ABSTRACT
The phrase at the head of this chapter was used in the report of the Bryce Commission to describe the scientific and technical education which had grown up under the aegis of the Science and Art Department (DSA), founded in 1853 (BC I:102–3). The Charity Commissioners had, as we have seen, supported such studies in a number of endowed schools, though the old endowments could make only a minor contribution to solving what had become a major national problem. The sense that Britain was falling badly behind its European neighbours and commercial rivals was first clearly expressed in the 1860s, for example, by a parliamentary select committee in 1868 under the chairmanship of the Cleve-land ironmaster, Bernhard Samuelson.
