9 Securing Britain’s Economic Future

Academics, educationalists, and MPs were concerned following the International Exhibition in Paris in 1867 that Britain had lost, or was beginning to lose, its position as the world’s most advanced industrial nation—a process which left unchecked could adversely affect the country’s economic position. As we have already discussed in Chapter 1, this perception was not wholly accurate in the late 1860s. Nonetheless, concern was now in the air, and Lyon Playfair, then Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh University who was responsible for organizing the juries judging the exhibits in Paris, wrote to Lord Taunton, chairman of the Schools Inquiry Commission about the concerns shared by many (though not all) visiting the Paris exhibition and lamenting Britain’s system of technical education compared to those on the continent. Playfair concluded his letter with a call for a government inquiry.¹

In response to Playfair’s letter and the issues it raised, the Society of Arts convened a conference on technical education in London on 23 January 1868. Invitations had been extended to:

the mayors of large towns, presidents of chambers of commerce, presidents of learned and professional societies and the City Companies (it was felt the City Guilds could help), university teachers, school and factory inspectors and, in short, all concerned in one way or another with technical development.²

Several jurors at the Paris Exhibition also attended. Among the 247 notables present were many who would take up “the baton” for technical education and play a prominent role in a variety of initiatives across Britain during the remainder of the nineteenth century. These included Playfair himself, Bernard Samuelson, James Bryce, and Thomas Huxley; Roscoe did not attend, but Joseph Greenwood (Principal of Owens College) did.³ Many of those attending were supporters of educational reform, and many wanted the government to take a leadership role to avoid relying on ad hoc initiatives across the country, however effective. A committee was set up to develop the proposals discussed at the conference; both Huxley and Samuelson were members of the committee. When the committee presented its report in July 1868, it offered a comprehensive definition of technical instruction: “general instruction in those sciences, the principles of which are applicable to the various employments of life.”⁴ Meanwhile, Gladstone’s government had acted promptly after receiving Playfair’s letter, according to Donald Cardwell: “they [the government] instructed ambassadors and consuls abroad to report on technical education in the various countries, as the Schools Commission [Taunton Commission] had recommended that they should.”⁵

The Liberal government set up a select committee on scientific instruction with Samuelson as chairman on 24 March 1868. This select committee followed three earlier Royal Commissions on education. The Royal Commission on the State of Popular Education in England was established in 1858 to consider whether the current elementary education was working, under the chairmanship of Henry Pelham-Clinton, 5th Duke of Newcastle (himself a product of Eton and Christ Church, Oxford). He was also the Colonial Secretary (under Lord Palmerston) for much of the period of this Commission. The Commission decided in 1861 that on the whole the system was working, but recommended that part of the state funding for elementary schools should be paid on the basis of the results of an annual test of the pupils, the so-called payment by results. It ultimately led to the Elementary Education Act of 1870. This report was immediately followed by the Royal Commission on the Public Schools, chaired by the former Foreign Secretary George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon (who was educated by a private tutor before entering St John’s College, Cambridge, at the age of 16), which examined the nine leading public schools following concerns raised about the running of Eton College, with its focus on classics to the exclusion of science. The Commission’s report produced in 1864 waxed lyrical about the value of these schools to the nation, describing them as “the chief nurseries of our statesmen,” but recommended changes to the curriculum (including more science) and their governance. This report led to the Public Schools Act of 1868, which only covered boarding schools. Set up immediately after the Clarendon Commission, the Schools Inquiry Commission had a broader remit to examine the 782 endowed grammar schools in England and Wales (in fact it was asked to examine all schools not covered by the previous two commissions), under the chairmanship of Henry Labouchère, Baron Taunton (Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford), who had been Newcastle’s predecessor as Colonial Secretary. The problems with the endowed schools were that they had moved away from their original aim of educating the poor, and were unevenly distributed across the country, as they tended to be in areas which had been wealthy in the Middle Ages or the Tudor period. Girls’ schools were also underrepresented. When it reported in 1868, the commission recommended that the endowments be used for modern purposes rather than their original intentions under the aegis of an Endowed Schools Commission. Thus schools currently offering free classical education were converted into modern fee-paying grammar schools. Its recommendations were given effect by the Endowed Schools Act of 1869.

