For a crowded country like ours to maintain a leading position in industry is obviously a necessary condition either of welfare or progress.  It is of first importance to secure work of high quality.  A highly civilised and trained nation must hold its own by the superior quality of the articles produced as well as by being able to supply both its own needs and to compete in prices with others by the quantity of output.  It may be possible, for example, to hold the market for fine spinning when other countries are well able to supply coarse yarns from their own factories.  Hitherto this country has been able to maintain a lead in industry largely through causes which are no longer operative.  Thus, we had (1) a settled Government when Germany and Italy were divided into a number of small and inefficient and often very badly governed States, when France was exhausted and unsettled, and when America was only in its infancy; and (2) the advantage due to the fact that the great discoveries and inventions which advanced industry were mostly made in Britain, when industry was developing at the close of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century.  Many of these inventions were made by manual workers who, by intuitive genius, saw what was needed to meet the requirements that arose in practice.  There was not then that fund of accumulated scientific knowledge and experience in existence which anyone must have before he can make any advance or improvement to-day.  There was an interesting print published some forty years ago giving portraits of the Englishmen who had made contributions to practical science and who might have been assembled together in one room in 1808.  It included many who made their inventions as manual workers.  Murdock, who invented a new lathe, and developed the use of coal gas, worked until over forty years old for a wage of a pound a week; Davy had been apprenticed to an apothecary; Bramah, who invented a new hydraulic press, once worked with a village carpenter; Bolton and Watt and Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam hammer, were practical engineers.  Never in the world’s history has there been such a galaxy of practical talent and inventive power as those whose portraits are shown in this picture.  Now a larger amount of preliminary knowledge as to what has already been done and of the sciences is necessary, in most cases at least, before useful inventions can be made.  The more widely this scientific knowledge can be made available throughout all classes in the country the greater is the possibility of maintaining our lead.  It is also important to maintain, so far as technical education can give it, skill in carrying out methods already established and improving them, and also in making the worker more adaptable to new conditions and altered circumstances instead of being a mere machine able to do one class of work only, and adhering simply to the one rigid method which he may have learnt.  But knowledge and training are not all that is wanted.