Lord Harlington made a remarkable speech on Wednesday in distributing
the prizes to the Polytechnic Young Men's Christian Institute, Regent Street. He founded his speech on an analogy drawn by Professor Huxley between the scientific competition in destructive agencies whioh is now going on in all the military and naval services in the world, and the scientific competition among rival industries by which one great concern endeavours to undersell its rivals all the world over by giving better work for the same money, or equally good work for less money. The Co-operative Producing Associations would perhaps say that this mutually injurious competition is not necessary, —that co-operation in determining the conditions and settling the remuneration of work, is much better. And no doubt, just as the jostling of the world is limited and controlled by ties of blood and friendship, so the jostling of industrial enterprises may be more or less limited and controlled within a given area by wise co•operation ; but we do not see how the time can ever come when even Co. operative Associations can escape the rivalry a other and external Co-operative Associations, unless, indeed, great trades ever become so anxious to confer benefits on their customers that they are no longer tempted to appropriate too large a share of their gains to the advantage of the capitalists and the operatives. In the meantime, as Lord Harlington justly says, and as Sir Henry Roscoe on the authority of his own ex- perience confirmed, the great danger of English industry is that the better instructed technical instruction abroad will beat it at its own weapons. The Germans are already showing how much more carefully they study, and how much better they under- stand, the niceties of demand in foreign markets than we do. 'The real difficulty is to sharpen the wits and polish the powers devoted to industrial pursuits, without making them either too fine or too polished for the sort of tasks to which they are set.
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