"The Late Victorian Age”,
G.M.Young has written, “became an age of technical
instruction. The men who understood their time best, now
put their benevolence less into charity than into
education, and especially scientific education, or
research,”(1) Sir William Mather was a
philanthropist in the widest possible sense of the word,
but he gave educational problems priority. He was
interested in the theory of education as well as in the
practical evolution of educational institutions, and in
encouraging technical instruction at the Salford Iron
Works; he was expressing a philosophy as well as pursuing
a business need. It was not only
individual pioneers who saw the need for an educated
population on the speedy provision of elementary
education”, Forster warned the: House of Commons in
1870, “depends our industrial prosperity, the safe
working of our constitutional system. and our national
power". (2) From 1870 onwards, a body of
enlightened and far-sighted men of different walks of
life faced the implications of this challenge, and
although religious issues cut across national
necessities, the framework of a system was set up as a
result of large scale exercises in national legislation,
and persistent efforts of individual pioneers. The towns
too, bustling centres of industrial populations played
their part. Karl Froebel, the educational pioneer, in
contra-distinction to many social critics called towns
like Manchester and Liverpool “the best and
worthiest representatives of modern civilisation and
culture in the world.”(3) Certainly Manchester and
Salford ware among the first towns to adopt the
Elementary Education Act of 1870, which set up Board
Schools where other educational facilities were lacking.
The first School Board for Manchester was elected on the
24th November, and that for Salford on the 30th November
1870. The policy of the two Boards was framed on similar
lines and except for one short period of three years,
they shared the same Chairman. They had plenty of work to
do, for although Manchester had been traditionally
interested in education, and. a great deal of voluntary
organisation had bean evolved in 1870, while there was
58,557 children for whom public elementary school
accommodation was needed. there was only 45,209 places
available.(4) William Mather became one of the
first members of the Salford School Board and was a keen
worker in the exciting pioneer days of the new
educational system.
The first services offered by the
new schools were circumscribed by the prevailing concept
of elementary education and the over-riding need to fight
illiteracy by teaching the three “R’s” as
a form of’ educational discipline. Business men like
the Mathers were interested from the start in other forms
of education, particularly in technical education which
seemed as essential to the maintenance of industrial
prosperity as did the three “R’s” to the
safeguarding of the constitutional system. The production
of high-class machinery needed special skill and
training, and a literacy test could at best be considered
a prelude to the acquisition of specialised knowledge. The first agencies of technical instruction were the mechanics institutes, which grew up in most of’ the new industrial centres between 1823 and 1850. We find that one of the subscribers to the new ‘building of the Salford Mechanics’ Institute in 1852 was the firm of Mather and Platt. William Wilkinson Platt and Colin Mather were both active in the committee of the organisation, and Colin was a Vice-President. (1) Unfortunately the Institutes ceased to satisfy the technical interests of artisans who lacked basic elementary education, and in many towns passed into the hands of’ the middle classes. It was clear that without a national system of education, the acquisition of’ specialised knowledge on the part of the working man demanded. considerable individual effort and a good deal of self-sacrifice. The artisan, who taught himself the rudiments of reading, writing and science, could take legitimate pride in his own individual advancement, in raising himself, if only a little, from the masses of the uneducated and the unskilled. If he could persuade a few others to follow the same course, he could sometimes transform individual self-help into corporate self-help.
In the late 60s there was an
interesting local venture of this type inside the Salford
Iron Works, when William Mather started a Mutual
Improvement Society for the apprentices. The Minute Book
of the society is still in existence, and both the rules
and. the descriptions of meetings reflect the social
values of the times. “The object of this
Society”, Rule 1 states “shall be to assist its
Members in ‘becoming steady, well— informed and
intelligent workmen; which object shall be pursued by
means of Lectures, Readings, Classes, and Entertainments
also by a free use to its Members of a Library of
Books”. Each member had to be between 12 and 21
years of age, and had to promise neither to smoke nor to
partake of intoxicating liquors until reaching the age of
21 furthermore “each member on joining the society
shall agree to avoid swearing and the use of all bad.
