es, sooner or later,
in this competitive creation, an individual replacement and a push
towards the abyss. The very lowest of them must understand the machine
they contribute to make and repair, and not only is it a fairly complex
machine in itself, but it is found in several types and patterns, and so
far it has altered, and promises still to alter, steadily, by
improvements in this part and that. No limited stock-in-trade of
knowledge, such as suffices for a joiner or an ostler, will serve. They
must keep on mastering new points, new aspects, they must be intelligent
and adaptable, they must get a grasp of that permanent something that
lies behind the changing immediate practice. In other words, they will
have to be educated rather than trained after the fashion of the old
craftsman. Just now this body of irregulars is threatened by the coming
of the motors. The motors promise new difficulties, new rewards, and new
competition. It is an ill look-out for the cycle mechanic who is not
prepared to tackle the new problems that will arise. For all this next
century this particular body of mechanics will be picking up new
recruits and eliminating the incompetent and the rule-of-thumb sage. Can
it fail, as the years pass, to develop certain general characters, to
become so far homogeneous as to be generally conscious of the need of a
scientific education, at any rate in mechanical and chemical matters,
and to possess, down to its very lowest ranks and orders, a common fund
of intellectual training?

But the makers and repairers of cycles, and that larger multitude that
will presently be concerned with motors, are, after all, only a small
and specialized section of the general body of mechanics and engineers.
Every year, with the advance of invention, new branches of activity,
that change in their nature and methods all too rapidly for the
establishment of rote and routine workers of the old type, call together
fresh levies of amateurish workers and learners who must surely
presently develop into, or give place to, bodies of qualified and
capable men. And the point I would particularly insist upon here is,
that throughout all its ranks and ramifications, from the organizing
heads of great undertakings down to the assistant in the local repair
shop, this new, great, and expanding body of mechanics and engineers
will tend to become an educated and adaptable class in a sense that the
craftsmen of former times were not educated a