THE GERMAN AS A WORKMAN.

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 107, 6 May 1916, Page 10

THE GERMAN AS A WORKMAN.

r -Sir Chas. Parsons, inventor ot the marine steam turbine, presiding over a meeting of the members of the North East Coast Institute of ■ Engineers and Shipbuilders at Newcastic-on-Tyne recently, said a wave of self-depreciation, was passing over Great Britain. It was being said we were very much behind tho Germans in all our educational movements, and the Germans claimed that they had invented practically ' everything. Sir Wm. Ramsay, however,'had shown that in science practically all inventions and great improvements had originated in countries other than Germany, chiefly in France, Russia, Switzerland, and England. Mr. Duguid Clark had demonstrated tho same thing in engineering and practical sciences. Sir Charles, continuing, said ,we had ways different from the Germans of doing things, .but' man for man we were better than they. He illustrated this contention by stating that about ten years ago his firm" took out comparative figures of the work done by British and German-Swiss workmen in building a thousand ; kilowatt turßine, and found . that the British workman's work per hour was,- when compared with the German's work, as eight to five. The former got higher'.wages and work; ed shorter Jrours than did the latter,, but the total wago bill of the English-made article was only 17 per cent, higher than that of the German article.