ABSTRACT
The last century was still bent upon the conquest of Nature. Till the middle of the century practical socialists identified equality with advancement for merit. The trouble started when the left wing emphasized a different interpretation of equality, and, ignoring differences in human ability, urged that everyone, those with talent as well as those without, should attend the same schools and receive the same basic education. All depended upon timely educational reform. In the nineteenth century this was delayed too long. If the Education Act of 1871 had come fifty years earlier there would perhaps have been no Chartism; had the 1902 Act coincided with the Great Exhibition, no Labour Party. When it became apparent that the new schools were not satisfying the hopes of their champions, a sect within the socialist movement changed its tactics, and put forward another demand. The primary schools were at that time common schools for children of all grades of ability.
