XXX. S. H. BARRACLOUGH. 



absolutely essential to industrial improvement and advance- 

 ment, and if this zest for labour, this inspiration of toil is 

 lacking in the worker of all grades (it applies to the highest 

 as to the lowest) much progress cannot be looked for. 



The British people have been, and are, great inventors. 

 It was an Englishman — or at any rate a Scotchman — James 

 Watt, who nearly one and a half centuries ago produced 

 the steam engine in a practicable form ; it took other 

 nations half a century to get proper possession of it, so to 

 speak, and to this fact our past material prosperity is to a 

 considerable extent due. It is equally true that it was an 

 Englishman — or at any rate an Irishman — who produced 

 the steam turbine in a practicable form some 20 years ago, 

 but in these days progress is fast, and not 10 years were 

 required for other nations to have full possession of it. 

 To-day, more Parsons steam turbines are built out of 

 England than in it. 



NATIONAL EFFICIENCY. 



The methods of the past will not serve. They were good, 

 but something more efficient is now required. It was Lord 

 Rosebery who in a remarkable speech a few years ago put 

 this matter with great emphasis, and set forth the position 

 that the vital question now confronting Great Britain was, 

 whether she intended abandoning her ancient policy of 

 " muddling along," and substituting for it that of " effici- 

 ency." National efficiency, the adaptation of means to 

 ends, is what is lacking at present in our Nation. For the 

 time Australia's prosperity, commercial and industrial, is 

 largely bound up with that of Great Britain, and the 

 important question for us is whether our methods display 

 this quality of " efficiency." It would not be hard to 

 establish the fact that at present they largely do not. 

 Without going into such a discussion in detail, I think it is 

 a fair comment to make that the three public Commissions 



