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67
their trades. They do not receive ordinary lads who have not commenced
any technical training. In some of the great commercial centres in
France there are trade schools ready to receive boys without any technical
training, who are taught, during a period of three or four years, everything
necessary for their equipment as craftsmen. The old custom
among the Germans, from the sovereign downwards, to learn a trade was
a very excellent one. In Germany the boys attend school up to seventeen
years of age, and in Switzerland until eighteen years of age, the later
years being spent in learning a trade. This compulsory teaching of a
trade, which would have to be worked in conjunction with the trades
unions, appears to me to be the only way of stopping the present manufacture
of the undesirab'e casual portion of the population, or those who
by the absence of any early training never have worked and never will
work. With regard to the treatment of the residuum, or unemployable
of the population, additional powers of a compulsory character will have
to be obtained from Parliament,. I do not think the sending of the father
of the family away to a trade colony is likely to prove a great success.
Some endeavour should be made, I think, to plant families in their
entirety upon the land, something after the fashion of what Lord
Carrington has done with his small holdings, which have proved so
successful. This planting of families on the land has its limits. When
we consider that upwards of 60,000 persons are added every year to our
London population the struggle for existence among the abjectly poor
must be terrible. The idea of any legal restriction in the families of
the destitute class of the population is a distasteful subject to talk
about.
We ought to institute in our district a health association of ladies
similar to what is now in vogue in Manchester and Salford, Liverpool
and Birmingham, where these associations have proved so beneficial.
This association, with a lady superintendent at its head, should be in
close touch with all the district visitors and officers in connection with
our institutions. The object would be to influence by their personal
attention and by the distribution of literature on food questions and on
house management the female portion of the population. We should
then have the institutions and the sanitary authority working closely
together. We must acknowledge that we are passing through a period of
great social and economic change, which I believe must tend to the
ultimate good of our race and our country.