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'IBE HISTORY OF THE SYDNEY MECHANICS' SCHOOL OF TS FROM ITS FOUNDATION IN 1833 TO THE 1880'S

Thesis submitted to the School of General Studies Australian National University

for the Degree of Master of Arts in History

15th April 1967

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTIO

PART I--Background and Origins Chapter !--British Origins Chapter 2w~Colonial Background Chapter 3--Foundation in Sydney

P

r

rr~~l833 to 1851

PART III~-1851 to 1883

Chapter 1-~Background Developments Chapter 2w•The School of Arts

Chapter 3-wThe College

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX r~MThe Puzzle of the Initial Step

APPENDIX II~- s.M.S.Ao Technical College•• Courses and Enrolment Figures

l

5 32 54

78

160 178 242

269

i

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SOU CES

THE minutes of the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts to 1909, and nearly all its annual reports up to the present time, were studied

at the Mitchell Library, Sydney. The minutes subsequent to 1909,

and such annual reports as were missing from the Mitchell Library series, were seen at the School of Artso The minutes and annual reports

of the Melbourne Mechanics' Institute~-now the Melbourne Athenaeum--were studied at the Athenaeurn.

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BBRBVIATIONS

A. ch· sholrn (ed~) ,The Australian Fl cyr1 ;,~1Fd:lE., Groli r , ydney, 19650 = - . . ~ - ·

A.D. B.! D. Pike (ed.) , Australian Dictionary of Biogra~hy2 1788-185~, Melbo Uni o Press, V. I, 1966, V. II, 1967.

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INTRODUCTION.

THE culture of every nation is an amalgam of indigenous and exotic ideas. In a new nation--especially one which has been colonized by a parent nation, as distinct from a federation of

local ethnic groups--the proportion of ideas newly borrowed from

elsewhere is usually high. Some ideas may be introduced

discretely, as points of detail; others in complexes, as more or less complete institutions.

Where a particular institution has been imported into one society from another, its fortune in the new environment is a subject for special study. To what extent, if at all, has it

been modified to suit changed conditions? In what ways has this been done••in form, or function, or both? What success has it

. d? enJoye ..

By design, all the formal institutions established in the young colony of New South Wales were imported. The colony

comprised elements from the society of Great Britain, deliberately selected and sent to set up certain specified institutions of

types already familiar to Englishmen. The indigenous culture was brushed aside. But from the beginning some social elements and some institutions were under•represented or not represented at all:

there were few women, Scotsmen or skilled workers; there was no heavy industry, no peerage and no representative government.

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differences in the new society as a whole: in addition its small scale, together with geographical factors such as isolation and dispersal, influenced its character. Similarly, any one part of it was liable to adaptation so that it could fit in better with related parts, and with the physical environment.

During the first decades of settlement in Australia, the mechanics' institute movement was in its incipient stages in Great Britain. By 1833 the movement had produced a fairly

stable form of institution, which had enjoyed ten years of

increasing popularity. The institutes were an attempt, in the first instance, to provide technical education for industrial 'WOrkers; but they adopted other goals as well which had nothing

to do with economic issues--goals related to social, cultural

and moral matters, and even spiritual matters. In its turn the institute movement had freely adapted some ideas borrowed from the Continent.

The Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts, founded in 1833, was the first attempt to establish the movement in New South Wales. Among the institutes founded in the colony it was unique in

certain respects. There was no colonial precedent for it

(discounting the Van Diemen's Land institute); on the other hand it led to precedents in government policy. The colonial

administration and the Colonial Office in Whitehall took an

official interest in it, Governor Bourke being largely responsible for its foundation and some important aspects of its character. A policy of financial support was adopted which was subsequently applied, on a modified basis, to similar groups later established

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elsewhere in the colony. The Sydney group led the other

institutes, and for a brief time helped them, in starting and managing classes and lectures. Alone among the institutes it

got as far as founding a working men's collegeM•the colony's

first attempt to provide cheap post-primary education with an integrated system of classes and examination,. Finally the college, when taken over by the government in 1883, became the

first step in the programme that set up a system of technical education throughout the colony.

This thesis studies the history of the School of Arts from its inception until the time when it ceased to play a significant part in the development of technical education in New South Wales.

The story has been divided into three main parts. In the first part, the first chapter describes the origins of the

institute movement overseas, and the ideas which had been tried out by 1833; the second examines the colonial situation at the

time, and discusses features likely to affect the institute; the

third chapter recounts the events leading to its foundation, surveys the individuals and groups that played prominent parts,

and examines the original constitution. The second part covers the first phase in the career of the School of Arts, fraught with the failures and dissensions which culminated in a crisis in 1851. In the third part, the first chapter brings the picture of the colonial background up to date, and gives an account of continuing

influences from Britain; the second and third chapters cover the

history of the institute proper until the 1880's, and the

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development, first of classes, and then of the working men's

college, up to the point of its transfer to the government.

The conclusion comprises a brief epilougue, sketching the

subsequent history of the institute, and a discussion of those

features in the character of the developing colony which were

reflected in the career of the School of Arts.

The reader should be very cautious about generalizing from

the story of the Sydney institute to that of the institute

movement as a whole throughout Australia. Many schools of

arts and mechanics' institutes, particularly those in the rural

areas, took on such a different character, and experienced such

different fortunes, that an account of them would entail a wide

diversion from the line of enquiry that has been taken here.

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PART !••BACKGROUND AND ORIGINS

Chapter 1--British Ori&ins.

