energy and for their ability, and that whatever their foreign competitors may learu, or what- ever study they may have recourse to, the inhabitants of these islands will beat them in the race. I recollect when exactly the same argument was used about the British navy, in days not so very long ago, when the public opinion of the country had not been converted to the necessity of sending our seamen to sea in the best ships and armed with the best weapons that could be procured. People said, " Oh, the British seaman is so superior to the seaman of any other nation that you may put him into what ship you like, with less thickness of armour, less speed, less guns, less tonnage, and he will always succeed in beating his opponents;" Well, that argument I think everybody would now scout. But very much the same argument I hear used constantly on the subject of educa- tion. The public opinion of the country is by no means yet advanced so far as to see that if you are to keep your present position in the world it will be by having a people who com- mercially, industrially, and with the great scientific progress in knowledge which our age has developed, are as well armed for the con- test as their foreign rivals. (Cheers.) From this point of view, the efforts which foreign nations are making in commercial and technical educa- tion are just as important as the progress they are making in ship-building and the develop- ment of arms of offence, and the man or woman who is content to leave our people intellectually inferior to those with those with whom they will have to contend in the peaceful arts, are no better friends to this country than those who would leave us comparatively defenceless and allow our rivals and our opponents to have ships and guns and materials of warfare far superior to our own. (Cheers.) That is one principle which will underlie all your deliberations, and another principle, which I hope you will forgive me, as so much con- cerned now with the popular education of the country, trying to impress upon you, is this : that all education of every kind is indissolubly linked together. (Cheers.) You cannot build a superstructure of art, of science, of commerce, or of technical education, unless you have a sound and solid base upon which to build. (Cheers.) And on the other hand, there is no use laying sound and solid foundations unless you proceed to construct something upon them. 8 (Hear, hear.) And, therefore, I hope that in all the discussions it will he rememhered that hefore any kind of special instruction can he engrafted in the minds of the people, their intellects must be awakened, their capacities must be called forth, and they must be prepared to receive that instruction. You cannot have high commercial education unless you have got a solid basis of elementary education on which to build. (Cheers.) Now, of course, the principal business of this Conference will be directed to the consideration of the means of specialization, but in those deliberations do not forget that in the case of every boy or girl, to whatever class of society he or she may belong, the first years of education must necessarily be devoted to general education. (Hear, hear.) Their intellectual, and even their bodily capacities, must be, to some extent, developed. Tou can- not take an ignorant lout of 16 years of age, who can neither read well nor write well, who does not understand the common principles of arithmetic, who has not had his eye trained and his hand trained in artistic or mechanical pursuits — you cannot take a boy (or even a girl) of that sort and make a sound, commercial, qualified person of him. You must take care that in your primary schools, and in your secondary schools, a proper foundation is laid. (Hear, hear.) At what particular age speciali- zation should begin, in what sort of institutions it should be carried on, and how it should be perfected, are all matters which the Conference is best qualified to consider and to determine. Those are exactly the points — the practical points — on which the experience of those here present, and the experience of foreign countries which have been making the same experiments, are most valuable. But remember, in all your deliberations upon specializing education, the fundamental fact that you must have a sound and a solid bottom on which to build. (Hear, hear.) People have sometimes accused me of being a pessimist. I am not at all a pessimist in the education of this country. (Cheers.) In spite of all our drawbacks, in spite of all the obstacles which have impeded us, we have, dui'ing the past quarter of a century, made enormous progress. (Cheers.) I do not know that he is a particular friend to progress who refuses to open his eyes and see the obstacles to still further progress. (Cheers.) But if, as I fully believe, the nation is determined to go on in the course which it has pursued in the last five and twenty years, I am perfectly convinced that whenever the people of this country come to understand, as I think they are beginning to understand, the necessity of further efforts and further exertion, and more special schools, and more special colleges, you will find the energy of the British race, upon which people so justly pride themselves, will, if it cannot bring us immediately into the first rank of European countries, at all events induce the people of this country not to sit down in any secondary place, and will, in due time, make this country in the future as it has been in the past, one of the greatest and one of the most intellectual countries in the world. (Loud cheers.) I.-COMMERCIAL EDUCATION IN SECONDAEY SCHOOLS. Eev. C. W., Bourne, M.A. (Head Master of King's CoUege School, Wimbledon), read the following Pap6r : — To avoid any misunderstanding, I wish to state at the outset that by " Commercial Education " I do not mean the teaching of " Commercial " subjects, but the imparting of a general education of such a nature as shall best fit youths for commercial pursuits It is not the part of a Secondary School to teach specialised commercial subjects, such as " Counting-house operations " ; and any attempt to do this is sure to be attended by damage to the general education of the pupil. Such specialised training is eminently desirable, but it ought to be given (as in the case of the professions) in certain institutions of the rank of University Colleges institutions to which the name " tertiary " has been sometimes applied. Such institutions are practically non-existent in England, and one of the results which I most earnestly desire from this Conference is the foundation of one or more Commercial Colleffes which shall do for commercial education what University College and Kind's Golle and similar institutions, are doing for professional education. 9 Now, in designing the general education suitable for those who are to take up a oommeroial career, we have to provide for two distinct classes — for hoys who will leave school at the age of 15 approximately, and for boys who will remain at school till they axe 17, or thereabouts. My remarks will be confined to the latter class, as my experience has been mainly formed in dealing with this class. In designing the curriculum for such youths, one must bear in mind that they will themselves, in all probability, at some future time hold high positions in the commercial world, and upon them will depend the oommeroial success or failure of the kingdom. Their training must therefore not merely equip them with a certain aipount of knowledge, but it must render their minds capable of receiving and assimilating new ideas ; it must train their powers of judgment, and give them habits of careful investi- gation into points of detail, and, above all, must give them wide powers of sympathy with interests other than their own. This last is a matter of great importance ; the man of influence is the many-sided man, who, while resolutely forming his own opinions, can appreciate the point of view of others, and can, as it were, look at matters through other people's spectacles. And here I should like to digress for a moment to allude to the bugbear of "the competition of the Grerman clerk." We are often told that the German clerk is ousting the Englishman in houses of business because of his superior education. Now, the Grerman clerk may be, and often is, better educated than his English rival ; but that is only a small part of the matter. The Grerman clerk has been trained in habits of hard-work, of plain living, and of steady perseverance, and it is these qualities which make him such a formidable rival. When English parents will bring up their boys as Grerman boys are brought up, the danger of rivalry will be at an end. It is a matter far more for the parent than for the schoolmaster. We teachers have constantly to deal with boys , whose home training is such as to inculcate self-indulgence as the guiding principle ; who are accustomed to an extravagant use of money for their own enjoyment ; and who have hardly learnt what the words " self-denial " or " self- restraint" mean. This is a strong indictment, but I fear that it is a true one, and that in a large number of cases parents have not the moral courage to say " no " to their children. I have digressed to this topic because of its important bearing on the general subject of education ; I will now return to the consideration of the subjects desirable for the education of those who are to conduct the commerce of the country. In the first place, then, comes a study of modern languages, together with a thorough study of our own language. I need hardly prove what is now almost an axiom, that an intelligent knowledge of English is of the greatest help to the acquisition of other languages. With regard to the modern languages that are to be selected, custom has prescribed French and German, and on the whole the choice is a wise one, if an opportunity is also afforded of acquiring Spanish if necessary. A most thorough linguistic training can be afforded through French and German if they are properly taught on one uniform system. The chief reason why English boys have not, as a rule, been successful in acquiring these languages at school is the want of any recognised system of teaching them. If a head-master appoints a master to teach classics or mathematics, he knows that he will fall in with the system employed in the school, and that the work throughout the school will be continuous ; but if he appoints a modern language master, however able and experienced he may be, the result is probably " chaos." It is true that there are some head-masters whose experience of modern languages is sufficient to enable them to devise a good system of modern language teaching, but in the majority of oases this is not so. As soon as the teaching of French and German is put upon a satisfactory basis of system, schools will turn out satisfactory results ; this is work which ought to be undertaken by the Modern Language Association, and I was in hopes that it would have 10 been accomplished before now, as a result of my strenuous representations ; but I fear that timidity or apathy is supervening. The whole question of success in modern language teaching turns on this one point of " system." One further remark I should like to make on this subject : whenever a system of teaching French and German in our schools is devised, I trust that it will recognise one or two facts, such as (i) that a living language must be learnt principally through the ear, rather than the eye, at all events at first ; (ii) that a mere " courier " know- ledge of a language is not sufficient, but that the intelligent study of a language must comprise its literature, and also the essential points in which the language differs from our own ; in other words, we must early recognize the fact that when a foreigner wishes to convey a statement, not only does he use words which differ from ours, but he casts his ideas in a different mould. Thirdly, some attempt at least should be made to teach " phonetics." If a German hears a word which he has a difficulty iu reproducing, he can write it down phonetically, and practise it at leisure ; the Englishman has generally no such resource. Lastly, one should learn that language is a means of conveying " exact " thought, and that a slip-shod use of it is demoralising. How often, for instance, do we hear the statement that a person " walked up the centre of the room," when "the middle" of the room is intended. If these points are attended to, there is no reason why the study of language should not be as exact a training as the study of science. In teaching French and German to a boy in a secondary school, even if the boy is to go into commerce, I do not think there is any necessity for teaching " commercial " words and phrases ; a boy who is master of these languages will soon pick up the eccentricities of commercial phraseology. Next in importance I should name Arithmetic, not only on account of its practical utility in commerce, but because of its excellent training, especially if it is extended to cover what is usually classified as Algebra, though it is essentially arithmetical in its nature. Euclid, especially as a training in logical thought, should also most certainly be included. Of course, if a boy has aptitude for Mathematics, it will be of great service to him to give him an extended course of the subject ; but even the non-mathematical should cover the ground I have specified. Next will come the study of Science, provided that it is pursued on an intelligent system — that is, on some such system as is so deservedly associated with the name of Professor Armstrong — a system in which experiment and discovery hy the pupil have taken the place of the old method, under which a boy's mind was regarded as a portmanteau, to be packed with a neat assortment of carefully-isolated facts. Next to this I should put History, provided it is intelligently taught. If a pupil is led to believe that History is a mere collection of facts and dates, the study wiU be a dismal one ; but if he is shown that all the facts have causes, that these causes originate from our human nature, and that because human nature is much the same at all times and places it follows that "history repeats itself," then the study of History may be made both interesting and valuable. Geography also must be taught, and taught intelligently, as it now usually is, I think; there are few subjects in which there has been more improvement of late. I should like to answer here one complaint which is often made against schools ; it is frequently said that schools do not give to Geography as much time as the subject deserves and requires. Now, one of the chief difficulties a Head-master has is to find adequate time for aU the subjects demanded of him ; consequently, it will often be the case that he has to allot to a subject less time than it deserves. In deciding which subjects should be stinted in time, a Head-master must consider whether in any of them there are opportunities for study besides those which are afforded at school. Now, Geography is the one subject which we all of us go on learning (whether we wish it 11 or not) all through our lives ; it is, therefore, only reasonable that it should give way to subjects which are never learnt unless they are learnt at school. Essay writing, and composition generally, will be comprised under that teaching of our own language to which I have already alluded. Drawing also should be generally taught, except in cases where there is an invincible incapacity ; and so taught as to educate eye, hand, brain, and power of observation. I should also include the two more essentially commercial subjects. Shorthand and Book-keeping, though I do not consider it to be the duty of a secondary school to carry either subject to a high pitch of perfection. If a boy is thoroughly taught the elements of Shorthand he can rapidly improve himself in spare moments without devoting school-time to this improvement — that is to say, if he is in earnest about the subject ; if he is not in earnest, he will never do any good in the subject, however much time is allotted to it. The study of Shorthand may be made a useful training in phonetics, about which I have spoken above. The study of Book-keeping is chiefly valuable for its training in accuracy, method and precision ; when these qualities have been acquired Book-keeping at school has done its work. In the above remarks I have indulged in many statements which a schoolmaster will regard as common-place platitudes, but I thought it wiser, in a paper designed to elicit discussion, to put down too much rather than too little. Finally, if schools are to turn out pupils weU suited for commercial life, business firms must give the encouragement which can only be given by their finding employ- ment for suitable pupils ; it is disheartening to be told, as I have been on two occasions, that one's pupil is " too well-educated " for the firms into which he was seeking admission. Dr. Eichard "Wormell, M.A. (Head Master of the Central Foundation School, Cowper Street, E.G.), read the following Paper: — Do we all understand the same thing by the two notions here brought together — Commercial Education and Secondary Schools? To make oneself intelligible, it is necessary to make clear what we understand by the terms used. It is preferable that we should differ after understanding each other than that we should agree in conclu- sions that are only verbal. The first phrase has evidently something to do with trade. But the word trade is used in different senses. It often means " Commerce " or " Exchange." Tet we sometimes speak of a handicraft as a trade. It is therefore applied both to producing and selling, and its ambiguity makes it not altogether suitable for our present discus- sion. Now, as I pointed out as far back as 1869, and have often repeated since, we may range all the occupations connected with Trade, in any of its forms and appli- cations, under two heads. The whole of the businesses connected with the industrial life of the land may be roughly divided into two departments — the department devoted to production, and that restricted to interchange or commerce. This is not a distinct classification, for the second overlaps the first. The manufacturer of shoes, for instance, must necessarily be a shoe vendor, but a shoe vendor need not necessarily be a shoemaker. Tet we shall not go far wrong for our purpose if we mark out the two departments — Industry and Commerce — or Production and Exchange. These are helpmates, and our aim at present is to avoid giving to Production a defective and crippled helpmate. The terms Technical Education and Commercial Education refer to the two departments. We may say that the common aim of technical and commercial education is to develop, through our influence on the rising generation, the productivity of the H2 12 country to the utmost limits consistent with social welfare — the first by improving and multiplying the things produced, the second by multiplying the markets which appropriate them when produced. Technical education is the means of making good handicraftsmen, and commercial education is the means of making good buyers and sellers. The late Professor Huxley, in the very last public address which he gave, said that it passed the wit of man to give a legal definition of technical education — but we have, I think, arrived at a distinction sufficient for our present purpose, although, perhaps. Professor Huxley was right in thinking it is not possible to frame definitions which will satisfy the lawyers. The army of merchants, travellers, buyers, sellers, accountants, actuaries, brokers, jobbers, are all fitted for their work by commercial education. So are bankers and financial agents of all kinds, for what are bankers but the sagacious distributors of capital where it can be profitably employed ? Grave and serious warnings have been recently given us that this aim of education, or form of education, needs to be improved. We have been urged to press the claims of commercial education by the reality of the struggle for existence. By the operation of natural laws, our population has increased until it is far in excess of that which we can feed. If we are to be saved from catastrophe by our inability to feed our people, it will be by our possession of a due share of the markets of the world. To secure this share we must be able to produce commodities which we can exchange with food-growing people. Our commodities must be better or cheaper than those offered by other nations. To this end technical knowledge and skill are in demand. But the commodities, when made, must be placed where they are needed, and so placed that they may bring a return. We must not send a cargo of skates to Rio Janeiro, or diamonds to Timbuotoo. That our skill, judgment, acuteness and sagacity in the placing of our commodities may improve, we must find more assistance from commercial education. Here is our stimulus. I am for the moment limited to the consideration of this work as it can be done in Secondary Schools. What are Secondary Schools ? I am glad I have not to define Secondary education ; it is easier to classify institutions. We all know what are Primary Schools, or, as they are legally styled. Public Elementary Schools. These are schools under the Education Department, in which children may obtain, generally free of charge, the education prescribed by the Grovernment code for those who, as a rule, begin labour at the age of 13 or 14. We all know also the institutions which constitute the head of o\ir educational system, namely, the Universities, and the University Colleges. Between the Primary Schools and the University Colleges are a great variety of schools working with curricula designed for those who may continue their education to 16 or more — in some cases to 19 years of age. These are the Secondary Schools. They include the endowed schools — the present representatives of the old Grammar Schools, and the Schools, public or private, carrying education through the teens. In Greater London there are about 40 Boys' Schools and 30 Girls' Schools designed to give an education up to 16 or 17, and about ten or twelve of each kind carrying education up to 19, or the age for going to the Universities. All these are Secondary Schools. Now the question before us amounts to this : How can the education given in these schools be made to promote the prosperity of commerce ? Probably others will have something to say on schools of other grades. My task is a limited one, but I must not for a moment be credited with a desire to maintain that the Primary Schools are outside the question before this conference. It is of the first importance that we should amend and improve our system of primary education until it becomes a proper preparation for the business of life in the cases of those who must of necessity enter on it at 13 or 14. We cannot shut out either the need for the acquiring of a certain amount of technical skill or of a certain amount of knowledge useful in commerce. We may make education of any grade too bookish, and too little practical. This is the case when it neglects the faculty of observation, and the faculty 13 of working aoourately. But we must not carry this notion too far. The elementary schools may be ■ charged with more than they can do. No good can come of burdening the elementary schools with special technical and commercial instruction. Hence the questions before us affect most the schools in which there are more years devoted to the work of learning, that is to say, the Secondary Schools. Now in what way can Secondary Schools promote the expansion and success of commerce? The answer is simple, namely, by supplying qualified men and women. The qualifications are of three kinds: there are faculties such as intelligence, acuteness of reasoning and mental capacity generally; there are habits such as industry, regularity and punctuality in the performance of the duties that present themselves, the habit of facing difficulties until they are overcome, the power to which Jjord Eosebery and others ascribe the achievements of the great statesman recently departed, namely, the power of concentration ; and, thirdly, there are acqidsitions of skill, as for instance, in the use of language, numbers and mechanical operations of writing in aU its forms, long and short, simple and ornate. Some, perhaps, may wish that we should confine our attention to the third head, but we must spend a minute or two on the first and second. They are all-important ; they are the siTie qua non of commercial success. What is the most important element in commercial education ? Discipline, discipline, discipline : moral discipline, intellectual discipline. And why ? Because character and intelligence are the first essentials. Better recruits for commerce must be our war-cry. The lame horses that will shy at every difficulty and jib at every intricate task or problem are not wanted in commerce. This, however, is the same thing as stating that the best boys of our secondary schools are the recruits wanted. The qualities which are the first essentials in commerce are exactly those which lift a boy to a good position in his school. That he rises to such a position is evidence that he possesses those faculties and those habits. " What is your position in your school ? " should therefore be the first question put to every youthful candidate for a commercial appointment. As he has gone on in the years of his mental and moral plasticity, he will go on in his maturity. There may be miracles in these days involving sudden reformation and sudden conversions. So many tell us of the possibility of these miracles that we must believe in it. But the schoolmaster neither knows these miracles nor takes them into his calculations. Hence, if the mercantile world is to be stocked with our best material, our best students must be made to feel that their school record will be a help to them. They need such an encouragement and such a stimulus at present. The German or the French student has it to the full. His school record is sure to be asked for. It may, if it reaches a certain level of excellence, save him two years of compulsory military service. Many merchants, in advertising for recruits, state a preference for those who possess the certificate of exemption. So great must be this advantage, that one is almost inclined to feel that the evils of the compulsory service are outweighed by it, and to wish we had the system here in England. As that is not possible, let us try to get the advantage by some other means. Let us some- how or other prove to our schoolboys that what they are doing is worth doing well, and that their school record will help or hinder their entry into business according as it is good or bad. The Chamber of Commerce has already done a little in this direction. I hope yet, as I have hoped for years, to see an institution thriving under the common care of the Chamber of Commerce, the L.C.C., and the merchants of the City, which will bridge over the gap between school and business. In it special knowledge of business matters should be obtained by those directly about to pass the Eubicon bordering commerce, and by those who have passed and have begun to find what special acquisitions would be profitable to them. When a boy is once in harness he does not as a rule care to continue his studies on the old lines, but he wiU study what he sees he wants, and the methodical habits of study acquired by the successful scholar enable him to pursue the new aim with system and application. But I must not enlarge on this point, it being beyond my task ; I only wish to add, that when we 14 get a good Oommeroial Institute, that will be the place in which may be learnt the schoolboy's record — transferred there from his school. The third point remains, namely, the acquisition of special commercial knowledge and skiU. This suggests an inqxxiry as to the effect of the demands of commerce on the curricula of the schools. It has to be remembered that in most cases we are unable to foresee what line of occupation any particular scholar will follow until he is about to leave us. But there are two points of importance to commercial education in secondary schools which are quite within our reach. The first affects our choice of subjects. It often happens that the same kind of training can be given by different subjects. For instance, able teachers of science can make any science or any common object in the world subservient to an introduction to the principles and greater truths of natural knowledge. Dean Swift could write an admirable poem on a broomstick ; Faraday could give a fascinating and most instructive series of lectures on a candle. Now, when two or more subjects will serve the same purpose in education up to the point to which education can be carried in the particular case under consideration, that one must be selected which will be of most use in the business of life. These rules should guide us in the choice of sciences, languages, arithmetical processes, and in subjects for the exercise of the reasoning powers. The faculties to which I have referred vary with the field in which they are exercised. An artist will see things in a picture which a chemist cannot see, and a chemist will detect a reaction which an artist would not notice. Hence, evidently, when we know the kind of field in which the faculties are intended to be the knowledge will influence the choice of subjects. Every boy looking forward to enter business at 16 should be sufiioiently familiar with the broad principles which underlie industrial operations to be able to adapt himself to new conditions. Such qualifications can only be secured by a scientific instruction which occupies a midway place between those primary notions given in elementary schools and those more advanced studies of the technical institutes and university colleges. Exercises, primarily intended to teach the use of language, thought and reasoning, may be combined with a lesson in important principles of trade. A discussion of such a subject as the following would serve this double purpose : — " The commercial calamities which have from time to time been produced by the ignorance and recklessness of individuals in using the credit offered them, and by the lack of vigilance and sagacity in those who give credit." And there is something a little more definite that may be done. In London and the larger provincial towns where there are a number of secondary schools, some may well be encouraged to take up a more strictly commercial curriculum than would be good for the whole. This really is done to a small extent even now. If you take a map of London for each school, and mark on it the positions of the residences of the scholars in that school, and then compare the maps, you will find that the schools do not simply serve a local purpose. Several draw their scholars from the same areas. What determines the parents' choice ? Not simply difference of fee, for railway fares are voluntai-ily added to the cost where they might be avoided. It is that some difference of methods and of curricula distinguish the schools, making one more suitable for preparation for one kind of pursuit and its neighbour better for another. We should take advantage of this and recognize a certain number of schools distributed over the London area, as St. Paul's, for instance, as suited for those aiming at the professions, and others as better suited for those preparing for commerce. It may be said in answer to this suggestion, that in the larger schools there may be a subdivision into departments : classical and modern, or professional and commercial. The danger in such cases is, however, that one department will be considered lower or less honoui-able than the other, and will, therefore, fail to attract the most able scholars. This difficulty does not appear to the same extent when the departments are in entirely different schools. I have now in conclusion briefly to sketch the curriculum of such a special commercial school. In addition to the usual school subjects there should be— 1 Arithmetic, including exchanges and curren- cies, and mathematics. 