"Inefficiency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... graft, favoritism, waste or inefficiency in the conduct of my affairs is a crime against my fair name; and I demand of my people that they wage unceasing war against these municipal diseases, wherever they are found and whomsoever ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... man thunders his protest at us against the inefficiency of the man with only the knowledge-stored brain. He says: We must have men that can will to do, and then do something, not merely men that can think of things "'twere good to do." Our public schools must train men and women to go out and take their place with the workers of the world, ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd
... yet; but, my God! Penhallow, my life is one to kill the toughest. What with army mishaps, inefficiency, contractors backed by Congressmen—all the scum that war brings to the top. Do you know ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... The inefficiency of most works of this kind are well known to all experienced housekeepers, they being generally a mere compilation of receipts, by those who have no practical knowledge of the subject, and are consequently unable to judge of ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... blame herself for having procured M. d'Adhemar's appointment to the London embassy, merely because he teased her into it at the Duchess's house. She added, however, that it was at a time of perfect peace with the English; that the Ministry knew the inefficiency of M. d'Adhemar as well as she did, and that he could ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... is first necessary to elucidate the causes of inefficiency; and to expect a brain which is out of order to function in an orderly manner simply because it is supplied with one of the substances necessary to its normal functioning (regardless of whether a deficiency of that substance ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... that he had violated the law and been guilty of tyrannous and despotic conduct, the mayor had ousted him not for pursuing an illegal course in arresting and "mugging" a presumptively innocent man (for illegal it most undoubtedly was), but for inefficiency and ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... Meade, at a late hour on the 29th, changed the entire plan of assault, which Burnside had carefully arranged, and to lead which a fresh division had been specially drilled. Then there was lamentable inefficiency or cowardice on the part of several subordinate officers. The troops charged into the great, cellar-like crater, twenty-five feet deep, where, for lack of orders, they remained huddled together instead of pushing on. The Confederates rallied, and after ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... compass if one of the strings be slightly wanting in absolute cylindricity. I speak specially of "staccato," as that form of bowing suffers perhaps more than any other from faulty bows; but any form of bowing that calls for special dexterity will betray the inefficiency of a bow. ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... I shall have enough to do to nurse it into its natural pace before I go home. I must devote myself to imbecility. I must be gloriously useless while I stay here. How is Mrs. [M.]? will she pardon my inefficiency? The city of Salisbury is full of weeping and wailing. The Bank has stopt payment; and every body in the town kept money at it, or has got some of its notes. Some have lost all they had in the world. It is the next thing to seeing ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... than two decades ago it was just the opposite. Then, it was said that the Negro was unfit for everything else except work. How inconsistent! We admit that there is a labor problem in the South, but we deny that it is due wholly to the inefficiency of the Negro as a laborer. In the first place, the natural increase of the population of the South has not kept pace with the marvelous growth and development of her industries. This in itself would explain ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... augmented the alarm of the people, who began to urge the magistrate to listen to their prayers, and coerce the sordid corn- dealers, who had, no doubt, numerous pits yet unopened. The alarm became still greater in the cantonments, where the commanding officer attributed all the evil to the inefficiency of the commissariat and the villany of the corn-dealers; and Major Gregory was in dread of being torn to pieces by the soldiery. Only one day's supply was left in the cantonment bazaars—the troops had become clamorous almost to ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... prudence or conduct, and the history of the league more than justified the disapprobation of Orange. The nobles thus banded together, achieved little by their confederacy. They disgraced a great cause by their orgies, almost ruined it by their inefficiency, and when the rope of sand which they had twisted fell asunder, the people had gained nothing and the gentry had almost lost the confidence of the nation. These remarks apply to the mass of the confederates and to some of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... on its own soil, only requiring to be redistributed to its peace occupations. Our Army will have to be fetched home, firstly, over Continental railways, probably battered into a condition of much inefficiency, and then in ships, of which the supply will be very short. The process will be very slow and very costly. Our Overseas Army will have to be sent back to distant Dominions, and the Army of our American Allies will have to be ferried back over the Atlantic. Consequently if ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... face, the abrupt speech, he was very much American. He was neat—neat in his way of dressing, and in his compact phrases, as hard and well-rounded as a pebble. The world to him was a place full of slackers, of lazy good-nature, of inefficiency. Into that softness he had come with a high explosive and an aim. He moved through life as a hunter among a covey of tame partridges—a brief flutter and a tumble of soft flesh. He had the cunning lines about the mouth, ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... extent