The Sun.
London, England, 1865-11-07 00:00:00

Lord Stanley on Physical Education.

Last evening Lord Stanley formally opened the
Liverpool new Gymnasium. He was received with
applause, and addressed the assembly as follows :
In proceeding to open this gymnasium, which I be-
lieve to be, in point of size, of arrangements, and of
its fittings, one of the most perfect yet established
anywhere in Europe, I need not trouble you with
more than a few introductory observations. You.
probably know its history as well as I do. You know
that in the main it owes its existence to the persever-
ance and energy of a townsman of yours,—l mean
our friend Mr. Melly. It was mainly by his efforts,
aided by those of a few supporters as zealous as him-
self, that the requisite sum of £lO,OOO was raised
for its construction ; and I think it is creditable to
Liverpool that such an amount could be raised,
without thought of profit to the contributors, for
such a purpose. I say, without thought of profit, for
believe those who have invested in it most largely
will be the first to tell you that, though for the sake
of the example and as an encouragement to others,
they will be glad to see an ample return, yet, so far
as their personal interests are concerned, every one
of them will be perfectly satisfied, if the concern
only pays its way ; and that it will pay its way I
think you have every reason to expect, from the
very brief statement of facts which I shall give. The
total cost has been under £14,000, of which £lO,OOO
has been raised by shares, and the remaining £4,000
by a mortgage on the building. The yearly expenses,
including interest, are calculated not to exceed
£1,000; and since the returns for the first six months
are £7,ooo,with the arrangements hardly completed,
and the whole plan still untried, I think there is no
reasonable doubt of the institution being self-sup-
porting. N ow, I lay some stress on that, not for the
sake of the thing itself. Liverpool is rich enough to
pay both for its pleasures and its wants, but because
the experiment is new. I am not aware that it has
been, or is being tried on an eqaally large scale any-
where 1,
else in the United Kingdom except in Edin-
burgh ; if it can be made to work there, there is no
reason whyit should not work equally well in every
large town throughout the country. I hear it said,
and I believe it is true, that in Manchester they are
only waiting to see the result, and if that result be
what we expect a similar building will very soon be
set on foot there. I will just mention, before leav-
ing that part of the subject, that the subscribers for
evening attendance are 500, who pay £1 each for
six months, and £1 10s. for the year. There are in
addition other subscribers at a higher rate, entitled
to daily admission. The number of these last as yet
is not great, 60 or 70 I believe, but increasing daily;
and there is yet a third class, young lads chiefly, for
whom the place is open on certain days of the week
and special training provided. Of the arrangements
I need say nothing. You can judge of them for
yourselves, but 1 congratulate the managers upon
having in Mr. Hulley a director, who is working
not merely for the salary which he earns, and which
they will be the first to admit is a very inadequate
recompense for his labour, but who is working out
of a real and enthusiastic interest in the business
which he is employed to do. And now one word as
to the object, or rather the objects, which the pro-
moters have in view. Many people look on a gym-
nasium—a place of teaching, that is, for athletic
exercises—as though it were a yacht club, or a chess
club, or an Alpine club—a thing which is a hobby
to a few individuals, and which others join for
amusement, or because it is the fashion, or because
it helps to pass the time. Now, if it were only that,
though I should say nothing against it, and though
I should think the promoters had made a very sen-
sible investment of their spare cash and their spare
time, I should hardly have considered that it re-
quired or deserved the formality of a ceremonial
opening, and assuredly I should not have done that
which to me is never perfectly agreeable—l should
not have stood up to make a speech on the subject.
But I should hold that it is far more than a mere
place of amusement. We, in Europe, and more
especially in England, are entering on a new
phase of social existence. Already more than half
the population of England reside in towns. With
peace maintained, and with an increase, or even a
continuance, of our present rate of prosperity, the
population will in a few years be far greater. But I
need not appeal to general statistics. We who have
lived to middle age in this neighbourhood—we who
have seen the great city extending from the New
Docks of Garston, on the one side, to the Sandhills
of Bootle on the other—who have watched the gra-
"dual disappearance of the green fields, and the
spread in their place of streets and lanes, and who
have daily before their eyes the long line of villas
which spring up at every adjoining railway station
—at Broad-green, at Hurton, and at Roby—should
require no proof from books or Parliamentary re-
turns to tell them how rapid and how continuous is
the increase of that part of the population engaged
in some one of the many branches of commerce, and
destined, for the most part, to sedentary pursuits in
crowded localities. What is happening here is,
though not to an equal extent, happening also in a
great part of England. But we all know also some-
thing else ; we know that, even under the greatly
improved sanitary conditions of the last few years
—and let me say, in passing, that it is nothing less
than a shame to us that, notwithstanding all that
has been effected (and it is a great deal), Liverpool
should stand nearly highest on the death-rate of
England—even after all that has been done, all that
drainage, and water supply, and wide streets, and
parks can do, urban life is never so healthy as that
which is passed in the pure air and active pursuits
of the country. What are the causes of that differ-
ence ? I am now speaking of the labouring and ar-
tisan class, with whom I admit at once this institu-
tion has little to do. But if I come to the class
above them—to the class of clerks, of young men
engaged in shops, of all whose days are passed sit-
ting on stools, in offices often close and crowded—
and I might take in a higher class still—l say at once
that one great cause of feeble constitution and de-
pressed energies is the absence of bodily or muscular
exertion, combined with the pressure of what is
in some degree mental occupation—though often
mental occupation of a very mechanical kind. Of
course, habit will do much. Of course, also, indi-
vidual constitutions vary. But every medical man,
and every one who has studied sanitary matters,
knows that life passed within four walls during the
week, with only the variety of a walk on Saturdays
and Sundays, will very seldom be a healthy life in
the true sense. For, by " healthy" we mean, or
ought to mean, not the mere absence of disease, not
the mere capacity to go through an ordinary day's
work, but that state in which existence itself is feltto
be an enjoyment, in which all simple and natural
pleasures are appreciated, and the little everyday
anxieties of our business sit lightly upon us. If
there are, as is undoubtedly the case, classes among
us who run all to muscle and with whom brainnever
gets a chance of being developed—navvies, plough-
men, and the like—so there are classes who seem to
have no further idea Of using their muscles than is
implied in walking to their place of business (and
even they very often use an omnibus to save time),
and whose utmost bodily exertion is driving a pen for
hours together and handling a knife and fork at
dinner. Now, I say, and I hope without offence,
that in the latter class the human result is, to my
mind, hardly more satisfactory than in the former..
Take Your navN y, and you have a fine sample of
animal development ; but I am afraid you have
little else. Take your clerk, shut up from year's end
to year's end : you have a quick active brain, the
nervous system ever excitable, but the animal frame
feeble and badly developed. I respect him. I am
very sorry for him. The fault is not his, but that
of the life he leads. But I say of him that he is not,
physically speaking, the stuff out of which we wish
the middle classes of Englishmen to be made. If it
were possible—which .1 fear it hardly is---to trace the
history of families in detail, we should be startled to
find how many of those engaged in purely sedentary
pursuits die out, and how the gaps have to be filled
up, year after year, from the hardier rural Popula-
tion. There are other evils of a purely sedentary life
to which in this company I can scarcely advert ;
one is that physical feebleness leads to depression.
That depression may be relieved by the easy and
always accepted resource of drink, and then, sooner
or later, we know the end. In other respects, too,
medical men and all who have studied health ques-