2. English composition and correspondence, with practice in condensing, expanding and para- phrasing. 3. Commercial geography and history. 4. The study of animal, vegetable and mineral products. 5. Laboratory practice. 6. Modern languages. 7. A study of British industries and commerce. 8. Business methods of conducting operations connected with import and export trade. 15 DISCUSSION. Mr. a. a. Somekyille (Eton College) : Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Q-entlemen, as repre- senting the largest of our secondary schools, and having to do with a great deal of the modern language teaching at that school, per- haps I may be allowed to offer a remark or two. The note struck by Sir John Grorst, and continued by Mr. Bourne, gave me very great satisfaction, and that was the plea for thorough- ness. It seems to me, judging by experience, that what is wanted in all the schools of our country is more thoroughness, and particularly I would ask that our own language should be taught more thoroughly. I would ask that the value of words and the construction of sentences in our own language should be more appreciated. Mr. Bourne suggested that the teaching of French and Grerman meets with many obstacles, mainly because of the differences of method, and he mentioned the Modern Language Asso- ciation as a possible means by which differences of method might be reconciled. As a member of the Modern Language Association, I may say that this question has been most carefully considered by the Association, and although we have not yet been able to agree upon a general method, we have agreed upon general principles. Mr. Bourne thinks modern language should be taught mainly by the ear. I agree with him, but I would also ask him not to banish teaching by the eye. I think the true solution of the difficulty would be to teach modem languages by a combination of methods founded on teaching through the ear and through the eye. Let me conclude by saying, as I began, that what we require is thoroughness, and that thoroughness will conduce to what Dr. Wormell has pleaded for, viz., the development of cha- racter and improvement of discipline. (Cheers.) Mb. H. W. Eve, M.A. (CoUege of Precep- tors) : Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have only two remarks to make, and the first is one which I hardly expected to have to make after having for more than 35 years worked hard to push modem education. I am just afraid that the pendulum might swing a little too far the other way, and that there is a real danger that the education of men destined for business should be a Uttle divorced from the general education of the country. I do most earnestly support the increased study and the thorough study of French and German, but I do not want to see boys going to business solely from those studies. After all, it is better. even for business purposes, to know Latin and Greek like a scholar than to know French or German like a courier or a bagman. (Cheers.) Therefore, with all my enthusiasm for modem language teaching, I should be very sorry to think that it was to be henceforth the only avenue to posts in houses of business. The otheif point is one that I previously had an oppor- tunity of dwelling upon, a point to which Mr. Bourne alluded at the end of his speech. Mr. Bourne told us that some people said " The boy is too well educated for our purpose." Is there or is there not an effective demand for really well educated lads in houses of business? (Hear, hear.) It seems to be very generally felt that what business men are too much on the look-out for are mere fags. Of course there must be a great number of such, but I think the heads of firms would be wise, if it is not very impertinent to say so, also to look out for what I may call recniits for their own profession as well as for mere assistants. (Hear, hear.) The highest kind of business in the country, I suppose, is that conducted by the Treasury. The Treasury is recruited from the pick of the universities. I do think that the best houses of business might in the same way recruit themselves from the pick of the public schools and universities, if they would offer positions enabling boys to be trained for the higher walks of commerce. (Hear, hear.) Those intended for the higher posts ought not, as a rule, to begin at the bottom, where a lad from a board school naturally comes in ; they ought to be put in the way of being familiar- ized with the real working of a business. I cannot help thinking that something of the system that has made public offices and the army what they are might be applied to busi- ness, that such posts as a man would give to his own son or his own nephew, should be given, by competition, to lads from ages of perhaps 18 to 22. By that means I believe you would get well-trained men who could adapt themselves to anything, and the power of adaptation, which is one of the results of a good education, is a thing most desirable to secure in commerce. I would, therefore, strongly urge that some collective effort should be made not merely to give inferior posis to those who distinguish themselves at the Chamber of Commerce or other examinations, but that really first-rate opportunities should be offered to deserving young men without family connection. The best men of business send their 16 sons, whom they intend to follow them, to public schools and universities, and generally they are wise enough to make them work hard there. Why should not they recruit the ranks of well-educated men of business from other sources ? (Cheers). Mr. Eobekt Leighton Leighton, M.A. (Headmaster Bristol Grammar School) : Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I echo every word Mr. Eve has said, but I should like to put before the meeting what I conceive to be the fundamental difficulty of raising the standard of commercial education at preseut. Suppose that we get these institutions for training the embryo captain of industry or merchant prince — how is that boy or youth going to earn his bread for the first fifteen years of his career ? . If he is all that these institutions try to make him, no firm wants him in a junior position. (Hear, hear.) No firm will have him in a junior position, and unless he has a father to succeed, there is no room for that boy in business. "When he got to be 35 or 40, if he had been in business, then there would be competition for his services, but he has been driven away into other lines of life before he attains that age. If, inadvertently, some firm gives a boy of that kind a position, he is exposed to very great dangers. I am not talking of imagin- ary cases, but I have real cases in my mind. He will excite the j ealousy of his immediate superiors, and they will lay information against him, and they will watch for him and set traps for him, and, if they can, they will destroy him. Justice and generosity are not principles of business (Laugh- ter and " Oh, oh "), and if anything is alleged against this boy of some promise, he must not expect that the heads of the business will really take the trouble to enquire into the truth of the allegations. The boys whom we are proposing to train in this way under the present conditions of business will really be in a worse position than if we left them alone. ("No, no.") Yes, the firms will not take them, except a few of the great banks. (" Oh, oh.") An ordinary firm win not take a boy of that kind. Within the last two months I had a boy of exactly the kind I am describing. He was a boy of brilliant parts. Unfortunately, the parents were poor, but if his parents could have helped him a little he would infallibly have got a first-rate mathematical scholarship. He was also well on in chemistry and physics. It was necessary that he should find work, and I had to hawk him round Bristol to firm after firm. " No, we do not want him." Another firm says, " He is too good for us, we will not have him." And at last I got a literary employer, to take him, very largely as a favour to myself. Having got him, he is very pleased with him naturally, and finds he can do all his work, but if this boy had been left to himself, as far as I can observe, he woxdd not have had a chance of getting employment of any kind. That is what one finds habitually. The firms will not have these people, and when they get them they have no protection against the jealousy and ill-will they are perfectly certain to excite. ("No, no.") Therefore, I ask, how are these boys going to earn their livings in the first ten or twenty years of commercial life ? (Cheers.) Mr. Alderman Brigg, M.P. (Keighley) : Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I venture, with some diffidence, to make a remark on the subject which is now before the Conference, for I feel that I am called upon from a different standpoint from those who have spoken so far. Hitherto, we have had what I ma}^ call a theoretical view of the subject. I venture to speak from the practical point of view (Hear, hear), having taken part very actively in the formation of a series of classes for the purpose of carrying out this very commercial instruction which we are now seeking to bring before the public more largely. Well, the position in which we stand at present is this, I may perhaps be allowed to say, representing the West Riding of Yorkshire, that we are surrounded by a large working poptdation to whom this question of commercial education is one of pressing import- ance, and one that is brought home to our very doors, and has been for some time past, by the needs of those whom we are seeking to educate. On this point may I just venture fo^ one moment, Mr. Chairman, to digress on what I may call, strictly speaking, a more political question, and that is, that while we regret, as has been expressed by gentlemen who have spoken already, that much of the work we are now seeking to accomplish is done by foreigners better educated than our own young men, yet at the same time, when we come to enquire why our young men have not done better than they have, and why — a fact which applies to very many other things besides teaching — why we do not do everything Mr. Foreigner does, and better than he does, we find 17 that it is simply this, that we are doing better work ourselves, and getting tetter paid for what we do. We cannot bear to do the work they do because they do it at a cheap rate, and we are doing something which is very much better. (Hear, hear.) Consequently, I venture to think, with the hon. gentleman on my left, Sir John Q-orst, that I take rather an optimistic view of this question. At the same time there is no reason why we should fall behind in the competition which we feel is coming in upon us from all sides. The position we have now taken in reference to education, which is under our control at the present moment, is simply to take care that we have a good sound basis of primary education all round. In the next case we have to deal with the same students when they come into the higher grade Board Schools, which, as a County Council, we do not venture to put beyond the range of our influence. Then we follow on with the work that is carried on in continuation schools, that is, in night schools where the students, in very many cases, are engaged in practical work during the day. In those schools — that is, in the higher grade Board Schools, and in the continuation schools — there is a certain amount of distinctly com- mercial teaching inculcated. Then we follow with the higher branch of the same studies which we carry on in the secondary schools, the technical institutes which we have in the district. That brings me now to what I have simply to say here, the main thing I have to say, and that is, that we are still wanting, and must have somewhere, a higher commercial college where we can send our successful boys. That is, as far as I can understand it, the problem before us. It is the great want of our commercial education in England of to-day. We have not got those schools or colleges or universities to which we can send our boys, and, consequently, at the present moment we are bound to deal with them and finish their education when they come to ages of something like 16 or 17. What I would hope would be the result of this Conference, and which I believe, to some extent, is the object of those who have promoted.it, is, that this Con- ference should be of assistance to the formation of the higher Institute for Commercial Educa- tion ; and London, of course, as the centre of the commercial life of this country, is the place where there should be, in the first instance, a college of the very first class in the world. Beyond that, it may be possible that districts in the country may institute something of the same kind. But I would commend to those who take an interest in education, that what we are most in need of is the higher branch, a more extended branch of commercial education. If we have that, we shall very soon find that the lower classification of students with whom we have to deal will gradually fall into line and work up to the centre, which, I think, it is the aim and object of this Conference to promote. I beg to suggest that as my contribution to the ' Conference. (Cheers.) Eev. W. Moore Ede (Newcastle-on-Tyne Eoyal Grammar School) : Mr. Chainnan, Ladies and Gentlemen, perhaps I may be allowed to speak on this subject from a rather different point of view from that of the previous speakers. I am here as the representative of the governing body of Newcastle Grammar School, but I also am, and have been for many years, in the position of chairman of one of the large School Boards of this country. I feel that this question really resolves itself into the provision of educa- tion for two classes of persons : the sons of business men whose business has already been created, and the training, therefore, of those who will be the future captains of industry. That is the work that will have to be done in such institutions as that which I represent, the Grammar Schools, and also in higher commercial institutions yet to be created. But also com- mercial education must make provision for that very large class of persons who go into commerce from the elementary schools. (Hear, hear.) It is from the elementary schools that the great majority of the clerks of this country come, therefore commercial education cannot neglect the preparation of the great mass of the clerks of the country, and the providing them with adequate preliminary training. Sir John Gorst has referred to the wisdom of such a Conference as this considering the obstacles that are in the way of improving education in commercial lines. I would like to refer to two obstacles. I speak as a north countryman, and in the north country the higher grade schools are a very large factor in education (Hear, hear), much larger than they are in the south. The very large proportion of the best clerks are boys who have passed through the higher grade schools. We have heard from our Chairman that one great deficiency of the English clerk is his want of knowledge of foreign languages. I venture to think that there is an obstacle in the way which can be 18 Temoved by persons in authority, which causes the training of those who are going into business to he defective on the language side. I refer to the regulations of the Science and Art Depart- ment which govern those higher grade schools, and compel an undue proportion of time to he given to science and an insufBcient portion of time to be given to languages. (Cheers.) I think, sir, that these higher grade schools, which are such a very important factor — if I took Northumberland and Durham I think I may say that there are something like six times as many children in those schools receiving a certain degree — I wiU admit not a very advanced degree — but a certain degree of secondary education — there are six times as many children in those schools as there are in aU the other kinds of secondary schools in the north of England. Then it is very important that these schools should be able to divide their curriculum, that they should be able to say to boys when they have got through their standards and passed Standard VII. : " We now offer you an alter- native. If you are going into commercial life, you may take the commercial side of the school. If you are going into mechanical life or into factories, you may take the science side of the school." But as all the financial encouragement is given to the science side and very little encouragement given to the language side, necessity compels the construction of the curri- cula of those schools in such a fashion that too much time is given to science and too little is given to languages. (Cheers.) And then, sir, I do feel that another obstacle that has to be re- moved is that lack of encouragement that Mr. Eve and the speaker who preceded him has alluded to, with regard to those who are to occupy important posts in the business work of the country afterwards. But there is also a great want of encouragement on the part of men in business of those who are the best trained in the elementary schools of the country. As long as the first step in commercial life is to begin as ofiice boy with 5s. or fis. a week, there is not much inducement for boys at school to qualify themselves much for commercial life. (Cheers.) The more those who are connected with commerce realize the importance of teach- ing, and value and encourage those who have done well in school, and give better posts at starting in their ofiice, the more we shall get boys striving to qualify themselves before they enter on their commercial career. Those two obstacles, the Science and Art regulations and the want of encouragement to those who begin their commercial career, are two obstacles which I hope before long we shall see removed. (Cheers.) Me. Albert Spicee, M.P. (Newport Chamber of Commerce) : Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I think this Conference is very much indebted to Mr. Eve for raising the question that he has done in connection with the small inducement held out by commercial firms in the employment of well-educated young men. (Hear, hear.) At the same time, I think the friend from Bristol who spoke on the same subject was a little unfair to a large number of commercial firms who do maintain principles of justice as well as of generosity. (Hear, hear.) But, sir, there are a great many more difiiculties surrounding this question than I think those who look at it purely from the professional educational side are apt to allow for. You must recollect first of all there are, after all, only a section of the present heads of firms, whether manufacturing or distributing, who are well educated themselves, and who therefore appreciate the advantages of well- educated assistants. Then, again, you have to realize that there is a great distinction between business of any kind and Government employ- ment. In every business there is an amount of drudgery that everyone has to learn, and everyone has to give his attention to (Hear, hear), and drudgery which, in the present day of keen competition, as we have been reminded, having to compete with every part of the world, heads of firms can only afford to pay a certain price for ; and I cannot help thinking, that if those who are interested in this question, like our friend Mr. Eve and others, would be a little more patient, and, if I may say so, from a business point of view, a little more discreet, it would be better. What they want to find, first of all, is what business their protege will throw his whole heart into ; then look out for a firm where he can exercise the abilities which he possesses. Do not trouble yourself at the outset, at any rate for the first year or two, as to the mere question of salary. (Hear, hear.) It is perfectly true he might have to accept less than he could get if he went into a Government employment, or some class of professional employment, but I maintain that directly he has learned his busi- ness he can command his own price. (Hear, hear,) He must learn his business first, and 19 while he is learning it he is not sometimes worth very much more than a School Board hoy. I speak with some experience in the matter, beoause in the firm with which I am connected we try to train our own staff. "We take them as boys, sometimes from secondary schools, sometimes from Board Schools, and our experience is that for the first two to three years the School Board boy knows better his own subjects in a limited sphere than the boy with a better general education. But there is this difference. With the School Board boy, unless he is an industrious boy and is willing to give some time in the evening to study, with his home surroundings, his education prac- tically stops when he leaves school. The boy who has come from the secondary school does not know exactly as much sometimes, or as well as the Board School boy, but he is living in the midst of educational advantages, and if he is a reading boy he is constantly going forward, and even if he is not a reading boy — and you must bear in mind what we have already heard this morning — there is a tremendous tendency in these boys who have been brought up in our better families to think sometimes that they need not really work ; but, whatever his ideas may be in this way, his education is always going on. And what do we find? For the first three years the Board School boy is being sought after by the heads of the different departments, and the boy from the secondary school is left alone. But the heads of depart- ments in any large firm are constantly looking out for those who do their work best, and this boy gets a change. He now gets to a position where he has to think a little for himself, and then at once the boy from the secondary school, in the bulk of cases, begins to forge ahead. A Board School boy, in too many cases, if you put the extra responsibility on him, fails. He has done splendidly when he is told what he should do, but when he comes to real responsibiKty he stops, and then you ask how it is you misjudged that boy so much. The other boy goes on. From that moment he has his chance before him, and I maintain that we should not have occupied the commercial posi- tion we do if the heads of firms were not constantly looHng after the boys who were likely to come on and do the best work. I quite admit that point which was raised as to the jealousy, in some cases, of the other em- ployees of a firm, but the heads of a growmg and progressive concern are always looking for those who are likely to occupy high positions, and from that moment, although the salary may have been very small for the first three or four years, directly that boy knows his business, as I say, he can command his price. And then, bear in mind, there are prospects opening to him either in the firm or any other firm which are far greater than those of the great mass of G-overnment employments. (Hear, hear.) There- fore I do think the heads of our great schools should look at this matter a little more all round. I admit fully that there has been a disinclination on the part of many to give these extra salaries to begin with, but, as a matter of fact, the reason is, that for the first two or three years they are not worth it. They may be anxious to try and encourage, and may pay extra in some cases, and gradually as they find by experience that they grow into important positions, I do not think they will be found lacking. (Cheers.) Sir Philip Magnus (City and Guilds of London Institute) : Mr. Chairman, Ladies and G-entlemen, I only want to be allowed to say one word on this question of the education to be given in our secondary schools. I am anxious that the discussion should not divert too far from the subjects brought under oux considera- tion by Mr. Bourne in his opening paper. Mr. Bom-ne laid down very clearly what, in his opinion, should be the om-riculum of a school preparing boys for a commercial life, and I was very anxious that that curriculum should be carefully discussed by the members of the Conference present here to-day. Mr. Eve raised a dissentient voice to the views put forward by Mr. Bourne ; and one of the main questions for consideration in the curriculum of such a school is the amount of time that can be devoted to the special subjects of instruction. I think it is admitted that without attempting to specialize in a commercial school, boys who are educated in such an institution should have ample time for the study of modern languages. (Hear, hear.) That point was raised by a speaker who stated that the encotiragement of science in the higher grade schools prevented a sufficient amount of time being given to modern languages. But I venture to think that the question raised by Mr. Eve is more important, and that is, whether it is possible to give instruction in the classical languages in a school devoted to commercial purposes, and, at the c2 20 same time, to give sufficient opportunity for the proper study of modern languages. Mr. H. W. Eve : May I say that was not my point. My point was, that hoys taken for commerce should he specially trained in modern languages — not to bring the classics into a purely commercial school. Sir Philip Magnus : I accept Mr. Eve's correction ; hut what I want the Conference to consider is, whether it is desirable or not that in the secondary schools preparing for a com- mercial life the classical languages should continue to hold a place ; and with reference to this question I would point out for one moment what is being done in some of those foreign schools to which reference has already been made. It is, undoubtedly, true that the boy who has been educated in a commercial school abroad has a wider, a more skilful, and a more intelligent knowledge of foreign languages than most boys obtain in corre- sponding schools in this country. (Hear, hear.) "We very often hear of the so-called Handel- schulen in Germany. When we look into the curriculum of one of those schools, we very often expect to find a large amount of specialized commercial instruction ; but, as a fact, one finds none, or next to none. Those schools, however, do succeed in giving to the boys who are trained for commerce a thoroughly intelligent knowledge of the French and English languages ; and nothing surprises a foreigner more than to go into one of those schools, and, at the invitation of the master, to be asked to speak to the boys either in English or in French. One finds that the shyness which is so generally characteristic of our own boys does not exist; that they are able intelligently to answer you in the language in which you address them. (Hear, hear.) Now, I venture to think this is a serious question for consideration. Some time ago Sir William Harcourt referred at great length to what he called the Eealschulen in Germany, comparing them, somewhat unex- pectedly, with the elementary schools in this country. But at the Bealschulen in Germany, as in the specific Handel schulen, an education is given of a thoroughly general and disciplin- ary character, but Latin and Greek are not taught. The same discipline which we succeed in obtaining from those classical studies is obtained in the teaching of foreign languages. (Cheers.) I venture to think that, without modifying our curriculum to any very great extent, we shall be able whenever