"Inefficiency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the two or three pieces of artillery, abandoned and exposed, gathered rust and cobwebs, while the pickets of the stockade, decaying and loosened in the ground by winter freezes and summer rains, leaned in all directions, a picture of decay and inefficiency. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... waste, inefficiency, discomfort. The woman lives all day in stifling rooms, poorly lighted, with the nerve-racking life of neighbors pouring itself through walls and windows. The men come from crowded shops and the children from crowded schoolrooms to crowd themselves into these rooms, to snatch a meal, or to sleep. ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... while the state governments, in all these changes, are seen working smoothly, we have next to observe, by contrast, the clumsiness and inefficiency of the federal ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... mind to put up with that kind of thing," said Mr. Flint, "and I won't be worried here on the place. I can get capable men to tend cattle, at least. I have to put up with political rascals who rob and deceive me as soon as my back is turned, I have to put up with inefficiency and senility, but I won't have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Great national catastrophes, like the blunders and miscalculations that have characterized the conduct of the war in South Africa, have always resulted in making the most uncomfortable revelations concerning the inefficiency of more than one important department ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... 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
... of the bloodlessness of their combats is the inefficiency of their offensive weapons, and the excellence of their defensive armor. Their offensive arms are merely a bow and arrow, and a kind of double-edged sabre, about two and a half feet long, and six inches wide in ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... "Although under the decision of the courts the National Government had power over the railways, I found, when I became President, that this power was either not exercised at all or exercised with utter inefficiency. The law against rebates was a dead letter. All the unscrupulous railway men had been allowed to violate it with impunity; and because of this, as was inevitable, the scrupulous and decent railway men had been forced to violate it themselves, under penalty of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... were frequently overturned. Meetings denounced the inaction of the authorities; a gigantic parade bearing placards calling for an end to procrastination marched past the cityhall. Democrats blamed Republicans for inefficiency and Republicans retorted that Miss Francis had done her ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... was the field in which the great battle of Europe was now to be fought; but the inefficiency of public men in Spain, and the divisions of the provincial governments, rendered it necessary that some superintending mind should be sent to conduct the national affairs. Early in 1809, Mr Canning, then secretary for foreign affairs, received the royal ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... small ones; but that is only because the big combinations have the monopoly of advertisement as well as trade. The big shop is not in the least remarkable for efficiency; it is only too big to be blamed for its inefficiency. It is secure in its reputation for always sacking the wrong man. A big shop, considered as a place to shop in, is simply a village of small shops roofed in to keep out the light and air; and one in which none of the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... inutility; uselessness &c. adj.; inefficacy[obs3], futility; ineptitude, inaptitude; unsubservience[obs3]; inadequacy &c. (insufficiency) 640; inefficiency.&c. (incompetence) 158; unskillfulness &c. 699; disservice; unfruitfulness &c.(unproductiveness). 169; labor in vain, labor lost, labor of Sisyphus; lost trouble, lost labor; work of Penelope; sleeveless errand, wild goose chase, mere farce. tautology &c. (repetition) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... but nervous and restless, he gave one a sense of power and intensity of purpose. There was a kind of slow-burning fire in him—a hatred of the enemy which was not weakened in him by any mercy, and a consuming rage, as it appeared to me, against inefficiency in high places, injustice of which he may have felt himself to be the victim, and restrictions upon his liberty of command. A bitter irony was often in his laughter when discussing politicians at home, and the wider strategy of war apart from that on his own ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... as Nancy was concerned, had been very dull indeed. To be bored, in her creed, was a confession of complete failure; it indicated the most contemptible inefficiency, since she designed the whole fabric of her life with the unique object of keeping herself amused. Nothing bored her more than to have the general attention centered on some one else, as all that evening it had been focussed on the absent ones. Not only ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... promoted. The fever had gone, 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