language”. There was a committee of 7, an
arrangement for weekly meetings, and a weekly
subscription of one penny. The first meeting, held in
November 1866, discussed the “cultivation of the
mind." and the speaker told in much the same style
as Samuel Smiles, of George Stephenson, “how he rose
from a poor collier boy to the greatest engineer that
ever lived.”(1) At the second meeting,
there was more stress on self-help. The Minute Book tells
us tantalisingly “how the streets of London are
paved with gold; the way to get there by attention to
business and good workmanship”. (2) Just over 20 apprentices attended
the meetings of the Society and although the had a
considerable share in formulating their own programme,
they obviously felt that it did not satisfy their
practical interests sufficiently. Although they scrapped
the penny readings in order to concentrate “on the
more scientific side of the business”(3),
the Society was short-lived and had disappeared by 1870.
The Smiles era in the development of education was
already drawing to a close and it is interesting to note
that there were complaints at the same time that the
Mechanics Institutes was becoming too
“literary”. While there was a malaise in
England about technical institutions, shrewd observers
were ‘beginning to look overseas for new ideas
concerning technical and indeed general education. The
dream of a national technical educational system which
some of the Commissioners of the Exhibition of 1851 had
indulged in, began to captivate a new generation which
was less afraid of centralisation than its fathers had
been. In place of the patchwork of uncoordinated
enterprises, men like Lyon Playfair wanted to see a
“good system of industrial education for the masters
and managers of factories and workshops” as well as
for their employees. When at
the Paris Exhibition of 1867 British products frequently
seemed to ‘be outclassed by those of other countries
- a complete contrast with the Exhibition of 1851 - it
was generally believed that the fundamental cause was the
disparity between educational systems.
William Mather, as an enthusiastic
traveller, had had special opportunities for
investigation and comparing different forms of
educational institutions. It was German institutions,
which stood out among the rest. His early education in
Germany left a deep impression on him and he claimed that
it was there “where he received the best part of his
education.”(1) At the early age of 18,
strongly influenced by German models, be wrote that
“it is seen plainly that there must be a good and
pure system of National Education — every child in
existence ought to be able to receive an education which
if taken advantage of would be the means of raising him
to a higher position both moral and physical”(2).
Later on in life he told the Union of Lancashire and
Cheshire Institutes that he was “almost cradled in
Germany; and that it was through his early life in
Germany that he derived his devotion for education”.
(3) The Education Act of 1870 marked the beginning of a national system of education in England, but Mather went on to supplement the public elementary education it afforded by providing technical education for apprentices in the Salford Iron Works along more formal lines than that attempted earlier ‘by the Mutual Improvement Society. Mr. Thomas Jonas, who entered the service of Mather and Platt in the drawing office in 1872, was asked in 1873 to form evening classes in applied arithmetic at Mather’s Queen Street Institute which was also used for working mens social and religious activities. The educational scheme was so successful that it became known as the Salford Ironworks Evening School of Science and covered, practical geometry and machine drawing, and later on steam and the steam engine, building construction and drawing, and mechanical engineering and tools. As the number of subjects taught
and the number of students increased, more teachers were
engaged (all of them employees of the firm) and the
pupils began to compete for the certificates issued from
1859 onwards by the Science and Art Department at South
Kensington and later on, by the City and Guilds of London
Institute, founded in 1880, and the Lancashire and
Cheshire Union of Institutes. “Salford Iron Works
Certificates” were also awarded by the firm and
prizes were given as rewards for punctuality, systematic
industry, and smartness both in the classes and in the
workshops. Those pupils who devised an improvement to any
part of a machine made at the Works or to any tool used
in the Works were also offered a special prize of £5.
In these ways it was hoped to
encourage not only a higher general level of technical
education, but also outstanding ability among the gifted
few. The early register and. records of the school give
some idea of its evolution. It had a committee, which
according to the rules of the Science and Art Department
of the Committee of the Council of Education, had to
include responsible local figures Benjamin Armitage, M.P,
and Robert Leake, M.P, were both members. Later on,
foremen were included from the various departments -
engine-fitting pattern making, turning; millwright;
boiler making; brass finishing; and smithy - to make sure
those special trades were taught. The bright boys were
recruited mainly from the Salford area, and, between 1874
and 1884, no less than 578 certificates were gained by
students sitting for externally conducted examinations.
