I am sure the House listened with the greatest interest to the Prime Minister yesterday, and it will not expect me to deal with all the subjects which he raised. I propose only to deal with two or three of them, and I will preface my remarks with a few words concerning the earlier part of his speech. I am sure we all realise the immense burden which he has taken upon himself by assuming, if only temporarily, the double office of Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary; and I am sure that I speak the wish of the House when I say that we all hope that that immense burden may not be, as we fear it will, too much for him. He seemed yesterday, in my view, already to be labouring under what every Prime Minister in these days must labour under—a sense of the tremendous responsibility which rests principally upon him. From the cheery aspect of the Front Bench yesterday, I should say that that sense of responsibility has not yet been realised to the full by all his colleagues. The line came into my mind as I watched them—

" The blessed Damozel lean'd out From the gold bar of Heaven"

and the wonder has not yet left their faces at finding themselves where they are. In time that look of wonder will leave them, but yet for a day or two we may hope to see the right hon. Gentleman surrounded on the right and on the left by the blessed Damozels whom he has chosen to be his colleagues.

The first point to which the right hon. Gentleman called our attention, and it was one of many comforting points in his speech, was that since he assumed office the price of gilt-edged stocks had risen. That may be a fact; and if my right hon. Friend relies for the support of the country on the use of a post hoc argument, we may also take it for granted that his advent to power was responsible for the rise in the price of food which has already begun and which will probably continue throughout the summer, especially if his Government should be unsuccessful in averting the trouble at the docks. There was one point, and a very important point, on which he did not touch, and on which I should like to ask a question, and that is the question of defence. No information has been given to us as to whether it is proposed to leave the strength of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force where it is, or whether one or all of those forces will be increased or diminished in number; and nothing was said about two questions which have just been raised this afternoon. One of these is the question of Singapore, on which an assurance was given that, in the current phraseology, every relevant consideration would be given to all the points that might arise. I would only say, on that, that when the Government come to examine the proceedings of the recent Imperial Conference, they will find that a great deal was said about Singapore, and I trust that they will, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty said they would, give the most careful consideration to the views of the Dominions overseas on that matter, and the question will doubtless come up again at a later stage. One other point was that of the new light cruisers, a question on which was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow (Mr. D. G. Somerville). On that we have been promised more definite information before long, but the interest that is taken in that subject is such that I think the questions will be fairly continuous until a satisfactory reply has been given.

Now I wish to touch, very briefly for obvious reasons, on what the Prime Minister said about our relations with France and Central Europe. I do that for this reason. Once more, from what he says, I gather that we are in process of either negotiating or entering into fresh negotiations with France, and at a time like that no Opposition would willingly raise any question that might make the duty of the Government more difficult. We recognise the difficulty of it, and I was very much touched to see how

" Hope springs eternal in the human breast,"

and that the same feelings have been passing through the mind of the Prime Minister as have passed through the minds of those immediately preceding him and of those who preceded him at a greater distance of time—the belief that by exhibiting a spirit of sweet reasonableness we could bend the whole of Europe to our will. No one wishes the right hon. Gentleman well in that task more than I. No one realises more than I how sweet reasonableness may be carried to excess without reaping any of the rewards which are its due. There is, indeed, a change of attitude which I note with some satisfaction, because it brings the foreign policy of the present Government into the historical succession of the foreign policy of recent Governments. Looking back to the Debates of last summer, one sees that the whole atmosphere is changed, and changed for the better. I think, perhaps, the less we allude to those Debates now the better, because we want to say nothing which can cause the slightest friction with our Allies. It is a source of gratification to Members on this side of the House that, so soon after assuming the responsibility for government, the present Government should be continuing, and I hope indeed with more success, the policy which has been pursued unswervingly for the last 12 months.

