MR. GLADSTONE ON "INDOLENCE IN PRODUCTION."
[To TTIE EDITOR OP THE "EPECTATOR."1 SIR,—The following extract from a speech made by Mr. Gladstone at Pumpherston to an audience of Scottish shale- miners on October 28th, 1890, will, I think, interest your readers :— "About the year 1841 I was Vice-President of the Board of Trade, and it was my duty to receive the deputations of all the different trades in a state of alarm and horror at the changes that were threatened, which they said portended to them absolute ruin. You would have thought that all industry was going to have an extinguisher put upon it, and that the only thing for the people of this country to do would be to walk out of it and seek some happier land You know the result of that has been, instead of ruin and destruction, that the trade of the country has been multiplied about five times over what it then was ; the population of the country since that time has fully doubled, and it has not only doubled in numbers, but it has been enormously
raised in material condition Although I sympathise with you under the pressure that you have felt, under the com- petition that has compelled you to tax your wits to the utter- most for the purpose of economising production, yet I am bound to admit that under the conditions of human nature that pressure is a necessity of our position, a condition of our attaining to excellence. It is by effort and not by indolence—there is such a thing as indolence even in production—it is by effort and not by indolence that we are to rise, and that we are to attain to true excellence."
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