[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I am a devout
Free Trader, and have always looked to the • Spectator as the prophet of the faith, but doubts re Safe- guarding have recently afflicted me, and the letter of " G. L. A." is disconcerting. Even more—may I say it ?- your own note, an excellent argumentum ad hominem, but inconclusive if the third example is taken rather as an effect
than a purpose and not touching the first. Please reconvert me.
And there is another Trade Reality, namely, that our success depends on our recovering—I use the word with intention—
our reputation as efficient workmen. An illustration : about three years ago we installed central heating in this school,the
system being supplied by one of the most famous English firms. We haVe since been engaged constantly in replacing defective valves, and on the day the boys returned 'this January one of the main joints started leaking, with a long irregular crack in it, not due to explosion or any other cause
except bad work in the casting.
A telegram to the firm elicited the reply by letter " in due course " that they did not stock this joint but would make one to be delivered in three or four days. It is now nine days since the occurrence, and we have no news of the new joint. The snow is on the hills and we are unheated. The system is so constructed that one defect not only puts the whole system out of gear, but entails also the emptying and refilling of the whole, each process taking three days. With good luck we hope to have some heat in the school at the coldest season of the year within three weeks of the boys returning. When we extend the system, as we hope soon to do, we shall employ another firm, and if a German firm pro- mises more satisfaction a German firm it shall be.
May I, then, in reference to a current controversy and to the dubious state of my Free Trade faith, sign myself as a man once habitually did to his friends Y—Yours to a certain extent,
King William's College, Isle of Man. E. C. OWEN.
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