On unemployment I should like to say a few words, but they will be few, because I feel certain that many other Members on all sides of the House will have a good deal to say upon it. I would only say, in passing, that, unemployment is a subject upon which one is apt to speak very differently according to whether one has responsibility or not. From what has been said both during the Election and in this House, in the course of the last year might, had I been less experienced than I am, have looked forward to some great revolution in method which would apply to unemployment that cure which none of us have yet been able to discover. But when the box was opened and the plans were produced we found nothing more than a strict adherence to what has been done by the last Government and the Government before and the Government before that—except this, that where you cannot find a cure, you are obliged by the course of events to make your palliatives more palatable as time goes on. And as each Government has tried to do a little bit more in the way of palliatives to try to sweeten an impossible position for those who are suffering from it, so this Government is proposing to take a little step in advance which would have had to be taken by any Government in power before the winter had passed. But not one single word about how this great social evil is to be cured! Plenty about how it may be treated to make the patient more comfortable; but not one single intimation as to how he is to be enabled to take up his bed and walk. On that point I should like to ask the Government what they propose to do with regard to the Safeguarding of Industries Act now on the Statute Book, which expires, so far as the second part of it is concerned, in the course of the present summer. It will be of great interest to the House to learn, before the Debate concludes, whether the Government will be prepared to abandon that slender but not quite useless reed upon which some of those hitberto unemployed have been able to lean with a tolerable amount of success during the last two years.

There were two points the right hon. Gentleman did not mention. He certainly had a great many subjects to deal with, and perhaps, although it would have come better from him than from me, I may just allude to them because they reflect a certain amount of credit on the Government which has now passed away. In speaking of foreign affairs he omitted any reference to the Treaty with the United States on the liquor traffic, which I am glad to learn has actually been signed within the last few days. I am also very pleased to learn that the Tangier Convention has been signed by Spain, also within the last few days. Both those are, in a sense, the children of the late Government, and one cannot help alluding to them with a little parental pride. There was a third point, and I shall be glad of information on it, because the rumour that reaches me is rather disquieting. I am told—but I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this—that immediately after the change of Government, the Soviet Government repudiated the engagement they had made in regard to compensation to our fishermen and the three-mile limit. Perhaps before the close of the Debate the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs will be able to tell the House if this is the case or not.

indicated dissent.

Perhaps we may have a definite assurance. I quite take it from the right hon. Gentleman. I have been told that. I hope it is not true. That leads me to say a few words on the principal subject which I want to bring before the House this afternoon, that is the question of Russia. The Russian problem is one which has occupied and preoccupied the Governments of this country for the last few years. It is a question on which the party now in power, before they came into office, had made up their minds and had given pledges which it would be extremely difficult for them to repudiate when in office. But I cannot help suspecting that they had made up their minds on insufficient evidence, and that they will find the carrying out of the policy which in opposition seemed to them so easy almost impossible in its fulfilment. It is to an examination of the difficulties that lie ahead of them that I propose to devote a few minutes.

Two things are desired in connection with Russia—desired not only by hon. Members opposite, but desired equally by Conservatives and by Liberals. They are peaceful relations with Russia and the development of trade. Let us consider the first question for a moment. We really have to face here a very serious and profound difficulty, because we have to try to establish peaceful relations with a Government whose ideals are entirely opposed to our own, and we have to try to bring about peaceful relations with a Government who would not use those words in the same sense in which we use them. I think as a proof of that I may remind the House that the Prime Minister himself recently used this phrase—and for the purpose of greater accuracy I have committed it to writing—

"The Labour Party will stand no nonsense and no monkey tricks from the Russian diplomatic representatives."

Hear, hear!

Can anyone imagine those words being used to the American or the French Ambassador? Does not that show that the Prime Minister himself recognises that he is embarking on a task different in nature from that of bringing about peaceful relations, with any other country in the world. That is the only point I want to make. I would remind him, when he talks about not standing monkey tricks, that when he gets close to the monkey it depends entirely upon the kind of monkey you are close to. There is no species which contains so many varieties as that tribe, whether it be in size, in amiability, in malignity or in strength, and it all depends on what you find at close quarters whether you can repeat, with success what the right hon. Gentleman has said. That is the view of one of the two participants in these endeavours to bring about peaceful relations. Let us see what the other side have to say, and for this purpose I will quote Mr. Zinovieff, the most powerful personality and the most responsible personality in the Government of Russia to-day. He has said recently—[HON. MEMBERS: "Where did he say it?"] It does not matter where he said it; the fact is, that he said it—

" We shall support. Mr. MacDonald as the rope supports the hanged man."

When first I heard those words I thought that the remark had been made by the right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) in the Division Lobby to the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). Mr. Zinovieff also said, by way of prologue to this Conference:

" MacDonald will certainly grovel on all-fours before the opulent English bourgeoisie."

