They were simply, and for the particular need of the time, better ...

They were simply, and for the particular need of the time, better educated. Thus in the widest sense the Later Victorian age became an age of technical instruction.

The men who understood their time best, now put their benevolence less into charity than into education, and especially scientific education, or research. City companies and borough councils catch the movement and pass it on through schools and colleges.

In 1887 we are by our own confession outclassed.' By 1897 the handicap is shortening. But no real or solid progress could be made until the great Victorian omission had been made good, and the executive class educated up to the level of the demands now making on it in a trained and scientific world.