Hence all of elementary education and much of secondary education had now been examined; what was lacking was a similar investigation of scientific education, especially for those going into industry. That was the remit of the Samuelson Committee, although it lacked the authority of a Royal Commission. The other members of the committee included Lord Frederick Cavendish (MP for the West Riding), who was famously assassinated as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1882; Lord Robert Montagu (MP for Huntingdonshire), the Conservative Vice-President of the Committee on Education; Henry Austin Bruce (MP for Merthyr Tydfil, later Lord Aberdare), the Liberal Vice-President of the Committee on Education; Edmund Potter (MP for Manchester), a calico printer (and Roscoe’s father-law); George Dixon (MP for Birmingham), an educational reformer; Thomas Bazley (MP for Manchester), a cotton spinner; and Thomas Acland (MP for Devonshire North), also an educational reformer. The committee’s remit was “to inquire into the Provisions for giving instruction in Theoretical and Applied Science to the Industrial Classes” under two headings: the state of scientific instruction and the relation of industrial education in industrial progress. Evidence was taken from witnesses representing a wide range of organizations: Department of Science and Art (South Kensington), the Committee of Council for Education (the government body responsible for education), universities, secondary schools and mechanics institutes, and those engaged in major industries in the principal manufacturing areas.⁶

Roscoe had been Professor of Chemistry at Owens College for almost 11 years when he gave evidence to the Select Committee on Scientific Instruction in June 1868. Responding to questions from the Committee’s members, Roscoe’s evidence (provided by oral testimony and submitted papers) concentrated on Owens College, its comparison with other universities in Britain and Germany, the funding of higher education in Britain, recruitment of well-qualified students, engaging working men in scientific subjects, the role of Working Men’s Colleges, and the training of science teachers. The published report shows the rather ad hoc and repetitive questioning in responding to the particular interests of individual Committee members.⁷ Nevertheless, in his responses Roscoe was able to draw attention to the limited accommodations at Owens College for both lecturing and laboratory work, and the current plans for an extension, his low pay as professor compared with professors at other universities (though he did also receive a portion of the students’ fees), from which materials and equipment had to be provided. He sharply contrasted this provision with those found in Germany, which were expansive to cater to a large student population (with a strict examination system) and were funded by the state. On several occasions Roscoe drew attention to the need for government financial support from “the national exchequer” since institutions such as Owens College, acting as the University of the North and serving the needs of regional industry and commerce, could not rely on voluntary contributions or municipal funding.⁸ Success at higher education necessitated well-qualified students, placing a responsibility on schools to broaden their curriculum and include science; Roscoe was able to point out that more recently the standard of students applying to study at Owens College had improved because of better schools provision, and used this point to emphasize the urgent need to increase the number of good teachers and the provision for teacher training.

Asked about the best way of interesting the working class in scientific subjects, Roscoe spoke about the successful series of Science Lectures for the People in Manchester which were published at a penny each:

By the help of a few friends who assisted me, I arranged a series of Science Lectures for the People … and which were published at a penny each … the number of persons attending the 13 lectures was upward of 4,000; I had over 400 people at my four lectures on elementary chemistry, which I gave to begin with; I charged an admission fee of one penny.⁹

Roscoe was then pressed by Edward Potter on the funding required to sustain such series, and he reiterated that voluntary funding was not a way forward and that “we have found throughout the world that high-class education does not pay its own way.”¹⁰ There was a more fundamental issue for Roscoe when comparing Britain with Germany that was not readily nor quickly resolved: “the love of scientific education, and that the intellectual culture of the people is probably greater throughout the masses in Germany than it is in Britain.”¹¹

The committee reported very quickly in July 1868 and without any dissent. It made a large number of recommendations, and arguably too many. The key recommendations were that every child should have an elementary education, which should teach drawing, physical geography, and “the phenomenon of nature.” Hence elementary school teachers should be taught more science. Furthermore, secondary education should be reformed and include more science, with some schools even being science schools. Colleges of science and schools of scientific education should be given some state funding, as they cannot be run on the basis of fees alone. However, in contrast to the earlier Royal Commissions, the report of the Samuelson Committee did not directly result in any parliamentary legislation. Nonetheless, it set the framework for later Royal Commissions on scientific and technical education.

Soon after the Samuelson Committee had reported, a quite different campaign started up. At the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Norwich in August, a retired Indian Army officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Strange, gave a paper on the “Necessity of State Intervention to Secure the Progress of Physical Science.” While it might seem strange that a retired army officer would be concerned about such matters, Lt-Col. Strange was no ordinary officer. While serving in the Indian Army between 1834 and 1859, he took part in the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. He was also an amateur astronomer. After he retired, Strange proposed to the Indian government that it set up a department to inspect scientific instruments, and he duly became the inspector of instruments. So he was already familiar with the relationship of the state (albeit in this case a colony) and science when he spoke at the Norwich meeting. He argued that there was a crisis in science, in part because science graduates could not afford to follow a scientific career; hence why should anyone study science? He argued that this shortfall in funding could only be solved by state intervention.

