A WORKMAN'S REPLY TO MR. HOLT SCHOOLING.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I ask permission to suggest that your reviewer is mis- taken in describing me as a pessimistic statistician. This description is attached to my name in the Spectator of January 3rd, where mention is made of "A British Work- man's" reply in the January Fortnightly Review to my letter published in the September number of that review. Pro- fessional work extending over many years, in which accuracy is the first essential, has caused me to be neither pessimistic nor optimistic when I am stating facts. My opinions—I beg your leave to say—are optimistic. In the Fortnightly letter I wrote :—" I am not suggesting to you, gentlemen, that British commerce is in a parlous condition, or in anything like a parlous condition. But I do say to you that in many important directions British industry and commerce have already begun to show unmistakable signs of feeling the activity of our rivals." Is this, Sir, pessimistic ? More- over, your reviewer has—naturally enough—regarded as true the assertions made by "A British Workman" with regard to the statements contained in my Fortnightly letter. Here is one example (out of many that I could quote) of "A British Workman's" inaccuracy. This "British Workman" asserts that I accused British workmen of drinking more intoxicants than the average man in other classes of British society, and he makes a great point of this, receiving the approval of your reviewer. The only words in my letter which touched the drink question were these:—" Your average consumption of alcoholic drink is twice as much per man as the consumption by the American workman. The American workman is not a man to whom you can afford to give away an important point of this sort." I made no comparison whatever, direct or indirect, between British workmen and other British men. If your reviewer would put side by side the two Fortnightly letters, and read them, he would, I think, come to the conclusion that he has been unjust to me, and that he, inadvertently, has been
misled into approving a particularly gross piece of misrepre- Fotheringhay House, Twickenham.
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