Playfair delivered a speech to the City Liberal Club in London, where he claimed that economic depressions were not due to fiscal arrangements but were universal and synchronous in all industrialised nations. The advancements in science, such as improved transport and the substitution of machine for manual labour, had lowered the value of labour of quantity and heightened the value of labour of quality. This, Playfair claimed, had dislocated labour. Playfair enlarged on this speech in an article for "The Contemporary Review" of March 1888. Afterwards, Playfair delivered a speech to the National Liberal Club, which was published as "On Industrial Competition and Commercial Freedom" by the Cobden Club. The Liberal Party leader, William Ewart Gladstone, wrote to Playfair to thank him for his "admirable tract; so comprehensive, clear, simple in statement, rich in illustration".