I never like these cacophonic foreign words to be introduced into our tongue, and I do not know what a bourgeoisie is. I suppose it is a term of abuse because any word beginning with "b" can be brought out with such emphasis and enjoyment as may put into the phrase the greatest amount of contumely. Indeed, I gather that it is looked upon as a very serious term of offence. I remember my hon. Friend the Member for Plaistow (Mr. W. Thorne) coming hack from Russia three or four years ago, and he told me, as he smote his chest in the smoking room, that they had called him in Russia bourgeois.

To pass from these terms, whether of affection or abuse, with which I am not familiar, I should like to ask the Prime Minister, when he comes to closer quarters in this matter, exactly what is meant by the Soviet Union. Which is their territory and with whom are we really going to make arrangements? We have very little knowledge about that. We know that it is the ambition of the Soviet Union to spread far beyond the confines of the old Russian Empire. This question of territory becomes a very real difficulty when you come more closely into your negotiations, and we are thinking of beginning our negotiations at the very moment when the death of Lenin has, according to such information as I have, made the whole position of the Government that has been in control of Russia during recent years more precarious, and when it is quite possible that before very long there may be no Government with which to negotiate at all. We Are running the risk, it seems to me, of giving away before we begin to negotiate, the only lever we have to obtain not only the things which we desire but which we shall be obliged to have, as I shall point out later, if ever we are to develop any trade with that unhappy country.

In the meantime the Italians, who proceeded from the other end, got their concessions first before they gave recognition. It would be of the greatest interest to the House if the Government could publish a copy of the Treaty which has just been made between the Italians and the Russians. We want to know what Italy has got, and we want to know if the reports are true that special concessions have been given to the Italians in regard to their shipping in the Black Sea. One of the subjects which caused me the greatest anxiety when I was at the Board of Trade was the attacks which were being made by maritime nations throughout the world on the position of our own mercantile marine, and I hope that this Government will be very much alive to the risks which face this country from the competition of other maritime countries and will be jealous, indeed, to secure that no privileges are given by one foreign country to another in which we are not allowed to share.

Two further words of caution, if I may, on this extremely difficult subject. With regard to debts, will the war debts be treated by themselves or will they be treated as part of the whole inter-Allied debt situation, remembering this, that all those who owe us money on the Continent are beginning to watch eagerly what we are going to do with Russia, in the hope and belief that we arc going to make great Surrenders of our claims of debt from Russia to us, claims which if allowed to be surrendered would immediately be hurled at us by every other country in Europe which owed us money and would postpone or cancel any hope we may have to-day, however slight, of collecting any of these debts from our late Allies. Mutatis mutandis, the same is true about private debts. Russia is not the only country where private debts are owed to this country and where owing to political difficulties these debts remain owing, and if any precedent is going to he set there, it may have very far-reaching effects in other parts of the world and cripple still further our export trade.

On the subject of propaganda, I could not help feeling from what the Prime Minister said yesterday that he, at any rate, since he has held his present office, has realized—

And long before.

"and long before," that propaganda really does mean something, and that it is one of the gravest perils to which the world is subject. [Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite may laugh. Perhaps they mean that the same thing is done here. We all know perfectly well that there is a certain amount of propaganda at home, but it is not of that I am thinking. I am thinking of the terrible risk to the whole world if propaganda of the kind which is being pushed out into Asia should ever bear its fruit. No man can calculate what the sum of blood and human misery would be if a state of anarchy were ever called into existence among the teeming millions of the East.

I now wish to say a few words about trade with Russia. I should imagine that on few subjects has there been a greater amount of wild and loose talk. There are many well meaning people, who have never had as much practical experience in business as would be involved by the keeping of a whelk store, who look on any country with a large population, and think that you have only got to go there with a prospectus in our hand to sell goods. There are only two conditions in the world in which business can be done. One is that the man who sells the goods should have some assurance that he will be paid for them; the other is that he must have some assurance that, if he gets into trouble in regard to the business which he is doing, some form of justice will be administered to him. If you cannot have these two things you may have recognition, you may call Mr. Hodgson Charge d'Affaires, or Ambassador or Archimandrite or Pope, but you will not advance trade.