On 13th March 1833 a public notice containing the following

passage appeared in the Sydney Monitor:

••A

large body of mechanics and others residing in Sydney, being desirous to establish an association to promote the diffusion of scientific and useful knowled&e extensively, throughout all ranks of the community of New South Wales ••• a number of

resolutions have been prepared by them ••• with a view to their forming the basis of a Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts, in the progress of which, provision should be made for ••• a Library,

the delivering of Lectures, and the establishment of classes for mutual instruction ••• "

1 Nine days later, at a public meeting at which the S.M.S.A. was formally founded, these aims, objects and activities were

voted into its articles of association. They were typical of the aims and activities specified in the constitutions of the

mechanics' institutes which were then being established in many cities and towns throughout Great Britain.

It is necessary, as a preliminary, to take account of the circumstances in which the institute movement began, and its early character. Great Britain was its birthplace. The first successful mechanics' institution so-called was formally established at Glasgow in 1823, developing from special classes for v.10rkmen

1. Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts. Nadel states that this title was not official until 1837, the School being formally titled "Sydney Mechanics' Institute" until then. (2) There is no evidence for this in minutes, reports or public notices

sighted.

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started by George Birkbeck in 1800. The occasion for the

movement was the Industrial Revolution, which created a new

need for technical instruction; but from the beginning the

situation was complicated by social and cultural factors as well

as economic. As a result it attracted the attention of various

people with special points of view, who added some important

incidental elements to its character.

Since the decline of public education in the seventeenth

century, scattered, tentative attempts had been made to found

working-class educational groups relying largely on mutual

instruction. At first these groups were mainly concerned with

elementary school subjects. The Spitalfields Mathematical

Society, founded in 1717, was perhaps the only notable group.

A change came in 1789 with the formation of the Birmingham Sunday

Society (later Birmingham Brotherly Society), which introduced the

study of scientific subjects. The formation of new pioneering

groups was much more rapid after this; but it should be noted

that the earliest groups were less interested in the sciences,

and included shopkeepers as well as artisans among their numbers.

G

The lines along which the movement grew reflected developments

in the economy: as commerce expanded at home and abroad, the need

for literacy and arithmetical training increased; later, as

industrial technology became more complex and subtle, and subject

to more rapid change, applied science increased in value. This

latter need enhanced the importance of mathematics and grammar,

which were vital ancillaries in advanced education of any kind.

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education for their children. It can be assumed that most of the fathers held jobs ebove the level of unskilled work; but the evidence at hand does not show how many were artisans and how many were shop and office workers, or whether they wanted their

children to qualify for workbench, shop counter or office desk. (This diversity was to have an important effect on the development of the institutes.) Regardless of its origins, however, the

demand for elementary education was so strong that the institutions providing it--largely the Sunday schools 1 and monitorial day

2

schools --grew and spread with remarkable speed. According to figures quoted by Brougham in Parliament, national attendance at elementary schools rose from six hundred thousand in 1830 to twice that number in 1833. 3 The third Report of the Select Committee on the Education of the Lower Orders, tabled in 1818, stated

emphatically, " ••• The anxiety of the poor for education continues ••• 4 daily increasing, and extends to every part of the country ••• "

There was then no national system, either governmental or non-governmental, for imparting knowledge and skills to the work

force according to the requirements of the economy. Apart from calling for reports, the government showed little interest. While endowing the "public0 schools according to tradition, it made no contribution, either financial or administrative, to elementary education for the working classes until 1833. In Parliament many

Tories, including a number of High Anglican churchmen, feared it

7

1. S.J. Curtis: History of Education in Great Britain. London. 1953, p.199.

2. 3. 4.

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as socially evil and dangerous. The first venture by the House

of Commons into this field did not involve the government in

direct administration: instead, funds were voted to aid church

odies in erecting schoolhouses for the education of the poor. 1

The sum voted was £20,000 At this time, calculating from

Brougham's figures, the fraction of English children of school

age actually receiving schooling was something like one in eight.

During the same period, Parliament was fidgetting with one

part of the problem which related to technology--the growing

national need for training in industrial art. In 1830 the

Commons set up a committee on means of promoting art, especially

among the manufacturing population. As a result of its

deliberations, the Normal School of Design was started in 1836, on

a vote of Ll,500. By the time of the World's Fair at the Crystal

Palace in 1851, about twenty such schools had been established

in important industrial centres, with enrolments numbering fifteen

to sixteen thousand. The inadequacy of these efforts was exposed

by the Crystal Palace fair: the standard of design among British

exhibits was sadly inferior to that of the best from the Continent.

This revelation frightened leading British industrialists, and the

government, into more intensive activity. Up to this time the

applied sciences had not received even as much attention as

industrial art.

The torpor of the central government until half-way through

the nineteenth century--an example generally followed by the

regional and local authorities--left the field to any non-governmental

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force, organized or not, which took an interest. This tacit

abdication accorded with the theory of ""oluntaryism0 ... -a label

which dressed it up as positive liberal policy, although it was

really only laisser-faire applied to social problems. In this

context its limitation lay in the facts that, in politics and

economics, Great Britain was an oligarchy, and in England (though

to a lesser extent in Scotland) the social structure was heavily

stratisfied. Nearly all the resources needed for a voluntary

enterprise in education--economic power, political power, prestige

and influence, leisure time, even the existing store of

learning--were vested in arelatively small number of privileged individuals.

The people most directly concerned--the working classesw-did not

even have voting power, and their individual wages were at little

better than subsistence level. Voluntarism in any major enterprise

benefiting the poor usually implied help of some sort from others

more fortunate.

The forces committed by tradition to providing education for

the poor were the church and private or semi-public charity.

sections of the economy with a natural interest, apart from the

workers themselves, were commercial and industrial management.

Those

The established church had no central organization to cope

with the problem. It was left to the parish vicar or curate to

provide what schooling he could for his flock as he and they saw

fit, and to supplement his income with tuition fees. This custom

was little practised. As a group, the only clergymen who were

enthusiastic and active in the cause of mass education were the

evangelists and dissenters.