had this practice been carried that all bolts and their corresponding nuts had to be specially marked as belonging to each other. Any intermixture that occurred between them led to endless trouble and expense, as well as inefficiency and confusion,—especially when parts of complex machines had to be ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... as he loathed inefficiency and as he loathed dirt. They were all three brothers with Drink in his eyes and as he leaned back in the chair now, his gaze travelling about the room, he could not but perceive little things that would have brought exclamations ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... what had really happened did not account to the master for the indifference of her long silence, and albeit conscious of some inefficiency in his present unheroic attitude, he continued sarcastically, "May I ask WHAT you imagined would happen when ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... ignominiously, lest his brother should be provoked to some desperate act of retaliation. On the other hand, Matthias despised the weakness and superstition of Rhodolph. The increasing troubles in the realm and the utter inefficiency of Rhodolph, convinced Matthias that the day was near when he must thrust Rhodolph from the throne he disgraced, and take his seat upon it, or the splendid hereditary domains which had descended to them from their ancestors would pass from ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... least developed nations. Annual GDP growth has averaged over 4% in recent years from a low base. Its economy is overwhelmingly agricultural, with the cultivation of rice the single most important activity in the economy. Major impediments to growth include frequent cyclones and floods, the inefficiency of state-owned enterprises, a rapidly growing labor force that cannot be absorbed by agriculture, delays in exploiting energy resources (natural gas), inadequate power supplies, and, most recently, political disturbances. In 1995, progress on Bangladesh's development ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... been brought home as his friend;—and some of them, no doubt, had whispered that this bringing home of Sir Marmaduke was part of the payment made by the Colonel for the smiles of the Governor's daughter. But no one alluded openly to the inefficiency of the evidence given. No one asked why a Governor so incompetent had been sent to them. No one suggested that a job had been done. There are certain things of which opposition members of Parliament complain loudly;—and there are certain other things as to which they are silent. The line ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... of the ordinary man to this is inefficiency on the part of the farmer, and up to the present this idea has passed as sufficient to account for the situation. The publicity given the whole farm question during the past six months, however, has to a large extent dispelled the inefficiency ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... fault with them is, they labor under an idea that nothing can be done without an extraordinary number of officers, soldiers, policemen, and employes of every description—upon the principle, I suppose, that if two heads are better than one, the ignorance or inefficiency of a small number of employes can be remedied by having a very great number of the same kind. In other words, they seem to think that if five hundred men can not be industrious, skillful, and economical, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the general gets all the credit. If it fails, he gets all the blame; and while no agents, however efficient, can compensate by their own efforts for the weakness of a conception that is radically unsound, many a brilliant plan has failed in execution through the inefficiency of the staff. In his selection of such capable men as his assistants must needs have been Jackson gave proof that he possessed one at least of the attributes of a great leader. He was not only a judge of character, but he could place men in the positions ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... thus made equal before the law, and no legal distinction was recognized between conqueror and conquered. There was, however, every element of confusion and perplexity in the theory and administration of the law itself, in the variety of systems which were contending for the mastery, and in the inefficiency of the courts in which they were applied. English law had grown up out of Teutonic custom, into which Roman tradition had been slowly filtering through the Dark Ages Feudal law still bore traces of its double origin in the system ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... condemned by the terrible committee eight years before. Opinion in Australia was divided, Robert Lowe leading the opposition,[213] and the experiment was vetoed by Mr. Gladstone's successor at the colonial office. He exposed himself to criticism and abuse by recalling a colonial governor for inefficiency in his post; imprudently in the simplicity of his heart he added to the recall a private letter stating rumours against the governor's personal character. These he had taken on trust from the bishop of the diocese and others. The bishop left him in the lurch; the recall was one affair, the personal ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... these conditions is inefficiency of administration and waste of the public moneys. The real interests of city or State are neglected. Streets become filthy, unsanitary tenements are built, firetrap factories and theaters allowed; every effort to improve public health is sidetracked, and the will of the people ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... fro from the dining-room to the kitchen Hannah's lamentations continued, grew more and more querulous. Accustomed as Janet was to these frequent arraignments of her father's inefficiency, it was gradually borne in upon her now—despite a preoccupation with her own fate—that the affair thus plaintively voiced by her mother was in effect a family crisis of the first magnitude. She was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... two-story affair with shiftless tenants and ragged children. Looking back now, I think likely it was the contrast of its desolation with the green hill and the fields I loved, of its darkness and human misery and inefficiency with the valiant fighting men of my boyish dreams, that so impressed me. I believe it because it is so now. Over against the tenement that we fight in our cities ever rises in my mind the fields, the woods, God's open sky, ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Department of Justice has been striving to weed out inefficiency wherever it exists, to stimulate activity on the part of its prosecuting officers, and to use increasing care in examining into the qualifications of those appointed to serve as prosecutors. The department is seeking ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Herbert Hoover • Herbert Hoover