Look at Germany. The Germans are far better traders with Russia than we. It is a business which they have done for years. The bulk of Russian trade before the War was in the hands of Germans. They know the country and they know its customs, and they are anxious to trade with it. They have given recognition; they have made the most serious efforts to trade. Concessions have been granted to groups of men who, neither in capital, business knowledge nor goods were lacking in any degree. The names of Wolff, Wirth and Krupp are in themselves sufficient evidence of that, and after all the efforts which they have made, with the thoroughness peculiar to the Teuton, they have to confess that their efforts have ended in failure, and they are withdrawing. You cannot get in present conditions, with or without any trade agreement, that confidence which will make the business man send his goods into that country. You have got a civil law under which he is convinced that he cannot get justice, and until commercial justice can be got, and until that atmosphere of confidence can be restored, there will be no business, whatever steps you may take. The Prime Minister spoke about credits. As I understood him—and I am sure he will assent if I am right—he was referring to commercial credits.

indicated assent.

It might happen that something might be done by extending the Trade Facilities Act or the Export Credit scheme to Russia. If that is proposed I should like to know in due time whether they would be extended to Russia on the same terms as to other countries. That is to say, subject to the same scrutiny. I am not speaking of the length of the credits. That is another question and raises another series of problems, but such credits as are afforded by those two instruments are extended to private trading. The will have nothing to do with the Russian Government. I repeat once more, and I cannot repeat it too often, that you may give all those facilities, but you cannot get people to trade unless they are convinced. as to those two points to which I have repeatedly called attention. I notice that Mr. Rakovsky has been speaking of sums of from £20,000,000 to £30,000,000 which could be utilised at once for trade credits. But one-third of that sum, he said, should be placed at the disposal of the Russian Government, and here again, as showing the enormous difficulty of the subject, the objects and aims of the two sides are so different. We on our side want to trade. The Russians on their side want money with which to bolster up the Government, and the difficulty will be in the reconciliation of two completely different objects. In the same paper Mr. Rakovsky comes back to the question which was raised at Genoa, and which has been adumbrated more than once, the, question of the £300,000,000 loan to the Russian Government. I understood from the Prime Minister that there was no question of any loan to the Russian Government, Government to Government.

indicated assent.

We have been too familiar since the War in speaking of hundreds of millions. Sums like that, really, convey nothing to anyone, but when a responsible man like Mr. Rakovsky speaks of £300,000,000 being advanced across the seas from one Government to another, he is mentioning a sum far in excess of what we in generations have advanced to India for the development of her trade and for the development of that country. It is a sum which it would be impossible for us or for any country in the world to advance to any other Government at the present time. I fear, indeed, and I wish I could think otherwise, that the time has not yet come when it will be possible either to enter fully into that reconciliation with Russia desired by all of us or to stimulate a trade with a country which is poverty-stricken, which cannot even yet afford to buy for itself. It must be a tender growth of years, and we have to wait until the fury of the tempest which has been raging in that country has subsided enough to allow us to launch what at first must be the frail bark of international commerce. I hope, indeed I wish, that it might be said my fears may prove to be exaggerated, and my prognostications prove false. Time alone will show, but I have tried to put before the House the difficulties, as I see them, of the Prime Minister, and while no one can sympathise more than I do with the elevated tone of his speech, and with the hopes that he has expressed, yet I cannot held feeling that a short term of office, in this troubled world as it exists now, will prove too hard a work for the idealism, of which he has always been so able and faithful an exponent, to survive.

(having left his seat below the Ministerial gangway, to stand at the front Opposition bench): I do not know that it is necessary to give any explanation or apology for my taking my place at this Box. Apart altogether from the traditions and customs of this House, there are two reasons which make it to me, for the time being, an acceptable position. The first is that you can see your opponents, those whom you may wish to criticise, and the second is that you can see your friends, a privilege which is more often denied to us by the peculiar arrangements of this House. I am not going to follow my right hon. Friend who has just spoken in what, think we shall all agree, has been a very weighty pronouncement in regard to Russia and our relations with Russia. I will only say that I hail with much satisfaction the declaration of the Government that they are recognising formally, what is called de jure recognising, the Russian Government. I, and many of my friends, have advocated that course for years past. Although I quite agree with what my right hon. Friend has said, that the mere recognition may not in itself achieve great practical results, yet I am certain that it will facilitate and smooth the discussion of many outstanding problems which have to be settled before we can restune what I may call complete trading, social, and economic relations with that great country. It is the first step, and only the first step, and one which I am very glad has been even tardily taken.