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Charity schools add schools of indsutry ha existed during the eighteenth century, but had been generally ineffectual, and

. 1

were dying out before 1800. The schools of industry, for one thing, taught the wrong industries (rural labouring skills for boys and domestic crafts for girls) in a rapidly industrializing economy. More important was the rural, parochial basis: the schools were usually attended by poor children wtth whom the patrons had some acquaintance. This was upset by the drift of population to the cities. One feature of urban life was its anonymity, which hid individual paupers from the notice and interest of possible benefactors. The framework of commitment to personal acquaintances that existed in the small community, once destroyed, was not readily reconstructed in the city.

Of the groups naturally interested in the promotion of

education, the more prestigious commercial companies could count -on being able to recruit the sons of well-to-do middle-class

families, educated at their parents' expense. Smaller firms could not have outlaid capital on any sort of academic

apprenticeship for their clerks. It was left to their anxious parents--most of them clerks themselves--to provide what schooling and/or home instruction they could. Schooling was obtained, as often as not, at the dame-schools, which were generally of low

standard and, for families living on clerks' salaries, expensive. In general, the world of connnerce benefited greatly from the sense of responsibility and social pride of lower-middle-class parents, on whom the financial strain must have been severe.

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Large-scale industrialists might have taken the initiative

and found the capital to start schools. A few--Robert Owen and

others 1 --did this; but they were very few. The change to mass

production had introduced a new type of industrial entrepreneur

and a new employee. The entrepreneur was the capitalist, who

came from a different background, employed more men than his

predecessor had done, and had little or no knowledge of the work

they did or the lives they led. He did not feel personally

involved with them, and was not disposed to brighten their future

with gratuitous training at no advantage to himself. Competition

from other manufacturers prompted him to keep his overhead expenses

low. The new employee was the process worker, whose best

qualifications were dexterity in a narrow repertoire of operations,

plus docility and endurance. The manager was confident of hiring

the special skills he needed in the open market.

Early in the revolution, the need to conserve and advance

technology widely was obscured from all but a few industrialists

by the bewildering speed of change. In any case, the expense

of schooling and training a free labour force woµld have had to

be shared by industrialists as a whole--and they were not organized

at the time. The few guilds which had survived and prospered

were now investment corporations. Not until the 18801s did

they begin to finance technical education, and even then their

efforts were primarily a bid to regain respectability: in 1880

1. ibid., p.228.

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their activities, assets and profits had been made the subject of

a Royal Commission. 1

These defections left the task in the hands of the radical

clergy, the workers themselves, and sympathetic, influential

-individuals from many walks of life'J\Politics, business, the

professions, even 11retirenent0

2

Professional and lay churchmen of protestant persuasion were

well in the van of experiments in mass education. Not only did

they play a part in pioneering the mechanics' institutes movement

(in groups such as the Birmingham Sunday Sociaty): they were also

mainly responsible for the development of Sunday schools and

monitorial schools. The Sunday school scheme attacked the

problem of limited time for study, posed by the need for most poor

children to work twelve or more hours a day for six days a week.

The monitorial schools were an attempt to bring means within sight

of ends--to reconcile the educational needs of millions of children

with the dearth of trained teachers and with the pitifully meagre

l. G. Howell: The Conflicts of Capital and Labour, London.1890.p.67.

12

2. Throughout this thesis the term "protestentisrn°, with its related forms, is used in a special sense. By derivation, this and similar generic terms--"non-conformism" and "dissent", emphasize the

rebellion of these sects against the rule and teaching of Rome, but say nothing of the positive doctrines--independence of

conscience, and full responsibility for one's own actions--which moved their adherents to dissent. "Protestantism0 , as applied here, emphasizes these beliefs.

Many evangelical Anglicans who did not follow John Wesley's example in leav·ng the established church agreed with much of

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resources of philanthropy unaided by Treasury.

It is significant that the most interested members of the

clergy were the protestants. The humanist ideas which were

implicit in the Reformation, and which they had inherited, reached

full maturity at some time around 1800. About the same time,

humanist faith in the dignity of man had been grievously affronted

by the degradation of the poor which resulted from the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions.

be ignored.

This was a challenge that could not well

Men like Wesley had fought widespread demoralization headwon

with heroic evangelical campaigns. But the period around 1800 was

at the latter end of the Age of Enlightenment. To many men who accepted the belief that man was ultimately perfectible, and

therefore intrinsically good, it seemedlogical that the root of

evil behaviour must lie not in man himself, but in his circumstances.

Among these one obvious obstacle was ignorance. For the humanist, to be wellwbehaved it was necessary to be not only well-intentioned,

but also wellwinformed. For this reason many radical churchmen,

as well as other men of social conscience, believed that

enlighten-ment was a necessary step towards moral improveenlighten-ment. Some of them considered that it was not merely necessar~ but would in the

long run prove to be sufficient.

This line of thought led from humanism to environmentalism.

Its followers argued that education is not merely for life; it is

also an integral part of life, and all life is a potential source

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instructive influences, and their effects are subject to

modification by teaching. In England a parallel theory had

been applied by utilitarians like Bentham and Howard to the

problem of prison reform; but its fullest development in

relation to mass education had been on the continent, where

educators such as Pestalozzi and Herbert had treated the issue

as a deep spiritual problem.

Pestalozzi shared Rousseau's belief that the aim of

education should be to develop all of man's powers fully and

harmoniously. Rosseau, however, had despaired of enlightening

the poor, and at this point Pestalozzi departed from his teaching.

He went on to postulate that only ignorance and lack of hope

were responsible for the degraded existence of the poor. His

conception of full personal development had strong oral and religious overtones: he adhered firmly to Christian principles

as he saw them--and his view of them strongly emphasized the

importance of love. This emphasis he maintained in both his

writings and his work. Of his experiments in school administration

he said, 0we aim to produce men educated for manhood f irst of all l

and only secondly to train citizens and workers."