tions, will understand the very vaguephrases I have
used. It is not easy to overrate the degree to which
habits of morality, among men under middle age,
are connected with healthy physical conditions, and,
above all, with sufficient bodily exercise. Well, then,
I think we shall agree as to this proposition, that in
Liverpool, as in all great towns, there exists a class
exceedingly numerous and yearly increasing, for
whom, in the course of their business, no opportunity
of bodily training or exercise is provided. Can they
make such opportunities for themselves ? Of course,
in a certain sense they can. There is no physical
impossibility in it. But our climate is damp and
dull, our streets are not attractive, and perhaps one
of the least entertaining of human occupations is
that which is termed " taking a constitutional " on
the high road. There is, also, the expenditure of
time. An establishment like this gives exercise in
a concentrated form, and its rooms will be open--
will probably be most frequented—in the evening
—that is, at the time of day when during several
months in the year out-door nature, especially in
the town, is not very agreeable. So much I have
to say of the uses of this building. Only one word
more. Ido not fear that support will be wanted.
Those who have watched the progress of the move-
ment tell me that among the young men who take
to these exercises many do so with a kind of en-
thusiasm which is quite remarkable. Still, I find
no fault with that. We all like to see men take up
with a thing in earnest, whether it be work or play.
But to those who are keenest about it I would offer
one word of warning. Recollect that it is a thing
that may be easily overdone. Don't ride a hobby
too hard. The object, the natural object, of a
training of this kind is not to make athletes out of
men who have not to live by their muscles, but to
develope sound health and manly constitutions.
His lordship concluded by expressing an earnest
wish for the success of the institution.