I listened, as we all did, with great interest to the speech of the Prime Minister last night. He covered, as he was obliged to cover, a very large area of ground, in which it would be impossible to pursue him step by step, even if time itself permitted, for the very good reason that he is debarred, and naturally and legitimately debarred, from giving to the House at this stage more than a mere outline of the legislative programme of his Government. No one can complain of that. They have been in office for less than a month. The problems which confront them are almost unexampled in their magnitude and extent, and there is no one, to whatever party he may belong, who is not prepared to give them the utmost consideration and sympathy in approaching a formidable, and, indeed, an almost unprecedented task. But the right hon. Gentleman gave us some indication of what, in the domestic sphere—I am confining myself for the moment to that—he and his colleagues intended to propose. I do not think I am misrepresenting him when I say that most, if not all, of his proposals are to be found in the electoral programmes of one or another of the various parties of the State. Some are actually quarried from those programmes, as, for instance, from what was called a manifesto issued by the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) and myself. All of them preserve the substantial continuity of what the present Government intend to submit to Parliament with the legislation of previous Parliaments and previous Governments. It is no new departure.

Let us consider what they are doing. Old age pensions, national insurance against sickness and unemployment, trade boards for sweated industries, a more humane administration of the Poor Law, trade facilities and export credits—I need not enlarge on these, because I am not for the moment attempting to apportion the credit as between different parties for the different items. All of these things have become part and parcel of our established Parliamentary and legislative system. The programme, as far as it has been foreshadowed by the Prime Minister and the present Government, is to be built up on those foundations, and substantially upon the same lines, with adaptations, expansions, developments which we all admit to be needed in order to meet the new necessities and the altered conditions of post-war life. In regard to that there are two observations which I wish to make.

I am quite sure that there are two sets of people who are thoroughly disappointed with the Prime Minister's speech. The first, not so largely represented in this House as it is outside, are those to whom I think I referred the last time I had the honour of speaking in the House, who had come to the conclusion that the accession of a Labour Government to power will mean the falling of the skies and the opening of the sluices to every form of confiscation and anarchy.

A lady, one of my correspondents—they are not by any means all of one sex —wrote to me a few weeks ago, and expressed the fervent hope that a place had been reserved for me in the lowest abyss of hell, because I aided and abetted in the advent of a Labour Government. I hope that on reading the right hon. Gentleman's speech this morning she has some sort of solace when she finds him descanting, as we heard him last night, on the danger of dissipating industrial capital, and enlarging on the importance in agriculture—I do not know why it should be confined to agriculture—of spontaneous co-operation and unfettered enterprise. That is one set of disappointed people. There is another set—the ardent spirits who sit there on what in the Convention used to be called the Mountain, and who are more numerous outside.

And they will be more numerous outside yet.

Wait till you have had 12 months of a Labour Government! Some of those ardent spirits who thought that the fiery finger of dawn could be discerned the moment my right hon. Friend (Mr. MacDonald) became Prime Minister are no doubt for the moment a little hit dispirited.

No, we are never downhearted. We have truth on our side.

We must wait and see. They are for the moment a little bit dispirited, because they had hopes of more far-reaching and full-blooded programme. I think we ought to make allowances for the conditions under which their leaders have been called upon to assume office No one will admit more readily than my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and all of us acknowledge, that the recent election, with its unexampled results, has circumscribed the parliamentary ambitions and opportunities not only of this Government, but of any alternative or substituted Government that might have taken the responsibilities of office, and circumscribed them within extremely narrow limits. I am now addressing, not on behalf of my right hon. Friend, but I hope in his interest, the fire-eaters, and I would remind them, as an old parliamentarian, that you cannot achieve legislation on an heroic scale—even the late Prime Minister could not have done it had he remained in office, nor could I or anybody else—when you are in a permanent minority in this House—

What about Oliver Cromwell?

and when, in consequence of that, you are denuded of an apparatus which every Government for the last 30 or 40 years has possessed—the power of taking the time of the House, moving the Closure, and of regulating its proceedings in accordance with your wishes. It is not only common sense, but it is common fairness to admit that any Government that took office under these Parliamentary conditions was to a certain extent, compared with all its predecessors which many of us have known, in fetters and in manacles. That, I think, is obviously true.