the organiz- ation of our secondary education comes to be effected, to find room in this country for schools corresponding to some extent to the Handel- schulen and Eealsohulen of Germany, schools in which modem languages form the staple of the linguistic instruction, and in -which the instruction is so given as to constitute a thoroughly intellectual discipline. Mr. J. H. YoxALL, M.P. : Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I think in all compari- sons between our English schools and the Con- tinental schools we must be careful not to forget one great handicap upon English teachers and English schools as compared with those abroad. Of the elementary school-child's life of seven or eight years I am quite sure that two years are occupied in the teaching, practising, rehearsing and testing of our cumbrous, antiquated and unnecessary system of money, weights and measures. (Cheers.) You will never obtain for English scholars in EngKsh schools a satisfac- tory amount of teaching of modern languages so long as you conserve for the English scholar in the English school an arithmetical exercise which occupies something like 25 per cent, of his time. I believe that merchants and men of business complain that the lads who come to them, whether from elementary schools or secondary schools, pursue long, roundabout, and cumbrous methods of calculation, have not gained the knack of quick calculation, and have no idea of those briefer methods which business men, by their own initiative and dis- covery, have found out. That is very largely due to the fact that the teachers of the child are compelled, by our systems, to go through a wearisome mill-horse round, in the utmost detail, by the most cumbrous methods, because they are the most logical and most easily explained to the child. If you want modern languages to be taught in elementary schools or secondary schools more than they have been taught, you must clear away from the path of the schoolboy here an obstacle which does not lie in the path of the schoolboy abroad. But I did not mean to speak on that point. We have been talking about the curriculum in secondary schools, and the difficulties of ob- taining for the highly educated lad from the comfortable middle-class home at 17 or 19, a beginning in the world of commerce, that seems worth -his while to take. I do not think that you ought to consider very 21 much the highly educated son of the wealthy middle-class home in this matter of commerce. Surely the one constant and heroic figure in the world of business has been the self-made (Hear, hear.) He is historical in the man. City of London, — " Thrice Lord Mayor of London," the typical figure in the history of business. He was in the old days the good apprentice who married his master's daughter (laughter), and inherited his master's business. (Laughter and cheers.) But in these days Mr. Bourne has pointed out how the middle- class boy comes from home with ideas hardly those which are likely to make him succeed in business. If his father be wealthy enough he places him in a profession, or leaves him in a position independent of the world of commerce. So long as commerce is built upon ideas of supply and demand, the cheapest market and the dearest market and so on, so long as there it is not an organized system for placing people in the posts they are best suited to, so long in the rough-and-tumble of commerce you must rely on the poor clever lads for commercial captains, and corporals and privates, more than upon the product of the secondary school or the tertiary school, who comes from a luxurious home with ideas which make him, perhaps, not quite the best suited to fight his way in the world of commerce, and so long must your chief care be so to organize your secondary education that you shall obtain in your secondary schools a constant supply of the cleverest poor lads from the elementary schools (cheers), and that to them you shall supply, in the secondary schools, a specially arranged commercial curriculum, and so have at the end of the secondary school course a sufficient number of lads, well educated, but not too rich and not too proud to take the poorly paid posts in your houses of business, and work their way up to the top. (Cheers.) Eev. Peebexdary Whittington (City of London College) : Mr. Chairman and Gentle- men, I rise to speak in the somewhat unique position of having been fifty years engaged in education, thirty-five years in public schools, and for twenty-eight years in one of the great schools of this great city. I know, therefore, what the work of the secondary school is, and I know what the defects are. I know also what we have tried to do in the City of London College in the way of supplementing that defective education which is found— necessarUy so— among the very large numbers of those educated in our public schools who have to leave early. I can remember the time when modern languages were looked upon as a mere thing to laugh at in our public schools. We are very thankful now that we have our modern sides in which modern languages and science are taught well in those schools. Bat yet not sufficiently I must say. (Hear, hear. ) My own experience with regard to modern languages is that to equip boys leaving those schools — and I have to deal with them often very early — to go forth and succeed in commercial life, modern languages must be taught more efficiently. I have the examination of a very large number of bank clerks, especially from two of the largest banks with branches all over the United Kingdom, and I am distressed to see how boys who have come from our secondary schools are utterly deficient in modern languages and other branches of commercial education. It is true that they are not to be taken as good examples of those schools, because we know that in many of them the most talented do not come up at that early age, namely, at fourteen or sixteen, but such are the exigencies of commer- cial nfe, and such the needs of the parents of many of these boys, that they are obliged to be withdrawn from the school and sent to even- ing classes in our City of London College or other kindred institutions to supply the deficiencies of their education in those secondary schools. And what do I find? I won't be Utopian- enough to imagine that very many of the two thousand young men and young women in our college come to us at these very early ages to get learning 'p&r se. 1 am glad to think there is a certain percentage who do do that, but the majority of those come to get equipped to enter into commercial life, and they feel the absolute necessity of being taught subjects such as will qualify them for commerce or business life. I do not blame those public schools, because when they leave so early as that we cannot expect they can give anything like a commercial education up to the age of fifteen. It is necessary I think that the lads should go, as contemplated in the idea of this Conference, to some commercial school such as we wish to establish, which shall qualify them to enter into the particular walks of commerce to whioh they are looking forward. Mr. Bourne did com- mence his paper by saying he thought it was highly desirable that there should be a general education up to a certain point, and I do venture 22 to hope, in spite of what the last speaker said, that we may have a general education, given to everyone, which shall include a certain amount of classical language, in addition to modern languages. I venture to hope also that we shall be able to keep up that general educa- tion, and then to implant upon it that other particular education which shall qualify for commerce. I think our modern departments meet a good deal of that difBculty. I know that much sound grounding is given in the modern departments of our public schools and elementary schools — although I am dealing with secondary schools — naturally elementary schools are very important, but that is not the subject now before us. It is the secondary schools, and the importance of modern education in those secondary schools we have to discuss to-day. Well, I must say, I think from my own knowledge that the way in which languages are taught in those secondary schools is not such as to qualify lads to enter into houses of commerce, or be of great service in after life. (Hear, hear.) I do not undervalue that modern education which is given in those schools, because I think in many of those schools they give a very good grounding in modern languages (Hear, hear) ; but they do not deal, of course, very largely with com- mercial modern language education, which is a thing of itself, sui generis (Hear, hear), and which certainly requires a great deal of atten- tion if a man is to enter a commercial house with a special qualification in modern languages. Again, with regard to the question of geography, I was rather sorry to hear Mr. Bourne say he thought geography was a subject which might be carried on at home and almost independently of the teaching of the school. My own experience is this, that the geography of the young men who present themselves for commercial positions is lamentably deficient, and it is certainly not that geography which would be of service in the commercial world, or which would qualify them to be of great service in a commercial house. I will not dwell longer on this point. It is said the commercial houses will not accept these young men. I am bound to say that I think hitherto the commercial houses have not had the opportunity of having any reKable certificates that these men possess that know- ledge which will be of great value to their employers. (Hear, hear.) I am bound to say with reference to the students in my own college that those who do get a good education, and qualify themselves as much as they possibly can, generally do find good positions, and that education is recognised, when it is really a sound and valuable education, by our great commercial firms. I think it is only justice to our com- mercial firms that I should say that. (Cheers.) If we have a commercial college for higher commercial education, then I think we shall find there will be no difficulty in our great commercial firms, when a man gets his certifi- cate from these Iiigher commercial colleges, in being able to find positions for such young men. (Cheers.) Mr. J. Easteebeook, M.A. (Headmaster, Owen's School, Islington) : Mr. Chairman, Ladies and. Grentlemen, so many professional representatives have spoken that we cannot after this be accused of being apathetic in this matter. I think I can safely say for those representing secondary education that we are most anxious to know where business men consider secondary education fails. (Hear, hear.) We wish to apply the remedy to the defects if we can, but we have not found, as a rule, that business men have been agreed upon the matter. However, they appear to be pretty well agreed to-day on one point, viz., that secondary education should be more thorough. Well, I am afraid there may be a certain amount of truth in that, but I do not think they know the difficulties under which we labour in the ordinary secondary schools. By the ordinary secondary schools I mean those which are not the richest in the country. I mean especially the country grammar schools ; and although I am not headmaster of a country grammar school myself, still I know their difficulties. We very often have the example of Germany put before us, but I should like to call the attention of business men to the fact that the conditions in Germany are quite different. (Hear, hear.) Secondary education is properly organised there, it is encouraged in every way, and the schools are properly equipped and fully staffed. Now in England we know that this is not the' case. For thirty years it has been the practice to give public funds to one side of education only. (Hear, hear.) That has been touched on already by a speaker near me with regard to elementary schools ; but the same thing applies in a more acute form to secondary schools. The great bulk of the secondary schools in the country are in want of funds^ and 23 since Government grants are only given to encourage certain subjects, they are obliged to lay stress on those subjects, and to give time to them. I think the time has now come to organise secondary education, and throw State grants open. (Hear, hear.) "With regard to the curriculum, I quite agree myself with what Mr. Bourne has said, and I also agree with Mr. Eve. I believe there is room for the classical schools, and there should be room in business houses for boys from those schools if they will only pay sufficient attention to hand-writing, commercial arithmetic, and modern languages. (Hear, hear.) My experience of boys who have been trained on a distinctly classical side, is that they generally write execrably. (Hear, hear.) With regard to commercial arithmetic I had been going to mention that we should very much like to see the metric system become general. (Cheers.) That would leave us a great deal more time for our modern languages in the lower form. Then we also hope that busi- ness men will take up this idea of the Higher Commercial College. The establishment of such a college would give a dignity to commercial education if the institution is of University rank, and attracts to its lecture rooms young men of from 17 to 20, and it will react on our schools because we shall have to prepare boys for the entrance examination to that college, which I hope will be stiff. By that means it will have a good effect upon the commercial education of secondary schools. There should also, I think, be a proper system of leaving certiiicates. If they were properly arranged by a central body, which we all hope will come into existence for secondary education, I think it would do a great deal of good, and business men would get into the way of recognising those certificates. There is another point. I have experience of boys who come from homes of limited means, and it is often very important when they go out into life they should begin earning money at once. (Hear, hear.) Well, if business men require superior clerks they must offer sufficient inducements. At present the majority of boys leaving school, and not blessed with rich parents, find the immediate emoluments offered by the Civil Service, even in its lower divisions, appeal to them more strongly than the emoluments offered in the majority of commercial houses. (Cheers.) Mb. Frank Debenham (Deputy-Chairman of the Commercial Education Committee, London Chamber of Commerce) : Sir Albert EoUit, Ladies and Gentlemen, I had not the slightest intention of joining in this discussion, although its subject has been to me one of supreme interest, for many years, in connection with our London Chamber of Commerce. I would, however, like to say how thoroughly I endorse the remarks made by Mr. Albert Spicer. Some may think that Mr. Spicer looked at this subject of commercial education too exclusively from the point of view of the man of business ; but surely it is important, if any progress is to be made, that we should all consider it as busi- ness men. Perhaps we have hitherto looked at it rather too much from the schoolmaster's point of view. All business men who take lads and educate them for business know how deplorable are the conditions of our secondary education. It has been suggested that to-day the Board School boy is better educated for business, and far more apt in consequence at learning his business, than the boy who has been educated at an average secondary school. I believe that this is so. We ought, I think, to combine the experience of business men with that of those who educate our youth in such a way as to lead to improvement in our secondary education. I agree with all Mr. Eve said about the importance of not doing anything to divorce commercial education from general education and even the higher culture. It is very difficult for a young man, say of 18 or 19, desirous of going into business — perhaps a business only waiting for him to go into— to know how best to qualify. He certainly cannot do it without beginning somewhere near the bottom. He may have reached the sixth form in a public school and yet, for one reason or another, not be desirous of going on to the university. How is he to enter upon his business career ? I cannot but think, more especially after attending the recent Antwerp conference, that there must, more particularly in London, be a distinct need for a higher commercial school or college which, as has been said, will do something to bridge the educational gap. Why should we be afraid to try experiments ? Our practical way in this country is to follow the law of induction and experiment, and if our London County Council can adopt one scheme, and our Chamber of Commerce assist in the promotion of another, let us hope the merchants and wealthy traders of this great metropolis will come forward with their usual generosity and supply the funds. 24 "We shall all rejoice if this Conference induce such a happy result. Mr. David Howard, J.P. (Ex-officio Vice- President of the London Chamber of Commerce (Incorporated) and a Governor of Chigwell School, Chigwell): Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Grentlemen, a great deal of what I might have said has been said much better for me, and therefore I need not take up your time by re- peating it. I venture to say a few words from a somewhat extended experience of foreign rivals and friends, and their methods of work. I do want to emphasize what has been said about the dangers of self-indulgent, idle, luxurious boys, going into business. Our foreign rivals are tremendously in earnest, and work tremendously hard, and make their commercial Life or their manufacturing life the first object of their life — it may be too much so. So do not let boys imagine, and do not let us send boys to be taught to imagine, that commercial life is a nice, easy, idle sort of thing. (Hear, hear.) CycKng, cricket, football, golf are all very well in their way, but directly they become the primary object of life there is an end of the commercial life. (Hear, hear.) Another thing I have found with my foreign friends is that, as a rule, the leaders have been thoroughly well educated. They are members of good univer- sities ; they are thoroughly grounded, and that is another thing I do want to emphasize most emphatically. There is no royal road to com- mercial knowledge. (Hear, hear.) You must begin with the foundation, and just as if you are building you always make your founda- tion fit in with what you are going to put on the top of it ; if it is a 6-ft. wall you do not put as much concrete in as for a building 100-ft. high, just so it is madness to suppose you can put in the same foundation for a boy who is going to leave school at fourteen, and a boy who is going to keep on his education until he is nineteen. (Hear, hear.) The more thorough the foundation you put into those who are to be leaders the better, and I do not think it is wasted. I am one of those benighted persons who learnt grammar from the old Eton grammar, and I even went so far as to waste my time over learning Greek, and I find men who have been taught modern languages in the modern way, when it comes to the interpretation of an im- portant German document — and may I say that some of them are quite as difficult to interpret as an obscure Greek chorus — somehow or other it is those who know several languages, and who know something more than "reise plander," who know how to translate thoroughly and well. I constantly find that I and others who have learnt a good deal more than the mere modern language, are called upon to make sense of foreign correspondence. A mere colloquial knowledge of French and German is worth precious Kttle. What do we reaUy want ? — thoroughness and accuracy of thought. (Hear, hear.) I do not think it is a pity even to spend time over our very complex system of weights and measures, if in doing so you learn vulgar fractions. (Laughter.) We want thoroughness. (Hear, hear.) It is little use teaching a boy too much book-keeping, he probably thinks the system he has learned is the only one, and he will tell you yours is wrong. (Laughter.) Employers cannot stand conceit, and that is why they are shy of taking the clever boys. We want a boy who will learn, and who will begin at the beginning. I should be ashamed to ask a clerk in my ofiice or a workman in my factory to do a thing I could not do myself. Thoroughness, thoroughness, thoroughness is what we want. Let us beware of shutting our eyes above all to the fact that it is the tremen- dous earnestness of the foreigner that we have to guard against more than anything else. (Cheers.) Mr. George Brown (Vice - President Private Schools Association) : Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, we have been told that the f undament&l principle underlying this question is the need for the best equipment of the rising generation. Well, I think we aU admit that. There is an assumption that England is falling behind in the commercial race. I think that is an assumption only. But the result of that assumption is, that almost a panic seems to have taken possession of the commercial people of this country, which leads them to lay the entire blame upon our schools. I do not wish to stand up here to defend entirely the secondary schools of this country. But I do think there are other facts entering into this question besides the school question. (Hear, hear.) The commercial supremacy of a nation does not depend entirely upon the education you give the rising generation. Thousands of the great merchants of this country will admit that they themselves had not a liberal education to begin with. But all the same they have raised 25 their country, notwithstanding their deficient secondary education, to the proud position of the first commercial nation of the world. (Cheers.) I think that is a proof that if we are falling hehind it is not due to our lack of education. There seems to be a desire on the part of many to nationalize the brains of the rising generation by the introduction of a State system which will drive -them into one groove. Now, you have a desire to commercialize the brains of the rising generation by making lop-sided individuals. I say if you com- mercialize theii- brains in that way, you may depend upon it the commercial supremacy of this country will decline. It is the function of the school, sui-ely, to develop the talents, to widen the intellect, and if there must be specialization for commercial life, let it be for those who are to enter into commercial Hfe, and let it come at that period of school life when the faculties have been widened, and have been brought into that position that they can accept specialization fully. I say, therefore, the great question now is this : to realise that our schools should devote themselves to widening the mind and laying the founda- tions which can be worked upon afterwards. I remember some years ago asserting that technical instruction should be isolated entirely from our schools. I was ridiculed for that remark. It is becoming realised that we cannot treat the technical in the schools, and if we wish it to be carried on successfully, it must be done by continuation schools or specializing schools to meet the various requirements. We have had technical education given to those who are to be clerks, and we have had the industrial portion of the com- munity taught modem languages, which they do not require. I say give the right education to the right person, and that is the one thing which this Chamber has to consider. (Hear, hear.) I believe that commercial colleges, with various departments to suit those who are going into this or that branch of commerce, is the only true solution of the question. I say there are other factors entering into this question which ought to be considered. The parents in the middle classes have been blamed for bringing up their sons to tastes and habits which unfit them to take their place in the commercial life of the nation. I think we must admit there is a good deal in that, but I stand up for the parents, and say this : What encourage- ments do the merchants give them for training their children to enter offices ? I have sent out many boys and I have watched their career, and I will teU. you what is the general result. The merchant wants about his premises a clerk with a respectable coat to his back, one who comes from a refined home, and who will give tone to his business. (Laughter.) He offers him little remuneration, if any, and at the time when he expects a prospect, there is none, but his place is supplied by another at an equally low rate. I say, if the merchant would realise that if he wants this high culture and this respectable man, he must pay, and offer such a prospect as will induce persons of this class to send him their sons. It is the merchant who wants educating as much as the clerk. (Laughter.) It is the merchant, I think, who needs to realise this fact, and if he wishes to have English boys in his office he must not expect them to compete with the German who advertises in this way (I cut this advertisement out myself) : " Wanted, a position in a mercantile house ; two years' experience in Grermany. Salary no object." (Laughter and cheers.) The Chairman : I am now compelled to proceed to the next subject, "Continuation Schools and Evening Classes." But I have several cards before me, and I am told by Dr. Garnett, whom I am going to call upon, that the subject overlaps somewhat with the previous one, so that probably an opportunity will occur of calling on those gentlemen who have not spoken on the previous paper. II._CONTINUATION SCHOOLS AND EVENING CLASSES. Dk. William Garnett (Secretary to the Technical Education Board of the London County Council) read the foUowing Paper:— It was not until I saw the programme of to-day's Conference that I understood that there had been allotted to me the whole field of commercial education between the secondary school and the higher commercial institute. When I undertook to provide a contribution to the subject of Continuation Schools, I had in mind the Evening Con- 26 tinuation School conducted by the School Board or voluntary school managers, and intended to provide two years' training for boys or girls who leave the elementary schools as soon as they have completed the compulsory standards, and are intending later on to join Polytechnics or evening classes in science, art, or commercial subjects — pupils, in fact, who are obtaining their higher elementary or intermediate education in the Continuation School — and I anticipated that there would be others who would contribute their quota to the same subject. The line, if it may be so called, which separates the Secondary School from the Continuation School is of such a nebulous character that I fear this paper will necessarily overlap, in no small degree, those to which we have already listened. While preparing this paper, I did not know what views were going to be expressed by those who were to read papers on Commercial Education in Secondary Schools or in the Higher Commercial Institutes. In marking out the iield that was left to me, therefore, I had first of all to determine for myself what should be the limits of the instruction pro- vided in the ordinary day schools, whether higher elementary or secondary, and at what point the student might be expected to commence his studies in the higher institute. With reference to the former, the trend of opinion amongst those who have considered the subject, and are intimately acquainted with the working of day schools, appears to be in the direction of avoiding as far as possible the introduction of technical commercial subjects into the secondary schools or higher elementary schools. The object of these schools is to train the intelligence, and subjects should be taught, not on account of their intrinsic value but for the sake of their influence as a means of training of the hand, the eye, the memory, the reasoning faculties, or the moral sense. Griven two subjects of equal value as a means of training, one of which has a direct bearing upon practical life while the other is com- paratively useless, and I suppose we should all agree that the former is to be the subject selected, and we should have little sympathy with those who maintain that the efiBciency of a University is tobe measured by the uselessness of the instruction which it affords. On the other hand, during the school-boy period, it is most important that mental training should not be sacrificed in the smallest degree to utilitarian knowledge. Hence, attempts at teaching the details of book-keeping appear to meet with small encouragement from educationalists, and it is probable that all will agree that it is a mistake to teach boys to deal with the details of transactions of which they can themselves have no clear conception. Book-keeping can be very much more readily learnt when a boy knows the meaning of a commercial transaction than while he is devoting most of his time to the rudiments of secondary education. Hence, it seems desirable that in the ordinary day schools com- mercial education should be restricted to writing, arithmetic, with special reference to foreign systems of money and of weights and measures, geography and history, and to a sound foundation for a practical knowledge of modern languages. I shall, therefore, assume that this amount of knowledge is all that is possessed by the pupils on entering the Continuation School. By Commercial Continuation Schools I understand day schools for boys between the ages of 14 or 15 and 17 or 18 who have already acquired a sound elementary education in Public Elementary or Secondary Schools, who have decided