... port of Trincomalee for a base. He fought five battles off the coast of India against the British Vice Admiral Hughes, in only one of which was the latter the assailant, and in all of which Suffren bore off the honors. He was constantly hampered, however, by the inefficiency and insubordination of his captains. On four or five occasions, including an engagement at the Cape Verde Islands on his way to India, it was only this misconduct that saved the British from the crushing attack that Suffren had planned. Unfortunately for him his victories were barren of result, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... building belonging to old Rufus Whiting. The building was on Duane Street, just off Main Street, and had been used for years as a law office by the old man, who had become too feeble and forgetful for the practice of his profession but did not realize his inefficiency. He liked Tom and let him have the room for a dollar a month. In the late afternoon when the lawyer had gone home the boy had the place to himself and spent hours lying on the floor by the stove and thinking of things. In the evening the grandmother came and sat in the lawyer's chair ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... nuisance." Senator Mallory declared in a debate about the close of the last Congress, that it was a system which never wrought efficiently, which never gave final satisfaction, and which generally brought in a set of adventurers. The department and members of Congress had experienced the annoyance and inefficiency of the system in the contract for carrying the mails between Key West and New-Orleans through the Gulf. It was several times given to the lowest bidder, and as often fell through; being finally awarded by private arrangement to other parties, at ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... above fear-thinking. Get out and keep out of negative thinking. Just as soon as you drop negative thinking your mind will begin to rise to a new brilliance of expression. One big element in efficiency is silence. It is the strongest thing to be silent. Noise is emptiness, weakness, inefficiency. Silence is the law of greatness; noise the ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... community of those who are immoral, inefficient, or defective, places a burden upon those who are mentally and physically capable and renders them liable to results which are the outgrowth of weakness or viciousness. The fact that alcohol causes pauperism, crime, and general inefficiency, thereby rendering the social environment less conducive to what is best in life, is plainly evident. To realize how alcohol harms the individual through its effects upon society in general, one has only to take into account his dependence upon society for intellectual and moral stimuli, for ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... science and chemistry, with whom Heidelberg is crowded, and who, astounding the naive German professors at first by the soundness of their views of things, astound the same professors no less in the sequel by their complete inefficiency and absolute idleness. In company with two or three such young chemists, who don't know oxygen from nitrogen, but are filled with scepticism and self-conceit, and, too, with the great Elisyevitch, Sitnikov roams about ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... not been an automatic levitation. It has been a fight, tragic and ceaseless, against destructive forces. This world needs something more than a soft gospel of inevitable progress. It needs salvation from its ignorance, its sin, its inefficiency, its apathy, its silly optimisms and its ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... case with added instances the Government found an unexpected champion in Mr. HEALY. He was amazed to hear the late HOME SECRETARY—"one of the Ministers who made the War"—gloating over the inefficiency of the War Office at a moment when round Verdun was raging a battle in which the fate of Paris, and perhaps of London, was involved. Why had he not imitated the monumental silence of Mr. BURNS? Instead, he, the suppressor of obscure Irish newspapers, had done more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... what our experience of contemporary life abundantly verifies, that the so-called representative assemblies of the world are not really representative at all. I will go farther and say that were it not for the entire inefficiency of our method of voting, not one-tenth of the present American and French Senators, the French Deputies, the American Congressmen, and the English Members of Parliament would hold their positions to-day. They would never have been heard of. They are not really the elected representatives ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... given the use of the Cumberland, a mere barge of only twenty-nine tons, in which to carry himself and part of his shipwrecked company to England. Compelled by the leaky condition of the crazy little craft, and the inefficiency of the pumps, to put into Mauritius, then a French possession, he was detained as a prisoner by the French governor, General Decaen, for ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... barrage, the Germans could be seen lying in the trench in force. When the barrage was on the Munich Trench, the enemy machine guns played on the attackers from both flanks all the time. The failure of the attack was due to the inefficiency of the British supporting barrage, together with the condition of the ground—thaw having set in and rain falling on the