In all, about 1,200 boys passed through the School
between 1873 and 1903. The prizes they chose to receive
were mainly technical books like Horner’s Principles
of Fitting or Cracknell’s Practical Mathematics, but
at least one boy chose The Midsummer Night’s Dream
and The Merry Wives of Windsor. (1) Between 1902 and. 1916, when the firm was pre-occupied with the task of transferring its premises from Salford to Newton Heath, few educational records were kept, and it appears that the major responsibility for educating young apprentices was handed over to outside institutions, at this time being set up by the municipalities. It is at this point that it is necessary to go back in time to trace Sir William Mather's personal interest in technical education as a whole. After the appointment of a Royal Commission on Technical Education in 1881, fourteen years after the Paris Exhibition had shocked enlightened opinion; William Mather accepted an invitation to act as special commissioner to make investigations into educational methods in the United States and Russia. In 1883 he toured the United States and Canada at his own expense, and produced a report on scientific and technical training there, which related the growth of the education system to “the advancement and improvement of the industrial population.” Six years later he played an important part in securing the passage of the Technical Instruction Act of 1889, which allowed local councils to levy a penny rate for work in technical education. He had just been returned to Parliament for the second time and although he “shared in the general disapproval of the Bill” he was” determined to do something for technical education” and thought that with all its weaknesses the government’s measure “might be made into a fairly good start in legislation on the subject, with alterations and amendments of a drastic character”(3). Alterations and amendments were
made, and the Bill did go through, not without trouble;
Mather hoped that it would fore-shadow “a more
rational and natural method of instruction in elementary
schools”, a more efficient system of secondary
training, and other and more complete measures for
extending the scope of technical instruction.
Manchester was the second city in
the kingdom to adopt the Technical Instruction Act and to
levy the penny rate allowed and within three years of the
passing of the Act, the foundation stone of a Royal
Technical Institute in Salford had been laid, with the
aim of providing “systematic instruction in those
branches of knowledge which have a direct bearing upon
the leading industries of the district”.
(1) A vital part of the scheme was the
provision of thorough secondary education as a necessary
first phase. This was the main objective also of the
Education Bill of 1902, which Mather supported as a great
and comprehensive measure. He was more interested in its
long term effects than in the atmosphere of religious
rivalry which characterised its passing and (when
political feeling was most bitter) he went so far as to
propose to the President of the Board of Education, the
Duke of Devonshire, that it should be discussed
“outside party lines”. (2) His own
approach was revealed, in the important amendment to the
Bill which he proposed and had carried, making it
compulsory, instead of optional on the part of the local
education authority, to apply grants to educational
services other than elementary. As a result of his
initiative the Government accepted after the word
“elementary” the phrase “including the
training of teachers and the general co-ordination of all
forms of education”. In the year of the passing of the
new Education Act, a landmark in English Education, the
School of Technology was opened in Manchester by Arthur
Balfour the Prime Minister. The site was provided by the
trustees of Joseph Whitworth, one of the great pioneers
of English production engineering, who had left his large
fortune to be used for the promotion of industrial and
artistic training. Mather was intimately associated both
with the use of Whitworth’s benefaction and with the
Royal Jubilee Exhibition at Old Trafford in 1879 which
set out to secure additional gifts for the same purpose.