upon a commercial career, and who desire to specialize in commercial subjects. The same course of instruction may be undertaken in evening classes, but must be spread over a much longer period. The conditions of school life and the manner of acquiring the information are, how- ever, quite as important as the character of the information acquired — probably much more important. Commercial men make two complaints about English school-boys when they enter their offices : the first is, that while the German looks upon his business career as his life, the English boy merely regards it as a means of living. He spends his hours in the counting-house not for their own sake, but in order that he may be in a position to enjoy the hours of liberty, and he works for eleven months in the year for the sake of the one month's holiday, while the continental clerk finds at least a considerable portion of the pleasure of his life in his daily routine. The other complaint is, that English school-boys, 27 especially those from secondary schools, do not carry their knowledge ready to hand. The energy they possess is not in an available form, and they are incapable of bringing their knowledge to bear on a practical point when it arises. In this respect it is said that the boy who comes straight from the public elementary school has an advantage over the boy who has been trained in the secondary school. It is probable that the boy from the elementary school has less power of continuous thought, less independent power of acquiring knowledge and less intellectual resources, than the boy who has been left to shift for himself in the lower forms of a public school, but what he knows he has ready to hand, and, like the street arab, is able to utilise all his mental resources in providing his livelihood, or in dealing with any circumstances which arise. I am not prepared to suggest a remedy for both these difiBculties. "With regard to the former, the work of the school should be made so interesting to the boys as to compete on even terms with the attractions of the playground, and it is questionable whether additional work should ever be given as an imposition for misconduct ; as far as possible the acquisition of knowledge should be dissociated in the pupil's mind from any notion of punishment. With regard to the latter difficulty, it may be more easy to iind a solution, for boys may very well be taught to apply their knowledge to practical questions, which may be brought before them in concrete form by the teacher. In this respect laboratory work in experi- mental science affords perhaps the best training which is possible within the school. In marking out, therefore, a course of study, whether in the secondary school or in the Continuation School, for boys who are intending to enter upon commercial life, I would lay very great stress indeed upon practical laboratory work, and I would at first teach book- keeping in connection with the laboratory note-book. It is true that the transactions to be dealt with — the measurement of a length, an area, a volume, a specific gravity, a tempera- ture, a quantity of heat, the thermal capacity of a substance, the elasticity of a spring, the work done in its deflection, and so on — may be very different in kind from the transactions recorded in the books of the merchant or banker, but if the laboratory note-book is properly kept, the same principles will be adhered to. Neatness, accuracy and completeness, are the three desiderata in connection with the laboratory note-book. On the question of neatness it is unnecessary to enlarge ; the accuracy with which the observations are recorded is of the same importance to the student of experimental science as the accuracy of the entry in the merchant's ledger ; and the leading principle of the note-book, like that of the books of commercial houses, is completeness in the record which is presented. Experiment, observa- tion, inference, are all to be faithfully recorded, and no conclusion is to be set down unless the full data on which the conclusion is based are clearly shewn. For a boy who has been thoroughly trained in keeping his laboratory book in this way, the book-keeping of the merchant's office will be shorn of many of its difficulties and of most of its pitfalls. It would take us too far away from the purpose of this paper to give anything like a complete syllabus of the elementary measurements which the pupils should be taught to carry out. The areas of regular and irregular figures, the volumes of prisms, pyramids, cones, spheres and other solids as determined from their linear dimensions, and also by weighing in air and in water, the specific gravity of common substances both solid and Uquid, the use of the balance, the hydrometer and the thermometer, are examples which will be found set forth at greater length in the syllabus of Elementary Experimental Science prepared by the Incorporated Association of Head Masters, and in syllabuses issued by other teaching, examining or administrative bodies. It must, of course, be remembered that the training which will enable a boy to pass a satisfactory examination in school subjects will not necessarily make him a successful man of business. This requires other qualifications, which can to some extent be developed by a properly organised school training, but which cannot be created. The eminent man of science, who has learned so much that he realises that he is only playing with pebbles on the beach and qualifies every statement from the consciousness that the discoveries of to-morrow may falsify the beliefs and theories of to-day, will not make an ideal commercial traveller. At the same time, the contact with actual things in place of books and the experi- d2 28 ence in ascertaining truth by direct and personal observation which would be provided by such a laboratory course as that just referred to, will give a boy confidence and assurance, and enable him to speak with that certainty about matters respecting which he has made himself acquainted as will carry conviction to the minds of his customers, without producing the impression of shallow omniscience which is characteristic of the typical salesman. But it is the duty of the school not only to impart knowledge, but to provide a moral training ; and for this purpose a well-graded system of practical measurements, if properly carried out, will develop habits of care and accuracy of observation and of calculation and a love of truth, which will have its influence throughout the whole of the boy's life and affect all his transactions. To this end it is important that the same quantity should be measured by two or three independent methods and the results compared, the measure- ments being repeated until the results are within the errors inherent in the apparatus. Moreover, the methods of experiment and of measurement which are taught in the physical laboratory will be found applicable to very many practical problems which will afterwards arise in the course of business, while the habit of closely observing minute differences will be most valuable in subsequently dealing with commercial commodities. The starting point of the commercial Continuation School has been indicated above. From what has been said it appears that the boy entering the school is to be expected to have some knowledge of a modern language or two, besides his mother tongue, to have been well trained in arithmetic, in history and in geography, while he may, or may not, have learned something about the principles of book-keeping. He must be a neat and rapid writer, as this art can be acquired much more easily at an early age than in later life, and if he has already received some experimental training in physical science, so much the better; if not, elementary measurements should form one of the chief subjects of study during the first year or two of his work in the Continuation School. Having thus enumerated the subjects bearing upon commercial education which it may be expected that the pupils will have studied on entering the school, it is necessary to consider what they will be expected to know when they leave, and the work of the school will then necessarily lie between the two. The superior limit is presumably fixed by the requirements of the entrance examina- tion of the Higher Commercial Institute. In the Institut Superieur de Commerce of Antwerp, the examination for admission includes the following subjects, which are taught in the preparatory course of the Institute previous to ]Matriculation — French, Grerman, English, History, Greography, Book-keeping, Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Commercial Law and Political Economy. The students who have gone through this preparatory course are regarded as qualified to enter the special courses of study arranged for the matriculated students of the institute, which in the case of successful students lead up to the final diploma. I am not disposed to lay great stress on Commercial Law and Political Economy in the Continuation School, I would rather press the importance of freehand drawing, not as a compulsory subject, but as an optional subject to be encouraged as much as possible. It is for other contributors to this Conference to state what should be the subjects taught in the Higher Commercial Institute, and how they should be taught ; but it is necessary at this stage to point out that the Higher Commercial Institute for which the Continuation Schools, which are supposed to be the subject of this paper, are to form a preparation, is a school in which English commercial subjects are taught in English by Englishmen, but in which there are separate departments for French, for Spanish, for Italian and for German commercial law and practice, each taught by a native of the particular country, who has received a thorough practical training, both in the schools and business houses of the nation the commercial practices of which he is to teach. Four nationalities have been mentioned, but it is by no means necessary that the foreign departments of the school should be restricted to these four. It is essential, however, that the French department should be virtually a little bit of Paris brought into London, The whole of the teaching is to be in French— French thought is to pervade the department like an atmosphere, and the student who enters 29 it must be able freely to converse in French, and to understand lectures of a more or less technical character delivered in that language. He must, in fact, be in precisely the same position as he would be in were he to enter a school in Paris, in which the teaching is exclusively given in French, or a Parisian mercantile house, and the same conditions must obtain in every foreign department of the school. It is not suggested that any one student should study in all these departments ; as a rule an English student will probably content himself with two out of the four or five foreign courses of study, but in the two languages which he selects he must be thoroughly prepared before entering the school to profit by the instruction provided. Hence, among the most important subjects of study in the Continuation School must be modern languages. I am not going to challenge the criticism of the Modern Language Association, by entering into details as to the manner in which languages are to be taught in any class of schools ; I will only say that they must be taught as living languages, and with a direct view to preparing boys to profit by the teaching afforded in the departments of the Higher Commercial Institute to which I have referred. The Modem Language Association itself will be quite capable of saying how this object is to be effected. Only the other day I heard of a school for quite small boys in the Midlands where, in some of the classes, the whole of the teaching was carried out in French or Grerman, and the boys were required to answer exclusively in the language which was for the time in use, so that to a great extent the boys attending this school had advantages corresponding to those which they would have secured had they joined a school in France or Germany. History and Greography should be taught with a definite bearing upon industrial and commercial development. I do not mean that the teaching of geography should be confined to what is commonly known as commercial geography ; physical geography must precede, or at least accompany, commercial geography, just as antecedent physical con- ditions have generally determined the positions of great commercial centres, and the lines of trade routes. Greography, therefore, in all its aspects, physical, political and commercial, must be taught as one science, undivided and indivisible ; but this is a very different subject from the geography of the text-books, in which everything bearing upon commercial enterprise, its history, its development, and its varied conditions in different parts of the world, is scrupulously omitted. In the teaching of Arithmetic care should be taken that the subject of Mental Arithmetic is not neglected. As a rule, boys are better at mental arithmetic the lower the form in which they are working, and mental arithmetic is altogether neglected in the upper classes of our secondary schools, so that at the leaving age the boys have lost entirely their power of rapid mental calculation. Special attention should be given to arithmetic in connection with mensuration, and to approximate methods of determining areas and volumes. This subject is closely associated with laboratory work, to which reference has already been made. The nature of money, different monetary systems and the world's exchanges, should receive considerable attention, and should form the basis of very many of the arithmetical exercises provided for the classes ; and though the mysteries of bimetallism may well be relegated to a later stage, the monetary systems of the chief European nations should be as familiar to the student who leaves the Continuation School as the £ s. d. of his own country. Algebra should be taught at least as far as progressions, but more care should be devoted than is usually the case to imparting a clear understanding of the meaning of algebraical operations, and algebraical methods should constantly be illustrated in their application to practical problems. In the teaching of geometry special reference should be made to its application in practical mensuration, and whatever methods may be adopted for dealing with geometry as a science, geometry as a practical art should not be neglected. The use of the ordinary drawing instruments for the practical solution of geometrical problems is most valuable to the commercial man in very many departments of his work ; 30 and in this connection it may be pointed out that freehand drawing, and especially the making of freehand dimensioned sketches, may be more important to the salesman or commercial agent than geometry itself. The facility for rapidly putting upon paper a clear exposition of a mental conception, so that a client may readily understand the picture which is in the mind of the draughtsman, is one of the most valuable qualifications for the business man. The elementary laboratory course, which has been referred to above, will have its natural development in the Continuation School in the experimental study of elementary mechanics and the elements of heat, light and electricity on the one hand, and of practical chemistry upon the other. The extent to which a commercial student should be encouraged to study chemistry or natural philosophy must depend very much indeed upon his individual tastes and upon the character of the business which he proposes to enter. Every boy clerk ought to have had the opportunity of learning in the laboratory the methods of making accurate measurements of length, area, volume, weight and density, but the connection between science and commerce is now so intimate that no commercial school can afford to dispense with facilities for the study of at least the elements of practical chemistry and physics. Shorthand and typewriting would, of course, find a place in the Continuation School, but it is by no means essential that every student of the school should be converted into a typewriting stenographer. For those who mean to make this branch of commercial work a speciality every facility should be provided, but the study should be regarded as a special branch of the school's work and not as a necessary part of the curriculum. The principles of book-keeping should be taught throughout the school, and no student should go through the course without obtaining a thorough knowledge of these principles and of the objects of the several books usually to be found in a merchant's ofiBce. The elements of political economy may perhaps receive attention in the upper forms of the Continuation School ; and here, too, the student may be introduced to the first principles of commercial law ; and, as an extension of the course upon experimental science, new interests should be introduced into the studies of the pupils by occasional lectures on the subject of commercial commodities, as preparatory to the more extensive courses of study, which will be provided in the Higher Commercial Institute, in connection with its museum of economic products, and with the visits which will be organised by the staff to docks and warehouses for the purpose of studying these products in bulk. There is one other subject which should not be n£glected in the Continuation School, and which should, perhaps, have been referred to under the head of geometry. I allude to the graphic representation of variable quantities by means of curves. The pupils should be encouraged to plot curves upon squared paper, representing the variations of temperature, or of the height of the barometer from day to day, the current prices for some selected commodities, the rates of exchange with particular countries, the number of students attending different classes at the school, or any other quantities which vary from time to time, so that they may acquire the habit of graphically representing, for the purpose of rapid comparison, any of the variable quantities with which they may have to do. A student who has successfully gone through the course of study outlined above, will find himself well qualified to enter the Higher Commercial Institute, about which we are to learn at a later hour to-day. As regards the minimum age of entry into the Higher Commercial Institute I should like to see 18 adopted, but I recognise that at first it may be desirable to provide for the admission of somewhat younger students, at any rate into the preparatory department of the Higher Commercial Institute, because it will be necessary for that school to have exerted its influence upon teachers before it will be possible to provide a thoroughly satisfactory prehminary training in the Continuation School or evening class. I have not entered on the question of the constitution and management of the Continu- ation Day Schools or the Evening Schools, nor have I touched upon the question of the local authority whose duty it should be lo provide, maintain, or control such schools, and the 31 central authority in which all control should ultimately be focussed. I have not even con- sidered whether the commercial schools should be under the Central Educational Authority, or, as the agricultural schools and c.olleges are aided by the Board of Agriculture, so the commercial schools, following the example of some continental nations, should be placed under the Board of Trade. I will only say that I am not advocating any such policy. These are questions which may be said at present to be sub judice, and to raise a discussion thereon would divert the attention of the Conference from the main issue, namely, the subjects to be taught and the manner of teaching them. A word may, however, be said about the schools and the teachers. There can be no sufBcient reason why the buildings of the endowed secondary schools and of those public elementary schools which are provided with laboratories for practical science should not be freely used for the purpose of evening continuation schools of a commercial type. Kegarding the teachers, the question is sure to arise whether those employed in evening schools should be professional teachers or specialists engaged in City houses during the day. The specialist has an important part to play in the Higher Commercial Institute, but in the Continuation School the teacher must be essentially a teacher, whatever else he may be. Some practical business experience will be of value to every commercial teacher, but the object of the Continuation School is not to make a shipbroker, a valuer or an East India merchant — it is to teach the principles of commercial science. Systematic training can do much for the equipment of teachers; practical experience of business is of value to the teacher in the commercial Continuation School; keeping " in toach" with business throughout his life by living in the atmosphere of a commercial circle may be of still greater value ; but it is certain that to be successfid with young boys the teacher must have a genius and a love for his work. DISCUSSION Me. J. H. Reynolds (Director of Technical Instruction, and of the Municipal Technical School, Manchester) : Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Grentlemen, I rise in the first instance in my capacity as Chairman of the Union of Lancashire and Cheshire Institutes for Com- mercial and other Examinations ; and I think it may perhaps be interesting to this audience, drawn as it is from every part of the kingdom, to know what is being done in the way of encouraging commercial education in evening continuation schools in one of the busiest com- mercial centres of this country. (Hear, hear.) The examinations, which are intended for evening students, are only just a month or two since concluded. The number of papers worked at these examinations in the obligatory subjects was 8,006, and in the optional subjects 6,155. The obligatory subjects comprise handwriting in the commercial grade, commercial arithmetic, commercial English, and book-keeping. The optional subjects comprise commercial geo- graphy, commercial law, business routine, short- hand, typewriting, advanced French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. Now, I think it only fair to an audience like this that they Should clearly understand what these comparatively large figures mean. In the first place, I must premise that Lancashire and Cheshire are covered with a network of evening continuation classes, the like of which I think can hardly be found in any similar district in England. These classes are organised in a large measure with the object of preparing for the examinations of the Union of Institutes; but out of this large mmiber of 14,000 papers it is only right that you should know that 5,000 of them are in shorthand, and nearly 2,700, or rather more, 2,800 are book-keeping. In com- mercial English only 2 per cent, of the papers were worked ; in advanced French, 59 per cent. ; German, 25 per cent. ; and Spanish, 37 per cent. These figures shew therefore that the chief object of the evening student is to gain that which will bring him immediate emolument. He hopes, if he learns shorthand, that he may by that means more readily get into a merchant's office, forgetting at the same time to take up important subjects like his own language and foreign languages, which alone can help him to qualify as a commercial clerk of any real value. I think it will be found that in the question under discussion, namely, the establishment of day commercial colleges or higher schools, that we shall be in the same posi- tion that we find ourselves in to-day with regard to the schools for industrial education for day students. It is nearly impossible to get any 32 satisfactory supply of properly prepared day students. Even in reference to this matter of foreign languages, taught in the commercial evening classes of Lancashire and Cheshire, it has been found absolutely necessarj^ to require a candidate who is qualified to take a prize in the examinations of the Union in French and German that he shall present at the same time a first-class certificate in English. I think it may be well, perhaps, to speak the exjDerience of one of the most prominent foreign merchants of Manchester, largely engaged in the Spanish trade, extremely careful as to the class of employes he takes into his service. He asks not that they shall have a commercial knowledge of English, or of French, or of German or Spanish, but that they shaU be thoroughly well grounded in the general subjects of secondary education. (Hear, hear.) I, for one, am quite convinced that we shall go on wrong lines entirely if we attempt to introduce, especially into our higher grade board and elementary schools, subjects of a special character. (Hear, hear.). I have been particularly struck with the comparison drawn by Mr. Albert Spicer as to the future career in commercial houses of the boy from a secondary school and the boy from a higher grade school. It seems to me that it opens up the serious question whether we are doing right by the boys in our higher grade board schools, and whether it does not mean that we are handicapping them by a hard and fast curri- culum ; whereas the boy in the secondary school is under tuition of a more elastic and general character, conducted by men of high cultivation. We ought, at least, to give to the great mass of our middle-class students, those who are found in higher grade schools, the advantages that come from the elastic curriculum and cultivated teaching of the best secondary schools, especially if it means that it only gives in the one case a superficial smartness which operates to the dis- advantage of the boy as his experience increases, and gives in the other case the boy a wider and more general training, a supreme advanta'ge in the business experience of his life. Fm-ther, I desire to say that I largely agree with those who have said in this morning's discussion that a good deal of the blame of the non- success of technical day schools is to be laid at the door of the employer. It is most difficult to get a boy of 17 or 18 years of age either into an industrial concern or into a com- mercial house. I do not mean to say there are not intelligent employers — I know there are (Laughter) — who take great pains with the employes whom they introduce into their business, and who do not encourage those who have a good previous education. I know one large home-trade house in Manchester which takes extraordinary pains to enquire into the education, character and training of every boy who goes into it. Mr. Mather, of the weU- known engineering firm of Messrs. Mather and Piatt, announced to a public meeting last week that in future a boy would not be taken into the firm's employ who did not present a certificate of a thoroughly sound education, and who had not had the advantage of the training of a technical school before he was allowed to enter into their employ. If employers will adopt a policy of this kind, I am certain that the successful establishment of technical day schools — and this, I think, is the real crux of the matter — and of commercial day schools also will be assured. (Cheers.) Mr. a. a. Wood (Common Council) : Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, it is a very desirable thing that in a conference such as this on com- mercial education, there should be the views tendered not only of those engaged in tuition, but of those who have to use the material that these teachers turn out. (Hear, hear.) That justifies me for a short time in saying a few words on this topic. I have the very largest sympathy with the holding of evening classes. The ordinary lad that comes to a school is after all but a very ordinary lad, and the brilliant boy is reaUy the exception ; the dull lad has to come and make his way into a commercial house, and it would often happen that the boy who was a dull boy at school was duU, not because of any deficiency of intellectual ability, but because of a failure to appreciate the impor- tance of utilising the tuition that is being given to him by his masters. Entering a commercial house, the lads, such as I have in my mind, learn what is a most important lesson for young fellows to learn, not how much they know — which the brilKant lad from school often takes his stand upon, " I know everything and can come and teach you " — but discover how little they know ; and a lad's mind is then, if he has any go or pluck in him at all, ready to receive the instruction that is necessary for his future commercial career. Now, I have, as I say, the very warmest sympathy with the 33 eveHing school, and I beUeve a lad who has wakened up and realised his responsibility, who desires to equip himself for a future oommeroial career, if he can have the opportunity of attending these evening schools, and studying in these evening classes, may make up perhaps for the time that he has lost earlier in his life. There is this thing also in regard to the evening class student, that he engages in his work with great earnestness and zeal. He knows what he wants, and he is willing to give up the time to acquire what in his opinion is desirable of acquisition. I am very anxious also, speaking as a commercial man, that traders and others who have in their employ young fellows who desire opportunities and scope for self improvement for their future oommeroial career, should afford their employes facilities for study. (Hear, hear.) It is too often the case that the hours of business do not quite fit with the times of the evening classes, and a young fellow is prevented from going to those classes which he