... 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 ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... progressive, or education better fostered than in the United States. The American Church laments that her faith has not been stronger and her zeal more fervent, but her history, with all its dark pages of hesitation and inefficiency, is the answer which she returns to the accusations of her Rationalistic opponents. Meanwhile, she proposes to continue her labor for human salvation, by the promulgation of her present system of theology, nor will she consider her mission accomplished until the gospel of ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... and wisely to keep her ambitions within bounds; to live and let live; to regard, without jealousy or envy, possessions which are the heritage of others less efficient than herself; and to leave it to time, slowly but surely, to do its work in rewarding merit and punishing inefficiency and sloth. ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... ardently and increasingly felt scientific aspiration of his life—an aspiration which he hardly dared to expect or to see realized." A little later, however, Sir William, always cautious and canny, began to discover the inherent defects of the primitive battery, as to disintegration, inefficiency, costliness, etc., and though offered tempting inducements, declined to lend his name to its financial introduction. Nevertheless, he accepted the principle as valuable, and put the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... several of the Paladins who were disgusted with Charles's credulity, and anxious at all events to be with Orlando, had joined the hero in the fated valley; so that the little Christian host, considering the tremendous valour of their lord and his friends, and the comparative inefficiency of that of the infidels, were at any rate not to be sold for nothing. Rinaldo, alas! the second thunderbolt of Christendom, was destined not to be there in time to save their lives. He could only avenge the dreadful tragedy, and prevent still worse consequences to the whole ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... he's hit it. He'll 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 ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... importance had to await a dilatory investigation and equivocal conclusions. This impotence of the central organs of government did not come in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella and their immediate successors, and the growing inefficiency of the councils was long overcome by the resolution of the monarchs. Nevertheless the system was part of the price paid for centralized government, acting independently of ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... 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
... steadily and rapidly growing disapproval, the peculiar methods of the Spaniards for the suppression of the rebellion. It was the opinion of America, indeed— and not of America alone, it may be said—that there would have been no rebellion in Cuba but for the gross corruption and inefficiency of the local government; and that the proper method of suppression was, not force of arms, but the introduction of reforms into the system of government. The fact is, that the state of affairs in Cuba was generating a strong and increasing feeling of hostility ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... American citizen 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 Government to ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... to call out," suggested Julien, somewhat mortified at the inefficiency of his assistance, "some one would perhaps ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... refrained from echoing the idle tales which ran whispering in England that the Dardanelles campaign was a cruel blunder, that the blood of the Anzacs' bravest and best had been uselessly spilt, that their splendid young lives had been an empty sacrifice to the demons of Incompetence and Inefficiency. To those in Australia who in their hearts may feel that shreds of truth were woven in the rumours—that the Anzacs were spent on a forlorn hope, were wasted on a task foredoomed to failure—let this simple drawing bring the comfort ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... the boat's officers, but a second thought convinced her of the unwisdom of that course. As to this stranger, this stalwart man of the West, she had appealed to him and he had made no sign. She had no friend, no counselor. A feeling of inefficiency, of smallness and helplessness, swept over her. For the first time in her life she found herself hard and fast in the grasp of events over which she had absolutely no control. She was prisoner to her own good fame. She dared not declare herself. She dared not ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... the provision-boats had not arrived, and for three days they waited there literally without food; very uncomfortable days for Governor Reynolds, who accompanied the expedition, and was forced to hear the outspoken comments of two thousand hungry men on his supposed inefficiency. But on the 6th of May the William Wallace arrived, and "this sight," says the Governor with characteristic sincerity, "was, I presume, the most interesting I ever beheld." From there they marched ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... assistance of pictures to make its meaning clear. Nor, too, is anything gained by calling colours harmonies or symphonies. Let such pictures strike their own chords and blow their own trumpets. Catalogues of all kinds are but props to artistic inefficiency. If dumb-show plays did not rely on "books of the words," pantomime would have to become a finer art. If ballets had no thread of narrative attached to them, their constructors would be driven to achieve greater intelligibility, or to give up trying for it—which were the more gratifying alternative. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... penny-post, and all guarantees of human advancement, and has no moments when conservative-reforming intellect takes a nap, while imagination does a little Toryism by the sly, revelling in regret that dear, old, brown, crumbling, picturesque inefficiency is everywhere giving place to spick-and-span new-painted, new-varnished efficiency, which will yield endless diagrams, plans, elevations, and sections, but alas! no picture. Mine, I fear, is not ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... brief recital of English blunders during the Crimean War, we have made no mention of the desperate and disastrous "charge of the Light Brigade," the gross and culpable inefficiency of the Baltic fleet under Admiral Sir Charles Napier, and other instances of military incapacity no less monstrous. Enough, however, has been told to more than justify the very mild summing-up of Mr. Russell, that the "war had exposed the weakness of our military organization in the grave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... in Petrograd in 1836. Gogol is one of Russia's classics. This play is a humorous treatment of bureaucratic corruption and inefficiency. ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... front of the British right wing, soon drove it from its ground. While rapidly pursuing the flying enemy, Woodford's brigade,[70] which was on the right of this wing, was arrested by a heavy fire from Chew's house, directed against its right flank. The inefficiency of musketry against troops thus sheltered being instantly perceived, the brigade was drawn off to the left by its commanding officer, and the field-pieces attached to it were ordered up to play on the house, but were too light to be of service. Some time was consumed ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Paisiello's arrival in Paris, several lucrative appointments indicated the sincerity of Napoleon's intentions. The composer did not hesitate to stand on his rights as a musician on all occasions. When Napoleon complained of the inefficiency of the chapel service, he said, courageously: "I can't blame people for doing their duty carelessly, when they are not justly paid." The cunning Italian knew how to flatter, though, when occasion served. He once addressed his ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... passed, with no one to hinder them. The great trench, on which so much labor had been expended, was, therefore, not only useless as a defence to Artaxerxes, but it was a positive encouragement to Cyrus and his men, for it revealed the inefficiency and the cowardice of the Persians. The whole army now moved rapidly forward, confident of an easy victory, many even supposing that Artaxerxes would make no stand at all, but abandon his capital to them. The Great King, however, was not so hopelessly pusillanimous as that; for, when Cyrus reached ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... Shakespeare's original for the Welsh Captain Fluellen in Henry V.), joined the army at the end of this month, bringing with him six hundred men. In a letter to the Council, upon his departure from England, he writes sarcastically of the number and inefficiency of the captains being made. This letter is so characteristic of the man, and so reminiscent of blunt Fluellen, that I shall quote ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... open boat built from the wreckage, and well named the Hope, he was 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 six and a ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... different constitutions, either from having been exposed to different conditions, or to their having varied from unknown causes in a manner which we in our ignorance are forced to speak of as spontaneous. Hereafter I shall have to recur to this subject of the inefficiency of a cross between the flowers on the same plant, when we consider the part which insects play in the ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... did not smile. Indeed he looked rather pained; he was remembering General Punnit's story: military inefficiency, even military imperfection, was for him no smiling matter. Beaumaroy did not appear to notice his ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... with the small lower middle-class household knows how often the life of the little "general" resembles that of an animal rather than a human being. All day long she drudges in a muddling, inefficient way, continually scolded for her inefficiency yet never really taught how to do anything properly. Her work is never done, for she is always at the beck and call of her employers; yet she lives apart in social isolation, is referred to contemptuously as the "slavey," and even her ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... the Middle Ages ran the forces of competition. The inefficiency of customary services and the high prices charged by selfish privilege were constant invitations to men to become competitors. Men strove to break over the barriers of custom and of prejudice. Their efforts to attain freedom to compete was the vital force of ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... or the 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 the problem of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... seemed to have lingered in the old room. He continued to watch the darkness until the outlines of the room and of its furniture dimly detached themselves from the black pall. The snow apparently caught what feeble light the moon forced through, reflecting it with a disconsolate inefficiency. He could see after a time the pallid frames of the windows, the pillow on the bed, and the wall above it. He fancied the dark stain, the depression in the mattress where the two bodies had rested. Those physical objects forced on him the probability of his guilt. Then he recalled ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... 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
