Page:(Commercial character) The Joseph Fisher lecture in commerce, delivered at the University of Adelaide (IA commercialcharac00jessrich).pdf/24

20 want of experience as a cause for lack of continuity. I notice that a discussion has been published in the Argus between employers and employees on the work and remuneration of clerks. On the one side there is a complaint of long hours and poor pay, on the other a declaration of the difficulty in finding young men of energy and ability. The conclusions the newspaper leader writer arrives at are that the market for clerks in Australia is oversupplied, and the possibility of competition from women is greatly on the increase, while admitting inferentially the existence of room at the top. An article in the October fortnightly on Technical Education in Germany gives one an idea of the characteristic thoroughness of its scholastic system as compared with the somewhat haphazard British methods. In this, as in other respects, the Teuton seems to have adopted Strafford's motto, and by due recognition of its value, forges ahead in industrial competition. There is an excellent series of books published by George Newnes, Limited, describing life in town and country of the different European nations. Mr. William Harbutt Dawson, who treats of Germany, says of its public education:— ""The very mention of Germany calls to the mind the vision of endless processions of pedagogues with spectacle on nose and ferules on side.""

The early introduction and (very largely) of free education is not sufficient of itself to account for the exemplary schools which Germany possesses. The true secret of their excellence lies in the fact that the state insists on controlling the entire system of education from the bottom to the