An increase in the number of schools and scholars involved an increase also in the number of teachers; and to supply them proved to be one of the most difficult of problems. The salary paid was so low that no man who had been to a University could be expected to accept it. As yet there were no secular colleges in Wales, and but few secondary schools. A few truly excellent secondary schools there were; establishments like Ystrad Meurig, from which, for a considerable period, Bishops used to ordain young men without any additional training. The result was that schoolmasters were generally grossly incompetent, being one-legged army sergeants, or retired sailors, with no knowledge of Wales, and but little knowledge of anything. And not only were they ignorant, but they were also snobs of the most contemptible kind, {226} toadying to the vicar and the squire, whose henchmen they were, and never hesitating to express their detestation and scorn of everything Welsh. A poor farm boy, who afterwards became one of Oxford's most brilliant scholars, has left, in his inimitable _Clych Atgof_, a half-amusing, half-pathetic account of his troubles in early life with teachers of this kind. In 1846 there was only one normal college in the whole of Wales. To this were added two Church of England teachers' training colleges, the one at Carmarthen, the other at Bangor; and, in 1862, was established a second normal college. Sir Hugh Owen, one of the most illustrious names in the list of great Welshmen, had begun to agitate for a connecting link between elementary schools and places of higher education. No schools were then founded; but a "North Wales Scholarship Association" was formed; and this afforded much valuable assistance prior to the coming of the County School. The Magna Carta of secondary education in Wales was the Intermediate Education Act of 1889. This Act provided for the levying of a half-penny rate in all the Welsh counties by the County Councils. In every county a joint education committee was to be appointed to {227} deal with existing endowments and buildings; and, where necessary, to provide new schools under the management of the recently appointed local bodies. In order that greater uniformity might be acquired, a Central Welsh Board was constituted, to which was entrusted the duty of supervising the schools generally, inspecting them, and examining the pupils. The Board continues to exercise some of its functions, but now shares a dual control with the Welsh Department of the Board of Education, a Department which was created as a concession to nationalist aspirations. From the commencement the success of the new Intermediate Schools was phenomenal. Schools starting with ten pupils would, in a dozen years, have two hundred or more. Of large gifts given by the rich there were very few. Apart from grants made by the Government, the schools depended upon the small, but generous, contributions of the poor.