otherwise would desire to do. As regards the general scheme of commer- cial education laid down by Dr. Grarnett in the secondary schools and evening classes, well, of course, any lad or young fellow who can accom- plish aU that Dr. Grarnett lays down is very much above the average ; in fact, I think a young fellow who did all that would be little short of an angel or intellectual miracle. (Laughter.) And that. Dr. Wormell said, was an impossibility. But I desire, with regard to this Conference, that the evening class should be developed as far as possible, and that a good scheme of commercial education should be laid down, so that the young fellow I have in my mind should know to what point to direct his attention, and how he is to accomplish his information. (Cheers.) Me. Edward Bond, M.P. (Chairman of the Technical Education Board of the London County Council) : Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I was anxious to say a few words in order to express the interest which the Technical Education Board takes in this Con- f ereiice, both because it is a matter which vitally concerns many of the interests with which they have to deal, and for this special reason, because we have now a committee sitting on this subject of the Higher Commercial Education, and the best means of promoting that in the City of London. That committee has been sitting now for a considerable time and is approaching the end of its labours. But you will understand that I have come here rather more with the view of gathering suggestions and hints as to the course which ultimately it will be the duty of the Board to pursue than to instruct an audience of this kind, or to let the oat out of the bag and say what it is that the Technical Education Board is thinking of doing. The mind of the Technical Education Board is not yet made up; we are still in the position of those who are gathering information and endeavouring to excogitate the right kind of scheme, and I feel sure the deliberations of this Conference will be of great assistance to us in coming to a right decision. But there are just one or two matters about which a very general consensus of opinion seems to have been estab- lished, or at all events in regard to which it seems to me the information which has come under my notice has enabled me to make up my own mind with regard to the education which is to fit a boy to become an ordinary clerk. The ordinary clerk goes into a London commercial house at the age of 15, or perhaps a little older, and what his employer seems to demand of him when he comes there is, that he should be able to write well and be able to accomplish ordinary arithmetical tasks with precision and facility, and the complaint of the employers is that the boys who come to them, or a good many of the boys who come to them, are not properly quali- fied in those respects. There is no occasion to alter the curriculum of our schools in order that they should be so qualified, because arithmetic and writing are already upon the curriculum of all schools. What seems to me to be reqtured is, that if the teacher is desirous of seeing a large number of his boys going into commercial houses, more attention should be paid to those two very elementary subjects. If, in addition to that, the boy has got some grounding in one or two foreign languages, though that is not necessary apparently in all houses of business, he has got almost as much as the ordinary employer will require of him at first starting. If he is to rise in the house in which he finds himself — and I am told that in a large number of commercial houses at all events the rule is that you should begin at the beginning, and the men who are occupying superior positions in those houses have worked themselves up from the very bottom of the ladder — if he desires to rise, I agree that facilities for improving himr self in commercial subjects and in general 34 knowledge should be given to him by way of evening classes, and that the employer might do well if he would give him special facilities for attending such classes. (Hear, hear.) There is another aspect of the case, and that is the giving of the higher commercial education. It is there that the diiSculty comes in. It is there, I think, that some things that have been said about the employer not requiring education seems to have a very strong bearing, because it does not appear to be at all estab- lished at the present moment that if you keep a boy away from the counting-house or ware- house until he is 17 or 18, giving him an education specially directed to fitting him for commercial pursuits, that it will be very easy to find a place for him when he leaves the secondary school. We have, therefore, to some extent, to create the demand as well as to supply the boys who are fit to meet that demand when created. But all things must have a beginning, and I cannot but hope that if conferences of this kind take place — if the employers of London can be convinced that it will be to their advantage to take into their employment at 17, 18 or 19, or an older age still, boys who have received a thorough educa- tion specially directed to fitting them for commerce — we shall succeed in obtaining situa- tions for boys who may have gone throagh some such course as that which Dr. Grarnett sketched out. I think we had a very valuable suggestion from Mr. Howard, which has been echoed by other people, and that is to warn us from attempting to teach those boys in the school the actual things they wiU have to do when they get into commercial houses. It is quite evident that if, for example, you try to teach book-keeping in any detailed way the chances are that the boy who has learned book-keeping on a certain system will find he has to learn a totally different system when he comes into actual contact with the business, and that he will be rather apt at first to resent the change, and think he knows much better how book-keeping ought to be done than the employer with his old-fashioned and old-established notions. I think in our secondary schools or continuation schools we should not attempt to replace the counting-houses or places of business, but that we should give an education which should develop the intelligence of the pupils and make their minds flexible for the appreciation of commer- cial problems — well equip them so that they can express themselves intelligently both in their own language and other languages, and also, as Dr. Grarnett has suggested, put their ideas upon paper in a graphic form so as to engage the attention and readily inform the mind of those with whom they may be brought into business relations. If we do that, and succeed in obtaining occupations for those boys when their course is completed, a very con- siderable step will have been made towards the development of that higher commercial educa- tion that we are brought here to-day to consider. Peofessoe F. Gr. Ogilvie, M.A., B.Sc. (Association of Technical Institutions) : Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, I wish to draw attention to one or two points of difference in the conditions which appear to obtain in the provinces and those which appear to obtain in London. Dr. Grarnett speaks of the work of the continuation and evening schools as being for pupils between the ages of 13 and 17. It is important for those who are interested in commerce in the provinces to notice that in these places evening classes are required for students up to the age of 24 or 25, and there- fore many of the subjects which are relegated here to the tertiary section of work in com- mercial education wiU require to be made in evening classes in the provinces. Let me illus- trate the matter by a reference to the case, as it obtains in Scotland. In Scotland secondary education is to a very large extent now already organised, and throughout Scotland there is a system of certificates which prac- tically give to every secondary school a measure corresponding in the main to that which is established by the London Chamber of Com- merce by their two years' certificate. Indeed, in most subjects, the standards for the Scotch certificates is higher than that of the London Chamber of Commerce junior certificates. The number of successful candidates for these cer- tificates are thousands, and in every large town in Scotland we have practically the majority of the better educated clerks in possession of these certificates before they enter the business houses. (Hear, hear.) The age of these clerks is 16 or 17, and I have never heard of any particular difficulty of well-educated boys of that age finding places in the counting-houses and offices of merchants and tradesmen in Scotland. There is no doubt at all that throughout the large towns of Scotland we 35 have a position of this sort. The better class clerks are all in possession of a good secondary education before they go to the office, and they continue their work in the evening classes. I wish to mention that now, because there are here a few of the subjects which, according to the programme, assumed as for London, are practically relegated to the tertiary school, and which require to be provided for in every properly organised system of evening classes in any of the large provincial towns. Counting- house work, the consideration of the shipping trade, and shipping documents, exchange, com- mercial law, banking, and insurance — classes on these subjects and lectures on these subjects — command very large attendances of clerks, who are already in senior positions in the offices, young men of from 20 to 25. The one difficulty which meets those who are charged with the organisation of such work is that of finding adequate teachers. The search for such teachers must be among men who are themselves actively engaged in the business which they have to teach. The teachers of such classes must in the first instance be com- mercial men, and in the second place they must be teachers engaged in and familiar with the practices of the particular section of commerce with which they are to deal. I am aware that the subject of which I am treating trenches rather on the subject on the last item of the programme, but I say it now because every member of a provincial chamber of commerce should recognise that the greatest possible difficulty is experienced in providing adequate teaching for these higher and by no means less important sections of the work which falls to be done in such provincial centres. (Cheers.) Mr. Gtxjy Pym, M.P. (Chairman, Bedford Harper Trust) : Sir Albert Eollit, Ladies and Q-entlemen, I came here to-day to listen, and not to speak. I had not the slightest inten- tion when I came into this room to have the honour of addressing you on this most impor- tant, difficult and technical subject of commer- cial education. I feel, to a certain extent, that Sir Albert Eollit was justified in asking me to say a few words, as I represent, as Chairman of the Harper Trust Schools at Bedford, a very large educational institution, an institution which embraces not only the higher education of our grammar school, our modern school, and our high school for girls, but also a very large number of children in our elementary schools. (Cheers.) This experience brings directly before us, as Governors of that Trust, the question, in the first instance, of the over-lapping of the boundaries of these different schools, and one of our great difficulties is to draw a hard and fast line between the work which is applicable to each of these schools. What I hope from the introduction of the Secondary Education Bill, on the back of which I have put my name, which has been lately introduced into the House — what I hope from that Bill more than any- thing else, is that these boundaries will be well-defined, that the chaotic conditions of our present system of education will be regulated and placed in a condition wherein each class will balance one another, and each section do its special work. With reference to this particular matter before us at the present moment, evening continuation schools, what I gather from this meeting is that there are certain advocates, more especially the gentleman who read the paper, who consider that the class of education to be given in the secondary schools should be of a highly technical character. I find, on the other hand, there are gentlemen, like the last speaker and other speakers also, who think that is too high a standard altogether. I agree with the latter opinion. (Hear, hear.) What is constantly before me, as a Member of Parliament — and every other member, I daresay, has the same experience — is the fact that one's constituents are constantly writing to ask one to get employ- ment for their sons. I quite agree with what the other speakers have said, that there is very great difficulty, and increasing difficulty, in doing this. We are turning out of our educational institution at Bedford a very large number of boys every year, an increas- ing number of boys, who are all looking for employment in life. As a rule their parents are not very well off. They are retired officers, retired civil servants, and people of that stamp, to whom it is most important that they should find some employment for then- sons. If you place the standard so high as it has been placed by the reader of this paper, before the boy can get emplojrment in a com- mercial house you are strangling altogether the opportunities which exist even at the present time. I think there is no need for it, and I agree with previous speakers, and especially with one speaker here, who was mentioning the brilliant boy who came into a commercial house and thought he knew every- E 2 36 thing, and a great deal more than he oould be taught there, that he is not the class of boy you want at all. You want a boy who has got an open mind, who has intelligence, who has industry, and a moderate ability. That boy will learn the lesson which is taught him, and you may be perfectly certain of this, that, having given his attention to these matters, his interest will be very great in them, and he will have every chance of a successful career. (Hear, hear.) With regard to the continuation classes, I must confess my know- ledge of them is very limited, and that infor- mation which I have inclines me to believe that the systems which are carried on all over the country with regard to these continuation classes are all, more or less, at variance with each other. There is no regular system of continuation classes that would apply to the whole country, and I hope that one result of this Bill which has been brought into Parlia- ment, and which, I hope will come before Parliament next year, will be to put that, at any rate, into proper form. With these few remarks I shall sit down, again thanking you for your kind attention. (Cheers.) Mr. S. B. Boulton (Yioe-President of the Chamber of Commerce) : Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, as it is so near luncheon, I shall take a very few moments, but I think as we have been edified and instructed by what has fallen from our friends, the professors, on very important points, they will also, I am sure, be very glad to hear from us, who. are the employers of these young men whom they turn out in such numbers, what are our views on the subject, because after all you must educate these young men so that they are fit for the duties they have to fulfil under us. (Hear, hear.) It is therefore important, I think, and I am sure it is the endeavour of the professors and schoolmasters to find out exactly what we want, otherwise they will be miserably misleading the young men they are bringing up. I speak from some knowledge, because I not only have a business house here, but forty years ago I established a business house abroad, I find notwithstanding all that is said about foreigners, that I am enabled to employ Englishmen as clerks, not only in my office in London, but the clerks in my office in Paris are also Englishmen. (Hear, hear.) Therefore, it is not a question so much of the nationality of the boys themselves ; it is, I think, the way in which they are selected. Now, we have heard something about the duty of employers to find positions for young men who have gone through a more advanced commercial education. I think we should aE be very glad indeed to get such young men, but we must bear in mind — and that I cannot impress too strongly upon the professional gentlemen who have spoken to us — that it is they who must find out what we want, and then they must prepare the men who are to take the positions. (Hear, hear.) We can- not possibly take young men into our offices and make positions for them unless they are qualified to compete with the boys who come from the Board Schools. If a weU-educated man goes on the village green to play cricket, he is sup- posed to play as well as the yokel who plays against him, and if he does not bowl or bat as well, he does not fall back upon his superior social position. He has to learn the thing he has got to do. And when a boy is brought up at the ordinary commercial school or public school, or has the advantage of going after- wards to the university, the same thing must take place. I have known many young men in the course of my experience who have gone through a university career who would be only too glad to come into City offices, and their friends would be only too glad to find them positions. (Cheers.) It is for you, gentlemen, to consider whether, in the public school career and university career, there is exactly that kind of training which commercial men require. I speak also from some experience there. I have two sons and three sons-in-law who have passed through public schools and the University of Oxford. They all of them speak with that touching affection which Englishmen generally feel for their pubKo schools, and they aU of them speak of their university career as one of the most agreeable portions of their lives ; but each of the five says this — and they are all in business — that as regards assisting them in the preparation for a commercial career, their life at Oxford was much too pleasant. (Laughter and cheers.) That touches upon what has been said about self-denial and practical application to the thing you have to do, and if gentlemen professors at Oxford want to turn out men of business, they must not give them six months' holiday in the year, and must not take six months' holiday themselves. (Laughter and cheers.) That is the practical piece of advice I have to give 37 them. I think, so far as regards employers finding situations for young men who are trained for a commercial life, the London Chamber of Commerce has, at aU events, taken a very practical step in that direction. We have a list of all those who passed the regular curriculum as required for our examinations. Those lists are forwarded to some 4,000 members of our Chamber, and either I am very badly informed, or else it is the case, that all those who pass the examinations creditably are sure to find situations in com- mercial houses in connection with the London Chamber of Commerce. (Cheers.) That, I think, is a very great point in answer to some- thing said on the other side. In the last paper which was read I heard something with regard to the study of poKtical economy. 1 think that was treated rather slightingly. I cannot im- press too much upon all gentlemen connected with secondary education that that science has not been relegated to Saturn — that it is a science that we must all learn, but if we learn it badly we shall learn it to our peril. It ought to be taught to all young men, especially those entering on a commercial career, because the whole system of successful commerce is founded upon, and must follow the principles of political economy. (Cheers.) Col. E. Williams, M.P. (President, Insti- tute of Bankers) : I only rise to say a few words at the Chairman's request. The words of the last speaker have rather given me a cue to speak for a minute or two, to press upon the teachers present the necessity of finding out what it is employers want, and I think our Institute of Bankers has gone upon that tack. (Hear, hear.) Of course banking covers a limited range of sub- j ects. We neither have any necessity for labora- tory students nor for a great deal of history or geography. Of course I do not say these subjects do not aid any man, but I take it qua banking. What the Institute of Bankers have done is this : they set to work and formed a committee, and the Council took into consideration as to what were the principal things which bank clerks ought to know, and upon which they wanted more instruction. We then provided the very best lectures we could in London upon those sub- jects, and we gave certificates to the successful students. With a view to encouraging the students to go on after one examination, we give also now a higher certificate after a second course of reading at the end of a second year. I am glad to say that by beginning in that way, thinking of what was really necessary to properly equip those with whom we had to deal, and whose interests we have to watch, we have done a great deal of good. We have succeeded in two things. We have suc- ceeded in raising a certain higher standard among a certain number of bank clerks, and we have succeeded in raising what is the great thing, a desire for education in the profession. We have also succeeded in interesting the employers, so that in many ofiices, I am told, it has got to be a condition of employment that the applicant should hold one of the certificates of the Institute of Bankers. (Hear, hear.) We began that in London, but it is now spreading all over the provinces, and our last examinations were held at something like fifty or sixty differ- ent centres with a very large number of students. I think that, perhaps, is interesting as showing a little bit of what has been done in practice, and may answer the remarks of the last speaker as regards finding out what employers really want. (Hear, hear.) On the question of evening continuation schools, I had not the pleasure of being present all through the discussion, and therefore I may be saying over again what has been said before, but the real age, it seems to me, for continuation schools is 12J to 13. I have no doubt it is the same in London, and those who know our provincial towns know the sad number of boys running about the streets because they are sharp enough to get out of the school standards and so out of the day school, and not old enough yet to be employed in any house of business. Those are the boys we want to get hold of, and for whom we want these continua- tion schools. I strongly suspect that Sir John Grorst in his address may have said something about raising the age of exemption from schools. That, after all, is the main thing which we want to go for. (Hear, hear.) It is not a bit of use letting boys go out of the 6th standard and think they are educated and fit for any- thing. If we grant — and I think it must be granted — that for the general mass of our schools we have to make the 6th standard the highest standard, there is in every town a large class of boys who ought to be compelled to go to some continuation schools. In those two years it may be possible to give them the grounding of some sort of scientific education. The press of competition is getting so keen nowadays that boys are getting even into banks 38 at much younger ages than they used to. They are heing taken on at low rates of salary. But if we can get hold of the boys in the years now wasted between the elementary school and their employment, we may possibly be able to give them some grounding of further on in their evening hours, and then, I think, after that, the continuation schools must be, more or less, special schools to enable boys to take up general education if they will; but primarily it must be intended to fit them for the walk in life they have taken up. education which may give them a taste to go i The Conference then adjourned for a short time. On resuming in the aft&moon the first subject considered was : — III.— FOEEIGN SYSTEMS OF HIGHEE OOMMEECIAL EDUCATION. Me. C. a. Montague Baklow, M.A., LL.M., read the following Paper on " The Greneral Organization of Foreign Higher Commercial Education": — Introduction. Sir H. Johnston, H.M. distinguished Consular representative in Tunis, in his report for 1898, tells us : — " It is the opinion of most Consular officials in this country that British trade would extend considerably if enterprising British firms would send out travelling agents to push their business, but agents who are able to converse in either French or Italian. Well-intentioned young men arrive here unable to speak a word of any language but English, with the result that their French or Italian-speaking customers cannot understand them, or make themselves and their peculiar requirements understood." * The same complaint has been the common topic of the Consular reports for years ; that English trade is hampered everywhere by ignorance of the language of the country, of its weights and measures, and of its media of commerce. The British subject obtains from his Consul, or from a directory, most probably out of date, a list of local traders who deal in what he wants to sell ; these he bombards with price lists in the English language which they cannot read, and then he is astonished that they pay no attention to his communications . t TSTo one pretends, at least I have never met the rash man who did, that success in business could be taught in a school ; the great merchant is, of course, like the true poet, born not made. Of many qualities, moral, perhaps even more than intellectual, is he com- pounded of courage, resourcefulness, energy, knowledge of men ; these can only be developped in the actual conduct of commerce. But these qualities we all believe the average Englishman possesses ; it is not of the absence of these that our Consuls complain ; it is more concrete knowledge, knowledge of things which can be taught, and taught properly, in a school that is required. In other words, it is not so much our commercial education that is in fault, for British commerce itself is the finest education in the world for the merchant, but better commercial instruction. + Sec. 1. — Commercial Instruction — What is it? It is not, as I understand it, a general education of the modem type, such as is given on the modern side of our best secondary schools, e.g., the City of London or Merchant Taylors, or in the German realschulen. Such an education would be as useful to the future engineer or architect as to the merchant : by this term I mean instruction which, though educational, i.e., so far as possible mentally stimulating, and not the mere acquisition of so much * Consular Report, 1898, Tunis, p. 45. t See Report of H.M. Consul at Danzig, 1897, p. 5. The publication ty the International Register Company of Manchester, of their register of British manufactures in several languages is a move in the right direction, but it is stated this will not obviate the necessity for expert commercial travellers. See Report of Mr. Gumey, H.M. Consul at Cherbourg, 1898, p. 5. t See Sidney Webb's paper on Higher Commercial Education, International Congress on Technical Education, 1897. 39 knowledge of business routine, is yet specialised and directed exclusively to supplying the wants of the mercantile community. Accepting this general definition, commercial instruction may yet mean various things according to the class for whom it is intended and the subjects taught. Eoughly, it means in England one or all of three things : first, the teaching in evening classes and continuation schools of book-keeping, shorthand and typewriting, trade tricks which maybe necessary, are certainly commercial, but are not in any proper sense education ; such courses are intended for the lower ranks of the ordinary clerk class, and are all that the phrase commercial education as at present understood in England usually implies ; secondly, the teaching in evening or day classes of the above subjects and something more, one or two modern languages possibly, and probably a business course embodying elementary * ideas of oiBce routine, commercial law and political economy, intended for boys whose parents can afford to send them to secondary schools, but not to continue their education after about 16 years — these wiU supply the ordinary rank and file of the commercial army ; thirdly, the highest grade of commercial education, provided for those who will be the captains of industry, the leading clerks or junior partners, whose parents can secure them the fuU course at a secondary school up till 18 or 19, or who, if their parents are the managers or proprietors, may possibly take a University degree first, and then at 22 avail themselves of specialised instruction to get a general outlook, or " iibersieht," over the world of commerce before taking a stool in the parental office. The distinction between those who come from the lower secondary, i.e., boys of about 16, and from the higher secondary grade, i.e., boys about 19, is, for om- purpose, fundamental; for the wants of the former private institutions like Pitman's School of Shorthand and Clerks' Correspondence College have catered for some years : for the latter we have at present, apart from the excellent work done by the Scliool of Economics under the direction of Professor Hewins, no provision whatever, and the School of Economics does not profess to cover more than a portion of the subjects required. Sec. 2. — Organization of Foreign Higher Commercial Education Generally. Through the kindness of the Education Department, I have been enabled during the last year to pay visits on behalf of the London Chamber of Commerce to schools or colleges of commerce at Antwerp, at Paris and Havre in France, at Neuchatel and Berne in Switzerland. I have interviewed the directors, attended the courses, talked with the students inside the school and the merchant outside, of the position of the schools and the utility of their work. The Swiss schools in particular, to which at present but little attention has been directed iu this country, can furnish, owing to the varying conditions of the Swiss cantons and the opportunities they afford for experiment and comparison, some interesting object lessons. Taking the countries t of Europe in order, Austria has the well-known academies at Prague and Vienna ; Belgium the Institut Superieur de Commerce at Antwerp ; France has eleven State recognised ecoles superieures de commerce, viz. : in Paris, the ficole des Hautes fitudes Commerciales, fioole Superieure de Commerce, both under the direction of the Paris Chamber of Commerce, and the Institut Commercial, a private venture; and, ecoles superieures at Bordeaux, Le Havre, Lille, Lyon, Marseilles and Eouen. Switzerland has fourteen schools of commerce, though not all of the highest grade. Italy has four of the highest grade, the oldest and best known being La Eegia Scuola Superiore di Commercio, in Yenice. In Germany the division already mentioned between lower and higher * See Business Course in Prospectus of Pitman's School of Shorthand. t The chief authorities are Leautey, " L'Enseignement Commercial " ; Stegemann, Kauf mannisches Fortbildungs Schulwesen 1896 ; Professor James' Keport to Washington Government on Commercial Education in Europe, 1892- "ficoles de' Commerce en Suisse," prepared for the Geneva Exhibition, 1896; "Commercial Instruction or'-anised by the Paris Chamber of Commerce," prepared for the Antwerp World's Fair, 1894 ; Eapport sur la situation de"l'ensei<'nement industrial et professionnel en Belgique, 1S97 ; Ammario della E. Scuola Supfiriore di Commercio, in Venegia, 1897. 