AND ON THE CONTINENT.
139
considerable amount of technical discussions. The contributionsof operatives are said to be often, from a practical point of view,so admirable that the paper lias subscribers among English fore-men and managers in spinning-mills in India, Japan, and Russia .Interesting for the Continental observer in a similar direction is avisit to some machinery exhibitions in the industrial districts.The operatives here crowd around the exhibited objects and discusstheir advantages and failings. It is also a remarkable fact thatthe trade society of the spinners lets the capability for its secre-taryship of the Amalgamated Societies depend upon a purelytechnical examination; the answering of questions in writingunder control is specified. The “ Cotton Factory Times ” alsourges the greatest possible use of the aid of technical training onthe part of the operatives (15). This advice is followed so muchthe more frequently because the “ limited ” principle of the cottonindustry in England , as in India, grants to young people withtechnical knowledge from the operative classes at the present timemanifold opportunities for bettering their position.
A mark of the technical inclination of the English operative isthe Mutual Technical School (16) at Oldham , founded solely byoperatives. In it there are lectures, in which the membersmutually teach one another about the particular branches in whichthey are specially at home. Business managers and similarpractical people also give lectures here. The school has graduallyacquired the possession of all the various machines of the cottonindustry. It is exclusively under the control of the operatives.
What has been said shows how the opposition, even hatred,against machinery which permeated the operative in the firstperiod of centralised industry, and is often acquiesced in by phil-anthropic observers, has in Lancashire at the present day beenput on one side. If the operative still hopes as hitherto for socialprogress, he knows that the means lie inthe extension of machinery.
But how essential a control full of understanding is for themachine to be worked, and this latter’s suitability to the nature