I wish, if I may, to put one or two questions to the Prime Minister, not about what is contained in his speech—we wait there for the elaboration, embodied in concrete proposals, of that which was foreshadowed last night, and I do not complain in the least of our having to do so; it is inevitable—but about what was omitted from it. In the first place, I noticed, and I think most of us must have noticed, that there was no reference to public economy. In All these complicated and necessary schemes of social development and reform, finance is a fundamental consideration, and, although I do not know—we shall know better when the actual proposals are brought before us—what the total estimated expenditure upon them may be, in my judgment, and I think in the judgment of most Members, the extra drain on the State's resources must he found, as far as possible, not in additional taxation, but in increased economy. We have heard rumours—I do not know how far they are well founded—that my right hon. Friend the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Philip Snowden) has been wielding his besom or his pruning knife, or whatever is the most appropriate implement, for the purpose among the spending Departments. Ho is at a great disadvantage, because he comes into office in the month of January with inherited Estimates. I myself have been in the same position when I was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and it is extraordinarily difficult at that stage of the financial year to effect for the forthcoming year really adequate economies. I hope, indeed I believe, my right hon. Friend is doing what he can, but I should have been more satisfied, and I think many Members would have been, if the Prime Minister had pointed out to us that it was in that direction—I need not mention disarmament, which is a very important factor—that he looked as the most hopeful way of finding the needed resources for additional and developed social reform.

Another omission has been referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bewdley (Mr. Baldwin). The Prime Minister said nothing about the Safeguarding of Industries Act—whether by intention, or because he had covered too much other ground I do not know. I should like to say one word about that matter, not perhaps precisely in the same sense or spirit as my right hon. Friend. I am addressing myself to the Labour Government and to the Labour party. On the 4th December, 1922, just after the General Election of that year, we, the Liberal party, moved an Amendment to the King's Speech, which was in these terms:

"We regret that no locution is made of the repeal of the Safeguarding of Industries Act and of other protective measures which are raising prices, hampering trade, and limiting employment."

Raising what prices?"

You did not think so, of course, but we did, and so did the Labour party. They voted, I think unitedly, in support of that Amendment. I do not see the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Colonel Wedgwood) in his place. Perhaps he is engaged in the duties of his arduous office. At any rate, he is a Member of the present Government. I do not know whether he holds his office on the same tenure as a Noble Lord explained to the House of Lords last night that he held his. But the Chancellor of the Duchy on that occasion used most cogent arguments and declared opposition on the part of himself and his friends to the continuance of that Act. We shall be very glad to know what is the attitude of the Government towards that Act. The first part of the Act does no expire till August, 1926, but I express a hope, which I suspect is shared by most of my right hon. Friends on that bench, that it has worked so badly that it ought to be swept away.

Then there is another matter. It was not omitted from my right hon. Friend's speech, but it was referred to, I thought, in a somewhat ambiguous way. I refer to the Resolutions which were come to at the Imperial Conference held here last year on what is called Preference. There was a whole schedule of duties which played a very prominent part in the rhetoric and dialectics of the General Election, and one would like to know very much whether the attitude of the Government in regard to that matter is, as my right hon. Friend rather indicated last night., that of submitting it to the free judgment of the House or whether they are going to give that guidance which I think we are entitled to expect from responsible Ministers of the Crown as to what is their own opinion. That at this moment is left in ambiguity and doubt. Further, the right hon. Gentleman referred to the intention of the Government to appoint a Commission on Taxation. By the way, he spoke, not only of a new spirit, but of new methods which the Labour Government were going to introduce. The new methods appear to consist in the appointment of Commissions and Conferences, which I am sorry to have to confess — and I have been in this business myself for a very long time—have been habitually the instruments and machinery of capitalist and individualist Governments. But that by the way. The important question which I wish to ask the Prime Minister is this. Is the proposed Commission to deal with the whole of our system of taxation, including the arrangements for the payment of debt? I do not know how far it is to extend. I do not wish to express any considered judg- ment at this moment, without further consideration, as to the expediency of appointing such a Commission. Prima facie, my own opinion would be that the only proper Commission to deal with matters of such importance is the Cabinet itself, assisted as it always has been and always can be, by the best expert advice from outside. If there is to be a Commission—and this is a matter which we shall have to consider later on—I should like to be at once assured that the composition of the Commission itself and the terms of reference to it will be submitted to the House of Commoris for consideration and debate. I think that is a very reasonable proposition, which I believe will be assented to in every quarter of the House.

