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acted personally. They might laugh at him individually, as
representing Gellert's humorous poem of the lame man on the
shoulders of the blind, but he entreated the Commissioners to
act the part of Hercules in æsop's fable, and help the carter who
has put his own shoulder to the wheel. (Hear, hear.)
Mr. J. Johnson urged the claims of the deputation, by saying
that in central London they had the most skilled workmen, who
needed more than any others a technical institute, so as to be
able to get access to the best designs to help them in their work.
They wanted something for the young workmen, to bridge over
the time between leaving school and coming out as workmen on
their own responsibility. As a consequence of this need, he
believed, much of the trade had been transferred to the more
highly-educated workmen of the Continent. But he believed the
citizens of Central London only wanted the opportunity and they
would recover their lost position. Then there was no doubt they
wanted opportunities for physical recreation. With regard to
means, he thought they should plead not only for an institute,
but also for an endowment; for to give them a building without
an endowment would be of little use, because the ratepayers could
not bear the taxation to sustain the institute. As shewing the
need of the institute for both mental and physical recreation and
instruction, he mentioned that at the last census there were 13,000
males between the ages of 15 and 25 years within the area of
the Poor Law administration of the Holborn Union, which
comprised Clerkenwell, St. Luke's, Holborn and the Charterhouse.
Mr. Easterling pleaded on behalf of St. Luke's, saying theirs
was the most densely populated of all the districts represented by
that deputation. Their ratepayers were poor, and their liabilities
heavy; and he thought they might say, with Clerkenwell, that
they housed many of the poor who had been driven over the
borders from the City ; beside which they had many of the
employes in the City. He found, from experience, that they got
children in their Sunday Schools and Bands of Hope, but after
the ages of 14 or 15 years, they lost the majority of them,
because of the need of some inducement to keep them together.
It was to supply this want that they asked, in one sense, for the
institute similar to that which was so ably conducted in the East
End by Sir Edmund Currie. (Hear, hear.) And if recreation
and instruction were wanted in the East End, he was quite sure
it was needed here.