snow, making it exceedingly slippery—the targets the men formed against the snowy background, and ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... to call out," suggested Julien, somewhat mortified at the inefficiency of his assistance, "some one would ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to survive; because the theories of good men who are enthralled by its delusions are made the excuse of the wicked who would rather plunder than work; because it stops enterprise, promotes laziness, exalts inefficiency, inspires hatred, checks production, assures waste and instills into the souls of the unfortunate and the weak hopes impossible of fruition whose inevitable blasting will add to the bitterness of ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... you, Countess, to the hotel at Cuneo, where we arranged our rendezvous, in case you arrived before me, to say that I was on the way; but now we will all go there together. Since we parted I have had adventures. So, evidently, have you. Joseph's repairs were so unsatisfactory, owing to his own inefficiency and that of the machine shop, that I saw the best thing to do was to come on by train to Cuneo, where proper tools could be obtained. After some difficulty I found horses to tow me up to the railway terminus at Vievola, where I succeeded in getting ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Fanny Kemble's husband had been left. But in one respect its disastrous effect was everywhere felt. By associating manual labor with the stigma of servitude, it bred, in free men, a strong disrelish for work,—a most demoralizing and ruinous influence. Inefficiency and degradation were the marks of the non-slaveholding whites. The master class missed the wholesome regimen of toil. Nature is never more beneficent than when she lays on man the imperative command "Thou shalt work." Of ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... the general proposition of the inefficiency of doctors, and asked my companion if he ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... over again expressed on this point and are well known to differ widely. The commission can neither reconcile nor change these variant opinions resting on conviction, nor will it be authorized to decide the difference. Under these impressions of the inefficiency of such a commission was the inquiry made in the letter of the undersigned of 5th March, 1836, as to the manner in which the report of the commission, as proposed to be constituted and instructed by Her Majesty's Government, was expected to lead to an ultimate settlement of the question ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... It is impossible for anyone to say how far a low standard of industrial or professional attainment held out before the girl at her most impressionable age, a standard that to some degree, therefore, develops within her, as it exists without her, ends in producing the very inefficiency it begins by assuming. But psychology has shown us that suggestion or expectance forms one element in the developing of faculty, and this whether it be manual dexterity, quickness of memory or exercise of ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... riotous vitality, with great but unused powers of endurance and of positive action, the finding of its task means concentration of energy instead of dissipations directness of action instead of indecision, conscious increase of power instead of deepened sense of inefficiency, and the happiness which rises like a pure spring from the depths of the soul when the whole nature is poised and harmonised. The torments of uncertainty, the waste and disorder of the period of ferment, give place to clear vision, free action, natural growth. There are few moments in ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... therefore, the teaching in the average rural school is a dreary round of inefficiency. Handicapped to begin with by classes too small to be interesting, the rural teacher is mechanically hearing the recitations of some twenty-five to thirty of these classes per day. Lacking at the beginning the breadth of ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... cognizance. The case was investigated by a military tribunal and the man justified. The result was every way satisfactory. Assaulting soldiers lost its attractiveness to town bullies, and the case in which the civilian had been left to the action of the civil courts was a standing proof of the inefficiency of those tribunals in matters where partisan passions entered, and where the unanimity of ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... prevent the pain attacks. At times, the cause being intangible, it may be necessary to change the whole life and metabolism of the patient, as so often necessary in hysteria, neurasthenia, gout, intestinal fermentation and kidney inefficiency. Besides a rearrangement of the diet and measures for causing proper activity of the bowels, massage, exercise and hydrotherapy should lie utilized toward the end of improving the nutrition ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... Pattern;" of the great Free Dispensary which is to rival that of the Medical Mission; of the asylums for lepers, foundlings, the blind, aged men and aged women, dating from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, originally well conceived and noble institutions, but reduced into inefficiency and degradation by the greed and corruption of generations of officials; of the "Beggars' Square" and beggars' customs; of the trades, and of the shops with their splendors; of the Examination Hall with its streets numbering eleven thousand six hundred and seventy-three cells for the candidates ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... remarkable case of arrested development. Although inexperienced observers might imagine traces of the British colonel, as found in Pall Mall, in the bristling white moustache, swollen neck, and red gills, we find neither public school education nor inefficiency much in evidence anywhere. On the contrary, education is in a rudimentary condition, though with slightly protuberent mathematical and fictional glands. Inefficiency, too, is quite absent, the organ having had but small opportunity to perform its functions. The subject, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... Arab