English Subscribers to the Confederate Loan

The Philadelphia correspondent of the Times gives the
following account of the origin of the published list of sub-
scribers to the Confederate cotton loan :

" The just indignation caused in England, by the publi-
cation in America of the names of Englishmen said to have
invested money in the Confederate Cotton Loan, has led
to some inquiry here as to the authorship of the list. I
have learnt from good authority how the list was procured
and published. The "New York Alsociated Press" is, no
doubt, well known in Europe. •It is an association for
procuring the news, and is supposed to be composed of the
leading journals throughout America. This is a mistake.
The sum and substance of the "Associated Press" is a
person named D. H. Craig, who having, years ago, pro-
cured an exclusive contract with the Nova Scotia telegraph
lines, by which he alone could have the European news
from the steamers touching at Cape Race, Father Point,
and Halifax, has built upon it a huge system professing to
furnish news for the entire American press—although
the way in which it is done is shockingly bad. Craig
receives a subsidy from every American newspaper, and
has made an immense fortune. Every one of our editors
grumbles at the insufficiency of his system, but none dare
to openly denounce him; for the invariable punishment is
a deprivation of the foreign news of which Craig has the
monopoly. The only way in which enterprise can bo
shown is by employing " special correspondence," and
every journal of note now has them, and while secretly
Craig and his system are detested, no journal openly de-
nounces him.

" Of course thisman yields an enormous power, and what-
ever he wishes to print is simultaneously published in every
American newspaper. He has agents in all the large
cities, whose business is to collect news and to send it to
other parts of the country. His own profits by this system
are at least $5OO a week. In Washington the agent is
L. A. Gobright. Of course, it was the object of the
Government, early in the war, to control Craig, as by this
means all the newspapers could be firmly held. The
military censor was, therefore, established at Washington,
who supervised every despatch forwarded from that office,
which was acknowledged to be the principal news centre
in the United States. But this did not work well ; -it
caused endless quarrels, the news the Government did not
like frequently escaped the censor. An arrangement was
then made by the Secretary of War and the Associated
Press, by which the department would furnish all the
news if the Associated Press would print it as sent. This
was gladly acquiesced in, and continues to this day in
force. Stanton's war bulletins were furnished in this way,
and Craig was even made to promise that he would deprive
any newspaper of these bulletins if it in any way changed
them from the copy furnished. Mr. Gobright, at
Washington, is the immediate agent to whom the War
Department communicates, and the list of alleged Con-
federate Loan holders was sent to him from the depart-
ment. He scattered it over the country through the
medium of the telegraph. It passed under the supervi-
sion of Mr. C:•aig or his confidential agent at New York,
as everything does, and, with several insulting comments,
was printed. I have every reason to believe that this list
was manufactured in our War-office. The Government
detectives in England, for our secret service had many
spies there during the war, picked up a few names of loan
holders, as they were heard floating about in the gossip of
London, and with these as a foundation the list was made
up. If what I hear be true, and I have no reason to doubt
it, the war Department has been guilty of an act of great
meanness, to say the least of it. Some one there has
placed upon the list the names of Englishmen who are dis-
liked on account of their having wished the South success
in the late war. Every distinguished Englishman who
espoused the Southern cause, or desired fair play in the
contest, was put upon the list, and imaginary figures set
opposite his name, inorder to show, as far as so transparent
a trick could, that he had a mercenary motive for his
course. The War Department is responsible for this
latest act of meanness, and Mr. Craig, for pandering to a
vulgar prejudice in permitting the list to be printed,
deserves reprobation."

