The Duke made two or three speeches on the occasion,
in the course of which he mentioned that the Municipal Council had provided £88,000 for the building and maintenance of the technical school, and had also made adequate provision for the gradual extinction of the debt incurred. He remarked that there is now a great rush of Peers into the offices of municipal Mayors, though, as Mr. Chamberlain had told him, and as he had discovered for himself, the Mayoralty of Birmingham had not yet become "a refuge for the destitute." In the evening, at a crowded public meeting in the Town Hall, the Duke, after declaring that his ill-fate obliged him to make speeches on popular science and technical education, in which his chief duty was to conceal his own ignorance, just as some military hero of whom he had read in his youth, whose nature was profoundly timid, had obtained a false reputation for gallantry which kept him perpetually in hot water in the effort to con- ceal his own cowardice, quoted the late Professor Huxley and Sir Henry Roscoe on the great competition for industrial supremacy! between this and other countries; and declared that it was now for England to choose between greatly improving her technical knowledge and expedients, or else consenting to take the much lower wages accepted by our continental rivals, for the labour her artisans embody in the work of production. And he illustrated what is needed by the history of the manufacture of aluminium, which in 1856 had cost us 360s. a pound to produce, and which could now be produced for 2s. a pound, so that its production had become a great popular industry. The Duke also contrasted the almost military organisation of technical instruction abroad, where all the improvements made are carried out by orders from above, with the more popular organisation of technical instruction in England, where a foreman will often argue the matter with his masters, and greatly modify the course of technical discovery. The Duke also said a word against the notion that working with the hands is in any way degrading, and discouraged the notion that the ambition of the artisan ought always to aim at rising above a handicraft. What indeed is every sculptor's and painter's occupation except a handicraft?
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