LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
CAUSES OF DISASTER.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."
SIR,—I see Mr. Massingham in the Spectator of February 17th gives as one proof of our national decadence the fact that "we have been beaten out of the field in the great scientific- industrial development of our time,—that of electrical engineering." That we are lamentably behindhand in the application of electricity for lighting, for traction, and—most important of all—for general power purposes, is quite un- deniable. But if the experts were polled on this subject they would be found practically unanimous in asserting that the cause of our backwardness is to be found, not in the timidity of our capitalists, nor in the ignorance of our engineers and men of science, nor in the lack of skill of our manufacturers and workmen, but primarily in the attitude of the municipal authorities, who, while doing practically nothing themselves, have bitterly opposed any development of electric enterprise in private hands. How strongly "progressive" municipal opinion has opposed, and still opposes, any development of electricity by private enterprise, no one should know better than the late editor of the Daily Chronicle. But if any of your readers wishes to study the municipal record in this matter, and to learn why and how far we are behind other countries, I would refer him to a very temperate article on the subject by an acknowledged authority, Mr. Campbell Swinton, in the current number of the Nineteenth Century.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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