Technology, Industrial Conflict and the Development of Technical Education in 19th-Century England

Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2001. Nineteenth-century employers played a crucial role in the training and education of young workers in England. This multi-disciplinary study traces the connection between problems of technical education development and the increasingly antagonistic relations with skilled workers, culminating in the Great Strike and Lockout of 1897. Cronin demonstrates that employers, dominated by economic short-termism, extended their hegemony beyond the boundaries of the factory gates. Their reluctance to endorse and sponsor technical education radically influenced the perception of technical education held by government and local authorities.