After 1902 the municipality took over from existing
voluntary bodies, and in opening the large new school
Balfour said that the building was perhaps "the
greatest fruit of this kind of municipal enterprise in
this country ... Nobody can go over this building,
observe its equipment, study even in the most cursory
manner the care which has been devoted to it, without
feeling that the Corporation of this great City have set
a great example worthy of the place they hold in
Lancashire, worthy of the place they hold in Great
Britain”.(3)
Already
before 1902 selected apprentices had gone on from the
Queen Street Institute to the Manchester Technical School
and between 1905 and 1916 all apprentices from the works
of Mather & Platt Ltd. went to the new city
institutions for their training. The First World War
created new problems, particularly in 1916 when there was
an urgent necessity for training apprentices quickly and
efficiently. As a result day classes for apprentices were
started at Park Works, with instructors drawn from the
office and works staffs. The results were encouraging. So
much so that Loris Emerson Mather, the new Chairman of
the Company, drew up a plan for a new Works School thus
anticipating the Fisher Education Act of’ 1918. Herbert Fisher the war time
President of the Board of Education, in a letter
addressed to Sir William Mather acknowledged the lead
given, saying “You have been one of the pioneers of
true industrial education in this country and if I should
be fortunate enough to succeed in doing something
effectual to raise the level of education in the country
it will be largely due to the load which you and a small
handful of intelligent men of business have given to the
more thoughtful and energetic part of the business
community."(1) In 1918 when the Manchester
Education Committee agreed to take over the Park Works
School its official title became the Mather &Platt
Ltd. Works Day Continuation School. The agreement reached
between the Local Education Authority and the Company was
a happy example of co-operation between education and
industry. It certainly set the pattern for the Butler Act
of later years. Roughly, the arrangement was this: the
Company undertook to provide and maintain suitable school
premises and pay their apprentices whilst in attendance,
and the Local Education Authority for its part assumed
the responsibility of providing a trained teaching staff,
the necessary school furniture and stationery. The
arrangement worked admirably. At first, when numbers were
small, the post of Headmaster was combined with that of
Apprentice Supervisor to the Company, and the first two
Head-masters and two large airy classrooms were added at
the end of the research building at Park Works while the
too-crowded curriculum of early years was steadily
whittled down until it conformed to the Pro-Senior and
Senior Mechanical Engineering Courses of the Union of
Lancashire and Cheshire Institutes, except that provision
was made for additional English studies and for two
periods per week in a well equipped gymnasium built in
1921.
The Chairman of the Company took a keen interest in these developments and he displayed an equal interest in the outdoor activities of the School. He gave the fullest support to the organisation of cricket and football teams, which played on land adjoining the works until the development of a new housing estate and the erection of a new foundry swallowed up the ground on which football was played; but his greatest enthusiasm was reserved for Scouting, and this was understandable. Himself a Gilwell-trained Scouter, and holding the highest Scout award, the Silver Wolf, for exceptional services rendered to the Movement in the early days of its formation (he was for many years District Commissioner of the Manchester Boy Scouts Association), Loris Mather believed in nothing so ardently as in the character-building potentialities of real Scouting. He saw that the Scout Law was equally the Law of Good Workmanship, the paramount need of the age for young people, and he was eager to bring its quickening influence to bear on their industrial lives. As has been well said: “Scouting solves the
antinomy of work and play, of labour and leisure, at the
stage where such antinomies are apt to be most pernicious
- in the life of the young. Playing the man is
substituted for playing the fool, and mutual loyalty
promoted by common participation in that splendid game.
