INCHCAPE ON WORK

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15034, 4 September 1922, Page 3

INCHCAPE ON WORK

“CHEAPEST FORM OF AMUSEMENT.” WORLD OPEN TO SCOTSMEN. In a speech richly reminiscent, full of humorous touches, and throwing interesting sidelights on the work of the Geddes Committee, Lord Inchcape returned thanks when h.e ivas recently prsented with the freedom of the burgh of Arbroath. His lordship announced that he intended to make the town a gift of £20,000, the interest on which he desired the Town Council to disburse among the widows and dependent relatives of men connected .with the sea. “I have sold for the Government," he said, “ a considerable number of steamers and crafts of various descriptions, realising about £60,000,000 and as a punishment for railing against Government extravagancese, in speeches in the House of Lords and on many platforms, I was arrested in August last by the • Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and sentenced to six months’ hard labour on the Geddes Committee. We began our work in my home at Glenapp, and instead of shooting grouse, blackgame, wild duck, partridges, and pheasants, and sometimes casting a fly, as I had hoped to do, I was tied to a table and engaged on masses of figures whloh showed how you were all being taxed out of existence. I confess I never felt happier than I did when in February last we had finished our labours, signed our report, and thrown it at tiie head of the Chancellor. I am sorry the Government had not adopted our recommendations in full. It has cut our suggested cuts by a good many millions, but I think the country will have something to say if it does not go in for further economy. Week in, week out, after we left Glenapp we sat at the Treasury in London from 10 till 7, and often later. The Treasury were very good to us, and we had half an hour for a frugal lunch which they supplied. We felt extremely grateful, and after we had sent in our report an incident occurred which led us to think that economy had really begun. We each received a hill for our luncheon, which w.e paid without a murmur. “Any success or supposed success I may have achieved is not due to myself. Had it not been for my good fortune in winning the lady who sits by my side I am perfectly certain "jou would not have been giving me the freedom of thb burgh to-day. - AH through our married life she has been my chum and my constant adviser, to saw nothing of what she has done for me a very stern course of discipline. It Is to this more than to anything else that I attribute any good fortune I may be supposed to have had."

Proceeding, Lord Inchcape said he acquired the rudiments of his business training in the office of his revered lord and master, the late Mr Francis Webster. He had the magnificent salary of £5 the first year, £lO the second and £ls the third, but there was compensation for the meagre salary in the long office hours. They began at 9 a.m. and were supposed to finish at 8 p,m. but it was more frequently. 10 or 11 at night before the office closed. “The instructions I got from Mr Webster on the first morning I entered his office,” said his lordship, “were brief and to the point. lie called me into his room, which I entered with fear and trembling, and he said, ‘Now, Jeemie,, you are to do as you are bidden and not a word must go out of the office either black or white.’ I endeavoured to observe that rule during all the time I was under his and other people’s orders, either in business or in Government service, and I. shall always be grateful to Mr Webster for Instilling into me a sound principle, which, I, too, have tried to pass on to those who in the course of time have become responsible to me.

“Perhaps I might before I sit down say a word or two to. those',who are about the age which I was when I left Arbroath, in 1872, just fifty years ago. Let me recommend them not to he afraid to go out into the world. There is no scope in Scotland for the energy, the brains, the initiative, and the ambition of ail the youth of the country, but England and the rest of the British Empire, China, the United States, South America, are full of opportunities for well-educated, hard-working, persevering, self-denying, intelligent, ambitious, and honest Scotsmen, and if there is no prospect for you here the sooner you get away the better. There is an idea abroad that there should be nothing more than., forty-two or fortyeight hour’s work a week, and that the other 126 or 120 hours should be devoted to rest and recreation. lam within the mark when I say that my average kcefl of work for the last fifty years has not been forty-eight hours it has been nearer or has exceeded ninety-eight hours a week. But I have looked on work as a recreation, not as drudgery, and certainly half the time I have spent at work has been either in trying to make'money for other people or in the service of the State. My experience is that there is no greater pleasure In this world than that which is derived from work. Occupation is the cheapest form .of amusement you can get; idleness is the most expensive. It’s not work that kills it is worry, and if you have lots of work—l don’t care what kind of work it is so long as it keeps you occupied /and you do it conscientiously—you will have pleasure in it and you don’t have time to worry. “I was told not long ago by a friend who was doing a short cruise with me in a vacht named the Rover which I have' the felicity of possesing,” concluded Lord Inchcape, “that the skipper confided to him one night that the first Lord Inchcape was Ralph the Rover. I had never heard it before. I suppose the title became extinct when Ralph’s ship went down on the Inchcape Rock. I felt proud to- think that I had such an ancient lineage, and though I may have had a passing regret that the founder of my family was a pirate, I felt consoled when I remembered that most of our noble families, if they choose to do so can trace'themselves back to someone who had no better morals than my reputed ancestor.”