was thrusting his hand here and there in the load on the donkey's back and finally drew out a goatskin bag. Hillyard, like other Englishmen, had been brought up in a creed which included the inefficiency of all Postmasters-general. A blight fell upon such persons, withering their qualities and shrivelling them into the meanest caricatures of bureaucrats. It could not be that the postal service was now to reveal resource and ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... its expectations. Recruiting went on so slowly that the rebellion was practically over when two companies of artillery, numbering seventy-three men each, which had been raised in Massachusetts, were finally marched to Springfield. All the other recruits were dismissed. The inefficiency of Congress and its want of ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... Trochu, who was confirmed as military commander of Paris, had written a book, previous to the war, regarding the inefficiency of the French army; he had been therefore no favorite with the emperor. His chief defect, it was said, was that he talked so well that he was fond of talking, and too readily admitted ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... strain the brain is beaten down; if the number of "low-efficiency" cells increases, the driving power of the brain is correspondingly lessened and therefore the various organs of the body may escape through the very inefficiency of the brain to produce in them forced activity. On the other hand, if the brain remains vigorous, the kidneys may take the strain and break down; if the kidneys do not break, the blood-vessels may harden; if the blood-vessels are not ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... jerkiness and bad co-ordination for which we have to thank the defective training of our people. I think myself that it is high time for old legends and traditional opinions to be changed; and that, if any one should begin to write about Yankee inefficiency and feebleness, and inability to do anything with time except to waste it, he would have a very pretty paradoxical thesis to sustain, with a great many facts to quote, and a great deal of experience to ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... of the inefficiency of the machine that led the applicant to make his invention of 1847, which, by a modification of pre-existing elements, provided an advantageous location for the raker's seat. Upon this his fame ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... his duty. That may be; but it is Nature; and whilst you pique Nature against you, you do unwisely to trust to duty. In this futile scheme of polity, the state nurses in its bosom, for the present, a source of weakness, perplexity, counteraction, inefficiency, and decay; and it prepares the means of its final ruin. In short, I see nothing in the executive force (I cannot call it authority) that has even an appearance of vigor, or that has the smallest degree of just correspondence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... assure Mrs. Brown of the inefficiency of hair-dye as an internal application, she ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... at it this way," he said. His eyes returned to the agent. "Suppose you're a congressman," he went on, "and you find evidence of inefficiency in the government." ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... would never stay as much as five minutes after his appointed time, so I had to show the adorable creature and her fat brother out of the premises myself. But I did not mind that. I flatter myself that I can always carry off an awkward situation in a dignified manner. A brief allusion to the inefficiency of present-day servants, a jocose comment on my own simplicity of habits, and the deed was done. M. Arthur Geoffroy and Mademoiselle Madeleine his sister were half-way down the stairs. A quarter of an hour later I was once more out in the streets of Paris. It was a beautiful, balmy night. I had ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... studying to be a teacher at Heriot's. Bobby saw him settled, and then he had to escort Mr. Brown down from the lodge. The caretaker made his way about stiffly with a cane and, with the aid of a young helper who exasperated the old gardener by his cheerful inefficiency, kept the auld kirkyard ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... know as I have been just right about it," said Mrs. Underhill. "But Mrs. Whitney's carelessness and inefficiency have always tried me. Still, the children have turned out well. Delia is smart, and capable; and since you ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... one instance when Colonel Lewis failed of carrying out an enterprise against the Indians. It was a retaliatory raid against the Shawnees and his force was composed of whites and Cherokees; and his lack of success was due largely to the inefficiency of the guides who undertook to pilot him to the mouth of the Sandy. I told the girl of the expedition as it was lacking in horrible details, and with other carefully selected narratives tried to keep ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... me to give way!" she reproached herself. "It is what you might have expected of me before—before I had been through all this, with his example to uplift me out of my helplessness and inefficiency. Believe me, Lord Avondale, I am a very different young woman from the shallow, frivolous girl you knew during those ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... limited that their judgment has little weight; and the hostile conductor—in presence of the public who would pitilessly hiss a vocal accident of a good singer—reigns, with all the calm of a bad conscience, in his baseness and inefficiency. Fortunately, I here attack an exception; for the malevolent orchestral conductor—whether ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... been called at once, without examination and without cause, to pass sentences by wholesale, and sign death-warrants blindfold. But, admitting that these men had no cause of complaint; that the grievances of them and their employers were alike groundless; that they deserved the worst;—what inefficiency, what imbecility has been evinced in the method chosen to reduce them! Why were the military called out to be made a mockery of, if they were to be called out at all? As far as the difference of seasons would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... described it as "a doctrine of sordid materialism and of atheism," they have denounced it as "the gospel of everlasting bellyful,"[1] and as "the coming slavery."