OPENING OF THE ESSEX MUSEUM, ETC. 327
material that has been accumulated, there is still an immense amount of
collecting and preserving to be done to give anything approaching an adequate
idea of our county's natural history. The growth and organization and
arrangement of the contents of a museum must necessarily be a work of time.
You are asked to-day to see but the beginning of a new departure in the
history of the Essex Field Club—a departure for which our most grateful
thanks are due to Mr. Passmore Edwards and to the Town Council of West
Ham. (Loud applause.)
And now that you have so kindly invited me to speak about the Museum,
may I ask you to now let me say one word upon your Technical Institute,
because it is chiefly as an educational enthusiast that you have so kindly
invited me to come here to-day, and knowing well the enlightened and
advanced views of West Ham I confess that the re-opening of the Technical
Institute was one that attracted me immensely, and it has been a great
pleasure to listen to the address of such a public benefactor as Mr.
Passmore Edwards. May I venture to hope that, as this Institute has
been built for the people of this vastly populated district, it may be used by
the people. (Loud and continued applause.) It has so often happened that
such institutes are captured by well-to-do people, and are not the benefit
to the unprivileged workers which they ought to be ; and West Ham and
Stratford should hold before themselves the ideal that a course at the
Technical Institute should be within the reach of every West Ham and every
Stratford child. (Hear, hear.) It is indeed not sufficient to say that a
number of scholarships are available for competition by the children of parents
in receipt of a total income of not more than £150 per annum, as in the case
under the technical education board of the London County Council. The
child of the weekly wage earner—say, 25s. to 30s. per week has small chance
in competing with the child of the man who has a salary paid monthly or
quarterly of £150. (Hear, hear.) The former works by the hour and one
hour's loss of work means loss of an hour's pay; the conditions in the two
homes are very different. In that of the weekly wage earner, by the hour, in
times of sickness, yes, even in times of health, the children of ten become
bread winners even before they leave school, to become full-timers in the
workshops. I am specially thinking of the boys and girls selling matches,
paper boys, who get up before fi o'clock in the mornings to sell papers and go
to school worn out and sleepy at 9 o'clock. It is, of course, easy to blame
the parents and preach to them that they ought to have higher ideals for
their children, and tell them of the scholarship ladder which we are assured
extends from the slum to the University. Crowded dwellings, a sordid
struggle to keep the wolf from the door, and the perpetual dread of the work-
house, are not compatible with the high ideals in education, and perhaps the
prosperous ones of the earth should not be too ready to blame such people
for looking with eagerness to the time when the little ones will be able "to
earn a few shillings." Of course it will be said by some, that I am taking a
sentimental view of this question, and they will say, "What about the
money spent in drink ? "Has not the time come in this England of ours
when we should cease to punish the children for their parents' sins—
even of poverty and drunkenness—and say that whatever we do with the
parents, the children shall not suffer, but shall all have the opportunity of