... silence for a minute or two. "They talk about the inefficiency of the army," he exclaimed, "but I've been four years in two armies and I'll say that if what we've found out at Hickory Hill is a fair sample of civilian efficiency, I'll take the army way every time. There are days when I feel as if I'd like to quit;—go out West and get a job roping steers ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... materials or construction entered into by the township or county authorities. The state highway departments can secure the requisite technical experts to determine the merits of materials and equipment and, in spite of some glaring examples of inefficiency or worse, have made a good record for impartiality and integrity as custodians of the funds for ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... corporal in a Brandenburg regiment. The dining and common rooms were in one long barrack, divided into two sections. At one end of the latter was a canteen of sorts, which ultimately improved considerably. The sanitary arrangements were most primitive, the breezes constantly reminding one of their inefficiency. For the first month the weather was glorious, and during the evening stroll round it was maddening to watch the red sun slowly sinking behind the distant woods to the westward, showing us the way to Holland ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... acclamation? I contend, that this was a victory gained, not for a populace, but for a people, for all France, for twenty-eight millions of men—over a portion of society who had lost their rank, a body already sentenced by their personal inefficiency—a caste, who, like a famished garrison, had been starved by the sterility of the spot in which they had inclosed themselves; or, like the Indian devotees, had turned themselves into cripples by their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... concentration was strategically correct, and it was incorrect to adventure an important detachment so far from home, without the reinforcement it might have received in Cadiz. This delay, in ships whose individual speed had originally been very high, has been commonly attributed in our service to the inefficiency of the engine-room force; and this opinion is confirmed by a Spanish officer writing in their "Revista de la Marina." "The Americans," he says, "keep their ships cruising constantly, in every sea, and therefore have a large and qualified ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... navy has acquired arises from the wisdom of the government in making the interests of the officers and men identical with the interests of the state, which gives bounties and premiums even in addition to the full value of the prizes; whilst the insignificance and inefficiency of the navies of governments which adopt opposite principles, sufficiently indicate whether such liberality, or the want of it, is the ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... nature and inefficiency of the Government evoked several modes of relief from these embarrassments were warmly espoused, among them none more prominent than annexation to the United States. It was urged with much force that the great want of the country, immigration and responsible government, would find their fulfillment ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... river below their parent-source: considering the singular rapidity of the great body of water in the Santa Cruz, and that no still reaches occur in any part, this example is a most striking one, of the inefficiency of rivers in ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... 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 more ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... of this corruption and inefficiency, an event occurs which stirs up the national enthusiasm and makes us feel that there is still left an element of heroism which will ultimately redeem the nation from impending ruin. Such was the Mongolian invasion of Japan in A.D. 1281. According to accounts given by Marco ...
— Japan • David Murray
... youngsters—strange methods of the city ward; and the philosophic observers, who on all sides think they descry evidence of the corruption of the country by the city, would have glibly explained to the Hon. Seneca Bowers the causes of his inefficiency. He had come to rely more and more on his sprightly deputy, till now, virtual county leader and his party's candidate, Shelby, double-weighted, prepared to wage the battle ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Crown thought propitious to throw down the gauntlet to the overwhelming power of America rather than to face what the writer terms the "cabbage-headed riff-raff of the Plaza de la Cevada" of Madrid. Again and again was the absolute inefficiency of the fleet pointed out to them. Even the few ships there were, all of them vastly inferior to those of the United States' navy, were without their proper armament; they might have been of some service in defence of the coast of Spain, but in aggressive warfare they were ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... serial representation of Wagner's works, only four additions were made. Two causes operated toward the disappointing outcome. One was an epidemic of influenza which prevailed during the greater part of the winter and caused much embarrassment to the singers; the other was the inefficiency of the chorus—a defect which has not yet been remedied, but was greater in the season 1907-08 than a decade earlier. "Otello" was in readiness so far as the principals were concerned, but the chorus consumed so much time restudying old works that ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... dilatory inefficiency of the Committee, in not hurrying forward reliefs without a moment's delay, as the state of circumstances ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... I reflect upon the difference between what books have to offer and what even relatively earnest readers take the trouble to accept from them, I am appalled (or should be appalled, did I not know that the world is moving) by the sheer inefficiency, the bland, complacent failure of the earnest reader. I am like yourself, the spectacle of inefficiency ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... consider whether the higher rates of income and profits taxes can in peace times be effectively productive of revenue, and whether they may not, on the contrary, be destructive