[2] They have stated that Socialism means to abolish religion, that it "would try to put laziness, thriftlessness, and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift, and efficiency, that it would strive to break up not merely private property, but, what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which our whole ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... too much license, take the matter into their own hands, not waiting for the courts, but executing a swifter justice. It is the terror of lynch law which has, in countless instances, been the foundation of the later courts, with their slow moving and absurdly inefficient methods. In time the inefficiency of the courts once more begets impatience and contempt. The people again rebel at the fact that their government gives them no government, that their courts give them no justice, that their peace officers give ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... health trusts, which we hold, not merely in our own behalf, but for the benefit of others. If we discharge the obligations of our trusteeship, we shall enjoy present strength, usefulness, and length of days; but if we fail in their performance, then inefficiency, incapacity, and sickness, will follow, the sequel of which is pain and death. Let us, then, prove worthy of this generous commission, that we may enjoy the sweetest of all pleasures, the delicious fruitage of ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... effort to cleanse his face as well as his wound, but as Sally took hold of his hand before beginning her task, she was startled to discover that he was suffering from a fever through neglect of his injury. This made her the more determined. Although appreciating her own inefficiency and disliking the work, there was nothing to be done at present but to go ahead with her own simple first-aid treatment. She had a bottle of antiseptic and ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... history," writes Professor Marshall of Cambridge, the doyen of Political Economy in England, "is full of the record of inefficiency caused in varying degrees by slavery, serfdom, and other forms of civil and political oppression ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... husband and lover thought, as he moved tenderly towards her. She met his first kiss on her forehead; the second, a supererogatory one, based on some supposed inefficiency in the first, fell upon a shining band of her hair, beside her neck. She reached up her slim hands, caught his wrists firmly, and, ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... memorable instance of the inefficiency of local descriptions in a very remarkable one by a writer of fine genius, composing with an extreme fondness of his subject, and curiously anxious to send down to posterity the most elaborate display of his own villa—this was the Laurentinum of Pliny. We cannot read ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... weeks have been the gay ones of the whole year; the races have been going on for three days, and there have been a few balls; but as a general rule, the society may be said to be extremely stagnant. No dinner-parties are ever given—I imagine, on account of the smallness of the houses and the inefficiency of the servants; but every now and then there is an assembly ball arranged, in the same way, I believe, as at watering-places in England only, of course, on a much smaller scale. I have been at two or three of these, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... is a friend of the Administration? The Administrator is a broken shard; the British will summon him home for inefficiency. Besides, there is only one man in Jerusalem of whom Noureddin is in the least afraid—that Major Grim, the American. And whoever would give the price of a cup of coffee for a lease of the life of Major Grim in the circumstances would do better ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... related to it. Sometimes, indeed, as in the case of the extinct giants of South America, they vanished without any considerable rivals, victims of pestilence, famine, or, it may be, of that cumulative inefficiency that comes of a too undisputed life. So that the analogy of geology, at anyrate, is against this too acceptable view of man's certain tenure of the earth for the next few million ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... find neither powder nor ball, while each barrel had been carefully filled with bore, up to the space which the loading had occupied! and, the priming of the weapons being left untouched, nothing but actually drawing and examining the charge could have discovered the inefficiency of his arms till the fatal minute arrived when their services were required. Charlie bestowed a hearty Liddesdale curse on his landlady, and reloaded—his pistols with care and accuracy, having now no doubt that he was to be waylaid ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... I was being wooed back to brisk health was situated along the sea-front. Chuckling at the MacNeils' efforts to modify my views of our Home Defenders and their inefficiency, and brooding on the folks' kind hearts, I paused to light a cigarette. The wind blew out the fluttering flame. It also set me sneezing, for I had a bad cold in the head. I struck ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... next kampong, but the day proved to be a very long one. There were about five kihams to pass, all of considerable length though not high. It soon became evident that our men, good paddlers as they were, did not know how to overcome these, hesitating and making up for their inefficiency by shouting at the top of their voices. However insignificant the stream, they yelled as if passing a risky place. Sunset came and still the kampong was—djau (far). Mr. Loing had gone in our small prahu with four of our best men ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... ludicrous laws to which the needy are