The ideal of services translated- from the moral
generality into a skilful occupation, is present
throughout, and wisdom is taught by working contact with
elemental things. Dark days, wet weather, obstructions,
difficulties, and contradictions are freely encountered,
the manful confronting of them being an essential part of
the game. The sportsmanlike spirit, under a businesslike
discipline, has here been brought into the service of a
moral ideal, and the spirit of youth rejoices in the
combination.” Mr. Mather’s faith in
Scouting has been shared by enthusiastic members of the
Works School Staff and ever since 1919, when the 2/16th
M/C (Park Works) Troop was formed. the link with Scouting
has remained unbroken. It is difficult to estimate the effect which Mr. Mather's friendly association with his own apprentices through Scouting has had on human relations generally at Park Works. It must have been considerable. Here was one answer, at least, to those who deplored the rise of Joint Stock companies and the consequent decline of the old paternalism. The charge of soullessness could scarcely apply when, as in this case a leader of industry met his young charges on the equal footing of Scouting, inspecting them, living with them under canvas, and providing ideal campsites in the clearings of a wooded estate in Cheshire. To a few privileged observers it was possible frequently to see the Chairman of a vast industrial enterprise sitting on a log in the open, with a plate on his knees, enduring with a smile and with the brave appearance of relish, the trials of camp cooking watery stew or charred bacon. Inevitably such a scene recalled the words of T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) à propos the Arabs: — “They taught me that no
man could be their leader except he ate the ranks’
food - wore their clothes - lived level with them - and
yet appeared better in himself.” It was not the least of “Squire Mather’s gifts of tact and understanding with boys that he could mix with them on terms of the utmost frankness and freedom, yet never forfeit their proper respect. The appointment of a new Head
master in 1936 coincided with a rapid increase in the
number of apprentices requiring further education and led
to a new outbreak of activity in the Works School. A
large new mechanical drawing room was added, shower baths
were installed in the existing gymnasium and among other
staff changes, a full time college-trained physical
training instructor was appointed to the School staff for
the first time. This latter innovation was to prove
especially valuable during the subsequent war years when
the spare time activities of youths, and “Keep
Fit” movements generally, became a matter of
governmental concern. The outbreak of World War II in
1939 acted as a spur, rather than a brake, to the School.
Although the War dislocated many peace-time activities,
so that evening classes were cancelled because of the
“blitz” and the new drawing classroom was
requisitioned for A.R.P. lectures and later on for the
manufacture of radar equipment, other class rooms were
improvised in underground shelters and considerable
progress was made in various directions. Distinguished
visitors came to the works. Pep talks were given to
apprentices by staff officers and leaders of foreign
resistance movements, and education in its wider sense
was never neglected. It appears paradoxical at first
sight that the mass wars of our twentieth century
“age of violence” have seen marked advantages
in public health. In 1941, a year of tension, an
interesting physical training test was carried out by the
firm at the suggestion of the Board of Education and with
the assistance of the Manchester Education Committee. A
three months’ test was made with two groups of boys
of 16 years of age, the one being given physical training
for six hours a week whilst boys in the other group
remained at work. The firm believed that the experiment,
which showed the value of healthy physique, pointed the
way “to more co-operation between education and
industry after the war for the benefit of the rising
generation”. (1) Another feature
initiated by the Chairman in association with Colonel H.
B. Campbell of Edinburgh University was the development
of a series of “Dexterity Exercises” designed
to reduce accidents in work caused by the clumsy handling
of awkward and bulky objects, and suitable for inclusion
in normal physical training programmes. Altogether this
was a period of no small creative activity. Nor did this surge of new ideas
cease with the end of the war. In 1947, valuable
extensions were made to the existing school promises.
These included the provision of a large Lecture Hall with
cinema equipment. The new facilities thus provided made
possible not only the organisation of the girls’
classes, for the education and training of young girls
employed at Park Works, but also a series of Adult
Training Courses along the recognised lines of Training
within Industry. There should be mentioned here
another training scheme which falls between the Trade
Apprentice Works School and the Adult Training Courses,
namely, the training scheme for Special Apprentices.
Early in this century one or two
young men were accepted from the public schools and
universities for a period of workshop training varying
from three to five years according to age. In those early
days it was common for the parents of a young man to have
to pay a fee before he was accepted into what was known
as a “premium apprenticeship”. A small weekly
wage was then paid on a similar scale to the Trade
Apprentice. Sir William Mather did not approve of the
'premium' system and University students and other young
men who were accepted for special apprenticeship received
the weekly wage without any financial obligation. This
system of a special apprenticeship has since those days
increased in importance and. today some fifty young men
drawn from grammar schools, public schools, technical
colleges and universities - some of them from overseas -
are given facilities for a varied and practical training
at Park Works. In order to encourage them to continue
their theoretical training, some of them spend one day a
week - without loss of pay at local technical schools and
at the Technical Colleges of Manchester and Salford. If it is conceded that a balanced
training should embrace vocational, cultural, and social
activities, then the Company of Mather & Platt Ltd.