of business activity and productive of waste and inefficiency. There is a point at which in peace times high rates of income and profits taxes discourage energy, remove the incentive to new enterprises, encourage extravagant expenditures and produce industrial stagnation with consequent unemployment ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... the 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 ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... started to the completion of the operation. This is deleterious. Also, local overheating of the infusion occurs at the point of application of the heat; and because of the manner in which the water is brought into contact with the coffee, the degree of extraction shows inefficiency. Spraying of the water over the coffee never permits the grounds to be completely covered with water at any one time, and the opportunity offered for channeling is excessive. The principle of thorough extraction demands that, as the substance being ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of the law are partly due to the system of courts and partly to the dullness of court procedure. The inefficiency of the system of courts and judicial procedure is shown in the practical workings of the civil courts of New York City. The antiquated organization of all the courts is like a patchwork quilt where each additional one has been added or increased as New York has grown ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... brother. He no longer dared to treat him 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
... treatment which will 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 of ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... as a limitation of the power of the legislature to interfere in purely local matters. The refusal of the state government to recognize an appropriate sphere of municipal activity which it would have no right to invade, has been the main cause of corruption and inefficiency ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... business. "Dodd" found his employer an exact man—one who required service by the card. This the young man could not, or rather would not render. He blundered in his work on more than one occasion, and resorted to tricks to bolster up his carelessness or inefficiency. The result was that after a few weeks' service he was discharged. He was chagrined, mortified, angry. But he "cheeked it through," as the young men of his class would say. It is ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... practically beyond criticism, and it will have the public interest passionately at its heart, and it will be practically beyond interference and it will be as inefficient as hell! And the more inefficient it is, the more it will have to take in to allow for its inefficiency—and for your patents it has to give us a flat cut of its gross! And meanwhile we'll get ours from the planets we've landed on and publicized. We've got customers. We've built up ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... of a brave man. And apart from this, we have been engaged with Persians and Scythians all the time, but the Vandals, since the time they conquered Libya, have seen not a single enemy except naked Moors. And who does not know that in every work practice leads to skill, while idleness leads to inefficiency? Now the stockade, from which we shall have to carry on the war, has been made by us in the best possible manner. And we are able to deposit here our weapons and everything else which we are not able to carry when we go forth; and when we return here again, no kind ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... Mrs. Brown of the inefficiency of hair-dye as an internal application, she had darted ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... without intervention into individual lack of intelligence and irresponsibilities. The opposite is our current path—an attempt to regulate and control away all dangers. But this overcontrol results in institutionalized violence and cruelty, inefficiency that is not checked or exposed by the bright light of a better way. As Churchill said, 'democracy is the worst form of government there is—except for all the others.' What he meant is that we must accept ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... friend of hers; she often looked at him this way instead of saying things. Her glance on this occasion, however, struck him as a substitute for a larger volume of diffident utterance than usual, inviting him to observe, among other things, the inefficiency of her father's design—if design it was—for diminishing, in the interest of quiet nerves, their occasions of contact with their foreign relatives. But Acton immediately complimented Mr. Wentworth ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... a farmer—a man with honest, sincere views of life. Bereft of his wife, his home is cared for by a succession of domestics of varying degrees of inefficiency until, from a most unpromising source, comes a young woman who not only becomes his wife but commands his respect and eventually wins his love. A bright and delicate romance, revealing on both sides a love that surmounts all difficulties ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... been stated that reliable information reached us in the autumn of 1917 that enemy submarines were passing the Straits of Dover in much greater numbers than we had hitherto believed to be the case, and the inefficiency of the net barrage in preventing the ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... Vane, and Sedley, which are brought forward in the poem on the Vanity of Human Wishes, as examples of inefficiency of either learning or beauty, to shield their possessors from distress, have exercised inquiry. The following is the best account of them ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... science of medicine. How far we are from this, we see when we attempt