142
work into National Schools. Since then the Department of Scienceand Art (Circular 44, Manual Instruction) has issued propositionsfor this kind of instruction.
Tile movement for technical education is in general an accom-panying result of centralised industrial development. It meansnothing else than that the English nation applies also, for theeducation of the people, the consequences of a national economicallaw, which depends upon the machine. The North English opera-tive is born and educated for the machine. With Continentalhand-labour he could not compete; on the other hand he is thecheapest operative in the world wherever he tends the most im-proved machinery.
(c) Social relations also grant England a certain start in thecompetition of nations. Two conditions come into' account. IfUre had at one time to- complain that nowhere in the world wasthe relation between labour and employer worse than in England ,it is to-day more peaceful than in the principal competing industrialcountries. Whilst in Germany , certainly, the turning point ofthose differences has not yet been reached—we are thinking aboutthe operatives’ press-organs only now making their appearance inthe valleys of decentralised industry—in England the personalhatred of the connection has disappeared. Employee and employerstand opposite to one another as business men, at least in thegreat industry of the North of England .
But especially in the cotton industry has that principle ofantagonism between Capital and Labour disappeared. The opera-tive knows that his chief interest is bound up with that of hisemployer in keeping the markets for his industry. Only by theirloss could he lose his high standard of living. Therefore he doesnot look with envy at the riches of his employer. Practicallyenough he argues: “ An employer who is doing well can pay goodwages” (19). The chief proof for the feeling of this commoninterest is the position of the trade unions of Lancashire on theeight-hours question. As a matter of principle the warmestadherents of the eighhhours day believe they would injure them-selves by its introduction at the present juncture, because they areafraid of driving a portion of the cotton industry away to foreign
19. Compare, for further particulars, my book “On Social Peace,” II.,p. 306. ’ ’