Evening star., 1901-06-13
ENGLAND'S GREAT DISTRESS
PROGRESS CRIPPLED, BUT SHE WILL
REGAIN HER POSITION.
Twenty-Five Years of Hard Times
Predicted - BrftOns Compared
With Other Foreigners.
Julian Ralph in Golfers Weekly.


| The English are in a panic over the in
vasion of their fields of industry and COM
merce by us Americans.
The pity is that while everybody feels
the pinch, no one knows how or where to
ease the boot that squeezes so hard. Or.
| let me put it this way: If any one does
know the remedy, it is seen to be so radi-
| cal and extraordinary that it is hardly rea-
| sonable to put it into words, hardly fair
to increase the alarm of the nation by
stating it frankly. AS 1 see the situation,
there is no gainsaying that England must
go through a fearful purging and a recon-
struction of her industrial system and her
attitude toward labor English labor, too,
must learn to look at itself and it's duty
from a new standpoint. This purging and
reformation mean to England a period of
twenty-five years of hard times IL condi-
coming war which shall press the great
modern powers into two camps-one Rus
sian, and one American, German and Eng
liSh-does not break out during that period
to upset all our calculations.
Gripping English Progress.
The United States have but just begun
to build the boats that are to cripple the
feet of English progress. More and more
goods, covering wider and wider field
of human needs, are to be sent by us to
England at so much cheaper prices that
the English, having less and less money
to buy with, must buy our wares or buy
none. AS the shoe hurts more and more,
the workmen of England must go out of
their closed factories, and, in hunger and
pain, divest themselves Of the habits of
mind and of work which have brought
this catastrophe upon their country and
themselves. The labor unions must modify
their eXactions and abandon their hostility
to modern labor-saving machinery. The
workman himself must come to be glad
to have the chance to do by himself
what he now-at every trade and every
job-insists that two men shall do. He
must learn that wages are paid not for
loafing, but for hard and earnest work
And bitter pain and hunger must teach him
that when he works he must do so with
vim and enthusiasm side by side with fel-
low workmen who like us Americans, are
all intent upon doing our very best and
are never satisfied even with that. He
must unlearn the poisonous Chinese prin-
ciple, that has corrupted London alike with
Pekin, that lit is best to leave well enough
alone" He must. like us new conquerors
of the worlds trade, be ever thinking how
to improve upon the very best
Is England 'PIayed Out.v
And do you think that this cannot be?
Have many of my readers imbbed the no.
tion that because the English are In a rut
they cannot get out of it-that they are
played out? Then let me tell you your mis-
take. These people show none of the last
signs of the arrival of decay. If they
were fine and highly artistic, like the
French, or feeble in war; if they were su-
perstitious and content to be poor, like the
Spanish and Italians; if they were nerve
less and degenerate, like the Hollanders,
who are content to slip down to the work
of growing flowers and making cheese,
well might one say this is the end of the
eminence of the English. But they are
not artistic not fine in feeling, thought or
work-they yet intensely rugged
strong. large-boned. forceful Gn a sense,
rude), active, fighting people-stin very
close to the earth, still very fond of the
soil the animals. the chase, the incessant |
trial of strength, the field of combat. No. |
you have only to pick up out of q crowd |
twelve Englishmen and set them beside
twelve Frenchmen or twelve Spaniards or |
Italians to see the difference between the |
Teutonic vigor and the Latin decay. "A |
nation of horses and mares is what the |
English are called by Frenchman who de- |
tests them. And the same phrase could |
be applied to the Germans, mind you. The |
phrase fits the two peoples who must soon |
contest with Russia the domination of Eu- |
rope.
Hard Times Ahead.
So I say that England is to see twenty /
or twenty-five years Of very hard times, |
during which her present lazy workmen |
will pass away, to give place to a new lot l
made earnest by distress. made keen and i
wide awake by necessity. And these will |
copy the tools and methods by which we |
are succeeding. During the process Eng /