hose hours made not
competitive, and not oppressive to the workmen.

141. Have you found that the instruction which you have been enabled to
give to the working classes has produced very good results upon them
already? I ought perhaps hardly to speak of my own particular modes of
instruction, because their tendency is rather to lead the workman out of
his class, and I am privately obliged to impress upon my men who come to
the Working Men's College, not to learn in the hope of being anything
but working men, but to learn what may be either advantageous for them
in their work, or make them happy after their work. In my class, they
are especially tempted to think of rising above their own rank, and
becoming artists,--becoming something better than workmen, and that
effect I particularly dread. I want all efforts for bettering the
workmen to be especially directed in this way: supposing that they are
to remain in this position forever, that they have not capacity to rise
above it, and that they are to work as coal miners, or as iron forgers,
staying as they are; how then you may make them happier and wiser?

I should suppose you would admit that the desire to rise out of a class
is almost inseparable from the amount of self-improvement that you
would wish to give them?--I should think not; I think that the moment a
man desires to rise out of his own class, he does his work badly in it;
he ought to desire to rise in his own class, and not out of it.

The instruction which you would impart one would suppose would be
beneficial to the laborer in the class which he is in?--Yes.

142. And that agrees, does it not, with what has been alleged by many
working men, that they have found in their competition with foreigners
that a knowledge of art has been most beneficial to them?--Quite so.

I believe many foreigners are now in competition with working men in the
metropolis, in matters in which art is involved?--I believe there are
many, and that they are likely still more to increase as the relations
between the nations become closer.

Is it your opinion that the individual workman who now executes works of
art in this country is less intellectually fit for his occupation than
in former days?--Very much so indeed.

Have you not some proofs of that which you can adduce for the benefit of
the Committee?--I can only make an assertion; I cannot prove it; but I
assert it with confidence, that no workman, whose mind I have examined