Pestalozzi's environmentalism was refined and subtle. His

idea of manhood was an idea of something spiritual; and for him

the greatest service that one could do for a fellow man was to

help him to find his own way to salvation--for find it himself

he must. Of the poor, Pestalozzi asserted1 "Because they have

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been most neglected and are in such desperate circumstances, the regeneration of the lower classes must receive first attention. This calls for an education which arouses the will and vitalizes their powers, for charity only makes bad

1 conditions worse. "

These feelings were reflected in the writings of Herbart, who acknowledged a considerable debt to ttthe great and noble Pestalozzi*', but added some concepts of his own. The opening sentence of his "Aesthetic Presentations" asserts, "The one and the whole work of education may be summed up in the concept--morality." 2 He defined virtue as "the idea of inner freedom which had developed into an abiding actuality in an individual. To develop the attitude of preference for that which constitutes inner freedom, 0 he went on, "is the chief aim of education. 3 To anyone with a taste for moral philosophy, the concept of ~irtue as a form of inner freedom would have been made more

real by contrast with the example of the urban poor of England, wh who were fllnally enslaved as much by the way of life into which

they fell as by the external conditions that started their demoralization.

Herbart offered a highly refined view of the good life as a harmony of morality and intellect. It helps to explain why

the term •tmoral enlightenment" became a catch-cry among many people wtth progressive ideas on education.

1. 2. 3.

ibid., p. 346.

Nevertheless,

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interested men who would have found Herbart's philosophizing

too abstruse (and they were probably in the majority) could

acquire an understanding of the situation which quickened their

sympathies. For most sympathizers in Britain, the case in its

non-material aspects could probably be reduced to something

like the following formula: one--cultural pursuits offer the

possibility of interests and pleasures which can enrich one's

life at any given income-level; two--the main reason why most

working-class people do not appreciate the joys of culture is

not lack of ability, but lack of opportunity; threew•the need

of the poor for spiritual comfort is greater than that of the

rich; four--accepting that the lower social orders are not

inferior intrinsically, their inferior circumstances are a gross

inequity.

There were a number of other arguments for educating the

poor, not in themselves contradictory, which nevertheless had

appeal for people with widely divergent interests, beliefs and

sentiments. Such arguments included the following :

one•-enlightenment leads to moral improvement, and so to divine

salvation; two-•irrespective of their hopes of divine salvation,

the poor should be persuaded to behave well if possible, as bad

behaviour is evil in itself, profaning society and grieving God;

three~-cultivated people are less likely to indulge in violent,

reactive behaviour and get themselves into trouble, which poor

people frequently do; four••cultivated people, being less violent,

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are less likely to injure the established order or its favoured

members through crime or insurrection; five--educated people can

get better jobs, and so improve their standard of living;

six--educated people are more valuable to their employers, and to the

economy generally.

These arguments appealed respectively to the godly, the

students of society and the economists; and each group was offered

two arguments, one suggesting benefits for the poor, and the other

benefits for someone else-~God, or the establishment, or the

entrepreneurs. As a result, when it became obvious that large

numbers of the poor would continue to clamour for education, and

that it was important to the whole economy that they should get

it, many prominent individuals with specifically limited interests

and objectives began to take an active interest in the movement.

But in its incipient stages there were only two main groups who

saw the desirability of mass education--some of the workers

themselves, notably those with anbi tion and the benefi t of some

previous education of training; and the humanists, whose faith

in education was a corollary of their views on moral and spiritual

subjects.

The humanist doctrine that all education should be related

to life and the real world implied that careful attention should

be paid to the physical aspects of reality. It is idle to argue

when or by whom this was first advocated: there were hints of it

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Campanella and others were pleading for general instruction in l

the arts and sciences. It was well developed during the Age of Enlightenment, and Rousseau expounded it at length in

"Emile". He held that in the learning process reasoning is essential, but that imagination precedes reasoning, and

imagination needs the positive stimulus of contact with real objects.

On the continent, theories of this type were applied through the medium of the realschule, and experience of the physical world was pursued in the farm~school experiments of Pestalozzi and

Fellenberg. In Britain, leading nation in the Industrial

Revolution, it was natural that the philosophy of "sense realism0 should be related to industry, and humanist theories to technical

education.

Some British protagonists stressed the fact that skilled

workers were intimately acquainted with many properties of objects in the real world which went unnoticed by othersw~the ways in

which timber shrank and warped; the compressile strength and

\

tensile weakness of stone; the variable temper of steel. Artisans, it was argued, were peculiarly well placed to bring empirical

evidence to the aid of science and other forms of learning. This view led logically to the opinion that for technical education, trade training grounded on elementary schooling was not enough,

as it failed to exploit the trainee's potential fully. It should be supplemented by instruction in higher mathematics and pure and

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and applied science.

But even among those who agreed that widespread technical education was necessary, their agreement posed more problems than it solved. First, there was the question of finance and administration. Before 1800 several Continental nations,

notably among the Baltic states, had founded government systems of technical educationo In Britain, however, voluntarism held sway in this as in other departments of education. Who, then, would provide the resources, including the management? Private

enterprise was as reluctant as the government to take the leado Another major issue was the problem of a syllabus. This question, which is still far from being solved to general

satisfaction even today, was even more baffling to men who were trying to cope with a novel and fluid situation for which they had no precedents.

One section of society which could provide some initiative, drive and organization, and to a limtted extent finance, comprised the protestant communities situated mainly in northern England and Scotland.

In the protestant morality, to the extent that a man lived among his fellows and affected and was affected by them,

deliberation in community affairs was at once his right and his duty. This principle meant much to responsible workingwclass people, who were bound fairly clos,ely to their immediate

neighbourhood and social circle Their involvement, reinforced often by church sermons, fostered a spirit of active democracy.

