PROTECTION OR EDUCATION?
IT is a very common error to suppose that Free-traders think that English trade is in so satisfactory a state that it is needless, if not impossible, to dream of making im- provements in it. No doubt it is a convenient error as well as a common one. It enables the Protectionist advocate to defeat us, as he thinks—at all events, as he means his audiences to think—by the simple process of quoting exceptions to what we are supposed to have set up as a universal rule. You hold,' he says, that from the point of view of English commerce and English industry we are living in the best of all possible worlds. What do you make, then, of this trade or that other trade which, as I shall prove to you, is on its last legs ? One exception to a . universal proposition is as good as a hundred, and I can name not one only, but ten.' This answer might possibly be as conclusive in substance as it certainly is in form if the picture drawn in it of the Free-trade case had any .truth in it. But it has not. Free-traders have never committed themselves to any statement so preposterous. They have never denied that English trade might, as regards some, if not many, of its branches, be in a very much better state than it is. They have never pretended that it would not be in a better state if there were no Pro- tective duties in other countries. They have been content to insist that Protective duties are only one cause among many why English trade is not more prosperous than it is, and that the disadvantages it suffers from would only be made greater if we introduced similar duties into this country.
The Times of Tuesday contained a valuable sketch of education in Germany, and of its influence upon com- mercial progress. Before the fiscal controversy was • started we used to hear a great deal about the educational • superiority of Germany. Since that time we have heard very much less. Theorists who wish to introduce a new explanation of a particular disease naturally look with disfavour at any rival essays in diagnosis. It is impos- sible, however, to read the Times account of the German elementary schools without recognising the superiority of the foundation laid in them over anything that we can show in England on at all a similar scale. The German system is rooted in common-sense. "The children are taught to speak, read, and write correctly ; and particular pains are devoted to secure clear enunciation and good pronunciation. Thoroughness is the great aim, quality not quantity of accomplishment." If we compare this standard with that to which the elementary school in England conforms, we shall see that if we are to rival the Germans in education we must begin at the beginning. With us the child comes for the most part to the continuation or technical school with no experience of thoroughness on which to build his later studies. Nor do the Ger- mans leave children to themselves, as we do in England, when the elementary schooling is over. The continuation schools, indeed, are not yet universal in Germany. In some of the States they are compulsory ; in others they are set up, and attendance at them enforced, at the pleasure a the focal authority. But everywhere they are becoming more general, and everywhere they are of the same character and carried on with the same object. In Dfisseldorf, for example. some sixteen hundred boys attended the compulsory classes last winter, the instruction given in these classes varying according to the trades which the students meant to follow. This preparation ends at seventeen; but it leaves those who have been subjected to it in a very different position as regards preparation for their future careers from any that a boy can hope to attain who has never had any systematic and thorough instruction since he left the elementary school, and perhaps not much of it there.
In a speech delivered some four weeks back, and since reprinted by the Liberal League, Mr. Haldane gives examples of some English industries which have declined, Inot because the goods manufactured in them are kept out of foreign countries by Protective duties, but because the goods themselves are inferior to those which are produced in foreign countries. One of these is cellulose. The German manufacturers make a finer quality of cellulose than the English manufacturers. We have not yet suc- ceeded in making it so white as they do, and for many of the uses to which cellulose is now put whiteness is an essential quality. How did the German manufacturers set about obtaining this whiteness ? Twelve of them, says Mr. Haldane, "combined together and put down £100,000, providing besides £12,000 a year, and in one of the suburbs of Berlin, near the great University, founded an institution which we have nothing like in this country. They had the most distinguished Professor of Chemistry that they could get from the University of Berlin at the head of it; they gave him a large salary; they employed under him the best highly technically trained assistants that the University and the Technical Schools of Berlin could produce Whenever they had a problem, whenever they found that the British manufacturer was making his celluloid a little whiter, they said to their experts, 'Will you show us how to make ours whiter still?' The investigators were set to work, and we were beaten nearly out of the field." How would retaliatory duties or Protective duties help us here ? We have been beaten, not by tariffs, but by our inferior knowledge of our own business. A general who has assigned the overwhelming numbers of the enemy in explanation of his defeat naturally dislikes a correction which shows that the result was due to a want of tactical skill which would probably have been fatal if the relative strength of the two armies had been reversed. Or take the case of colour dyes. If we had been beaten by the French in this branch of trade, we should probably explain it by their greater taste or their better climate. But no one has ever heard of German taste, nor is the German sun so exceptionally bright that it constantly supplies those who work under its beneficent rays with a, kaleidoscopic succession of new tints. No; the explanation lies in a sentence. "In the German trade there are employed some five hundred first-rate chemists ; in the English coal-tar trade there are employed some forty chemists." We have our part, indeed, in the German success. We supply the raw material of it. "Our own coal-tar," says Mr. Haldane, "goes out to Germany in great quantities, and it is there treated by the great chemical firms in such a fashion that we cannot compete with them at all." They have used their newly developed skill in one direction which is specially injurious to us. Mr. Haldane describes a walk he lately took in Berlin, and the pride with which his German companion told him that certain tall chimneys belonged to Professor Fischer's laboratory, "where they are making all sorts of discoveries, and among them how to develop the artificial indigo which is to ruin your Indian trade." That is a very serious consideration for the rulers of India. But if artificial indigo is to drive natural indigo out of the market, it is better that the supply of the artificial product should be in the same hands that have hitherto held the natural product. In this way the loss to one part of the Empire will be made good in some degree by the gain to another part. Englishmen seem to prefer that the injury to India should be inflicted for other people's benefit rather than for their own. This may be a pretty sentiment, but it is not business, and the effect of in- dulging it is simply to impoverish England as well as India, and to allow Germany to get the better of both. What greater chemical skill means to Germany, what the want of it means to England, is shown by the fact that, while the big chemical firms in Germany are paying dividends of 24 or 26 per cent., many of our chemical works are paying next to nothing. .
It is easy to imagine an objection that will be taken at this point. Do you expect us, it will be said, to believe that all these industrial successes can be traced to the thoroughness of German elementary education and to compulsory attendance at continuation schools ? Certainly not. What we do want people to believe is that these successes come from an appreciation of the value of educa- tion, of which the elementary and continuation schools are only indications. It is necessary that the workman should be educated if he is to profit by his employer's guidance. But it is even more necessary that the employer should be educated, or he will not be able to give the workman the -right sort of guidance. In both these respects we are at a disadvantage. The workman is badly taught at school, or rather, perhaps, taught the wrong things, and when he comes to learn his trade he does not bring to the study of it that habit of thoroughness which he must get somehow if he is to keep abreast of modern conditions. But the employer is equally ignorant, it may be, of the theory of his own trade, while he has not the practical skill which in the workman sometimes stands to him in the place of theory. The manufacturer must be educated equally with the mechanic. When we have accomplished this, we shall find that high tariffs will be of small avail in keeping English goods out of the world's markets.
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