The President of the Working Men's Club end Institute Union,
Mr. Hodgson Pratt, to whom the Union owes a vast debt of gratitude for indefatigable energy and work, delivered his annual address this day week, in which he insisted on the ideal of duty that these associations should keep before them, and drew a picture especially of those :aspects of their work in which as yet they are deficient. He dwelt on the political development of these Clubs and Institutes as an essential part of their work. He hoped that every one of them would be a sound political school. For this purpose, he desired to see them including men of all shades of social and political opinion. Patronage, no doubt, they would not tolerate. Working men are no easier than other men under the depressing influence of moral patronage. He dwelt also on the special attention which ought to be given to the education cf the young,—the apprentices,—in industrial, in technical, and in moral life. Special committees should be formed, be thought, in all these clubs for the training of the young, a course which must result in an immense improvement in the future efficiency of the clubs themselves. Nothing could be better than the President's address as a whole, though one feels with some regret that it was delivered to a class in:whom club life of a kind is much fuller of educational promise than home life. In the present condition of the industrial classes, that is, we suppose, inevitable. But after all, clubs are very imperfect substitutes for home, and we cannot help looking to some (still distant) time when the home may be expected to supersede in great measure, even the best influences of the best-managed institutes in the world.
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