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The institution which implemented democracy 1n church matters

was the council of church elders-~laymen chosen from among the

parishioners. This served as a model for bodies set up to

govern secular matters. The church council and allied groups

provided the community with a reservoir of experience in oommittee

·work and administration-weven in public speaking. The democratic

spirit and the ready--made committee pattern, working sometimes

through the lodges, were the source of such institutions as

friendly societies, co~operatives and even, in time, trade unionso

Naturally, these bodies tended to be manned by the same people.

The council of elders was thus a nexus where the hopes and attitudes

of the community were concentrated, reconciled, and within limits

satisfied.

This general character of society was especially strong in

Scotlando More remote from the south than the northern English

counties, Scotland had a long history of ethnic and other ties

with Scandinavia. Despite the general use of the English language,

the Scottish culture was quite distinctive. In addition, English

rule of Scotland was not wholly direct. The Scots maintained

many institutions which were not the work of the English government.

One of these was their own educational system. A system to

realize the Calvinist ideal of universal education had been

propounded by Knox as long ago as the sixteenth century, and

thereafter had been pursued with determination and some success,

jointly by church and state. In the eighteenth century universal

primary education was still far off, and standards in the cities

were generally low; but in most of the country elenentary schools

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were widely established, well financed, and staffed by highly educated teachers. In some parts of the lowlands the literacy rate was one hundred percent. 1 The empirical temper of the Scottish universities reached right down to the primary schools

through the many graduate teachers, and a system of secondary

schooling had been created which rejected authoritarianism and

rote learning, and sought to substitute learning through logical analysis.

~,

The greater strength, in Scotland, of the protestant community

of values and administrative facilities, and the higher level of education which resulted from it, combined to make Scotland

especially hospitable to early experiments in technical education

for the poor. Of the nine notable groups started by 1824, five began in Scotland. The same conditions, and certain other

e\i~o~~

features of the intellectual/ such as the bias towards realism, produced a disproportionately large number of self~made, often

famous men, like Watt, Nielson and Macadam. These men were a new element of the middle class"imen whose capital comprised their

ability, education and training, and who were to move in to fill a growing void in the framework of industry: although many of

them were trained as engineers, they contributed largely to the

formation of a managerial class. Their success stories were to be cited as encouraging examples to members of institutes, and

some of them, such as Nielson, played leading parts in the

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1

movement. At the same time, northern England was not slow in

producing others of the same class, such as Richard Arkwright and

2

George Stephenson. Stephenson was another patron of the

institutes.

The unexceptional men who came from this background were

mostly skilled and semi skilled workers, and even labourers. None

the less, many of them had sufficient ambition and optimism to

hope that they might advance themselves through further study.

Some of those who joined the institutes were probably moved by

community spirit and the pleasure of joint endeavour. Generally,

men with these origins, independent in themselves and confident of

the groups they joined, resisted interference, and were suspicious

and even somewhat resentful of patronage.

Despite this independence of spirit, nearly all the pioneer

groups were founded on the initiative of liberally educated men,

such as clerics, teachers or engineers, who took a benevolent

interest. The workmen were ill able to found and manage

educational bodies without the leadership, or at least guidance,

of more sophisticated outsiders.

In this, protestant workmen were fortunate in having good

connections. They were in active social contact with members of

1. Nielson, a self-made engineer and inventor, founded the Glasgow Gas Workmen's Library in 1814. (For data on

pioneering groups, see M. Tylecote: The Mechanics' Institutes of Lancashire and Yorkshire, Ch. lN•Manchester U.P., 1957.)

2. For adequate discussion, this group of men should be extended in various dlrections: for example, it should include

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their clergy, who, with such influential friends as they could

enlist, made up perhaps the most effective group in Britain for

an enterprise of this nature. In addition, they included

superior artisans, chargewhands and foremen, who worked close to

engineers, among whom there were some able and wellMdisposed

individuals like Nielson. If the professional men happened to

attend the same church the links were made even stronger by the

democratic mode of the protestant churches.

The protestant groups were encouraged by two other factors.

First, they were aware of the potential of communal enterprises,

and their elders had some experience of administering them.

Second, it was natural for them to entertain the possibility of

mutual instruction, a device which promised to save some of the

difficulties and costs of retaining skilled teachers.

There renained the problem of what to include in courses

of technical instruction. At least one separate group in England

tried to solve it along trade~oriented lines. In 1799 the

geologist Thomas Webster, supported by Count Rumford, formed a

mechanics' class in connection with the Royal Institution,

offering practical training extended by theoretical explanations

of the practices that were taught. The founders of the protestant

groups, however, were guided by their humanist philosophy, and

favoured instruction with an intellectual biaso They brought

together a spectrum of theoretical studies~•applied science, pure

science and mathematics; English composition, to improve

(28)

political economy, as a branch of the humanities with av tal interest for men whose livelihood was not guaranteed. Manual training was introduced in another context~-art, for industrial and commercial application. The whole approach was clearly aimed at providing a li,beral education on empirical lines.

It remained in contact with the world of the artisan's experience and understanding. Its down~towearth secularity shared much with the protestant religion, Scottish higher education, and the

sense-realist theories.

No dividing line could be drawn, however, between pure science ,

or mathematics and metaphysics, between English composition and more subjective liteDature, between technic 1 drawing or commercial

art and the more imaginative visual arts. Here was an open path along which the movement could be steered aside

from

its original purpose, and the question of the best point at which to stop and contain the enterprise offered opportunities for unending

disagreement.

By the end of 1823 the general idea of the mechanics' institute or school of arts, as a source of technical education for workers, was well established, and these or allied institutions had been

founded in Glasgow, Edinburgh, London and a few other centres. 'Ihe movement then grew rapidly, but its voluntarist character was epitomized by the fact that it renained only a movement. Individual

institutes were autonomous, although after a time numbers of then banded together into unions to share facilities, thus cutting costs and easing some of the problens of operation. There was no

(29)

have been on a federalistic basis, as the societies varied

somewhat in character and constitutinn.