40 secondary education in connection with our sutject is very sharply marked ; taking boys at nine, some of the secondary schools {e.g. the ordinary real-sohulen or modern schools) have only a six years' course, and the hoys leave at sixteen ; others, i.e., the classical schools (gjonnasien), semi-classical schools which teach Latin (realgymnasien), and higher modern schools (oher-real-schulen) have a nine yeiars' course, completed when a hoy attains nineteen. For the lower secondary grade of hoys who leave the real-schulen at sixteen, the doors of many regular commercial academies stand open, e.g., of the * " Offentliche Handels- lehranstalt, at Leipsic ; t Offentliche Handelslehranstalt, at Dresden ; J Handelschule, at Miinehen ; and very many others. § These Schools do not seem to have met, even in their own line, with the entire approval of German expert opinion. I have heard complaints from the well-known manufacturing firm of Mansfeld, in Leipsic, of the " woodeness " of clerks taught in this Handelslehranstalt, with the addition that this was the general experience. In 1896 a movement was set on foot by Dr. Stegeman, of Braunschweig, to start colleges of the third or highest type ; at the instigation of the Brunswick Chamber of Commerce and of the German Society for Commercial Education, the opinions of some 300 merchants, chambers of commerce, and schoolmasters was taken as to the advisability of founding such a school. Two hundred and forty-nine answers were favourable, and Dr. Ehrenberg, of Altona, was commissioned to write a memorandum as to the lines the college should take. A conference was held at Leipsic on 11th and 12th June, 1897, in which Dr. Eaydt.ll the Director of the existing Handelslehranstalt, took a leading part, and the foundation of a coUege of the highest or university type was determined on. This college was opened on the 25th April, 1898, and by the 12th of May, ninety-five students, ranging from 18 years of age to 46, had matriculated. The college has received the recognition and a grant from the Saxon Government, and other colleges or schools of this type are being established, or are in prospect at Aachen, Hanover, and other towns : at the same time the Government is anxious that the experiment should receive a full trial at Leipsic before being repeated elsewhere.lf Sec. 3. — Typical Schools. It is impossible to give a full account of all^the schools or colleges mentioned. I propose to take the following typical ones, the ficole's des Hautes fitudes Commerciales and the Ecole Sup^rieure de Commerce in Paris; the Institut Superieur at Antwerp, the ficole de Commerce at Neuchatel, the Eoyal School at Venice, and the Commercial Academy at Vienna, and analyse their organization and work under three or four main heads. Other countries, Norway and Sweden, Russia, America, Japan *» even, have all felt the impulse of this movement towards better commercial instruction ; but for our purpose the schools and colleges named will supply the best material. They are not all quite of the same rank, the conditions of education and of commerce in each country being different; to take one instance, compulsory service, as in France and Germany, or a universal three years' apprenticeship as in Switzerland, may cause the age of entry to vary ; but for the purposes of this paper they can be treated on a common footing. Of the new Leipsic College I shall say nothing, as Sir Philip Magnus is to give you directly a full account of that. * See 67th Yearly Report, 1898. t See 44th Yearly Report, 1898. X See 29th Yearly Report, 1897. § For a complete list see Stegeman op.-oit. II See Die Hendels Hochsohule in Leipsic, die erste in Deutschlaud ; by Professor Eaydt, 1898. f For a criticism of German commercial education generaUy, and of the new Leipsic College, see Beigel, Der Kampf um die Handels Hochsohule. Beigel denounces the new coUege as a " Zwitterding." * * For references, see works already cited. 41 Sec. 4. — Age and Attainments of Pupils Entering. The schools or colleges selected do not by any means represent a uniform level of equality, rather an ascending scale, a plateau elevated to commence with but still sloping upwards continually from High School at Neuohatel to the Institut at Antwerp, and higher yet to the new German high schools at Leipsic and Aachen. Ability is not measured by age, but the aim of the schools can fairly be gathered from the ages of the students they admit : other things being equal, a school which takes boys of 16 will be content with a lower standard than one which requires 17 as the limit. The Neuchatel School has a three years' course in addition to a preparatory course of one year, the object of the latter being to remedy defects in secondary education, to perfect foreigners in the French language, and to begin accountancy and the elements of commercial work.* No one can commence the first year's course proper unless he is over 15, and has also passed a satisfactory examination or reached the highest class in a cantonal school or the second class in a classical one. Consequently the average age of entry is considerably higher than 15. Of 149 students in 1896, 129 were between the ages of 16 and 23. The Prague Academy has two divisions, involving a three and a one year's course respectively ; the latter [abiturienten curs) is instituted only for graduates of the gymnasia or higher grade secondary schools, and is intended to give them a quick insight into the world of commerce ; for others a three years' course is provided ; of 417 attending the three years' course in 1896-97, 378 were between the age of 16 and 20.t In Paris, both at the ficole Superieure and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, the proper course is of two years' duration, while in each case there is a preparatory course of one year's duration. In both the minimum age for admission to the first year of study proper is fixed at 16 ; but in order to encourage the completion of the full term at the higher grade secondary schools, those who have obtained the baccalaureat, e.g., have completed their studies at a lyc^, can at once take the examination giving admission to the first year's course, and bacheliers have a start of sixty marks, or 10 per cent, on the total given in the examination. M. Grelley informed me a large proportion of his boys did possess the baeoalaurdat, and the average age of entry at the school of higher studies is between 19 and 20. The entrance examination for the first year of study consists of papers or oral tests in arithmetic, algebra and geometry, physics, chemistry, history, geography, composition in French and in one foreign language. The preparatory course naturally covers the ground for this examination. At Antwerp there is also a two years' course with a preparatory one year in addition ; but more subjects are studied during this preparatory year than in Paris. Two foreign languages appear in the list as well as bookkeeping, law and political economy, and these are all included in the examination § for admission to the first year. Students at Antwerp are not usually admitted below 17. Sec. 5. — Numbers of Students Attending. The two Paris schools had in 1896-97 352 pupils in attendance, of which the school of Higher Commercial Studies had far the larger share, viz., 246 ; Neuchatel had 168, Prague 417 in the three years' course, and 39 in the superior course of one year ; at Antwerp the average has exceeded 200 since 1891 1| ; thus making roughly a total in all of 1,200 for five schools. Comparative statistics showing the careers pursued by the students, after leaving the school, and how far they are actually engaged in commerce are not very easy to obtain. Sir Bernhard Samuelson in his Presidential Address to the Association of * " L'Enseignemeiit Commercial en Suisse,'' p. 218. t See Einundvierzigster Jahres-bericht iiber die Prager Handelsakademie, 1897. The organisation of the akademie at Vienna is the same, the number of students heing larger— ahout 650. I Chamber of Commerce Memorial, 1984, p. 69, 102, 121. 5 The examination is excused for those who have a diploma in an athen^e du royaume or have reached prima in a German gymnasium. II L'Enseignement Industriel en Belgique, 1897, p. 329. 42 Technical Institutions last January said: "Institutions like the London School of Economics or the ficole des Hautes fitudes Commerciales at Paris are no douht of the greatest value for training members of the Consular service, actuaries and heads of great financial houses, hut they have little bearing on the rough-and-ready processes of industrial and commercial life." As throughout this paper, I only wish to state the facts, so far as they are ascertainable ; and the facts here do not seem to bear out Sir Bernhard Samuelson's statement. The ficole des Hautes fitudes referred to has recently made a list of the students for the thirteen years, 1881 to 1895, who have taken a full course and passed out of the school, amounting to 1,150 in all. Of these : — I. 1,083 have gone into commerce, their number being made up as follows : — Business ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 368 Commission agency ... ... ... ... ... 93 Manufactories 506 Banks ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 86 Insurance ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 19 Eailways ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 9 Agriculture... ... ... ... .. ... ... 2 The large totals for " business " and " manufactories " indicates that not all the pupils so engaged can be heads of houses as Sir Bernhard Samuelson suggests. II. 43 only have taken to Grovernment employment, made up as follows : — Consulates, etc. ... ... ... ... ... ... 15 Ministerial offices . . . Bar and Magistracies Commercial teaching Sworn interpreters . . . Army Three are without profession, twenty- 10 7 8 2 1 one have died, or cannot be traced, thus making up the total 1,150. I give only one instance, and leave the figures to speak for themselves : but the experience of the other higher colleges is of a similar character. Even where, as at Antwerp or Venice, there is a special Consular course, the far larger proportion of pupils do go direct into business of some kind, and not into Grovernment employment. Sec. 6. — Subjects Taught. On this point, which has given rise to animated discussions in England, there is singular unanimity abroad. Methods vary, of course : the hours allotted to different subjects are not the same in each school, but on the whole the programmes of the schools are more uniform than anything else about them. We may divide our foreign subjects of instruction into two classes : (A) those which are taught in England, but not so weU, or not as portions of a connected plan: and, (B) those which are not taught in England at present at all.* In the former class there are several groups : 1. The Modern Language Group. There is a pretty general consensus of opinion that modern language teaching in our secondary schools leaves much to seek ; I have heard the same complaint abroad ; and even granted that the secondary schools attain a satis- factory standard, there is stiU. work for the commercial college to do. Intimate knowledge and appreciation of Heine or Yictor Hugo may, and should, be acquired in a general secondary school, but that will not enable a boy to understand French or Q^erman commercial terms or write a business letter in either language. At Antwerp, four modem languages are taught, viz. : English, German, Italian and Spanish, three hours a * A complete set of the programmeB of all the schools named, and of many others, are in the writer's possession, and can he seen at the London Chamher of Commerce. (See list at the end of this paper.) 43 week being devoted to each. The entrance examination assures a general knowledge of all these languages,; and the foreign' language lessons are devoted entirely, at any rate in the second year, to the study of the commercial terms, machinery, and even law of the country in question. At the French schools two languages are obligatory. At Venice, either French, English or German, may he taken. Here, in contradistinction to the Antwerp method of utilising the hours devoted to foreign languages to impart commercial knowledge, exercise in foreign languages is given in the courses of practical accountancy and business routine. That the method of teaching is conversational goes without saying: it is vivid, answering to the needs of business whether in writing or speech. At Neuohitel ease and fluency are secured by a system of confirmee or public speeches. These are of ten minutes' duration in the first year, and of half-an-hour in the second ; preparation is allowed in the subjects selected, but the speech must be delivered without notes and before the rest of the class. In the third year the student of 18 or 19, who is just leaving the school, has a subject given him six months in advance ; in a case which came imder my notice it was Adam Smith. Every assistance is given to the student in the way of authorities on which to draw, and the result is a very creditable essay in English, which defies reproach, on the Father of Political Economy. The essay has been examined and approved both for matter and for style ; and now the budding trader must unburden his soul for an hour to his friends and fellow pupils assembled much as on a prize-day at an English public school. He stands up a typical ' froggy,' weedy, hirsute, and physically an object of contempt to every right-thinking English boy, but voluble and determined, and delivers, without note, an intelligent lecture enough of an hour's duration, in fluent English, though he has never been oiit of his own country. The writer has an original essay on Adam Smith in his possession, together with many others, to show there was nothing unique about the performance. 2. Practical knowledge of business methods is insisted on. Under this head would come Accountancy, including therein full knowledge of foreign weights and measures and foreign money, together with rapid methods of conversion from one to the other ; while knowledge of the ordinary routine of a business house, ordering and selling goods, shipment, payment by biU, &o., are taught at Antwerp, Venice and Neucheltel by means of a business bureau.* In one school I saw accountancy and business routine combined ; a small class of boys were representing a British house of business : one boy was acting as correspondence clerk another making purchases on behalf of his firm, two or three others keeping the regular books, the journal, the ledger, and so on. They represented an English house, so they kept all these accounts in English weights and measures and in English money, and they found their prices current in the current number of the Economist. They entered into business relations for buying and seUing with other similar classes ; but this was not plajdng at business, everything was done under the supervision of a teacher with adequate business experience, who furthermore usually gave his instruction in English. The necessity of insisting on the Accountancy and Business Courses as a " hauptfach," a primary subject, in order to secure a practical atmosphere, is strongly felt ; at Neuchatel the course occupies nine to twelve hours weekly; at Antwerp the work of the bureau engrosses three hours every day.t 3. Science is also pressed into the service; and lessons in chemistry, physics and geology, so far as applicable to commerce, usually find a place ; the former is of special use both in the analysis of raw products and in the inspection and comparison of silks and manufactured stuffs. • These bureaux are not to be confused with the spurious counting-houses common in American Commercial S hools and iinitated at the MaisonPigier in Paris ; the object of these bureaux is the understanding of the processes of business, not the slavish reproduction of office furniture. t A full account of the Antwerp " bureau " and its working will be found in a paper shortly to be published in th Education Department's reports. The Neuchitel system is fully described in the Swiss Memorandum referred to, at p. 229. f2 44 4. Economics and allied subjects ; e.g., geography and history in connection with commerce ; statistics ; commercial and maritime legislation, customs legislation, international and industrial law, all these deservedly receive attention in most of the programmes mentioned. With regard to Head B (subjects not taught in England) perhaps the chief is 1. what is known in Germany as Warenkende, the science of commodities, mineral, animal and vegetable, involving a description of their place and method of growth, their use in manufacture or exchange, and the markets where they are most in demand. The British Consular reports should constitute a veritable mine of information on such a subject. 2. Another subject successfully taught in several schools, e.g., " ficole des Hautes fitudes," is transport by sea and rail, its facilities and cost. 3. At Antwerp a course on shipbuilding and fitting out of ships, together with some account of Lloyds, and the corresponding French Veritas, appears in the third year, and is also in vogue elsewhere. Finally, there are educational methods and instruments such as visits to factories and docks, travelling scholarships to send students abroad, collections of mercantile products in museums attached to the school, and also of all the documents, invoices, bUls, etc., in regular use in commerce which are employed to a greater or less extent in most of the best schools. The visits to factories have been given up in some schools as degenerating into mere pic-nics; they appear to be successful only on condition the class is small and well prepared for the visit beforehand. Sec. 7. — Ohganization of the Schools. It is rather surprising to find that even in countries like Grermany and France, where education is a function of Grovernment, all the commercial schools owe their initiation to the private enterprise of merchants, and are still, with some addition of State control, managed by Chambers of Commerce or bodies of merchants. The " £cole Sup^rieure" in Paris was started in 1820 by two merchants; in 1869 it was taken over by the Paris Chamber of Commerce, in whose hands it has since remained ; in 1881 the Paris Chamber itself founded the " ficole des Hautes fitudes," on a fine site in the Boulevard Malesherbes. Both are recognised by the State, and to secure this recognition and the doubtful privilege of exemption from two out of three years' service for four-fifths of their graduates, the schools must submit their rules and programme to the State Depart- ment of Commerce; but otherwise the management of the Chamber is imfettered. At Antwerp the governing body consists of the Burgomaster as President, four active merchants, the Judge of the Tribunal of Commerce, and an average stater who is a member of the Common Council. The Commercial Council initiated the school at Prague. As already stated, it is the Brunswick and Leipsic Chambers of Commerce that have taken the chief lead in the initiation of the new movement for the highest grade of schools in Germany. The Neuchatel School owes its birth to patriotic enterprise of a private banker, M. Junod, who for the first two years found the necessary funds for its maintenance. He is still the President of the Council, which consists of eight merchants (the famous M. Suchard, of Chocolat-Suchard fame, being Vice-President), a doctor and an advocate. On my remarking to M. Gaille, the Director, that there was not a schoolmaster among them,^ the smiHng answer was, that pedagogues and commercial education do not run well in double harness. The fees paid at some of the schools strike one as high ; at others as surprisingly low. At the " ficole des Hautes iltudes " the charge is £112 a year for boarders, and about half that for day boys who dine at the school. At the " ]ficole Sup&ieure " the charges are £80 and £40 respectively. At Antwerp, on the other hand, the general fee for instruction is £8 for the first year, £10 for the second, with various small additions. At Neuchatel natives pay £5 for a year's teaching ; strangers double this ; in Venice the fees vary from about £7 10s. to £10. The reason of this variation is, of course, that the French schools have now no State 45 aid, the remission of two years' service being relied on to fill the class-rooms, and, with the high fees in vogue, keep the schools going.* I found the opinion not uncommon that this privilege was not likely to prove an unmixed blessing, and might drive into the schools loiterers who have no serious thoughts of a commercial career. The Antwerp Institute, on the other hand, can draw on the public purse ; in 1894 the expenses amounted to £3,600 ; to this the State contributed £1,780, the town £592, and fees amounted to £1,680. At Neuohatel the cost was, in 1895, £2,720 ; fees amounted to £920 ; the town contributed £834, the Canton £368, and the Confederation £600. The two corollaries from this somewhat tedious financial statement are, first, that even where, as in Paris, the fees for commercial instruction are high, they will be readily paid if the instruction be good ; secondly, the professors being picked men, require high salaries. The incomes in Switzerland of the ordinary teachers amounted in various ways to £400 or £500 a year, which, compared with professional incomes there, is high. At Antwerp, I am told, the higher professors receive the equivalent of £900 to £1,100 per annum, and being Government servants have a right to a pension as well. As to the training of the professors themselves, this is an object specially kept in view in the school at Yenice (which has a separate five years' course for the future teachers), and in the new Grerman higher colleges. I did not find that the teachers had had generally, even at Antwerp, any practical business experience before com- mencing teaching. In the Swiss schools, however, this seemed more common, and with the happiest results: for instance, M. Gaille had received a practical education first in a French high school of commerce, and then for some years in a bank. Sec. 8. — Connection with the Business World. Into the disputed question of the success or otherwise of the schools I cannot enter at length : there is no doubt that opinions do vary among merchants abroad as to the usefulness of the schools ; and the masters not infrequently complain of the apathy they have to face ; at the same time the existence of the schools themselves, the recourse had to them by thousands of students, the vast sums expended annually upon them, are facts which cannot be got over. The best efforts of German merchants, as well as educationalists, have been devoted for the last two or three years to extending the scope of this Commercial Education; the Municipality of Antwerp spends half its whole income on education, and a large share of that goes in commercial subjects. Presumably, the merchants of Antwerp, the commercial growth of whose town during recent years has been phenomenal, believe they can write for "value received" against such expendi- ture. My beHef is, that when complaints are heard they are an indictment not of the existence of every commercial school, but of the methods of the particular one. If the school combines in due proportion sound theoretic instruction with practical application, it will possess the confidence of the business world. I cannot do better than finish this section with a quotation from a recent letter from M. Suchard, of Neuohatel, where the school undoubtedly has achieved this combination :— " I believe commercial education, properly understood, is of great importance for younc' men about to enter business. It is of course understood that their general educrtion must first be sound and sufficient to open to them fields other than those of Commerce. When this is acquired, it is necessary to give a special importance to the practical teaching of different branches of a commercial education. The field embraced by modern commercial and industrial activity is so vast, that it merits a special course of instruction. It is therefore to commerce that it is necessary to devote close attention in the school, without dissipating effort on other branches of less importance for our purpose. I think that the governing body of the school should be composed mainly of merchants, manufacturers, or bankers, who are still actively engaged in business though room should be found for some experts in science. But the active energies of 'the school should always be directed towards actual business." > There was formorly a small Government subsidy, which ceased last year. 46 M. Suohard does not approve of the university type of school, not because the standard will be too high, but because the strenuous application and discipline necessary can only be secured in a school.* Conclusion. Many points are, of course, still subjects of discussion abroad, but several main positions seem established beyond controversy, and can be of use to us in England: — 1. A sound secondary education on a general basis is a preliminary, and a necessary preliminary, to this specialised commercial instruction ; the latter is only a coping stone, and a heavy one too, which cannot be safely imposed save on a main building well constructed. Entrance examinations, preliminary courses, or the requirement of a full term at a secondary school, conclusively indicate the line of foreign experience here. 2. The inherent difficulty of organization lies, as I said, in securing the right combination of theory and practice, the proper infusion of the business element into the realm of pedagogy, and this difficulty is likely to be peculiarly great in England to judge by previ&us experience. In the medical world the proper sphere of each branch appears to be satisfactorily ascertained, of University teaching and hospital application ; but with regard to the Bar, there is stiU much difference of opinion : the Lord Chief Justice has only recently advocated a much more careful attention to reading and digesting the principles of law before attempting to practise it. In technical education it has been found that men of the best position, of University rank and experience in teaching, have not got the practical knowledge ; and it is with regard to the teaching staff that the difficulty will first arise in commercial education. The late director of the coUege at Neuchatel, I learned, had been promoted direct from that post to be director of the National Bank of Neuchatel, which speaks volumes for the sympathy there existing between theory and practice, and to secure success it seems advisable that the teaching staff, or at any rate its heads, should be men of the highest attainments, fortified with some practical business experience in a bank or insurance office. As a means to the same end, if foreign experience goes for anything, the council of the school should be mainly composed of active but well-informed business men ; the control of every foreign school I have mentioned is carefully placed in such hands and not in those of schoolmasters ; while as an almost necessary corollary of the last condition the school ought to be entirely independent of any other educational institution. Dr. Eichmann, the Director of the Swiss Federal Department of Education, was most emphatic on this point ; Dr. Eichmann pointed the moral by comparing the commercial school at Berne with that at Neuchatel. In the former case, the commercial school is in the same building as the gymnasium, or classical, and real, or modem school ; it has the same council, consisting mainly of professors, with the result that practical commercial subjects are neglected, and the school exercises no influence in the town. At Neuchatel, on the contrary, the school is in a separate building, with, as I have said, a practical body of administrators ; this was not always so, and since the entire separation of the com- mercial from the secondary school, the vitality of the former has greatly increased. Nor is it sufficient that the teachers should have had some business experience, that the administration should be supervised by business men, and that the blighting influence of other educational ideals should be as far as possible removed ; the atmosphere of practical commerce must circulate freely through the school, and for this purpose visiting boards of merchants identified with special subjects have been found of use in some schools. These attend from time to time the lectures in which they are interested — not of course with the object of lessening the teachers' authority by interfering at the time, but of making suggestions subsequently, and keeping the routine as up to date and * This is mentioned as a difficulty in Dr. Eaydt's memorial on the Leipsic school. 