SLACK WORKERS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 39, 15 February 1930, Page 8

SLACK WORKERS

TROUBLE IN ENGLAND

A PULPIT DIAGNOSIS

(From "Tho Post's" Representative.). LONDON, 7th January. The Rev. R. J. Campbell is leaving Holy. Trinity Church, Brighton, to take up his appointment as Canon of Chichester. In his farewell sermon to his congregation, Dr. Campbell referred at length to Britain's industrial troubles. Suggesting that her difficulties were partly due to slackness, ho contrasted the attitude towards work of the British and the American working-man. "Eleven years have elapsed since the Great War, and tho hope of an emergence of a new order remains unrealised," he said. "It is no straining of the truth to say that the peoplo of this country have suffered more of the aftereffects of the war than the peoplo of any other qountry, not excepting Germany. AYe aro taxed to desperation, trade is dislocated, and tho problem of unemployment has assumed such dimensions as to cause many of our wisest and most experienced men to despair of the situation." Dr. Campbell expressed his sympathy with tho position of Mr. J. H. Thomas, whose unselfishness in taking tho post of Employment Minister had not, ho said, received the recognition it deserved. "He cannot get rid of tho evil —no one man can. If it is to be solved we must pool all our resources, and brains, and energy, and attack it at its roots." While some of the causes of tho present situation were economic others were moral. The British character was threatened by a habit which had grown up in recent years. AYe were too ready to adopt something for nothing; to escape from discipline, and to devote too much time to excitement and plea-sure-seeking. To leave God out of the reckoning was to court disaster in the long run. Dr. Campbell told of an American physician, whom he met recently in London, who said to him: "I have travelled this country through, and I have yet to meet an Englishman who puts his heart into his job." "I resented his remark at the time," said Dr. Campbell, "but on reflection I could not say it was obviously untrue. No one can visit America, as I have done within the last twelve months, without being struck by the contrast between the habits of life in that country and in ours. Not all the advantages are on the side of America, but the ordinary American works as tho ordinary Englishman does not. Determination, energy, vigour in facing one's task are the rule.-over thorp. They really are not over here." i