One reason for the variety was that once the movement was

well launched, numbers of prominent people began to patronize it,

sometimes even to the extent of founding and running institutes.

(Leonard Horner founded the Edinburgh School of Arts, placing

complete control in the hands of its patrons, and giving the

students no voice in its direction.) In other cases patrons had

nominally only partial control (as in the London institute, where

they held about one-third of the seats on the committee); but

their power and influence naturally exceeded their voting strength.

Often they acquired moral dominance by making substantial gifts.

Few institutes, if any, were able to grow rich on the contributions

of ordinary members.

For independentwminded workers the advent of these helpers

was a mixed blessing, and some groups strove, like the Glasgow

institute, to be completely self-supportingo They did not have

much success. Their resistance to patronage was weakened by

another factor. It was thought with some reason that large

member ips were not only a source of subscriptions, but were

vital to prestige and general success. Accordingly, most if not

all institutions extended their membership to include workers from

offices and shops.

Employees of this class had certain obvious economic interests

in the institutes: for them there was undisputed value in the

arithmetic of bookkeeping, and in being able to read with facility

and to write a good business letter. Instruction in these

(30)

or both. The institutes were one more possible source of cheap,

perhaps good, teaching. But for the black~coated workers 1 there

was something else besides.

In

the mannered world of nineteenth-century commerce the

social hierarchy played a more important part than it did in

industry. Prospects of advancement were influenced by good

social connections and a pleasing personal style. A mechanics'

institute, which had or might acquire prominent patrons, was a

meeting~gtound where a member might come under the notice and

favour of his social superiors. Members with lower-middlekclass

values, far from resisting or even regretting patronage and

hierarchic control, actually welcomed it.

There were three important problems which the institutes

could not fiully overcome.

expense of good teachers.

One of these was the shortage and

Mutual instruction was not an adequate

substitute for them. Some students profited from it, and a few

even became well known as teachers; but these heroes would probably

have risen to fame by simply educating themselves. For most

students, expert guida~ce was needed, particularly in unforgiving

subjects like mathematics.

Another difficulty was the severe limit set on the time and

energy which a worker might spare from his scant free time for

study and attendance at classes. This was harder on men who did

manual work under severe conditions than on sedentary office

workers.

(31)

The third problem was the general poverty of elementary

grounding in reading, writing and mathematics. This forced the

institutes to start their syllabus from a low initial level of

learning. Here again the black-coated worker was better off;

he could profit directly and immediately from lessons in

arithmetic, spelling and elementary grammar; but an artisan

undertaking an ambitious course of technical education faced

several more years of hard study. Many artisans lacked the

ambition and industry to commit themselves for so long a period.

For these reasons they did not enrol in such large numbers as the

shop and office workers, who, as a group, came to dominate the

"mechanics,•• institutes. (This also helps to explain why the

classes were composed almost wholly of members under twenty~one

years of age.)

So far two main groups of ordinary members have been identified,

one strongly protestant and independent, and the other loyally

supporting ecclesiastical and social hierarchy. There is a

temptation to isolate the socialists as a third group. There was

in fact open interest in socialism within the institute movement.

Political economy was a subject which was popular for instruction

and debate, and some members frankly expressed chartist sympathies.

The issue led to some dissension within the institutes, and some of

them wrote articles into their constitutions prohibiting debates on

religious or political subjects.

The emergence of this issue was assured by the element of

socialism that exists, to however slight a degree, in all democratic

(32)

---freedom from personal connnitments, but an equitable share in

making decisions which will bind him and his fellows equitably.

In both the protestant community and the institute movement,

democratic ideals and procedufes were a result of their community

of interests. Workers' committees within protestant communities

played an important part in the formation of trade unions. Thus

the same men who had an interest in mutual self-help through

hof\-Studyw•a self-contained and ,political activity••Stood to gain by

improving their conditions through joint political action.

However, the prime object of the institutes was education, not

political action. Proletarians who wanted to better themselves

not by study but by political change had no business with the

institutes unless it was to pervert them. No serious attempt at

this was made. Studious menbers, even if proletarian ·in attitude,

shared the same interests as other studious menbers, and in this

context belonged to the same group. The rivalry that affected

the course of the institutes lay between the two groups already

defined. Diversion of the movement into non~educational

activities did occur, but this was more or less spontaneous, not

the result of a general conspiracy.

not lead to political activity.

Where it occurred, it did

The influence of the blackMcoated workers was governed by

the subservience of the lower middle class to the establishment.

In the bourgeois society, advancement was at least possible

without hereditary position, and might be aspired to; but in the

conunercial sphere economic and social advancement depended on

each other. To improve his position the clerk or shop employee

(33)

well. The standard of quality in both was the example set by

his superiors.

The aspirant cultivated his manners, at first with advancement

as his goal; but soon, in the mannerof a child's game, the ritual

of cultivated behaviour helped him to identify himself with his

superiors--to feel that he was already one of them in some little

degree. The social graces became desirable in themselves, giving

their practitioner a better opinion of himself.

Among the social graces of the time, a show of aesthetic

refinement was widely esteemed. Pretensions in this field were

perhaps made easier by prevailing attitudes to the fine arts.

The value of making some sort of aesthetic statement in a work of

art was then widely disregarded, so that a wouldwbe critic might

safely avoid the deeper waters of discussion. Amon~ the many

busy, newly-rich people whose main interests were efficient

production and indulgence in luxury, beauty was seen either as

"the perfection of utility" or as ornament, diverting attention

from, even concealing the work~a~day aspects of life; or it

was identified with moral good. The new gentry, while affecting

a patrician disdain for the banausic crafts, yet saw the fine arts

as media for little more than technical skill and standardized,

factitious sentiment. Their genteel sons and daughters dabbled

presumptuously with water-colours and sketches (often slavish

copies), and sang ballads of love, heroism and virtue triumphant,

while clerks and servant•girls dreamed of aping them.

One of the advantages of this sort of accomplishment was that

it was not necessary to pass examination( in it, or even to study

(34)

game of social graces was co~operative rather than competitive:

the players needed and gave mutual support to sustain the general

convention of refinement. Mastering the "correct" grammatic

forms and cultivating a genteel accent were basic requirements,

and reading enough suitable literature to acquire an ornamental

turn of phrase was very important. Additional accomplishments

were painting and music (singing was enough). The mere ritual

of attendance at a lecture on a refined topic, delivered by a

celebrity, conferred some grace on the listener.

The mechanics' institutes offered libraries and public

lectures. They could organize classes in elocution, art, music

or any other refined subject at a small cost to each member.

Many prominent people lectured or took classes.

Encouraged by easier and earlier rewards, clerks and shop

assistants joined the institutes in larger numbers than the

artisans, and strongly influenced the content of lecture programmes

and classes. The physical sciences were neglected, and interest

moved towards literature and the arts.

workers fell off.

Enrolments of manual

The difference in objects and activities was revealed by the

rise of institutes with a different nomenclature~"the athenaeum

and the lyceum. These sociElties were similar in form to the

mechanics' institutes, but, as their names implied, they pretended

rather to the cultural interests of the classical Greeks"~as the

Victorians saw them. Some of the athenaeums were the preserves

of the leisured classes.

(35)

Despite their pretensions, the institutes generally did

not maintain a high standard of learning. Few members endured

the discipline of programmed study for long; and without it their

own independent efforts were ineffectual. Classes declined, and

were superseded by popular lectures intended to entertain rather

than instruct. Even these had to compete with indoor games and

other sociable activities. The economic and cultural purposes

of the movement were threatened.

By 1833 these trends were already noticeable in England

(though perhaps less so in Scotland)o What the institutes had

realized had little in common with the dreams of the men who had

pioneered thm. The soil of colonial society, to which the

(36)

CHAPTER 2.

The Colonial Background.

SYDNEY in 1833 was the capital and chief port of a small,

rapidly expanding colony,whose economy was based on the export of

primary produce, mostly wool. The system of depasturing made for

a different kind of rural life from the more closely-settled farming

communities of Britain•4 a life conditioned more by distance and

solitude. The soil was unfamiliar and inhospitable, and the climate

visited the settler with fl6od, drought and bush-fire. Methods of

farming based on centuries of experience of northern European

conditions of soil and climate were often unsuitable.

Henry Carmichael, writing advice to intending migrants to the

colony in 1836, said: "The Farmer Emigrant, in coming to this country,

has much more to learn than the Mechanic or Tradesman.o.The soil,

the seasons, the rotations, the modes of tillage,•wall are new to

him. The diseases of the sheep and cattle are equally so.

At

every

step he finds how much of his early ideas and requirements he has 1 to revise, reform, reject and adapt to altered circumstances."

As an inseparable part of all this, the settler was too often

confronted by dramatically sudden changes in the situation, demanding

quick and drastic decisions. Frontier farming of this order required

intuition, improvisation and daring rather than recourse to textwbooks.

1. Henry Carmichael: Hints relating Sydney,1836,p.360

(37)

Another feature was that there was little opportunity for the

independent small-scale farmer with limited capital: the land and

climate were more favourable to extended sheep~runs, and the hardships

and abrupt changes of fortune could leave a small farmer without

enough income to live on.

The settler was a dominant figure in the life of Sydney, which

by 1833 existed largely to serve him, and owed its prosperity to him.

It was inevitable that his values and attitudes would influence

those of the town.

The fast~developing economy, with so much in it that was

temporary, needed skilled labour badly; but what it needed from

artisans was quantity, not quality, of artifacts. The economy was

simple, because of the general dependence of trade on one staple.

Diversification was not justified at that stage. Carmichael said

that there was need for " ••• Architects and other Master Mechanics•o•

masons, house and ship carpenters, joiners, cabinet-makers, coopers,

plumbers, glaziers, blacksmiths, millers, butchers, shoemakers and

tal lors ••• " He also recommended "• •• the rnanuf acture of necessaries

for common consumption, where little labour is required in production •••

leather, soap, candles, salt, beer, coarse woollen cloth, ropes,

h W· H

eart enware, bricks •• ,but cautioned,

.~.In

all manufactures, however,

where much and skilled labour is required for the production, it l would be folly to attempt competing with the home producero•

(38)

The demand for quantity rather than quality, according to

Carmichael, extended to the work of the professions.

In

particular,

of his own profession-.... teaching ... he said: ... It is •• cruel to entice

men of education hitherward, with the view of gathering laurels and

lucre in the course of their professional toil ••• Under the present

circumstances of the colony, there is ample room and inducement

for the labour of inferior men as schoolmasters: and certainly,

better it is to have inferior labour in this department of exertion,

. 1 than an utter destitution of the means of elementary instruction. tf

The residents of Sydney, according to the census of 1833,

2

numbered between 16,000 and 20,000, of whom about twenty per cent.

were convicts and another fifteen per cent. emancipees. Of the convicts, perhaps a quarter held tickets of leave, and only a

minority of the others were kept in barracks and denied contact with

the public. Many were assigned servants; others in Government employ

were allowed to find "open° lodging to save the Government expense.

They were thus a considerable factor in town life. More than sixty

per cent of the population was male, and more than twentywfive per

cent of the women were convicts or ex-convicts. Most of the convict

women were degraded beyond hope of rehabilitation~ if not from

choice, then by exploitation at the hands of men both bond and free.

1.

!.!2.ll!

.,

p. 45.

2. Figures compiled f1t0m original abstracts of the 1833 Census, as adopted in the Colonist Secretary's Returns for the Colony. The population of Sydn,ey was given as 16,232, and of its

(39)

Thus fewer than half of the men in the colony could at that time

expect to achieve a respectable family life. Nor were many of them

in rewarding contact with socially acceptable women. These

conditions affected their behaviour noticeably.

As the growth of the population owed more to immigration

than to natural increase, its social composition was influenced more

by immigration than any other factor. From 1821 to 1630, the pattern

of free immigration was governed by the land policy, according to

which grants were made to applicants in proportion to the amount

of capital they had available to spend on it. The potential migrant

most likely to be attracted to New South Wales was the man with

capital, who could augment it at no expense with a freehold granto

Migration involved the outlay of a fair sum, which was irrecoverable. 1

(The fare alone was I.40 per passenger, steerage). But the more

money a man had to invest in land, the more was the irrecoverable

cost of migration offset by the value of the freehold land which

he could obtain (up to the point where this cost item was no longer

significant). Migration would have been a minor expense item for

a man whose capital ran well into four figures; but to the small

business~man or tradesman, the transfer would have been a heavy drain

on capital~-especially if he had to bring a family with him.

From 1831 onwards, the Wakefieldian policy of land sales and

the assisted migration schemes brought to the colony thousands of

people turned off by their parishes because they were out of work:

(40)

local governments found it cheaper to pay paupers' fares once to the nearest port of embarkation than to keep them on poor relief indefinitely. A large percentage of them were accompanied by their families. During periods of economic depression, the unemployed included competent workers who could easily find work in good

times (the Stirling Castle passengers among them); but the assistance schemes operated in good times as well as bad. As a result, the

great majority of assisted migrants were people whose services had been least sought after at home-wand assisted passages accounted for

1 more than three~quarters of immigrants from 1832 through 1850.

Many of them belonged to the "submerged tenth" of the population,

living on or over the borderline of theft and prositution, from which most of the involuntary migrants had been recruited.

For people in such case, the prospect on arrival in Australia was not encouraging. The settlements were small, and offered little of social variety and entertainment. For unskilled workers the best~ paid work was on farms and pastoral properties; but here they were brought face to face with the Australian bush, alien, harsh and silently indif£erent. Men who had not succeeded well among their fellows were no less hungry for companionship~-if anything more so. Loneliness kept them in and around the settlements or drove them back

there, where they clung in disproportionate numbers, accepting less steady and less remunerative work for the sake of the company. Such

1. Sir T.A. Coghlan: Labour and Industry in Australia, Oxford,1918,

(41)

company as offered included convicts and ex~convicts, who had their

own special reasons for lacking ambition and hope.

These people quickly learned that servility was not necessary

to survival in the colony; and their own memories of the working

of the English hierarchy were usually such that they were not moved

to spontaneous demonstrations of respect for rich and powerful men.

But as social forces they remained more or less inert. They

were politically important only as potential followers of demagogues,

where their numbers -would give them force. In the past very few of

them had played dominant roles in any sort of social exchange. Very

few had known success, or even gained experience, as active participants

in free inst~tutional activities. A fonnal act like speaking in

public or serving on a connnittee -would have daunted most of them.

Thus they were ill qualified to take a constructive part in fanning

and running a mechanics' institute. Further, the general level of

schooling among them was almost certainly low even by the standards

of the time. Their attitude to schemes for self~education as a

spare-time activity would have been despairing and apathetic, if not

made hostile by envy. In this field their deprivation was liable

to be felt acutely, and the temptation to affect scorn of formal

social activities"• in fact, to cry sour grapes-~was especially strong.

The Irish,who made up about a quarter of the population, were

for the most part ill-educated and somewhat mystical, unacquainted

(42)

democratic institutions. The percentage of immigrants from Scotland, bond or free, was small. As individuals, a high ratio of those

who came pursued very successful careers in the colony, and in greater numbers they might have strongly influenced the character of its

public institutions; but they were too few, and were absorbed by superior numbers without having a radical effect.

Between well~to-do landholders and somewhat demoralized workers, the petty~bourgeois stratum was thin, and weighted in favour of the

1

small merchant. The best professionals and artisans did not need to 2

leave Britain, and,as Nadel points out, migration to Australia was

1. "Petty-bourgeois", as used here, denominates that group in the econom~ which comprised men with enough capital, education or skill to enjoy some measure of independt;.~e, many or most. of whom were self-anployed, but who did not play a dynamic role in

economics, politics or society. The group included minor

professional men, shopkeepers(with a few shop assistants), senior office workers and master tradesmen (with some self~employed

and even a few employed tradesmen). There was thus no dividing line between this group and the lower middle class. They were men with modest incomes and little power, but they had more

faith than the proletarians in a future which they could improve by their own individual efforts. In this they were the urban equivalent of yeomanry.

3

According to the 1841 Census, there were 44,678 free males over fourteen years of age in the colony, in addition to 23,844

convicts. Of the latter, 5,843 held tickets of leave, 6,658 were in government employ, and 11,343 were assigned servants, so that most of them were in the private sector of the economy. Of all residents gainfully occupied, 4,477 were listed as

''landed merchants, bankers and professional men'; 1,774 as

"shopkeepers, and other retail traders"; and 10,175 as ''mechanics and artificers". (The last group must have included most or all men employed in skilled or semi-skilled manual wrk in the

industrial field and in construction work, regardless of their qualifications).

Figure

figure of only 296.)
table was placed end on to the window.
TABLE l--Subjects offered under rule XVI of bhe College Kules 1:
TABLE 2 as ..... comrses of insttuction in relation to occupations of students, ,) proposed under ule XXII of the College Rules
+4

References

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