PROGRESS AND THE POOR
Snt,—A vote of thanks to the Rev. James Johnston for his letter in your issue of last week. What he says is both true and opportune. No one who knew the conditions of the weekly wage-earners fifty or even twenty years ago, and compares them with those of today, can for a moment agree with those who talk of the failure of our economic system. Though there is much still to be done, it is nevertheless to be hoped that the country will not be persuaded, by well-meaning people whose hearts are larger than their heads, to disregard the history of these years and exchange the methods of ordered progress hitherto characteristic of the British race for an impetuous plunge into violent change.
It may, for example, very well be doubted whether the fortunes so admirably expended by successful organisers of business, such as the Cadburys, Lord Wakefield and Lord Nuffield could have produced anything like the same benefits for thc nation at large if they had been transferred to the State by taxation even more severe than that hitherto in force. Westminster and Whitehall are not omniscient, by
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