has every reason to be satisfied with the arrangements it
has made for the welfare of its young employees since the
year 1873 when the aforementioned Salford Ironworks
Evening School of Science - the forerunner of the present
Works School - was founded. In good times and in bad, the
fullest opportunities for self-development have been
provided, for in addition to the Company’s own
training schemes steady support has been given to such
character-forming institutions as the Outward Bound Sea
and Mountain Schools and the residential courses at
Cheshunt College, Cambridge. This unique eighty years record in
Further Education is not solely a family tradition,
strong as this is in the Mather family, or of current
educational ideals. It must be grounded also on the firm
belief shared by all who are affected by it, and in
whatsoever capacity, that the possession of a Works
School is eminently worth while. As a former Head-master
of the school has said:- “From the point of view
of the teacher, a post in the Works School has this
advantage, that he can measure the effect of his work as
reflected in the careers of boys when they leave school.
From the employer's point of view, such a school provides
an easy means of recognising conspicuous ability early.
For the boy, it provides variety during the working week:
it keeps him subject to a wholesome influence at an
impressionable stage of his working career, and it
enables him to measure his powers and progress against
those of his fellows. It affords too, an excellent medium
whereby experts and specialists in the works can come
along and demonstrate to the boys vivid and up to date
applications of the general principles learnt in
school”. Attendance at the School is made a
condition of employment, and pupils come from many
surrounding districts, no longer only from the immediate
vicinity of the works. The School has been running long
enough to establish a sound tradition and to be accepted
by all, officials and apprentices alike, as a necessary
and valuable part of the works organisation. If the head
of a department has any vacancies he is able to turn to
the School for possible candidates, and since each boy
has a card with his school record on one side and his
works record on the other, there is an efficient scheme
of registration. The Supervisor of Apprentices arranges
future transfers. Perhaps no stronger claim can be
made for the Mather & Platt Works School than that it
enjoys the confidence and support of the Works
superintendents and foremen who, under the sympathetic
direction of the Works’ Manager, and other members
of the Board give it their constant backing and support. In
addition to benefactions and personal service, gifts of
tools and appliances have been made to numerous
universities and technical colleges in different parts of
the world. Apart from
gifts of equipment made to Manchester Institutions and
some prominent ones in other parts of the United Kingdom,
support has been given further afield. One of the most
interesting gifts was made in 1902 when Sir William
Mather presented to the Gordon College at Khartoum,
“a first rate manual-training school, with all
appliances for wood and metal working”. In a letter
to Lord Cromer, Sir William Mather stated his
characteristic philosophy of education and of the place
of manual training in it. “In dealing with real
things and actual processes, and in using tools, machines
and materials responsive to their will and applied to
purposes which they can see and appreciate, they
unconsciously acquire habits of observation, carefulness,
precision, and logical thought, and a sense of reality,
proportion, form and strength”. This was
"practical education" and this was what Sir
William wanted the boys of the Sudan to learn. A century ago it was the Great
Exhibition which first focussed attention on the need for
technical education on a national scale, and gave rise to
the colony of useful institutions in South Kensington,
which has survived in increasing glory to this day. The
links with 1851 still persist in the educational side of
the firm's work. Sir William Mather, who went to the
Exhibition as a small boy, went on to become a member of
the governing body of the Imperial College of Science and
Technology, South Kensington, appointed by the Royal
Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 to manage the
surplus fund left over from a successful season of
festival. A hundred years later, the School provided a
large and enthusiastic contingent on the occasion of the
firm’s visit to a second great exhibition, the
Festival of Britain of 1951. The world has changed much
during the century following the first Great Exhibition,
and not the least sign of the change is that whereas in
1851 ‘Young’ William went to the Exhibition
alone, in 1951 all the employees of the firm had the
opportunity of going to London as guests of the Company.
Exactly half way between the two dates, Sir William
pointed the way to the future when he said, “In
education, happily, after all, only the democracy rules.
There is no rank; the only question is that the ability
all possess shall be used to the uttermost, and all shall
work for one common end.”
|
A History
of Mather & Platt Ltd.