Not one bit of it.

Well, that is my suggestion. I have indicated affirmatively, that to the proposals which the Government has put forward, as outlined by the right hon. Gentleman—of course, without prejudice to whatever judgment we may form, when they appear in concrete shape—we are not in principle opposed, and, negatively, I have asked that those omissions I have indicated in his statement should be supplied. Before I conclude, I must come to another matter as to which I shall speak in somewhat different terms. The right hon. Gentleman referred, almost at the beginning of his speech, to administrative action which has been taken by one of his oolleagues—the Minister of Health—in regard to the rescission of what is called the Poplar Order. I wish to say in the plainest and most unequivocal terms, that unless the Government can see their way, as I hope they will, to reconsider the action taken in that respect., I do not think there is the least chance of that administrative act receiving the countenance or approval of the House of Commons. I, and many of my Friends—all my Friends, I think —regard this as a matter of capital importance. There is a great deal of misapprehension as to the actual facts, which we shall be very glad to see receiving further consideration. But some things are abundantly plain. The Order which has been rescinded by the administrative act of the Minister has nothing whatever to do—though the Prime Minister seemed to think it had—with the Acts of 1921 and 1923—absolutely nothing whatever. My right hon. Friend the Member for the Ladywood Division of Birmingham (Mr. N. Chamberlain) knows that very well, because he, I think, was the author of the Act of 1923. The Acts of 1921 and 1923 had to do with one thing only, namely, the conditions under which outdoor relief granted by the guardians should be supplemented from the Metropolitan Common Fund. The Act of 1921 proposed one scale. The. Act of 1923—that scale having proved difficult to work in practice—proposed a flat rate, and everybody who knows the provisions of those Acts, knows also that this was their purview and it. has nothing whatever to do with this Poplar controversy. The Poplar Order was issued by Sir Alfred Mond, then Minister of Health.

Where is he now?

He is not in this House. I wish he were.

The electors did not think so.

Ho is a great loss. The Order was not issued under, nor did it purport to be authorised in any way, by either of these Emergency Acts. It was issued under the old Poor Law Act, 1834, which provides that in fit cases Guardians of the Poor shall use their trust, their trust being what? To relieve destitution, and not for ulterior purposes. The Order was passed by the then Minister under the authority and provisions of that Act, and it is totally unaffected by the Acts either of 1921 or 1923. Why was that Order issued? It was issued because after a, careful, impartial inquiry by a thoroughly competent Commissioner who came clown from Lamm, shire, the administration of poor relief by the Poplar Guardians had been found, as he reported, to be contrary to the spirit and intentions of the whole of our Poor Law legislation. I hope hon. Members will get that report and read it, because I am going to ask for an opportunity for a full discussion of this matter, which is quite impossible, of course, in this Debate. I am only now indicating the points upon which the matter turns. That report is, I believe, accessible. I am not sure that it was not presented as a Parliamentary Paper, and I think it can be obtained by anybody in the Vote Office. It should be read and digested by all who wish to form a really fair judgment of the case.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the guardians were not allowed to give any evidence on the other side; that this was purely an ex parte inquiry by this gentleman, and that his statement has no relation whatever to the work of the guardians?

We can scarcely bring ourselves to believe that.

I happen to be a member of the board, and I asked the Commissioner to take evidence from the guardians, and he told me he had no intention of taking any evidence from the guardians.

If that is the argument, the hon. Member will have an opportunity of developing it. With the greatest respect, the hon. Member knows that this is the report which was made by a perfectly impartial Commissioner.

No, not impartial.

I do not believe he refused to take evidence.

