The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 84
Government Help Required to Encourage Short-Hand
Government Help Required to Encourage Short-Hand.
Mr. Anderson deplores, in very strong terms, the fact that the British Government does not, like the German Government, encourage short-hand by liberal endowments. "Short-hand has no small claim to State support We deplore the fact that in our country short-hand is no sanctioned and supported by that influence and aid which it receives abroad. We deplore that it is left entirely to the option of pupils whether they shall learn short-hand, and that they are without any guide except the active puffers of their own particular plans as to what system they ought to learn. There ought to be, in this country, no less than in Germany, a competent staff of men paid by the State to look after the interests of an art of so great importance and possibilities. These remarks apply to America, and to our own country, and to both probably in an equal degree. Why should Germany spend thousands yearly in the protection and fostering of this art, and why should England and America spend nothing? Why, further, should German State funds be devoted, apparently with no niggard hand, to propagating their Gabelsberger system in foreign countries, and why should England and America be so careless of the interests of short-hand even at home. These questions, we venture to hope, will receive the attention they deserve in the right quarters. Our immediate province, however, is to point out in what direction the advancement of the art, both with ourselves and with our American cousins, really tends. Well now, without insisting at further length on the points already referred to in the chapter on the essentials of superiority in short-hand systems, we again revert to that principle first started, but neglected in England, commended in France, but adopted in Germany, and by the exertions of German scholars and professors fast spreading throughout all European nations. That principle is—having your short-hand alphabet, as is the case with ordinary writing, composed of characters all on one slope." (Anderson, page 225.)
"I well remember my own troubles when I began to report for the press, and many weary hours of the night I have spent in transcribing notes for the want of a book like this, which to me would have been worth its weight of gold. In fact it requires time and practice to familiarise the mind with words divested of such important sounding letters as vowels; for instance, I well remember the anxiety of mind I experienced because I could not make out what word an eminent M.F. had used in an after-dinner speech, which in my note-book was represented by the short-hand letters for pigs. I had to leave it to a later contemporary to inform the honourable member's constituents that he did not think it necessary to apologise in reference to a cirtain vote in the House. I did not lose my situation, hut dare not say what the consequence was. How many ta tales of this kind can an elderly member of the 'Fourth Estate' recall!"
Now the above quotation shows how urgent is the necessity for improvement in short-hand.