I believe that a conviction of the new truer charity, and of the futility of the old modes, is destined to sink deeper and deeper into men’s hearts, until our working classes will perhaps fall into the extreme in unforgiving hardness towards those whom unthrift, profligacy, idleness, have brought to want.  But with this conviction is growing up the absolute necessity of more technical schools and better industrial training.  We want to make our handicraftsmen better than any foreigners.  More than that, there are some who say that the very existence of the United Kingdom as a Power depends upon our doing this.  Can we afford any longer to keep up, at a yearly loss of all the power represented by ten thousand pounds a year, that house of Shams and Shadows which we call by the name of the ancient and venerable Hospital of St. Katherine’s by the Tower?

THE UPWARD PRESSURE: 

A PROPHETIC CHAPTER FROM THE ‘HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY’

The most striking part of the great Social Revolution which was witnessed by the earlier years of the twentieth century was the event which preceded that Revolution, made it possible, and moulded it; namely, the Conquest of the Professions by the people.  Happily it was a Conquest achieved without exciting any active opposition; it advanced unnoticed, step by step, and it was unsuspected, as regards its real significance, until the end was inevitable and visible to all.  It is my purpose in this Chapter, first to show what was the position of the mass of the nation before this event, as regards the Professions; and next to relate briefly the successive events which led to the Conquest, and so prepared the way for the abolition of all that was then left of the old aristocratic regime.

Speaking in general terms—­the exceptions shall be noted afterward—­the Professions during the whole of the nineteenth century were jealously barred and closed in and fenced round.  Admission, in theory, could only be obtained by young men of gentle birth and good breeding.  Not that there was any expressed rule to that effect.  It was not written over the gateway of Lincoln’s Inn that none but gentlemen were to be admitted, nor was it ever stated in any book or paper that none but gentlemen were to be called.  But, as you will be shown immediately, the barring of the gate against the lad of humble origin was quite as effectually accomplished without any law, mule, or regulation whatever.

The professional avenues of distinction which, early in the twentieth century, were only three or four, had, by the end of the century, been multiplied tenfold by the birth or creation of new Professions.  Formerly a young man of ambition might go into tho Church, into one of the two services, into the Law, or into Medicine.  He might also, if he were a country gentleman, go into the House of Commons.  At the end of the century the professional career included, besides these, all the various branches of Science, all the forms of Art, all the divisions of Literature, Music, Architecture, the Drama, Engineering, Teaching, Archaeology, Political Economy, and, in fact, every conceivable subject to which the mind of man can worthily devote itself.