subject (such as that which punishes the homeless for not going home) have really, I think, a great deal to do with a certain increase in their sheepishness and short-wittedness, and, therefore, in their industrial inefficiency. By one of the monstrosities of the feeble-minded theory, a man actually acquitted by judge and jury could then be examined by doctors as to the state of his mind—presumably in order to discover by what diseased eccentricity he had ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... women, girls and boys were moving onward in all directions. She met girls of her own age, who looked at her as if with contempt for her diffidence. She wondered at the magnitude of this life and at the importance of knowing much in order to do anything in it at all. Dread at her own inefficiency crept upon her. She would not know how, she would not be quick enough. Had not all the other places refused her because she did not know something or other? She would be scolded, abused, ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... they last? This is the first and most important question. Men, who have commenced with open ditches, and, having become disgusted with the deformity, the inconvenience, and the inefficiency of them, have then tried bushes, and boards, and turf, and found them, too, perishable; and again have used stones, and after a time seen them fail, through obstructions caused by moles or frost—these men have the right to a well-considered ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... are more men than there is work to be done, a sifting-out process must obtain. In every branch of industry the less efficient are crowded out. Being crowded out because of inefficiency, they cannot go up, but must descend, and continue to descend, until they reach their proper level, a place in the industrial fabric where they are efficient. It follows, therefore, and it is inexorable, that the least efficient ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... which these record yields were secured had been raising twenty, forty, and fifty bushels of corn to the acre. Over great sections, the per acre average was well under twenty. Into this desolation of agricultural inefficiency, a few thousand school boys entered. Under careful supervision and proper guidance, with little additional expenditure of money or of time, they produced results wholly unbelievable to the old-time farmer. Yet he saw the crop, husked, and watched it through the sheller. There was no magic and ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... factor of the Hudson Bay Company. The assimilation tends to be ethnic as well as economic, because the severity of the climate excludes the white woman. The debilitating effects of heat and humidity, aided by tropical diseases, soon reduce intruding peoples to the dead level of economic inefficiency characteristic of the native races. These, as the fittest, survive and tend to absorb the new-comers, pointing to hybridization as the simplest solution of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... and Mrs. Crawley was slowly regaining her strength—very slowly, and with frequent caution from the Silverbridge doctor that any attempt at being well too fast might again precipitate her into an abyss of illness and domestic inefficiency. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... come to the process of inheritance as viewed by Darwin, and its part in the production and perfection of new species. In every case, Darwin said, the efficiency or inefficiency of an animal depends upon its characteristics of an inherited or congenital nature. Variations in these qualities provide the array of more or less different individuals from which impersonal nature selects the better by throwing out first the inferior ones. An organism can ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... tell Madame Porvis the facts, she'll weave them into a fantasy and they'll spread like wildfire. Of course she can't plant new subjects in people's minds. But anybody who's ever heard of Mekin will pick up her fantasies about graft and inefficiency in its government. Riots against Mekin, and so on. However, one wants not only to spread seditious rumors about villains, but also about—say—pirates who go about fighting Mekin. Tell her stories about your men, if you like. Anything that's material ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... that was like an altar-fire, a miraculous and beautiful phenomenon, than which nothing is more miraculous nor more beautiful over the whole earth. Whence had it suddenly sprung, that flame? After years of muddy inefficiency, of contentedness with the second-rate and the dishonest, that flame astoundingly bursts forth, from a hidden, unheeded spark that none had ever thought to blow upon. It bursts forth out of a damp jungle of careless habits and negligence ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... during the early years of the war. He had no military education, but he soon demonstrated that he was in fact the real commander-in-chief. He liked General McClellan, and stuck to him until McClellan had demonstrated his absolute inefficiency for command. McClellan was a great organizer. He made the Army of the Potomac the most perfect fighting machine, I might almost say, that was ever known in military history. But there he stopped. He could organize, but he could not and did not, despite the urging and the anxiety of ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... fleet is no more an incitement to war among reasonable men, than a policeman is an incentive to burglary or homicide. An army is not a contemptuous protest against Christianity; it is a sad commentary on Christianity's failure and inefficiency. An army and a fleet are merely a reasonable precaution which every nation must take, while awaiting the conversion of mankind from the predatory to ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... "known factor" of great significance. Plants can and must be improved physically where necessary, and qualified operators provided for them. Collection systems have to be improved or enlarged in many places. Diminutive plants, doomed to inefficiency by their size and the financial impossibility of hiring expert workers for them, need to be eliminated in favor of