47 live as possible ; while the masters, in their turn, should he allowed whenever possible full access to business houses, in order to observe the ever-shifting processes of commerce. The London County OouncU, in conjunction with the Council of the City of London College, have recently put out a scheme for the adaptation of the City of London College to the needs of a higher commerciel school. The Council are to be congratulated on their energy in the matter, and their attempt to realize the wants of London ; but at the same time, if my general conclusions are right, the scheme will labour under certain serious defects. It will not be a separate teaching institution with ideals and an atmosphere of its own, and will probably lose in directness of aim on this account: it is general experience that adaptations of existing institutions to new ends start with a heavy handicap in educational matters as in everything else ; neither the administrators nor the teachers of the old regime take kindly to new ideals with which they possibly have no sympathy, and which they may not be competent to appreciate or carry into practice. New wine must be put into new bottles. At the same time there are, no doubt, immediate advantages secured by this plan in the way of funds and buildings, and I wish the scheme the success it deserves. Besides the authorities already quoted the following are in the writer's possession, or can be seen at the London Chamber of Commerce. Programmes of the following schools : — Germany. — Wiener Handdsakademie (1898); Hohere Handelsschule, Aachen ; TJn- terrichtsanstalt des kaufmannischen Vereins, Magdeburg (1898) ; Handelsakademie, Leipzig ; Stadtischen handelsschule, Miinchen (1897); Kaufmannischen fortbildungsschulen zu Berlin (18.95); Hambargh (1897) ; Berrcht iiber die offentliche Handelslehranstalt, Leipzig (1898); Oeffentliche Handelslehranstalt, Dresden (1898), Stadtischen Handelsschule, Nuremberg (1897); also "Was Heisst Handles Akademiel" with contributions from various experts, Leipzig ; Memorandum on the Handelshoehschulen, by Dr. Bohmert, Dresden, 1897 ; Die Entwicklung des berlinischen Fortbildungs schulwesens, by Grunbach, Berlin, 1898. Copies of the periodical, Zeitschrift fur das Gesammte Kaufmannische Unterrichtswesen, and of the " Handles Akademie." France. — Programmes of all the eleven "^coles SupMeures" in France; Ques- tionnaires pour les Examens de Sortie, "Ecole Sup^rieure," Paris. Bulletin de ^Association philotechnique, Paris (1897). Programme Ecole libre des sciences politiques, Paris (1898); i^cole polytechnique, Paris (1896). NedchAtel. — B^glements and programme of the Ecole de commerce (1897). Skeleton lectures of professors at same school in Geography, Commercial Routine and Book-keeping ; specimen conferences at same school. Antwerp. — Discours prononc^s a I'oocasion de I'inauguration des nouveaux locaux. SiB Philip Magnus, City and Guilds of London Institute, communicated the following Paper, prepared by Mr. Laurie Magnus, on "The German Ideal of Higher Commercial Education, as exemplified in the Leipzig Commercial College." I visited Leipsic last month with a view of learning some particulars concerning the Commercial College, which, as the papers told me, had recently been opened in that prosperous Saxon centre. My first efforts were directed towards discovering the where- abouts of the new Institution, and it seemed at first that my search would go unrewarded. The Institute had a name, but it had no local habitation ; and it was not until, by the kind offices of an acquaintance, I had made my way to the President of the Leipsic Chamber of Commeice, that the facts of the case were made clear to me. Dr. Zweininger, the President of the Chamber has warmly espoused the movement since it first took definite shape, and the success with which it has been crowned is very largely due to his exertions. He was careful to impress upon me from the beginning the modest character of this new experiment in Universities. The Leipsic Commercial College, Die HandelshochSchule zu Ldpsic, the first of its kind in the German Empire, is at present merely on its trial. It has no building of its own. It divides its time between the Leipsic University proper and the Public Middle School for Commerce, for which the city is also famous. Its classes are distributed between the hospitable rooms of these two institutions, and are held at hours which do not interfere 48 with the ordinary time table of either. It has similarly no teaching staff of its own. Professor Eaydt, the Director of the Middle School, is Director of the College as well, and his efficient body of assistants seconds him ungrudgingly in voluntary service to the new undertaking. By mutual agreement between the Senate of Leipsic University and the Senate of the Commercial College, the students of the latter are admitted to the professorial lectures of the former, and the privilege is highly appreciated, so far as their schemes of study coincide. The financial features of the College wear an equally modest appearance. An initial outlay on house and personnel having thus been prudently avoided, the Chamber of Commerce was in a position to guarantee the expenses for the first two years. The students pay some small fees. The Saxon Grovernment contributes an annual sum of £26i) for this period, and the Municipality of Leipsic adds a further subvention of £150. All other questions are left until the preliminary two years have expired. The College exists on paper as an independent institution of university rank and university habits. But during its term of probation it may be said to be lying low. The decision as to the grant of a state diploma, the problem of the degree of " academic freedom " to be enjoyed, and the question of the statutory length of the vacations, over each of these the promoters of the College have written solvitur ambulando — time will show. In striking contrast to this practical and praiseworthy reserve, is the hope which is entertained of the future development of the College. The hope is well-grounded on a careful consideration of the soil. I do not propose to occupy your time with an exhaustive account of the conception and embryology of the College. But from a mass of facts and pamphlets at my disposal, one or two salient points may be selected, partly in admiration of the thoroughness of German methods, partly in testimony to the significance of their results. The agitation for higher commercial instruction began as far back as 1894, when a Bill was sent up to the Parliament of the Ehine Province recommending the establish- ment of such an institution. It broke its force in vain against the opposition of the Prussian Agrarians, who saw in the Ehenish proposal an attempt to create an industrial proletariate, and to strengthen the cause of Socialism. " Political economy," said Baron Stumm, on June 1st, 1894, "is not a concrete science. A university training could only benefit a few great tradesmen. It would considerably injure the majority." The champions of the movement thereupon decided to take a 'plebiscite on the subject, and the Deutscher Verband fii/r das kaufrndnnische Unterrichtswesen undertook to collect opinions. A circular of queries was sent out during the year 1896, to German merchants, tradesmen, trade associations, professors, schoolmasters and so forth, asking, in all, twelve searching questions as to the demand for a Commercial College, and the shape which such an institute should assume. The report was favourable to the scheme, and early in 1897 the Saxon Government was approached through the Leipsic Chamber of Commerce. When the Commercial Education Conference met in Leipsic, in June, 1897, the way had already been prepared, and the Charter granted at the beginning of this year by the Saxon Home Office could no longer be justly withheld. It will be seen that the foundations of the College are deep, and it cannot be denied that its aims are high. They have the advantage of being in harmony with the tendency of affairs in the empire. The last few years have witnessed a marked development of the commercial idea in Germany. The gigantic progress of her export trade, the technological resources of her manufacturers at home, the carefully nursed successes of her mercantile steam-ship lines, her commercial base in Shantung, and its obvious connection with the evolution of the empire into a maritime power — all these causes are steadily combining to raise the status of the German tradesman, and to give him a prominent place in Germany's political life. This shifting standard is extremely interesting to watch, and its reaction upon the old position of the agricultural population gave the key-note to the electoral campaign through which the country has just passed. It is to the credit of the founders of the Leipsic Commercial College that they are a little in advance of their times. It is their ambition to train a generation of business men, intellectually and socially, as fully equipped 49 as any " Herr Doctor " of conventional University life. It is not only, it is not primarily, designed for the benefit of trade itself. Indirectly, no doubt, the empire will gain when its commercial classes and consular profession are recruited by men of University stamp. But its chief aim is the ideal one of benefitting the recruits themselves. A business man hitherto has had the ordinary general school education up to his early teens. He has gone into the office or the workshop during his apprentice years, and he has had the chance of attending " continuation " classes in commercial subjects. Or a self-made man has risen from the ranks, and his native genius for amassing a fortune has turned the laugh against preconceived notions of the need for general culture. The Commercial College aims at altering all this. The future kings of business are to receive a University training. They are to learn to look at their work from a larger and more spacious point of view, first because the nation which is without ideals perishes, and secondly because they will thus be better qualified to fulfil the duties which await them in the coming century. Let me offer at this point an extract from the Director's inaugural address to his students. " The Commercial College," he said, "is not designed as a direct preparation for bread winning, such as commercial classes can give. It is to be a home of higher intellectual training, and its golden fruits will fall into your lap not directly, but indirectly. . . . The Commercial College will teach you to think clearly ; it will train your mental powers, and will provide you with the ability to rise superior to the most diflBcult tasks and most critical situations. All this and much more is offered to you ; but to give direct practical lessons in the requirements of your future calling — this we will not and cannot and shall not do. Above all, the Commercial College will never replace your years of apprenticeship to mercantile life. If, gentlemen, you have come to us straight from your higher studies, spend four terms at this college, you will then have to learn your practical business from the very beginning. No one can or shall release you from this obligation. Your time may be shortened by the fact of your residence here, in the same way as obtains in the military profession. But just as the highest oflBcer has to learn every detail of his duties by practice, so the greatest tradesman must begin his career by a practical apprenticeship. The chief advantage which Commercial Colleges confer upon commerce and upon their country is to be sought in the necessity for them. This is founded on the fact that our times make greater demands upon men of business and industrial life than was formerly the case— demands which our schools are no longer able to fulfil." And Professor Raydt went on to specify the social and pohtical problems which await solution in the approaching industrial century. It would be rash to say that the elements of universal culture of a university training, in the most liberal sense, may not be imported into the educational programme for commercial life. There is a way of looking at commerce which raises it far above the material details of its practice. To a nation of idealists like the Germans, the present stage of development which their country has reached must be full of the possibilities of ennobling ideas. They are standing on the margin of an unknown future. Their flag has just been hoisted on the shores of the Yellow Sea. They have a body of white troops in permanent employment abroad, in their South-west African territories. The marvels of intercourse, the responsibilities of Empire, and the intoxicating sense of national expansion, are coming' home to them with full force. With these factors to work with, it should be easy to impart such a training that the clerk at his ledger in Berlin should feel his pen throbbing to the ends of the earth, and should discover a relation in time and space between his columns of addition and the "light and sweetness" of the whole of life. Between Seele/s view of the 18th century, as it is given in the " Expamion of Er^land," and the "mechanical view," with its vision of " distressing commonness and flatness in men and affairs " which his book was written to correct, there lies the gulf which the Leipsic Commercial College has been founded to bridge for the trustees of the expansion of Germany. It is a noble aim, worthy of German ideals, and it will be interesting to see how far it is realized by the promoters of the Leipsic scheme. 50 Let me eonciude this review of motives with a few essential facts. The College was opened on April 25th of this jear, in the Aula of Leipsic University. It is governed by a Senate of ten members, exclusive of the Director of Studies. The Saxon Grovernment and the City of Leipsic send one representative each. The Chamber of Commerce sends its president and three members ; the university is represented by two professors ; and two teachers from the staff of the Public Middle School of Commerce complete the roll. The Senate selects the president of the College for a period of two years, and his election is confirmed by the King of Saxony. There is no entrance examination. The College is open, first, to young business men who have obtained their certificate for the one year's military service, and have spent at least three years in a merchant's oflSce. As the military certificate is granted to boys out of " Unter-Secunda" in the secondary schools, this condition of three years' apprenticeship is designed to correspond to the remaining three classes in the schools. Such candidates for admission, however, must satisfy the Director of Studies as to their level of general acquirements. It is open, next, to Abiturients from the nine- year secondary schools (gymnasien, real-gymnasien and oberreal gymnasien), and to those from higher commercial schools of an equivalent grade. Trained teachers are admitted on certain conditions, and a department of the College has been organised for the special training of masters in commercial schools. Lastly, the matriculation is open to foreigners who have attained their 20th birthday, and have received a corresponding education. No Englishman, as yet, has taken advantage of this privilege. It is interesting to note how the ninety-five students who have already matriculated are distributed under these categories. They range in age from eighteen to forty-six, the biggest number, twenty-two, falling to those of nineteen years of age. Seventy-five are Germans and twenty are foreigners. Their previous history is as follows : forty-one out of the ninety-five, or nearly 50 per cent., belong to the class of young business men who left school at sixteen, and have since spent some years at the desk. Twenty are professional teachers. Seventeen come from the various gymnasien, and ten from the higher schools of commerce. Three are described as students, one as a craftsman, one as an apothecary and two as officers. The students' lecture-fees are small ; they represent in the treasury of the College an average of four marks an hour, each term. Finally, as to what is taught to these makers of Germany's commercial greatness. I have tried very briefly to point out the ideal at which the College aims, and it is obvious that its success will depend upon the degree of universal culture which the lecture plan is constructed to impart. So far as the instruction given is calculated to widen the student's mind and to help him to grasp the whole of the system, to a part of which he will subsequently be apprenticed, thus far it is in harmony with the ideal. But so far as it is used for the direct material furtherance of the student's future career, it must be regarded as a decline from the ideal ; and the Leipsic Commercial College will sink from its pretensions to university dignity to the every-day level of an ordinary specialist high school. The scheme of study, based on a course of four semesters, comprises Jurisprudence and Political Economy (including social legislation, currency, maritime and exchange law). Commercial Politics, statistics and insurance ; further. Commercial History and Geography, to be taught as much by organised conversation as by lectures ; technology and wares, varied by visits to well-known establishments ; Colonial Policy, foreign languages and lectures on general subjects. Practical exercises in book-keeping, correspondence and so forth, are combined with the classes in those branches. It will perhaps be clearer if I reproduce the time-table which has been recommended for the guidance of students for the present summer term. It must be remembered, however, that this is the first of the four semesters, and that the " humanities " branches will probably be developed as the course wears to an end. In a week of six days the hours are distributed as follows :— Universal Political Economy 6 hours. Industrial Politics ... ■? Trade and Intercourse in Politics ... 2 Commercial Arithmetic ... ... ... ... 4 51 Chemical Technology 2 hours. Counting-house Work, Correspondence ... ... ... 3 Book-keeping ....... q Insurance Mathematics .S ... ... ... u „ Practical Aspects of Scientific Thought 2 Technology of TextUes Industry 2 Introduction to the study of Statistics 2 German Colonial Politics ... 9 History of the Age of Discoveries 1 Geography and Colonisation of German East Africa ... 1 „ Commercial, Exchange, and Maritime Law ... ... 4 „ Universal History of Modern Times 4 Landscapes and Cities of Central Europe 1 „ Notes by Sir Philip Magnus :— The foregoing account of the initial efforts of Germany to found a Commercial College of University rank may prove, I think, of some practical usefulness to us at the present time, when we are contemplating the establishment of a similar institution in London. You may have heard that the City Parochial Trustees have offered to the City of London College a grant of £500 a year, provided the governing body will organize such a school; and this contribution is likely to be largely supplemented by the Technical Education Board of the London County Council. If a High School of Commerce is to bie established in England, the experiment should certainly be first tried in London. It will be seen that the Grermans have very carefully considered the problem of Higher Commercial Education before entering upon this new departure. Out of the 301 answers received to the questions addressed to merchants and others, 249 were unconditionally in favour of the proposal, and only 41 were opposed to it. It will also be seen that, the Germans have very clearly defined the aim and purpose of their new college, and the results they expect to secure, and these differ in many essential particulars from those of the French and Belgian schools. It is indeed interesting to note that, with the experience of all continental schools before them, the Germans have decided not to reproduce at Leipzig a school similar to the Antwerp Academy or the JEcole des Hautes Etudes of Paris. Their ideal of a High School of Commerce corresponds much more nearly with the ideal they have had in the establish- ment and organization of their High Schools of Technical Science. With the exception of the school at Neuchatel, I have had the opportunity, at different times, of visiting the principal Commercial Schools in Europe, and I am impressed with the marked contrast between the aims of the Leipzig College, as set forth in the paper I have read to you, and those of other well-known Commercial High Schools. Both in Antwerp and in Paris the attempt is made to completely equip the student with the knowledge and practice he requires for commercial work. The instruction is all directed toward this end. The aim of the school is not so much to educate the youth with a view to his future calling, as to inform him on those subjects which it is thought may be of direct benefit to him. The utilitarian side of the training is brought prominently to the front. It is this strictly technical and narrow view of Commercial Education that has made English merchants sceptical as to its advantages. The German idea is different. It recognises that in commerce, as in engineering and in manufacturing industry, the complex conditions of the pursuit render it necessary that those who are to occupy the higher positions, should receive a training corresponding to a university education, whilst the subjects of instruction should have a distinct reference to the student's future career. The direct aim and object of the training, however, should be discipline, the improvement and development of the man, so as to enable him to better understand and control the circum- stances and conditions in which he may have to work. It is not the purpose of the Leipsic College " to produce clerks " or commercial agents, but to give young men the training that will enable them to take full advantage of the experience acquired in the bureau or warehouse, and to apply it to the best commercial uses. The aim of the German School could not have been expressed more definitely than in the words of the Director : " The Commercial College will enable you to think clearly, it will train your mental powers, " and will render you competent to rise superior to the most difficult tasks and the most g2 m " critical situations. All this and much more is offered to you ; but to give direct practical " lessons in the requirements of your future calling— this we will not, and cannot, and shall '^ not do." In this statement is contained the essence of the difference between the aim of the Leipzig and that of the Antwerp and Paris School. It may be said that any University education would equally well answer the purpose the Leipzig authorities have in view. But this i.s not so. It is now generally recognised, that to be proficient in the higher developments of commerce, there is a body of well-organized knowledge to be acquired, and a distinct line of study worth pursuing; and that, equally as in the different branches of Technology, there are special subjects of instruction through which this University training may be best obtained. One great advantage of the establishment of a High School of Commerce is the recognition of Commerce as a subject capable of being treated education- ally from the same high standpoint as Medicine or Law. As you know, our first Universities were Technical or Professional Schools, and it is only recently, and even now not generally, that Engineering has been treated as a subject of University rank. Commerce is the latest claimant for this high distinction. Socially, the recognition of Commerce as a branch of University Education is of considerable importance in Germany, where class distinctions are more pronounced than in this country. But here, too, the widening of the University idea to include studies of special value in a commercial career, cannot be without influence in attracting to its pursuit men of the highest intellectual capacity, and in determining the curriculum of secondary schools. In many of the higher Technical Institutes of Italy, which correspond to some extent with our Central Technical College in London, Commerce is one of the Faculties in which a student can graduate. It seems to me, therefore, that so long as we keep this idea before us, and endeavour to steer our students through a course of instruction that shall train their intelligence by means of exercises useful in a commercial career, we shall gradually win for such studies the necessary recognition, and shall avoid raising expectations that are not likely to be realized. I hold in my hands a sheaf of extracts from our consular reports, repeating the tale we have so often heard, that in all parts of the world, except perhaps in our own Colonies, foreign agents are succeeding, by their knowledge of foreign languages, of their castomers' requirements, and of other technical details, in driving British goods out of the market, and in replacing them by home manufactures. But, in nearly all cases, the travellers referred to are not French nor Belgians, but Grermans. Yet, hitherto, there has been no high school of commerce in Germany similar to the well-known academies of Paris and Antwerp. It would seem, therefore, that the conditions of trade have changed to induce the Germans to advocate this new departure. Hitherto, the Germans have reHed upon their general system of secondary education to produce thoughtful, competent and resourceful men of business. But now they feel that more is required. Changes have undoubtedly occurred. Competition has become still keener, and commercial relations with distant countries have been extended. Germany, sees, therefore, the need of fresh educational efforts. This, then, is the lesson we may learn from the opening of the Leipsic College. In all branches of professional and manufacturing work, it has been found necessary to provide a special and appropriate training for those who are to occupy the position of officers in the industrial army. Commerce forms no exception to this law. The opening of the first commercial high school in Germany is almost contemporaneous with the recent extension of her empire beyond the seas. We in this country cannot afford to lose any possible advantage that education may be able to confer on trade. The reasons that have induced the Germans to make this new advance apply with still greater force to the conditions of our own commerce. It cannot be said that our commercial practice or experience is superior to theirs. If we have not been losing, as some contend, we certainly have not been gaining ground in the competition for trade. We may do worse, therefore, than follow Germany in her recent educational departure. The establishment of a high school of commerce in this country may be regarded as an experiment, but it is one we are bound to try ; and it is to be hoped that the high ideal of commercial education which underlies the scheme of the Leipsic College may help us in determining what should be our aim and purpose in establishing in London — the greatest commercial centre of the world — a school of commerce, not unworthy, perhaps, to find a place in the new University to be. one day, ours. 53 DISCUSSION. Me. p. E. J. Hemeleyk (Liverpool Cham- ber of Commerce) : Mr. Chairman and Gentle- men, when I sent my card up this morning I had not read all these splendid reports and papers to which I have been listening since, but I should be failing, I think, in my duty as a delegate, as one of the Vice-Ohairmen of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, and as the President of the new School of Commerce which we are trying to establish in Liverpool, if I did not venture just to say one or two words. I will try to be as short as I can. I have been listening carefully the whole morning to any number of professors and any number of professional men, and I have listened to one or two commercial men, but I have not heard a single case — if I may take my own case — of a man who has gone through the training of a commercial college on the Conti- nent. I think, if I may venture to give the experience of that college and its results to myself and to those who were at the same college with me, it might, perhaps, be of some advantage to this meeting. (Hear, hear.) "We want practical results, we business men. We want to know, if we are going to establish Schools of Commerce in England, that they will be of so much benefit to the EngHsh nation at large that we shall not require those wretched foreigners any longer. (Laughter.) Being a foreigner myself, and ordy naturalized 37 years ago (laughter), I think I may speak both as a foreigner and as an Englishman. (Hear, hear.) The school in which I was educated was in HoUand, and poor Holland has not been mentioned at aU in these discus- sions, and also Belgium ; and when my school mates and myself left school we, every one of us, spoke fluently four languages to begin with. (Hear, hear.) We had had in our commercial school the training of a higher arithmetic, of algebra, chemistry, political economy and inter- national commercial law. But the last years of that commercial education were the best ; we were taught, gentlemen, practical commercial operations, and we were instructed by practical men and not schoolmasters. (Laughter and cheers.) We had men who had not been most successful in business, but who had gone through a varied experience as traders, importers, exporters, insurance brokers, ship- owners, &c., and they were only too happy to give the benefit of their long and painful experience to a number of young students, and to give it in a practical way. We were told on the Monday morning, " Jones, you are a sugar planter in Cuba ; Smith, you are a shipowner in Liverpool; Eobinson, you are an importer in Liverpool ; WilHamson, you are a refiner in Liverpool. Now then, Jones, your sugar costs you so much ; you pay so much for your barrels, and the rate of exchange on London is so much ; offer your sugar to Liverpool. You, Robinson, in Liverpool, you see what the price of sugar is in Liverpool, and make a bid to Jones in pro- portion to the price at which you can afford to sell it. Jones and Smith, make up your invoices, your freight notes, and your bills of lading." We went through the whole technical operation of the sugar transaction, taking it from its incep- tion at the moment of its production to the moment of its final consumption, and when for a whole month this young fellow had been a sugar producer, and had been told aU the ins and outs of what was connected with his business, he was turned the next month into a cotton importer or into a sugar refiner (laughter). Gentlemen, laugh ; but it was the practical knowledge brought home. (Cheers.) None of your professors are men of business. You can- not say (and correct us if we are wrong), as we had said to us, " Now then, Jones, that sugar costs so many pesetas in Cuba, and sells at 9s. 6d. per cwt. in Liverpool, can you make a profit ; yes or no ? Then the master would continue, and say : " Go to your London banker and ask him to open you a credit, and let him charge you a commission and make up your account, etc." The whole of that business for two years, in a superior commercial class to which I belonged, was conducted on those principles. Now for the result. I will not name myself, but one very intimately connected with me had the chance, and was ordered by a Dutch house at the age of 21^ years old to go to England, and with his knowledge of four languages, and with the experience and teaching of that commercial school, he was given at the age of 21J the representation of a very old-established Dutch house, and at 22 he had already twenty clerks under him, every one older than himself, of various nationalities and of various occupations — book- keepers, invoice clerks, account sales and correspondence clerks — and he was able by his commercial training and commercial teaching to tell every one of those men how to go about his duty. (Loud cheers.) That is, gentlemen. 