1926 
A REVIEW OF 1925 
[In the Manchester Guardian Commercial ; Annual Review, J anuary 28, 
1926. ] 
s we get older the years seem to come faster. We can all 
emember when it was quite an event to put a fresh number of the 
hristian era at the top of the first letters we wrote in January 3 
ow we change the date of the year with as little emotion as that 
ith which we used to change from one month to the next 
ven the end of the quarter-century leaves us cold ; it is the 
hird which we have seen, and yet things are going on much as 
hey always did. We prate of rapid change, but fifty years 
ake little difference except to the personnel. If a man who left 
[anchester fifty years ago were now to revisit it, he would not 
ecognize a single person, but he would be able to find his way 
bout the streets and the inside of most buildings without much 
ifficulty ; I dare say he might even catch the same train to 
derley Edge. As things get bigger and more elaborate they 
become less easy to alter. Chicago now is much more like the 
hicago of fifty years ago than the Chicago of 1876 was to the 
Chicago of 1826. New countries get settled ; I recently stayed 
1th people not two hundred miles from Chicago who had lived in 
he same house for sixty years, and that without ever altering it. 
On March 9 it will be one hundred and fifty years since Adam 
mith published the Wealth of Nations. In the palmy days of 
the Vietorian Jubilees we used to smile in superior fashion over 
hat we conceived to be his ill-grounded pessimism when he said 
it was improbable that the States of Europe would remain solvent, 
and that it was quite Utopian to suppose Great Britain would 
ever adopt a completel Free Trade policy. The compulsor 
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