regional waste collection and treatment facilities, which are quite feasible, particularly in the watershed units of the ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... they are trying to do, as opposed to the way in which they are trying to do it, makes one a Socialist," said the Professor, "then I am a Socialist." Here also we may sympathise with the aim, but the results are largely dependent on the method; and that method is the offspring of ignorance and inefficiency. The results may be summed up in one word—superficiality. I have elsewhere warned readers not to think that this word means simply a slight knowledge of, a subject. A slight knowledge is all that most of us ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... the piratical Moros, who otherwise would harry the Pintados Islands. Japanese pirates have menaced Luzon, and the Chinese immigration needs frequent restriction. In the colony there is much corruption in official circles and inaction and inefficiency in the military. The new governor relates his efforts to improve the condition of the city and administer the affairs of the islands; but he is accused, especially by the ecclesiastics, of immorality and tyrannical ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... refuses to pay attention to civic affairs, contenting himself with a general growl at the tax rate, and the character and inefficiency of public officials. He seldom takes the trouble necessary to form the ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... West Coast Trading Company of the German steamer Valkyrie, had, to Cappy's mind, atoned for the loss and humiliation he had suffered in that grape stake deal. His honor was clean again and for weeks he taunted Redell with the latter's inefficiency, insufficiency and general business debility, until, having extracted the last shred of triumph from the affair, a vague sympathy for Redell commenced to surge up in Cappy's kindly heart and he commenced casting about for an opportunity to do the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... Squads of the Customs, and the Postal Inspection. Then there's the State Service and the police and several other services. And there is no proper co-ordination, no single head for all these agencies. The result is a ghastly confusion and shameful inefficiency. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... and ironic, was positively brutal that afternoon. The latest play, book, moving picture, the inefficiency of the New York police, his afflicting correspondents, were hacked to the bone. When he had finished, his jangling nerves were unaccountably soothed. Other nerves would shriek next morning. Let 'em. He'd been honest enough, and if he chose to use a battle-axe ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... cause. Is there a ragged-school scheme originated in the capital, to rescue the neglected perishing young among us from out the very jaws of destruction?—forthwith rival institutions start up, on the ground of religious differences, to dwarf one another into inefficiency, like starveling shrubs in a nursery run wild; and projected exertions in the cause of degraded and suffering humanity degenerate into an attack on a benevolent Presbyterian minister, who refuses to accept, from conscientious ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... of providing for the general exigencies and the common interests of the nation. Nevertheless the federal government of these different people has always been as remarkable for its weakness and inefficiency as that of the Union is for its vigorous and enterprising spirit. Again, the first American confederation perished through the excessive weakness of its government; and this weak government was, notwithstanding, in possession of rights even more extensive ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... or a Guild, than that the management should content themselves with results which in the lump seem satisfactory, and regard losses here or there with an indifferent eye. That way lies stagnation, waste, progressive inefficiency and ultimate disaster. To inquire searchingly into every nook and cranny of the business, to construct, as it were, for each part a separate balance-sheet of profit and loss, to expand in those directions where further ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... had so eagerly waited. France was in their power, conquered already, they told themselves, for was she not utterly unprepared for war? And as for Russia, Russia the Colossus, the steam-roller, inefficiency reigned in her ranks, and she, too, in her turn, would be ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... that suggested an architect vindictively devoted to the discomfort of the servant class. If so, he had overreached himself and defeated his end, for no servant would stay in them unless for exceptional wages or exceptional tolerance of inefficiency or exceptional freedom in repartee. Every storey in the house was from twelve to fifteen feet high (which would have been cool and pleasant in a hot climate), and the stairs went steeply up, to end at last in attics too inaccessible for occupation. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the Sierra Leone Company had to lament the inefficiency of its superintendants, their want of unanimity, and various other disasters and unforeseen difficulties which operated to augment the charge in their establishment, and diminish its funds; and with every deference to ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... of his characteristics, isn't it?" returned the elder lady, with unaccustomed tartness. "A minor branch of the root of inefficiency." ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... reorganised as an imperial province with an elaborate hierarchy of civil and military officials. The change was welcome to the orthodox clergy, the more so because Justinian gave large powers in local administration to their bishops. Of outward pomp there was enough to gild corruption and inefficiency with a deceptive splendour; but in fact the restored Empire was little more civilised, in the true sense of the word, than the barbarian states of the past and future. Upon the Italians the Emperor conferred the boon of his famous ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis |
