ABSTRACT
It cannot be too clearly pointed out that there is no formal ‘solution of continuity’ between the Christian Socialist movement and the Working Men's College, although as I have said, the latter virtually killed the former; so that Professor Brentano in his work on The Christian Socialist Movement in England is perfectly right in devoting his last chapter but one to the College. It was not raised upon the ruins of our association, for several of them survived its establishment and others were opened after. The feeling of a necessary connection between co-operation and education, as I have shown in a previous chapter, had always been with us. In the very first number of the Christian Socialist I had announced that the paper meant to deal with education. ‘We shall all agree, probably,’ I said, ‘that our Universities must be universal in fact as well as in name; must cease to be monopolised for the benefit of one or two privileged classes; we may differ as to the means by which that monopoly is to be broken up, that universality attained, whether by lowering the benefits of university education to the reach of the many, or by drawing up to them the pre-eminent few of every class.’ (I need not point out what vast strides have been taken in both directions since the above quoted words were published, from the establishment of University Extension Lectures to that of co-operative scholarships)… Later on, the work of the ‘People's College’ at Sheffield had been brought to our notice by Lloyd Jones and the idea of something of the same nature, to be established for the benefit of London Working Men, had been mooted amongst us. Charles Mansfield's fertile mind in particular must have been stirred on the subject, for I find that I wrote to him in November 1852: ‘I wish you were with us, to work out your own idea of a Working Men's College’. Mr. Maurice's dismissal from King's College accentuated, so to speak, the educational development of the movement, and as stated in the Life, as early as December 27th 1853 it was publicly suggested at a meeting of working men at the Hall of Association that instead of a Professor at King's College he might become the ‘Principal of a Working Men's College’…
