The Worcester Spy

A SCIENTIST'S ADVICE TO BRITISH MANUFACTURERS

The most recent and also the most practical suggestion of means by which English manufacturers may successfully meet American competition in the world's market comes from Professor Dewar, the noted scientist. At the British Association's annual meeting, in September, he said that Britain's great blunder had been the remaining in ignorance of what was being done on the other side of the Atlantic, and that if manufacturers would subsidize their chief officials to spend their holidays in the United States and see how time could be economized by organization, they would be repaid a hundredfold.

Professor Dewar's advice is very good, as far as it goes, but it will not cause any loss of sleep among American manufacturers, for however much the aforesaid chief officials might learn—and they have keen eyes and good memories—English trade would still be handicapped by the English workman, while the American, despite his grumbling, his strikes, and his occasional sprees, works hard. This difference between workmen on the two sides of the Atlantic has often been noticed and commented on alike by English and American employers. It has been attributed to difference of climate, pay, food, etc., but the true reason is far more significant: it is that the able English mechanic seldom or never expects to change his condition, while almost every American hopes that some day he will become a manager and employer through sheer ability, so he works as if he were heir-presumptive to everything in sight, and he has hundreds of thousands of exemplars to cheer him, all of whom came up from the bottom. -Harper's Weekly