Dynamite
Every day produces fresh proofs that it (unrestricted competition) results in combination, whereby all economic freedom is at an end, and both the small competitor and the consumer are helpless in face of a trust. Under these circumstances Free Traders must revise their arguments.—Daily News, 6.8.08.
They certainly must if they wish to keep their end up in the genial game of “coddem.”
Mr. W. Johnson, Liberal-Labour M.P. and Secretary of the Warwickshire Miners’ Association, who stated in the King’s Bench Division recently that, with the exception of his salary and expenses, he had not put a penny of the Association’s money in his pocket, received as salary £3 10/- a week, from the Permanent Relief Society, £1 10/- a week, and from the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, £350 a year. Total, £11 15/- per week and expenses. Verily a starvation wage.
Mr. Jenkins, K.C., in the Chancery Division (20.7.08) quoted from the reports of the Labour Party, showing that out of £1,000 received in fees, all but £257 was paid by trade unions. Of the Parliamentary fund of £8,594, all but £189 was paid by trade unions, the A.S.R.S. paying £583. The I.L.P. paid fifteen guineas in fees and £175 in levy, and the Fabian Society paid £10 11/-. Yet they had one-third of the representation on the Labour Party, and controlled the policy.
You may fool some of the trade unionists all the time. You may fool all the trade unionists some of the time. But neither I.L.P. nor Fabian Society, past masters though they be in subterranean methods, can fool all the trade unionists all the time.
Is it not possible to shew that the real interests of employers lie in the fact that if children could be taught for a longer time they would be more useful in their employment ?—SIR NORMAN LOCKYER.
There is a vast army of men and women, wretchedly poor, living tinder abject and squalid conditions, and existing on a pittance eked out by the poor rate and private charity. . . . Factory and sanitary legislation have failed to remedy the condition of these people and a decision of the High Court has deprived them of the benefits of the Truck Acts.—THE HOME SECRETARY, House of Commons.
We have now entered, it would seem, upon an era of comparative depression. Free Trade countries no more than Protectionist countries can escape from these periodical slacknesses in the wealth-making power of the world.—H. H. ASQUITH, Cobden Club Dinner, 4.8.08.
Then what’s the good of Free Trade ?
The boys of the bull-dog breed !
Mr. Haldane informed Mr. Thorne (House of Commons, 13.7.08) that of 34,808 men who offered themselves during the year ending 30.9.07 for enlistment in several important centres, 16,297, or 46 per cent., were rejected as medically unfit. Of these the rejections in Manchester represented 72 per cent, of the applicants in that town, Dundee, 71 per cent., Newcastle, 70 per cent., Birmingham, 58 per cent., and London, 41 per cent.
“An enquiry was then held on the second child, which died on Saturday, 1.8.08, Ada Florence White, aged seven months. Dr. Chas. Stanham said the child was very emaciated, but it was only normal for such a poor neighbourhood as Hackney Wick.” Rule Britannia !
In the preface to Blue Book on Criminal Statistics, Mr. W. J. Farrant, Superintendent of the Statistical Branch of the Home Office, says that the decrease of crime in 1906 coincides and may be attributed to some extent to increased prosperity.