The British Association for the Advancement of Science set up a committee in November to study whether there was sufficient provision for physical science in Britain. This committee included many of the leading scientific reformers (and the members of the X-Club), including Tyndall, Huxley, Frankland, Playfair, and Lockyer. The scientific community was asked if there was a course of action, either by government or private initiative, which would improve their lot. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the committee then concluded that there was inadequate provision for science in Britain; the nation had benefited, but the individual scientist had not. While many scientists were keen to see state funding of science, others feared the effect of patronage, so it would become a matter of “who you know” rather than “what you know” (Lockyer had gained his sinecure at the War Office through patronage). Alfred Russel Wallace argued that public competition was “a greater stimulus to true and healthy progress than any Government patronage.”¹²

For academic scientists such as Roscoe, there was a danger that this campaign would divert government money from the civic universities to the funding of institutions such as a national science museum, scientific research outside the universities, and the support of individual scientists in particular. However, the pressure for an inquiry into the relations of the state to science was growing, not least in the pages of Nature, the new journal founded by Lockyer. The other Royal Commissions on education having completed their task, Gladstone agreed in February 1870 to set up a Royal Commission to consider scientific instruction, and it was established under the chairmanship of William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire, who was the Chancellor of Cambridge University and the President of Owens College, in May 1870.

The formal remit of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science was “to make Inquiry with regard to Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science and to Inquire what aid thereto is derived from Grants voted by Parliament or from Endowments belonging to the several Universities in Great Britain and Ireland and the Colleges thereof and whether such aid could be rendered in a manner more effectual for the purpose.” Besides the Duke of Devonshire, the members of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science including several outstanding scientific, educational, and political figures. They included the Marquess of Lansdowne, John Lubbock (MP, banker, and scientific writer), Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth (civil servant and educationalist), Bernhard Samuelson (MP), William Sharpey (Secretary of the Royal Society), Thomas Huxley (Professor of Natural History, Royal School of Mines), William Miller (Professor of Chemistry, Kings College, London), and George Stokes (Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, University of Cambridge). Following the death of Miller in September 1870, Henry J.S. Smith (Savilian Professor of Geometry, University of Oxford) was appointed as a Commissioner.¹³ Norman Lockyer, although he was busy editing his new journal, was appointed Secretary for the Commission as he was still a civil servant in the War Office and it was standard practice for the Secretary to be a civil servant (Figure 9.1).¹⁴

It would be impossible to cover the work of the Devonshire Commission, which produced eight reports over a five-year period, in detail.¹⁵ Clearly the most important report for Roscoe and Owens College was the fifth report on civic universities, which appeared in August 1874. However, the other reports sometimes touched on matters of importance or interest to Roscoe. The first volume, on state-funded institutions in London such as the Science and Art Department, the Royal College of Chemistry, and the School of Mines, was of interest to Roscoe for two reasons. He was heavily involved with the examinations set by the Science and Art Department, and the potential expansion of colleges such as the Royal College of Chemistry was a threat to civic universities such as Owens College. It was even more of a threat to nearby University College, and Williamson spoke against increased state funding for teaching science. The commission recommended the move of the Royal College of Chemistry to South Kensington and as a result of this report, the building in South Kensington intended to house the Royal School of Naval Architecture became the Normal School of Science with the aim of training science teachers, which was headed by Huxley. The second report was on scientific and technical instruction in elementary schools, an issue which was considered again by the later Samuelson Commission of which Roscoe was a member. The third Report on Oxford and Cambridge was of less interest to Roscoe, except insofar as it examined the issue of where research should be carried out, as well as a topic dear to Roscoe’s heart: the importance of a professor being a researcher as well as a teacher.

Museums were also close to Roscoe’s heart and this was the topic of the fourth report. The commission supported the separation of the natural history collections of the British Museum from the main museum and its relocation to South Kensington. It also proposed that the collections of the Patent Office Museum should be merged with the science collections of the South Kensington Museum. Although this merger did not occur for almost another decade, the proposal that the science collections be expanded led to the scientific loan exhibition of 1876. Leaving aside the fifth report (and the related seventh report) for now, the sixth report dealt with the teaching of science in public and endowed schools. While not directly connected with Roscoe, it did encourage science teaching in public schools, most notably Rugby and Eton.