to make criminal anthropology the basis of criminal legislation. Man is so complex that if we were to eliminate one of his apparently worse qualities, we might develop others still worse, or throw the whole machine into inefficiency. By taking away what the phrenologists call combativeness, we could doubtless stop prize-fight, but we might have a springless society. The only safe way is that taught by horticulture, to feed a fruit-tree generously, so that it has vigor enough to throw off its degenerate tendencies ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... manufacture. The opposition found a leader in Randolph, who now broke once and for all with the Administration. "Never in the course of my life," he exclaimed, "have I witnessed such a scene of indignity and inefficiency as this measure holds forth to the world. What is it? A milk-and-water bill! A dose of chicken-broth to be taken nine months hence!... It is too contemptible to be the object of consideration, or to excite the feelings of the pettiest state in Europe." The Administration ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... response, we sat in a comical sort of restraint, smothering a laugh, which we were afraid might burst out. In his Life of Gay, he has been still more decisive as to the inefficiency of The Beggar's Opera in corrupting society[1099]. But I have ever thought somewhat differently; for, indeed, not only are the gaiety and heroism of a highwayman very captivating to a youthful imagination, but the arguments for adventurous depredation are so plausible, the allusions so lively, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... they be forced to consider the probability of foreclosure eventually, he knew they would not consider the loan. Don Mike was bitterly aware of the fact that the history of his family bad been one of waste, extravagance, carelessness and inefficiency. In order to place the ranch on a paying basis and take up John Parker's mortgage, therefore, he would have to have a new loan of not less than half a million dollars, and at six per cent., the lowest rate of interest ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... rents in this period was the remission of a part of the services due. Miss Levett notes the extent to which this took place on the Winchester manors, and suggests that the Bishop wished to avoid the wastefulness and inefficiency of serf labor.[72] She overlooks the fact that he failed to exact the money payment in place of the services for which manorial custom provided. It was a well established custom that in case work owed by the tenants was not used they should pay money ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... mention of the sufferings which they must have undergone from lack of food and supplies of all kinds. He purposely puts the best face on it, and bears his troubles stoically. But young as he was, he marvelled at the inefficiency and lack of coordination of the high command. Once when a despatch was received by the General during dinner, from their ally, Austria, he tossed it aside unopened with the remark, "That will ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... existing administrations, however peacefully, might be charged with intimidation of voters and prosecuted under the new act. Thus these radical governments were made practically self-perpetuating. When their corruption, wastefulness, and inefficiency became evident, many people in the North frankly condemned them and the Federal Government which continued to ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... The inefficiency of labor is by no means the fault of the individual laborer alone. Heredity has bankrupted him before he started on his career. His parents were probably as inefficient as he is—and most likely their parents also. One who sees much of the lower grades of labor ceases to wonder why children turn ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... were followed by other organizations of men until hundreds were on record as favoring woman suffrage. Men trying to bring about civic or political reforms in the old parties or through new ones and feeling their weakness turned to women with their great organizations but soon realized their inefficiency without political power. The old objections were losing their force. The lessening size of families and the removal of the old time household tasks from the home left women with a great deal of leisure which they were utilizing ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... contemplated on the accession of George I., and prevented, we are told, by his own refusal; and it is asserted, on the authority of Pope, that his acceptance now was owing only to the influence of his wife. Even if there is no ground, as there probably is not, for the allegation of Addison's inefficiency in the details of business, his unfitness for such an office in such circumstances was undeniable and glaring. It was impossible that a government, whose secretary of state could not open his lips in debate, should long face an opposition headed by Robert Walpole. The decay of Addison's health, too, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... talk nowadays about Industrial Democracy. Some of us believe that the application of the democratic principle to industry is the most promising solution to industrial unrest and inefficiency. The only people who have written about the idea or discussed it, so far, have been either theorizers or propagandists from among the intellectuals, or enthused appliers of the principle, more or less high up in the business end of the thing. What does Industrial ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... moment the efficient service rendered by the Y. W. C. A. in its hostess-house work in the American camps; that work alone would have entitled it to the support of the American people. That of the Y. M. C. A. was on so large a scale that naturally its inefficiency was often in ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... centre of a considerable industry, was a mere village as compared with its present extent. People who travelled went about armed, by reason of the abundance of highwaymen and the paucity and inefficiency of the police. Stage coaches had not reached Birmingham, and it took three days to get to London. Even canals were a recent ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... 