THE LIFE OF GEORGE CADBURY.t Mn. A. G. GannostEn has
reinforced with enthusiasm his established skill as a biographer in writing about the late Mr. George Cadbury. Mr. Cadbury was the rare combination of a mystic and a man of affairs. He was a devout Quaker and followed the Inner Light as though a vision of spiritual things were always before him. Yet lie was intensely practical in detail. He did not pour out money for other people to carry out charitable ideas. Having invented the ideas he himself attended to their fulfilment. He was a pioneer in the creation of garden towns or villages and in town-planning. Bournville is a truly wonderful achievement, which crowned the labours of Mr. Cadbury and his brothers in pulling round a shaky business. In business, indeed, Mr. Cadbury proved, what Mr. Henry Ford has been proving on a much larger scale in America, that if you ensure a high quality in your production and also ensure the material well-being of the people you employ wealth may easily follow as an incident though it may never have been sought.
As Mr. Gardiner mentions in a rather misleading way the controversy between the Spectator and Mr. Cadbury on the
subject of betting tips, we feel bound to say something about
this, though we should have preferred to leave it alone. When Mr. Cadbury became proprietor of the Daily News he banished all news of racing and betting from it and announced that he did so on principle. To him betting was a sin. When, however, he became the virtual proprietor of the Star lie allowed that • Travels and Sketches. Translated from the Danish of Frederik l'oulsen. London: Chatto and VVindua. [7s. fid.1 Life of George Cadbury. By A. G. Gardiner. London: Cassell. [10a. Cal• neLl paper to continue—though he still maintained his principles in the Daily News—as the most notorious betting sheet in London. Captain Coe continued undisturbed in his business of inciting the wage earners to put their money on his fancies. If Mr. Cadbury had taken what may be called the "man of the world" view, that there was nothing sinful in betting, we should not have felt compelled to criticize him. But the contrast between the devout assertion of high principles in the Daily News and the conduct of the Star as a kind of public gaming table was too much for us. Mr. Cadbury, of course, had his defence. It was, as Mr. Gardiner tells us, that without the betting tips and news the Star could not have carried on, and he deliberately thought it better to have a Star publishing Captain Coe's incitements in conjunction with good Radical doctrine than a Star publishing Captain Coe's incitements in conjunction with bad Tory doctrine. In all the circumstances the defence seemed to us thoroughly bad, though Mr. Gardiner accepts it as satisfactory. It is not even as though the Star was a mild offender ; it outpaced all its rivals in laying itself out to help betting. As for the attacks of the Spectator, Mr. Gardiner says that Mr. Cadbury " understood quite well that they were inspired not by outraged morality but by political feeling." That is hard to beat as a poultice for an uneasy conscience. Lord Justice Fry was politically opposed to the Spectator and an impartial man if ever there was one. Yet he was a whole-hearted supporter of the Spectator in the matter. Mr. Gardiner must try again.
We are sorry to have to recall these facts because, though we think that Mr. Cadbury did a public disservice in con- nexion with the Star, we agree with Mr. Gardiner that he was in countless respects a very great benefactor. He did not merely make two blades of corn grow where one grew before—he made countless blades grow.
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