The final report, published in June 1875, was in many respects the most contentious. The early reports had dealt only with scientific and technical education, but this report covered the second part of its remit: the advancement of science. How indeed was science to be advanced, and how should the state assist its advancement? The report surveyed the current support given by the government to science, and it proved to be both extensive and piecemeal. The various institutions and less formal arrangements that linked the state to science had grown up organically over the previous 200 years and hence had become a haphazard jumble. There was strong support for new scientific institutions, especially an astrophysical observatory which was close to the heart of Lockyer, the Commission’s Secretary. There was also a demand that the state should fund individual scientists. There was a call for a government ministry of science to be established. The report supported the idea of the astrophysical observatory and proposed that the Royal Society’s current grant for research of £1,000 to be increased to £5,000 (£600,000 in today’s terms; tiny compared with modern science budgets). In the end, unlike the earlier commissions, the Devonshire Commission did not result in a specific act of Parliament or even a series of concrete actions. The main result of the commission’s deliberations over and above what might have happened anyway (such as the move of the Royal College of Chemistry and the British Museum’s natural history collection to South Kensington) was the increase in the grants disbursed through the Royal Society. These grants were eagerly sought (although the number seeking them soon decreased) and doubtlessly much valuable research was supported in this way, as leading scientists such as William Thomson received grants from the scheme. However, the impact of the Devonshire Commission after five years of work did not transform British science. There are two reasons why this was the case. First the commission had been set up by the Liberals, and the Conservatives (under Benjamin Disraeli) came to power in February 1874 while the commission was still at work. While this may seem a setback, and perhaps was in some ways, the leading Conservative peers, the 15th Earl of Derby and the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, were more enthusiastic supporters of science than Gladstone. However, what the Conservative cabinet lacked were the strong advocates of reform, such as Playfair and Anthony Mundella. Furthermore, Derby was Foreign Secretary and Salisbury was Secretary of State for India. Hence, they were not in a position to directly influence matters. The Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Ralph Lingen (needless to say, a Classics graduate from Oxford), was strongly opposed to additional expenditure on science (perhaps influenced by his experience of the “payment by results” system at the Education Office while he worked there), which led to a stalemate that had to be broken by Financial Secretary William Henry Smith (of the eponymous news-agent firm). Perhaps for this reason he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1878. The other reason for the Devonshire Commission’s lack of success was the impossibility of it fulfilling all the hopes placed on it. A major science-funding program would have required government spending on goals not hitherto seen as the business of the state on an unimaginably large scale, even if British governments were already moving rapidly away from the purest form of Gladstonian prudence.

Let us now turn to the involvement of Roscoe with the Devonshire Commission and its impact on his activities. Roscoe and Greenwood gave evidence to the Royal Commission on 31 March 1871 as part of its review of the metropolitan universities (University College London and King’s College), Owens College, the College of Physical Science in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the Catholic University of Ireland. Their evidence came during a period of intense activity for Owens College; namely, drafting documents for the two parliamentary bills and planning the move to the Oxford Road site. Finance was a key factor in both bills and thus figured prominently in their evidence. Greenwood focused on the wider challenges facing the college and the changes to its governance and administration. The Royal Commission’s first report contained not only Greenwood’s oral evidence, but also important documents drafted by the college and used during their deliberations on the constitution of the College and the “College extension,” as well as detailed financial information.¹⁶ Roscoe gave a detailed account of the chemistry department and compared the provision at Owens with universities in Germany. He benefited from the visit he had made to Germany with Greenwood in the summer of 1868. His evidence contrasted the “hand to mouth” existence of Owens College with the expansive laboratory facilities, the numerous well-paid staff, and the focus on research in many German universities, all funded by the government of the various states.¹⁷ His published evidence includes a list of students working in the chemistry laboratory, their age, duration of their studies, and purpose of their study or proposed occupation. Roscoe was questioned about his role in spreading scientific instruction among the local population and was able to draw attention to the series of Science Lectures organized in Manchester with the assistance of several other scientists.¹⁸

When the fifth report was published in 1874, the Commissioners were clear that Owens College had made strenuous efforts and had established a claim to aid from the state, and therefore recommended:

that the Owens College should receive assistance from Government, both in the form of a capital sum, to be regarded as a contribution towards its Building Fund, and also in the form of an Annual Grant, in aid of its working expenses, with the especial view of enabling it to complete the curriculum of studies by the establishment of New Chairs.¹⁹

Unfortunately, the recommendation had little immediate effect because it was not until 1890 that Owens College (as Victoria University) received its first government grant of £2,250.²⁰ Nevertheless, the evidence by Greenwood and Roscoe helped raise the profile of Owens College and provided details (and challenges) of its important higher education role in the North of England during a period when the College was trying to advance its university status.

During the period of these parliamentary inquiries, attention was beginning to focus more closely on technical education. This was a subject of growing interest to Roscoe because of his increasing involvement with industry and industrialists through his work in the chemistry department at Owens. This interest was further encouraged by his association with several leading figures in an emerging technical education (or instruction) movement, including Bernard Samuelson, Philip Magnus, and Thomas Huxley.

The Society of Arts removed science subjects from their examinations in 1870 since they were replicating examinations of the Department of Science and Art at South Kensington. Having just joined the council of the Society of Arts, Major Donnelly, the inspector for science in the Science and Art Department, then proposed that the society “could continue its useful work by instituting examinations in technology, with papers designed specifically to supplement the science papers set by the Department,” thus restoring the emphasis on technical education.²¹ He went on to suggest that the Livery Companies of the City of London should support technical education because one of the primary purposes of their wealthy Guilds was to support craft apprentices. This proposal was approved by the Society of Arts.²² After protracted discussions, facilitated by the Prince of Wales and the Lord Mayor of London, a conference agreed in July 1873 to build a teaching institute in the City of London. In the following year, a working party chaired by the Liberal politician Roundell Palmer (recently ennobled as Baron Selborne) recommended allocating £10,000 to the institute and £10,000 toward scholarships and support for existing metropolitan and provincial technical colleges. Selborne’s working party also drew up the constitution of the new college.

The City and Guilds of London Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education (CGLI) was formally established in 1878 and the following year took over the technological examinations of the Society of Arts. The original plan was to have a junior technical college in the City and an advanced university-level institute in South Kensington. In May 1880 Philip Magnus (Figure 9.2) was appointed Secretary and Director of CGLI, which was then still without a building. This was a remarkable appointment given his position as a rabbi at a Reform synagogue, although he had lectured at Stockwell Training College (in the theory and practice of education) and had published Lessons in Elementary Mechanics.²³ Progress on the advanced institute was very slow, and at the second annual meeting of the governors of the City and Guilds Institute in 1880 it was agreed that the Commissioners would provide £50,000 toward the building and £50,000 annually to maintain the university. The laying of the foundation stones of the two institutions followed in 1881: Finsbury Technical College on 10 May and the advanced institute at South Kensington on 18 July. Finsbury Technical College opened in February 1883 and the Central Institution (as it was now called) opened in 1884, alongside the Royal School of Mines (RSM) and the Royal College of Chemistry (RCC) in South Kensington.²⁴

In the period after the report of the Samuelson select committee and while the Devonshire Commission was still gathering evidence, two powerful pleas for the importance of academic chemistry were made. In October 1870, at the inauguration of the Science Faculty of University College London, Alexander Williamson, Roscoe’s former professor and employer, gave a speech entitled simply “Plea for Pure Science.” This was not, as the title might suggest, a justification for pure science rather than applied science in academia (a matter with which Roscoe was much concerned), nor was it simply “an outline of the benefits which science confers on mankind,” as Williamson claimed at the beginning of his lecture. He began by stating a need for opposing points of view: “that every worker know and acknowledge the point of view at which he is placed and from which he sees.” He then postulated that there were two schools of thought in education. One side emphasizes efficiency and the acquisition of skills. The other side puts the stress on general principles and the development of one’s mental powers. Hence the first party wishes a young man to have technical instruction, by which Williamson meant professional education, an apprenticeship or pupilage. By contrast, the second party (of which Williamson was clearly a member) wishes a young man, having acquired a knowledge of general principles “accompanied by practice in the methods of their application to simple cases,” to be able to learn a more specific aspect of their business, and “improving its details” in later life. This was precisely the model of technical education advocated by Roscoe at Owens College. Williamson then goes on to show how the science teaching at University College London was an excellent example of the latter, more enlightened method of training the country’s young men. Hence his lecture was a head-on attack on narrow professional training and especially apprenticeships, even presumably when this specialized training was obtained at technical colleges.

Roscoe’s approach was similar to Williamson’s, but at the same time his argument was subtly different in that he put the emphasis on scientific research as the best way of training young men for a technical career. Since his appointment as Professor of Chemistry at Owens College in 1857, Roscoe had held strong opinions on the relationship between the courses at Owens College and industry. These opinions were informed through his experiences studying with Robert Bunsen at Heidelberg, his visits and interactions with other German scientists, and his knowledge of the German education system, with its universities and polytechnics. The universities were focused primarily on research and advancing knowledge and understanding in science, while the polytechnics were institutions concerned with technical education and training for industry. Roscoe had taken numerous opportunities to emphasize the importance and benefits of studying the physical sciences (but not to the exclusion of other subjects) and then later to promote original research as a means of education; again, not to the exclusion of research in other subjects, including the arts. His Introductory Lecture following his appointment at Owens in 1857 was titled The Development of Physical Science, and Roscoe not only provided a historical survey and the benefits of studying the physical science for civilization and Britain, but also drew attention to the important role of laboratory instruction alongside lectures.²⁵

By contrast, in his important lecture “Original Research as a Means of Education” at the formal opening of the extension of Owens College in October 1873, Roscoe stressed the importance of original research:

The subject of the value of original scientific investigation may be considered from many points of view. Of these, that of the national importance of original research is the one which naturally first engages attention; and it does not take long to convince us that almost every great material advance in modern civilisation is due, not to the occurrence of haphazard or fortuitous circumstances, but the long-continued and disinterested efforts of some man of science.²⁶

He continued on the theme of national importance:

As soon as English people see clearly the imperious necessity for encouraging, stimulating and upholding original research as contained in the seeds of our future national position, they will not be behindhand in securing the free growth of those seeds. It is, therefore, the bounden duty of all those whose employment or disposition has led them to feel the truth of this great principle, to leave no stone unturned to make widely known and keenly felt the importance of the national encouragement of original investigation.²⁷

He briefly surveyed the important role that original research was playing in France, Germany, and United States, before pointing out how little is known about the chemical elements and the opportunities that lie ahead:

Among the sixty-three different elements of which the earth, so far as we know, is made up, there are many which have been found only in the minutest quantity. A few only of these rare substances are employed in the arts and manufactures, or are known to play any part in the economy of nature; the rest are substances of interest at present only to the scientific chemist. It would, however, be presumptuous on our part were we to assume that the existence of these bodies is a matter of no moment, for we are constantly learning that substances hitherto supposed to be useless are of the most vital importance. Hence it is obviously our duty to get to know all we can about the properties of each, even the rarest, of these elementary bodies, and especially about their relation to, and mode of action on, the other elements.²⁸

Again, Roscoe emphasized the importance of research in all subjects, not just in the physical sciences, but noted the particular benefits that research in chemistry could bring to industry and the prosperity of the Britain.

The second Gladstone Liberal government replaced the Conservative government of Disraeli in April 1880. Gladstone appointed the ardent educational reformer Anthony Mundella as Vice-President of the Committee of the Council and hence the de facto education minister.²⁹ Between 1880 and 1886, Mundella “set about a series of inquiries and reorganizations covering the whole sphere of educational activity,” especially technical education. As a manufacturer in Leicester, he had been struck by the differences with Leicester and the similar town of Chemnitz in Saxony, where he also had a factory. Keen to alert his fellow politicians and other policymakers about the superior nature of German education (as he saw it), he induced his agent in Chemnitz, Henry Felkin, to gather information about the educational situation in Saxony. This was published as Technical Education in a Saxon Town in May 1881 for the Council of CGLI, thereby showing the close links between that institution, Magnus, and Mundella.³⁰ The preface by an anonymous author associated with Gresham College remarks that the aim of the pamphlet was to show:

what kind of provision is being made in Germany to meet these new wants, may help those who are endeavouring to promote technical education in England to avoid errors resulting from inexperience, to appreciate the educational requirements of manufacturers and artisans, and to understand the best means of providing for these requirements.

He admitted, however, “What will strike every one who carefully examines the figures contained in the following pages, is the great cost of a well-organised system of technical instruction.”³¹ Felkin gave a thorough survey of the education provided in Chemnitz from elementary schools upward, but played particular attention to the Royal Technical Institution, with floor plans and details of its courses. This institution had replaced the “old apprenticeship system [which had] become obsolete and gone overboard for ever”;³² a provocative statement given the importance attached to the apprenticeship by British manufacturers and trade unions. Felkin’s little book fueled public concern about the English technical education system falling behind its German counterpart (as it had been intended to do). This anxiety enabled Mundella to persuade Gladstone to establish the Royal Commission on Technical Instruction in August 1881, under the chairmanship of Samuelson, who had chaired the earlier select committee on the same topic. Given the existence of this committee and the Devonshire Commission, one might wonder why this royal commission was needed. However, given the growing anxiety (partly fomented by Mundella) about English technical education falling behind its rivals, the remit of the commission was:

to inquire into the Instruction of the Industrial Classes of certain Foreign Countries in technical and other subjects, for the purpose of comparison with that of the corresponding classes in this Country; and into the influence of such Instruction on manufacturing and other Industries at home and abroad.³³

The members of the commission were a distinguished group from politics, academia, business, and education, including Roscoe himself, seasoned by his experience of serving on the Royal Commission on Noxious Vapours between 1876 and 1878. John Slagg was a Manchester businessman and a Liberal MP for Manchester (1880–1885) who became President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce.³⁴ Swire Smith had served an apprenticeship in the textile industry in Keighley before starting his own business, and later was appointed Secretary of a new trade school council in Keighley and the local Mechanics’ Institute; in 1873 he published a widely circulated book, Educational Comparisons, that reviewed education provision in France, Germany, and Switzerland.³⁵ William Woodall was Liberal MP for Stoke on Trent (1880–1886) and senior partner in a china-manufacturing business at Burslem.³⁶ The architect and art historian Gilbert Redgrave was Secretary of the Commission; he later became a schools inspector and Assistant Secretary to the Board of Education in 1900. Roscoe later grumbled that unusually the Commissioners had to pay their own expenses because the government was only covering the secretarial and printing costs.³⁷

The Commissioners divided themselves into small groups to undertake visits to major cities in France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, and Italy to see how schools and other educational institutions approached “instruction of the industrial classes in technical and other subjects.”³⁸ Besides taking evidence from a number of British witnesses, the Commissioners also visited educational establishments in London, Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Liverpool, Oldham, Barrow, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Keighley, Saltaire, Macclesfield, Burslem, Nottingham, Bristol, Bedford, Kendal, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast, and Cork. Besides the Commissioners, several other respected and knowledgeable experts were asked by the chairman to undertake investigations on behalf of the commission and submit reports on their findings.

With his knowledge and experience of Germany, Roscoe took responsibility for investigating “science-teaching in that country and generally on the Continent.” The Commissioners’ travels through Britain and abroad “were of a most interesting and successful character”:

our object being to ascertain how far the systematic education given to the workmen, to the overseers or foremen, and to the masters abroad, and the comparative lack of a system at home, told in favour of the industrial progress of continental nations and against that progress with us. The evidence we gathered from all quarters abroad, from manufacturers and workmen alike showed us that the beneficial effect of technical-school training upon industry was universally admitted; and our visits proved that the sums of money voted by both State and municipality were far in excess of what were then applied to British education.³⁹

While the definition of technical instruction proved contentious, Roscoe for his part was very clear on the nature of technical instruction under investigation by the commission:

No one whose opinion is of value pretends that the technical school can supplant the workshop or the factory. To be an adept in any handicraft the experience of long continuous work in the shop or at the loom is, of course, essential. The school teaches the principles, scientific, mechanical, or artistic, upon which the industry is based. The workshop puts those principles into practice. The school does not consider economy of production; at any rate it cannot carry out economy in detail; whilst in practice economy, that is, the proper relations between production and expenditure and between quality and quantity, is an essential condition of successful work.⁴⁰

The commission published two reports. The first report in 1882 was only 30 pages long and was just a preliminary survey. The second report, published two years later, was much more substantial. In addition to the main report, there were four other volumes. The second volume contained reports by Herbert Jenkins, Secretary of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, on agricultural education in North Germany, France, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, and the United Kingdom, and by William Mather, on technical education in the United States and Canada. The third volume comprised Mather’s report on technical education in Russia; a report by Thomas Wardle, a silk dyer who collaborated with William Morris, on the English silk industry; and a report on technical education in Ireland by William Sullivan, a chemist who became President of Queen’s College, Cork (now University College Cork). Evidence relating to Ireland was also the subject of the fourth volume, and the fifth volume contained reports from other countries. It is perhaps a little curious that a Commission whose origins lay in a book about German education should devote so much space to Irish education and seemingly little to Germany.

Completing the final draft of this report and its companion volumes must have been a lengthy task that cut into vacation periods, as Roscoe relates in his autobiography:

With regard to the preparation of the Report—a most difficult and tedious task—had I not invited several members of the Commission and our indefatigable secretary to visit me during my summer holidays, on more than one occasion at Graythwaite, on Windermere, it would, I believe, never have been licked into shape. Here we worked steadily at it, and at the finish Mr. Swire Smith, Mr. Magnus and myself gave the last touches to our recommendations at Sir Bernard Samuelson’s country house in Devonshire.⁴¹

The commission’s recommendations included:

Rudimentary drawing be incorporated with writing as a single elementary subject

Advocated more teaching of agriculture and craft work

Advocated more teaching of science and art in training colleges

More support for [City and Guilds of London Institute]

Greater powers for local authorities to establish more technical and secondary schools

Advocated less part-time employment for children

Recommended more systematic training for young workers in work schools and that employers and trade organizations should make financial contributions to help realise this recommendation.⁴²

Broadly, as Margaret Gowing concluded, while “their reports noted great educational advance at home, their evidence showed still greater progress abroad, and they urged, above all, local authority provision of secondary and technical schools.”⁴³

These recommendations attracted broad support, and The Times was sympathetic:

whatever may be the progress of other nations in technical education and in manufactures, our own industries also are full of vigour; that we already possess considerable opportunities for theoretical instruction in the technical sciences and in art applied to industry; that these opportunities are capable of increase on their present lines; that the value of such instruction and the necessity for its further development are felt by those most directly interested; and that this development is making sure, though gradual and perhaps somewhat tardy, progress.⁴⁴

But with so much detailed information covering so many different aspects, it was not surprising that various criticisms were expressed: pointing out where good practice was already undertaken; the lack of adequate financial support, especially from government; and the lack of a coordinating and regulating body. Among workers there was strong opposition to the principles of technical education, as the historian, Bernard Cronin has pointed out:

The industrial or craft apprenticeship system was a form of technical education in relation to which new forms of technical education were to be developed. Technical education, as perceived by those for whom it was intended, the workers, was not merely a system of theoretical training instituted as an adjunct to practical work carried on in the workshops. In the separation of theoretical and practical elements in a definition of technical education, unquestioned importance is given to the former.⁴⁵

After all, since a trade or industry had developed in the past under the apprenticeship system, it was better to retain this tradition and rely “on the skill and energy and industry” of the worker.⁴⁶ But through the nineteenth century the mode of production became more technological, necessitating a transition from an artisan workforce to a technically trained one.

Many manufacturers were also resistant to the changes embodied in technical education. They were concerned about outside interference in the workings of industry and “were not going to encourage something which would bring all the workmen from the different works together to discuss matters in which trade secrets were involved.”⁴⁷ But on the other hand, there were enterprising manufacturers such as William Mather of Messrs. Mather and Platt who organized a tour of the company’s private technical evening school for a group of the Technical Instruction Commissioners. The school had 68 scholars and provided science teaching (with drawing exercises) for the apprentices employed in the works. Echoing Roscoe’s position on the relationship between workshop and school (separate but related):

In Mr Mather’s opinion, you must bring the school to the workshop; you cannot bring the workshop to the school. Bringing the school to the workshop is simple and inexpensive. The teachers here are draughtsmen in the works … he [the teacher] knows what each person is working at each day, and has the opportunity of pointing out something connected with work he is doing. The teaching has an actual bearing on his every day work. The students are rewarded not only for proficiency in drawing, but for regular attendance, and actual proficiency in their manual work. It is also a condition of employment that they should be regular in their attendance here.⁴⁸

The Mather and Platt school was an enlightened example but unique to Lancashire, and confirmed the voluntary approach supported by most manufacturers. This stance was consistent with the laissez-faire approach of governments toward industry, as Cronin concluded:

Commitment to laissez-faire doctrines was a prominent feature of Victorian Britain’s economic affairs and was reflected in attitudes to technical education … and [the Commission of 1884] revealed the government’s reliance upon the workings of the market with respect to technical education, demand for technical education would call forth appropriate supply; if demand was not forthcoming supply would respond accordingly.⁴⁹

Adherence to the philosophy of market forces on the part of government and industrial leaders would play a major role in the shaping of legislation on technical education for the remainder of the nineteenth century and would thwart the ambitions of the leading figures of the technical education movement such as Samuelson, Magnus and Roscoe.

However, for Roscoe himself there was one consolation. Samuelson sent Roscoe an appreciative letter commenting on his outstanding contribution to the Commission, remarking that during the period that the Commission was active, he had “learnt that your loyal support as a colleague and your advice on all matters of business have been almost of equal value as your ability as a man of science.” Given his sterling contribution to the Samuelson Commission, Mundella put Roscoe’s name forward to Gladstone for a knighthood, not only for his “great and valuable services on the Technical Commission” but also in recognition of “your distinguished service to science and education,” which was duly communicated to Roscoe by Gladstone in June 1884. In due course, he would probably have been given a knighthood for his presidency of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1887, something that Roscoe implicitly acknowledges by putting his knighthood on the facing page to the one about his presidency of the British Association in his autobiography.⁵⁰ Nevertheless, his knighthood does show his massive contribution to the Samuelson Commission and to the development of technical education more generally. Thomas Huxley’s letter of congratulation had an amusing P.S.: “Shall I tell you what your great affliction henceforward will be? It will be to hear yourself called “S’enery Roscoe” by the flunkies who announce you.”⁵¹

The publication of the Commission’s reports and his knighthood did not end Roscoe’s commitment to technical education. Like several of his fellow Commissioners, Roscoe undertook many speaking engagements throughout Britain between 1882 and 1885. While acknowledging that he “was not behind my colleagues in their missionary work … to make the conclusions and recommendations arrived at widely known,” Roscoe nevertheless challenged more fundamentally the psyche of the English nation:

English characteristics have been, and still are, eminently practical. We prided ourselves, and still do, I presume, on being a practical nation, and we have been rather in the habit of looking upon professors and schoolmasters as theoretical kind of people, who are not up to very much good in the battle of life. Now, I think we are beginning to acknowledge that theory is only a systematic practice—and practice without theory is very often poor practice—and we recognise that science is but ordered knowledge, and that if we are to succeed in the great endeavours which we as a nation have to make, if we are to keep abreast of the progress other countries are making, and are to preserve the position of superiority for our manufactures and trade we have enjoyed in the past, every effort must be made to put our educational house in order and to see that the sciences upon which the manufactures and industries of this country are based are taught to the people of every class from top to bottom.⁵²

Roscoe’s mission to improve technical education in Britain was a major achievement, which stands on equal terms with his important contributions to Owens College. Severing his ties with Owens College and the Victoria University in 1886 did not diminish his determination and commitment to bring about educational reform. Having been a strong and effective advocate on behalf of Owens College and the chemistry department, Roscoe could contemplate now a broader canvas where changes could bring national benefits. During his time as an MP (1885–1895), when legislation on technical instruction was being promoted more forcibly, Roscoe continued to take every opportunity within Parliament and beyond to promote the major reforms that he (and others) felt were so urgently needed to improve science and technical education. His contributions to further Royal Commissions and Select Committees, his commitment to secure technical education legislation, and his position as Secretary of the National Association for the Promotion of Technical and Secondary Education are all testament to his determination to see Britain retain its position as a major trading nation, able to compete on an equal footing with Germany and the United States.