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 Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... was in these early days of teaching that Miss Anthony saw with indignation the injustice practiced towards women. Repeatedly she would take a school which a male teacher had been obliged to give up because of inefficiency and, although she made a thorough success, would receive only one-fourth of his salary. It was the custom everywhere to pay men four times the wages of women for exactly the same amount of work, often ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... 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 in ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... capable and industrious men on the one hand and to inefficient slackers on the other; and as a graduated scale of payment, according to results, is not practicable without arousing ill-feeling and jealousy, the farmer's only remedy is to get rid of the slackers. Inefficiency and slacking are often due to a man's enfeebled mental and physical condition, owing to neglect in his bringing up as a child, or to insufficient or unwholesome food provided by an improvident ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... that the skipper, noticing his inefficiency in the work of the ship, made him his cabin boy, in place of the lad who had hitherto occupied that enviable position, and whom he now sent forward amongst the ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and was not intending to smile for another seven. He looked me steadily in the eyes—mine lost confidence and fell. I had never confronted a great man before, and was in a miserable state of funk and inefficiency. The ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rode beside the ubiquitous "Judge" Billings, who cheerfully and persuasively sought to "swap" horses with him when not otherwise employed in discoursing upon the vast inefficiency of certain specifically named officers who rode in all their plump glory at or near the head of the column. He was particularly out of sympathy ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... and drawers of water. Many drift with other groups of human wastage to the unemployed, thence to the unemployable, and so to the gutter and the grave. The poor we have always with us; but the wastrel—like the pauper—"is a work of art, the creation of wasteful sympathy and legislative inefficiency." ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... lamentable that, owing to the miserable inefficiency of the Spaniards, to their want of exertion, and the deficiency of numbers, even, of the allies, much more of discipline and every other military quality, when compared with the enemy in the Peninsula, ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... and land, man and beast, domestic duties at home and business transactions abroad. Her children required constant attention, and the servants, bond and free, for the most part lazy, evasive, and insubordinate—spoilt by the inefficiency of a vacillating master—were hard to govern or to please. Peter Taylor was insidious, but plausible; Albright, obstinate; the negroes, with few exceptions, "something between a hindrance and ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... army with growing desperation. He knew the inefficiency of his fleet, that it had left Spain unprepared because public opinion demanded immediate action, that its guns were lacking and its morale low, that if it stayed at anchor in the harbor it would be taken by the army, and that if it went to ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... 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 ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... closed his argument by drawing a comparison between the House of Lords and the French Senate: "It was but a few weeks since he had read an official comment in the Moniteur, coming from the highest source, on the inefficiency, the want of patriotism, energy, and the backwardness to fulfil the high destinies to which they were called, that characterized that illustrious body, the Senate of France. He had no disposition to cut down our tribunal to that life interest ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... limiting factors; cost of equipment; life of the mine; mechanical inefficiency of patchwork plant; overproduction of base metal; security ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... up, vindicating the high educational value alike of the old classic and the new scientific studies, on even stronger grounds than are urged by most of their advocates, and insisting that it is only the stupid inefficiency of the usual teaching which makes those studies be regarded as competitors instead of allies, was, I think, calculated, not only to aid and stimulate the improvement which has happily commenced in ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... unfaithful part they had acted. The Athenians, finding that the Lacedaemonians would lose fewer partisans by such a measure than themselves, and would become masters of the public deliberations, vigorously opposed and defeated the attempt. This piece of history proves at once the inefficiency of the union, the ambition and jealousy of its most powerful members, and the dependent and degraded condition of the rest. The smaller members, though entitled by the theory of their system to revolve in equal pride and majesty around the ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... those days were not very direct, and private messenger was often the surest and speediest method of letter-carriage. In the absence of my mother, my father was trying to better the staff of servants. Their inefficiency was the drawback to our comfort then, as it is now. Often the recommendation of some was only the name of the estate from which they came. A few days later, ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... sometimes very amusing, as these soldiers were quite unaccustomed to the rules of the Court and did not know the mode of procedure when in the presence of Her Majesty. Many foolish suggestions were made by these generals. During one of the conversations Her Majesty remarked on the inefficiency of the navy and referred to the fact that we had no trained naval officers. One of the generals replied that we had more men in China than in any other country, and as for ships, why we had dozens ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... by formulas and ceremonies, to which the mystic is indifferent; they are to him obstacles to his faith and he strains every nerve to destroy them. He has every appearance of the truly free spirit, but he is secretly dependent on that against which he is fighting. He suffers under its inefficiency; his deed is the final reaction against his environment; salvation seems to him to lie in the improvement of existing conditions, and not until he has succeeded in accomplishing his purpose can he hope for religious peace. The mystic is possible in ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... 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 development promises good results, and to curtail activity where ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... money and troops, and 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, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... Kie Wicks. And as the man turned he recognized the little professor whom he had met at Judge Breckenridge's ranch the previous day. Kie laughed to himself. Here was one man he need never fear. Inefficiency and irresponsibility were stamped upon ever line of the ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... talking to Thad," Persis repeated, as Mrs. West looked at her with the instant confidence of inefficiency in one who indicates a readiness to take the helm. "Don't make him feel that he's so awfully important just because he's making a fool of himself. Most boys attract more attention the first time they kick over the traces than they ever did in ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... accumulated, notably one incurred by the tax collectors of the town of Boston, of whom Samuel Adams was one during the years from 1756 to 1764. For one reason or another, on Adams's part certainly on account of his humane feelings and general business inefficiency, the collectors fell every year a little behind in the collections, and one day found themselves declared on the official records to be indebted to the town in the sum of 9,878 pounds. This indebtedness Mr. Hutchinson and other gentlemen not well disposed towards ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... tactful," warned the doctor. "The young lady is a trifle sensitive, as is natural, over her inefficiency, but she's very anxious to learn, and there's nobody to teach her. She is too independent to go to the other neighbours, but I've an idea you could ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... as by the growth of custom, and by the weakness of the Emperors, that in course of time each city became a sovereign State. The theoretical supremacy of the Empire prevented any other authority from taking the first place in Italy. On the other hand, the practical inefficiency of the Emperors to play their part encouraged the establishment of numerous minor powers amenable to no ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... it usually is with industrial inefficiency in the man, bad housekeeping in the woman, and lack of self-control in both, is of course, a potent factor in non-support and ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... his characteristics, isn't it?" returned the elder lady, with unaccustomed tartness. "A minor branch of the root of inefficiency." ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... after midnight, a quiet passing, so that only Sidney and the two men knew when she went away. It was Harriet who collapsed. During all that long evening she had sat looking back over years of small unkindnesses. The thorn of Anna's inefficiency had always rankled in her flesh. She had been hard, uncompromising, thwarted. And now ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... his "Autobiography," which ought to be a textbook in all those practical classes of literature that work to turn out self-supporting authors, tells us that the most important part of a novel is the plot. This may be true, but the inefficiency of the plot in the works of Charles Dickens may easily be shown in an attempt to summarize any of them, except "The Mystery ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... steadily evaded the pleading glance of Carroll, and though her bright face and unblemished toilet showed the inefficiency of her excuse, it was evident that her wish to be alone was genuine and without coquetry. They could only lift their hats and ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... stupidity, nor blundering in the handling of Irish affairs whilst his hand was on the helm. It was only later that the creeping paralysis of inefficiency and incompetence exhibited itself and that a people deprived of his genius for direction and control sank into unimagined depths of apathy, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... 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
... 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 moral influence ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson |
