MEANS OF PROMOTING NATIONAL COMMERCE 13
markets are one of the latest means resorted to in different countries
with the view of promoting national commerce.
85. In the United Kingdom there are ag yet no general commercial
museums, and at present samples obtained from consuls are sent to
the chambers of commerce of the most important towns specially
interested in the industries to which the samples belong. The Imperial
Institute, founded in 1886 and Placed on January 1, 1903, under the
management of the Board of Trade, includes, among other things, a
commercial museum of the products of the British Empire.
36. Technical education is another highly important means of
advancing national commerce, and one which has also been hitherto
comparatively neglected in the British Isles. A royal commission
appointed to inquire into this subject issued a valuable report in 1884 ;
and though the commissioners were able to refer with satisfaction to
the benefits conferred upon industry by the more or less flourishing
schools of science and art in London and nearly all the great industrial
centres of the United Kingdom, they were obliged to admit that several
foreign countries—notably Germany, France, Belgium, and Switzerland
—were then as regards this branch of education in a much better
position!
87. Commercial education is another means of promoting national
commerce of even greater importance perhaps than technical education,
and in this respect Germany would appear to be at present admittedly
ahead of all other countries. In the special schools of commerce
which are found in nearly all the large towns in Germany, thorough
instruction is given in the means and methods of business, in com-
mercial geography, and above all in modern languages. The result was
shat for a time at least the German educated for business was on the
average superior in all-round business capacity to his rivals belonging
bo other countries. With regard to the teaching of foreign languages
in English commercial schools, it is probably the case that the fact of
she English language itself giving the command of many of the best
markets of the world has exercised a prejudicial effect on the desire to
learn other languages ; but it is becoming more and more manifest that
this defect in English education will have to be supplied ; and, in par-
licular, it may be pointed out that without a knowledge of Spanish and
Portuguese it will become increasingly difficult for English merchants
! Both British and foreign testimony make it doubtful whether this is still
irue. The following is Dr. Shadwell’s summing up on this subject :—* While
England has long been backward in technical education, it has of late years righted
itself with so much energy that the provision from below [for the inferior grades
of industrial employment] is already greatly superior to that of Germany, and the
provision from above [for those who have the direction of industry] has at least
°qual potentiality if the same use is made of it. And that has begun.” Industrial
Efficiency, cheap edition, 1909, p. 640. Similar testimony is borne as far back as
1903 by a German, W. Hasbach, in an article on British industry which appeared
n the Jahrbuch fir Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung, und Volkswirtschaft in that year
‘part ii.) ; see more particularly p. 66.