54 in my opinion, what we now should try to establish in Liverpool. We are trying in a small way to teach the students elementary French, German and Spanish ; thdn if they do know sufficient French, German or Spanish, we shall provide for them special commercial classes conducted in English, French, German and Spanish, and that by commercial men. One speaker spoke of the leading managers of London firms and Liverpool and Manchester firms who are quite able to give that teaching. That is what I would like to bring before this meeting, namely, to get those men to teach the practical part of commerce. (Hear, hear.) It is very often true what Sir Philip Magnus said about Germany. We have to compete with these German houses, with their training at com- mercial colleges, or elsewhere, in the City of London, the City of Liverpool, and the City of Manchester, and aU our great dependencies — in Australia, in India and elsewhere. Many of them are at the head of the commerce of the place, and it is that particular training which you, gentlemen, under the advocacy and able guidance of your President, wish to establish, which shall put English houses at the top. It has my hearty support, because there is no doubt about its final result. Give the boys up to the age of 15 or 16 a classical education, let them know something of foreign languages ; but let them from the age of 16 entirely devote themselves to foreign languages, and remain at school until they are 19. It is those last three years of a boy's education that are the most valuable. (Cheers.) I have given you an ex- ample of one closely allied to me. I coiild name thousands who have had the same education, and who have at once stepped into positions worth £300, £400 and £500 a year. (Cheers.) Prof. Julius Wektheimer, B.Sc, B.A. F.I.C., F.C.S. (Principal, Merchant Yenturers, Technical College, Bristol) : Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, there are two or three points which I should like to lay before you. In the first place, one that I believe has not yet been touched upon — the financial aspect of the ques- tions which we have been discussing. The results that have been obtained in foreign countries have not been got without an expenditure of money which, so far, we in this country have not been at all disposed to face, and I, therefore desire to impress upon this Meeting the im- portance of clearly facing the fact that, if we are to attempt to compete satisfactorily with Germany and other nations, it is absolutely necessary that larger sums than have hitherto been devoted to the purpose shall be put at the disposal of those who are to undertake this important work. No such measure as that, for instance, which is at present before the House of Commons — a private Bill which proposes to take a portion of what is felt in many of the boroughs to be an inadequate amount devoted to technical education, and divide it between technical education and commercial and second- ary education — will be at aU adequate to deal with this matter. What we want is not to split up the small amount that Parliament already provides, but rather to provide additions to the funds. Secondly, I have not yet heard anyone mention the very important machinery which is used in the country from which the last speaker came, and in Germany and in Austria, and in many other countries, for the purpose of developing commercial education — I mean the Commercial Museum. As far as I know there is not in England at present anything that at all — I say it with all due respect to the Imperial Institute — ^anything that at all deserves the name of a Commercial Museum as it is known on the Continent. A Commercial Museum on the Continent is a place where the manufacturer can go and not merely see the best products of his own country, but can more especially see those products of other countries which are ousting the products of the home country. Such a museimi ought to exist in .every commercial centre, and a magnificent Commercial Museum of this kind ought to exist in this great City of London. (Cheers.) A third great point to which I should like to draw your attention is the fact that this country provides nothing of the kind that our French neighbours have in the shape of Commercial Bursaries, which are provided by the French Government. In the Boys' School of the Technical College at Bristol we receive each year one or two young men about 16 years of age, who are sent over by the French Government, whose fees are paid, whose board and lodgings are paid, and who remain for a year in the Commercial Department of that Institution. At the end of the year they enter for another year, as volunteers, some house of business in England, and at the end of that time they return to their country. There are twenty-four such bursaries under the Minister of Public Instruction ; twelve are 55 sent out to some Grerman-speaking country, and twelve to England. That is not a large number — only twenty-four in each year — but I am very sure that those twenty-four young men, returning each year with some knowledge of the commerce of foreign countries, must help the French nation to compete with us more satisfac- torily than they otherwise would be able to do. One point more before I resume my seat. Allusion has been made to the City which I have to a slight extent the honour of repre- senting, in a manner which would make you think the West of England is in a particularly benighted position with regard to the views its commercial men maintain. My experience does not coincide with that of a former speaker. In the West of England you can find a consider- able amount of appreciation of good training, and the outlook is not nearly so pessimistic as one might be led to believe. (Cheers.) Mr. J. W. WiLLANS (Yice-President, Leeds Chamber of Commerce) : Mr. Chairman and Grentlemen, I confess that one of the most suggestive utterances we have listened to to-day was in the concluding observations of Sir Philip Magnus, who addressed us a few minutes ago, that in nearly aU cases the travellers referred to are not French or Belgians, but Germans, and yet, hitherto, there has been no High School of Commerce in Germany similar to the well-known academies of Paris. It seems to me that that helps to bring us back to the sort of bed-rock from which we started this morning. The fact is, I think, that too little consideration is given to distinctions of character and national capacity in our various discussions upon this question. Now, there can be no doubt what- ever that without any vanity — my remarks are sufficiently wide to exclude vanity— the English, the Germans, and the Dutch nations, are con- spicuously the commercial people of the world. They have the natural adaptation to commerce, they have those special qualities of character which fit men for the commercial contest, as they do for some other different contests with the nations of the world, and I suppose, of course, we must include our American friends. What we have to start with, I think, is this : Given fifty men, or fifty boys or young men, whether German, or English, or Dutch, or what you like— given, say, fifty men of equal capacity, of very much the same natural characteristics, the same capacity for getting on —and I want to ask if you give twenty-five of those men a mere ordinary training, and allow them to be brought up in the haphazard way of an ordinary education, and if you give to the other twenty-five a specially adapted, and skilfully adapted, training, which of those two twenty- fives are the men who are going to succeed in life ? There you have the touchstone of owe technical and commercial education. The question is, what instruments are we going to put in the hands of those who are going forth to the battle of life ? That is the whole question of our commercial and technical edu- cation. Of com-se, there is room for great variety, and if you put the same instruments into different hands they wiH be used very differently. But it is no use attempting to put into one set of hands the instruments which are only properly adapted to the other set of hands, and you can have no universal system of either technical education or of commercial education, which would be adapted to all the boys of all the countries in the various con- ditions, some of them rising from the lower strata, some beginning high up in the social scale. (Hear, hear.) We have had the diffi- culty pointed out this morning : you take in boys, as a rule, to begin (and they must begin) at the lowest duties of the office, and must rise from that position ; and there comes in this great variety of character. It is what my friend, Mr. Albert Spioer, said this morning — that after two or three years the boys of the secondary education will forge more ahead ; but there, again, you have the differences of charac- ter, and you must have your education so adapted that these boys shall all come, if they like, if they are qualified for it, with instru- ments fitted for going forward in their commer- cial work. I had the advantage of being in a German Realschule a good many years ago, and I had part of my training there. I went there from a very good English school, or college as it was called, and had had the ordinary advan- tages of a middle-class education. On the three- quarters of a year I spent at that school I can only look back with great gratitude, for I think I learned more in the nine months I was in the German school than I had learned in any two years I was in the English school. The subjects which were taught were very much the same as in our own country, except that languages were a more regular course of teaching. We had a good amount of English education, and a certain number of hours every 56 week of French education at that school. As to arithmetic, somebody was comparing — I think it was Mr. Yoxall — our systems of weights and measures with those in foreign countries. Those were the days in Grermany when they had a system of weights and measures and money pretty nearly as complicated as our own. I remember very well there was this good commercial feature there, that a large proportion of our arithmetical education con- sisted in the practical sums of commercial transactions, and of the exchanges between one country and another. That just leads me to another thing that struck me two or three times to-day. It is not merely the boy that you have, it is not merely the system that you have, but a great deal depends on the teacher that you have. I am not going to make any reflection upon the teachers of the present day. We have had an advantage of hearing very excel- lent observations from a great number of professional gentlemen here, but I do say that at that time the German teachers were, unfor- tunately, superior to the English teachers, and especially in the very large and happy quality, and the very useful quality in a teacher, the quality of imagination. Each study was made so much more interesting than I had been accustomed to have it made in the English school. The same thing struck me with regard to languages two or three years ago in Canada. Somebody said this morning that we must teach through the ear, and somebody else said through the eye. In Canada I attended a lesson in which French was being taught to the boys in one of the common schools. The master taught both with ear and eye. Every word and every sentence to be learnt he illus- trated by some very simple action with a book or paper he had in his hand ; and it struck me, the half -hour I was there, that those boys got more instruction in French, more valuable instruction, than in an ordinary college school, so far as I have seen, a boy would get in a couple of hours. Then, sir, there is another illustration. I attended in Switzerland not very long ago a commercial class in one of the higher common schools. The head-master had a class of only six or seven boys, and he was teaching those boys to write a German business letter. It dealt with an ordinary transaction. He told them what they had to communicate, and they had to write the letter. That man went through every letter individually in the presence of the whole class, and spent three- quarters of an hour on a letter of, perhaps, eight or ten lines, and he did it with the thoroughness which our friend referred to this morning, and it seemed to me he gave there very much what our friend from Liverpool was Speaking of just now, an illustration of practical teaching which is very valuable. If we could, in the commer- cial colleges we are talking of establishing, combine the theoretical with the practical, as they do in some of the agricultural colleges, for instance, in Canada, we should do very much towards making up the deficiencies which we undoubtedly suffer in our competition with those who are just as good men to start with as we are ourselves or pretty nearly so — we will not say quite ! — and who have better instru- ments in their hands, and very often beat us in the conflicts of business life. (Cheers.) Dr. R. p. Scott (Headmaster of Parmiter's School) : Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, there is one particular point on which I should like to break a lance with Mr. Barlow. He has said that the schoolmasters and merchants do not run well in double harness. Now, I think that when both schoolmasters and merchants are reasonable men there is not much doubt they will run well in double harness. (Hear, hear.) That at any rate is my experience. But if you are to run comfortably in double harness you must be clear beforehand about the course which lies before you. Until we get definitions, until we have some fairly definite idea of what is meant by secondary education, what is meant by technical, and what is meant by commercial, how can we run in double harness at all ? The immediate necessity is, so far as I can gather from the feeling of this meeting, to enlist in the service of education an amount of clear thinking, which at the present time is not to be found. We have had, however, before us to-day one point on which there seems to be general agreement. There seems agreement that it is possible to have a modern education drawn entirely on modern lines, out of which can be got the same discipline of mind, and the same discipline of conduct that can be got out of the old classical languages. (Hear, hear.) They have found that true in Germany, and I am convinced we can find it true in England, if only we can set ourselves to work out the different types of secondary education that this nation should have at its command. But in order to bring this matter to a practical issue 57 we want a great deal more even than clear thinking ; we want organised action. I should like to say how exceedingly delighted I have been at the opinions generally expressed by the members of this Conference, because I per- ceive in it a great many people who think they are fighting on opposite sides, but who are really at one. (Hear, hear.) One thing school- masters have had to urge very strongly of late is that there should be no specialization before the age of 16, and so far as I can gather the feeling of this meeting, it is in entire agree- ment with that view. (Hear, hear.) If, then, we can agree, first as to no specialization before that age, and, next, as we seem to have agreed already, on the need of thoroughness, and on the supreme importance of conduct, the require- ment in fact of conduct, then, I think, Mr. Chairman, that the schoolmasters and the merchants are at one. But in order to put these things into practical use we need organiza- tion, we want some focussing of the experience, as, for instance, that which is represented here to-day. Where is it f ooussed ? Where is the committee which will consider the points of detail and the principles which have been discussed here to-day ? Where have our schoolmasters any opportunity of learning at first hand what merchants really want ? Where is it arranged that the profession of school- master and the profession of merchant should be in constant touch ? That organization has yet to be devised, and if there is one thing that is needed at the present time more than another, it is that we should focus all the experiences which relate to education, whether theoretical or practical, into one great whole ; so that the results of that experience, the princi- ples on which action should be based, and the necessary practical details connected therewith, may be a possession common to us aU. When that is done we shall find there is a great deal more agreement than disagreement. School- masters will find that that for which they have laboured and which they have at heart, thoroughness and character, are thought well of by merchants in this city, and this meeting, in focussing that opinion, and in placing it in a definite form before the world as the outcome of its deliberations, has done something to uphold the spirit of the age, which is, I think, character and thoroughness of work, as against the spirit of the time,which is rather superficiality and a desire for immediate results. (Cheers.) The Rt. Hon. Sir Bernhard Samuelson, Bart. : Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have very few words to say, and I hope that you will allow me to refer very briefly to one or two points in the papers which have not yet been read. T think that if anything were required to justify the existence of the London Chamber of Commerce, our meeting here to-day would be the best possible justification. (Hear, hear.) I believe that this Conference will lead to most important results, and perhaps the most important of those results will be — I hope I am not presumptuous in saying what I am about to say — the paper of Mr. Bourne, the Head-Master of King's College School, which has, once for all, put an end to the illusion that it is ex- pedient to have special commercial education in secondary schools. He has expressed that very clearly, and has justified it so fully that I believe this illusion, at any rate, may be said from this day to have terminated. I would like to state that what you gather from his paper is also the opinion of the best informed authorities on the Continent. I have had put into my hands lately the Eeports for 1896 and 1897 of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce. You, sir, know well that the Hamburg Chamber of Com- merce is composed of gentlemen of the highest standing in that great commercial city. You know that that city, connected as it is by com- merce with every part of the world, is composed of men of the highest standing — composed of men eminent in banking circles, in commercial circles, and in manufacturing circles, and that its secretaries are men who are graduates of the first Universities of Germany. Well, sir, the opinion of these gentlemen expressed in those reports is clear, that the education of com- mercial men, of lawyers and of men who are intended to practise the medical art, should be conducted together on uniform lines until the age of 17 or 18. As has been well said here, the object of secondary education is not to teach people to be merchants or doctors, or lawyers, but to train them so that they may take their place intelligently in any of those professions. (Hear, hear). Well, sir, what applies to secon- dary education, I believe, also applies in a great measure to higher commercial education, and perhaps I may be allowed, with your permission, to refer to the paper of Mr. Hewins. I am very sorry that these papers have not been circulated before the meeting. They are, to use a vulgar expression, as full of information and 58 of important teaching as an egg is full of meat. I hope that when, in this Conference, they are circulated, they will lead to correspondence of the greatest possible value. Mr. Hewins in his paper tells us that the general character of the curriculum which he recommends works out as follows : — " Classes arranged as a two years' course of descriptive and theoretical economics, economic and commercial history, and statistics." Well, that is an education which will train a man for commerce, but it will also train him for politics and also train him for diplomacy. But then he goes on, and he says that when this course has been gone through, then specializa- tion should take place, and that it should be followed by specialized courses of lectures and of classes, and that these special courses should be selected with the view of the trade or pro- fession, or the subject in which the student requires special training. Now, sir, as much as I agree with him in the first part of what he proposes, so much do I differ from him in the second. I believe that commerce in these days is such a thing that no one can foresee, whether being a merchant to-day he may not be a banker to-morrow, and that, therefore, what we have to aim at is — as much in the higher schools as in the secondary schools— the training of a man's mind in order that he may be able to adapt himself to any circumstances to which he finds himself thrown. (Hear, hear.) If, in establishing the school which is proposed to be created in London, we confine ourselves as much to high general training as we do in our secon- dary schools to secondary general training, and if we leave afterwards the special training to the commercial or banking establishments into which the young men may be drafted, I believe we shall do a greater work for commerce than if we attempt to specialize our training even in this higher commercial school. This also is the opinion, I believe, of those best qualified to judge on the Continent. The Leipzig School, on which my friend Sir Philip Magnus has given us a paper, is a great experiment, an experiment well worthy of being tried. But it does not command the general sympathy on the Continent which, I believe, he attributes to it, or which, at any rate, might be supposed to arise from the answers which have been given to the circular which has been sent out. The opinion, I believe, of those whose opinion is best worth considering amongst the Grermans is this : give a man the best general training that you can, carried on as far as his circumstances will admit, then send him into practical life, and there let him complete his commercial educa- tion. Now, sir, one word more, and that is with regard to modern language. I should be the last in the world to deny that it is necessary that our secondary schools should adopt, as a part of their course, tuition of the best kind in modern languages ; but there also I think that practice is the best ultimate " finish," if I may use the word, of the education which a man intend- ing to be a merchant or banker should receive. Let him be taught modern languages as well as it is possible to teach them in a school. When he has learned them in a school as far as it is possible, do not let him think he has completed his course of modern language. Let him do as the Grermans do who come to England, let him go to Grermany to learn Grerman, and let him go to Spain to learn Spanish. (Hear, hear.) I believe that is the proper training for a young man who has to enter upon a com- mercial pursuit, and I believe that well worthy as the experiment is of being tried, which is about to be tried at Leipzig, for as yet scarcely anything is done, and which, I am glad to say, is about to be tried also in London, yet what we have really to look to as the foundation, and, I may say, to a certain extent, also the super- structure of the commercial education, is a thorough training of the mind. One word with regard to modern languages. The first modern language that an Englishman ought to learn is not French or Grerman or Spanish, but English. (Hear, hear.) How often do we find that argu- ment is thrown away upon a young Englishman because he does not understand the value of words. Our great task is to improve our secon- dary education. Build upon that an experi- mental commercial school if you Hke, but look to your secondary education in the first instance. If you have that such as it ought to be, if you have schools like the London School of Econo- mics, in which young men who are anxious to educate themselves have the opportunity of continuing their education in political economy, in law, and various subjects having a bearing upon commercial life, I believe then you will have done a good work, and one which will bear excellent fruits. (Cheers). Mr. G. Walteh Knox, B.Sc. (Ex-President and Chairman Examination Committee, Insti- tute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) : Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, there 59 are just two points whioh I should like to refer to, though they do not- bear altogether on the two papers whioh have just been read, and whioh, I suppose, are more for our information as to what is done abroad at the present time than for any real discussion, except in so far as they relate to the papers whioh we had before us this morning, and to those which are to follow. We have had a variety of opinions given us on various points, but I think amongst all the differences which have occurred there seems to be one general thought of agreement, and that is, that we ought to have in London a higher commercial college, where the higher subjects of commercial instruction can be given — and to which students from our secondary schools and from our continuation schools may proceed with the view, I hope, of some day obtaining a commercial degree at, say, the London University or the Victoria University. I think that is a matter on which we seem all to be pretty well agreed. I did not gather, as Sir Bernhard Samuelson gathered, from Mr. Bourne's paper, that he would exclude from secondary schools the all-im- portant commercial education. What I gathered was, that he would exclude from secondary schools the commercial bureau or definite technical commercial instruction, but that he would stOl have, and would extend in those schools, education of a nature which should be the groundwork of the forthcoming commercial education. My feeling is, sk, that we shall never get that commercial groundwork in our secondary schools properly established until we have the Higher Com- mercial College, which will give a tone to com- mercial education generally in the country. The division in our secondary schools between the literary or scholastic side and the com- mercial side, does not redound to the credit of the commercial side. (Hear, hear.) The commercial side is looked upon as being infra .%i