An Argument for the Free Trade in Iron.

(From the New York Commercial Advertiser.)

Mr. Daniel J. Morrell, General Superintendent of the
Cambria Iron Works of Johnstown, Pa., in a letter re-
cently addressed to the American iron and Steel Associa-
tion of Pittsburgh, reveals some remarkable facts in regard
to the production of iron in this country.
He states that to produce a gross ton of railroad bars
it requires 32 days' actual direct labor, and further, the
equivalent of 18 days' labor to cover the wear and tear of
furnaces, machinery, buildings, interest on capital, and
royalty for the minerals consumed, so that the actual cost
of producing a ton of rails is equivalent to 50 days' labor,
exclusive of excise taxes. Estimating labor at $2 per day,
$lOO is therefore the normal cost of producing a ton of
rails in this country. Now, as long as this is the case,
how can our manufacturers ever compete with other na-
tions in foreign markets when a ton of rails can be pro-
duced in England and Belgium at about five pounds per
ton, say twenty-five dollars is gold, and other iron in the
same proportion ? Is it not evidently to the interest of
American industry to abandon the manufacture of iron,
and to obtain it from Europe in exchange for other pro-
ducts which Europe needs, if thereby we can save this
enormous tax, imposed on every species of industry, merely
with a view to continue the production of an article in re-
gard to which we are so unfavourably placed compared to
England and Belgium? Why should every industry of the
country be thus unnecessarily burthened merely to permit
the existence of a single branch of industry, the manufac-
ture of iron ?

But upon further investigation of the facts presented by
Mr. Morrell, we are led to believe that Free Trade would
not only liberate every industry of the country from this
unnecessary and unjust burthen, but, further, that it
would greatly stimulate the production of iron itself, by
placing it under the healthy influence of competition, the
lack of which has evidently produced the usual results
which attend monopolies and Government protection of
industry—i. e., undue extravagance and waste, as well as
a diminution or cessation of efforts to improve the methods
and processes of production.
We.
believe this statement shows either that the work-
men in the iron districts sidle their time away instead of
laboring as the British workmen do, Cr else that there is
the greatest extravagance and waste in the iron districts
of Pennsylvania. In either case it imposes an unjust and
unnecessary burden on all the other producers of the
country, who should unite to free themselves from this
terrible incubus, which does not even contribute to the
welfare of the labor employed in the production of iron,
since if these cannot reduce the cost of producing iron,
they can readily and beneficially be absorbed in the other,
more productive, industries of the country, thus increasing
the profits of our industry to the extent of the reduc-
tion in the cost of the iron they consume. We be-
lieve, however, that with perfect free trade, the pro-
duction of iron will be greater and more profitable than
under protection. The only effect of Protection is to turn
producers into non-producing government officials, who
have to be maintained upon the taxes levied on the pro-
ducers of the country. How long will laborers believe
this to be beneficial to themselves ?

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