But he did not take evidence. He refused. I do not want to interrupt unfairly. [HON. MEMBLRS: "Order!"] I take it the right, hon. Gentleman has read the report. If he has done so, he will see that Mr. Cooper himself says that he consulted with Sir Alfred Warren, of the Municipal Alliance —that is, with our political opponents—but he does not say—because he did not do it—that he consulted with the board of guardians whose work he was inquiring into and about whom he issued that grossly unfair and one-sided report.

That is the report upon which Sir Alfred Mond acted, and, if the statements in the report are correct, he was bound to act. This is a matter that does not affect Poplar merely. The Order was made in the middle of 1922 and it directed the guardians to discontinue their practice in the way of outdoor relief. The guardians, from the first, ignored and disobeyed the Order. I will do them the justice to say they acted perfectly conscientiously and they made no concealment. The guardians from the first disobeyed the Order and, every week, sent to the Ministry of Health returns showing in what respects they had done so. They were perfectly straightforward and I am not making any imputations against them from that point of view. Those reports came weekly to the Ministry of Health and showed a flagrant, avowed and I would say quite honestly conscientious determination on the part of the guardians to disregard the Order—[HON. MEMBERS: "To relieve destitution."]—to pursue their ideas. It appears to be true that nothing was done by the Ministry of Health. Whether actual surcharges had then been made I do not know. We shall hear that, I suppose, from those who are acquainted with the facts, but surcharges were certainly contemplated and, I suppose, have since been made.

No.

The statement issued from the Ministry of Health announcing that this Order has been rescinded is to the effect that the surcharges made under it will be remitted, and that seems to imply that the surcharges have been made. That is the state of things which has to be considered. An Order, the legality of which is not disputed, made under the Poor Law Act, 1834, by the central authority in pursuance of statutory powers given to it nearly 100 years ago, has been continuously defied for a period of nearly two years by this particular board of guardians. Why is the Order to be rescinded? Why are the surcharges which have been incurred under it to be remitted? It is not a question—otherwise I would not labour it to the House at this stage, but I attach the very greatest importance to it—that affects Poplar alone. Everybody knows the terrible conditions which exist in Poplar, but they do not exist only in Poplar. They exist in the surrounding unions and boroughs. [An HON. MEMBER: "Shame!"] They exist in many parts of the country, in the north, in Wales, and elsewhere, and the guardians who, in these equally necessitous areas—[An HON. MEMBER: "Equally?"]—I do not like to discuss the degrees of necessity; that is not the point I am upon, but the guardians who, in these equally necessitous areas—having to face the same problems, feeling exactly the same kind of sympathy—

We know them!

These guardians, having been constantly exposed to every form of objurgation and contumely because they did not follow the Poplar example—why are they to be subjected to these attacks? That is why I attach so much importance to this question. It is encouraging, it is almost inciting boards of guardians to follow the Poplar example, and it is discouraging and paralysing these men of public spirit and a sense of public duty, open to every temptation to which men can be exposed to transcend the boundaries of law, in the interests of—[An HON. MEMBER: "The destitute poor! "]—of mercy and consideration, having manfully fulfilled their duties and performed their tasks.

What would you do?

When we get this matter fully debated, I can go into that; but for the present I would like to say this: In the first place, I think the present sanction of the law, namely, the power of surcharge, is inadequate and illusory. The ratepayers get nothing out of it. I cannot say for the moment what substitute there ought to be for it, but I am quite sure that it is a thing which is not worthy of Parliament. Here is an expenditure, an illegal expenditure, practically admitted, of very nearly £100,000, and the only remedy which the ratepayers, many of whom, remember, have no votes—in Poplar 55 per cent. of the rates are paid, I believe, by people who have no votes, docks, railway companies and so on, and their money, the money they have contributed, is expended by these guardians for purposes which are admittedly illegal. Indeed, the guardians glory in it. They know they are illegal—[An HON. MEMBER: "The £180,000 for deportees to Ireland was illegal!"]—I do not want to end on a purely critical note—not at all. I have very great and very real sympathy for these necessitous areas, and I know, and I can well understand, the position of the guardians, what tremendous pressure there is, not external pressure, but pressure which comes from a man's own conscience and feeling, to do what. they can even to stretch and strain the law in the presence of these hideous necessities. Therefore, I am not speaking in any spirit of bitterness, but I am quite sure the matter is one that ought to be dis- cussed, and I trust the Government will give us a day for that purpose.

The other point I want strongly to impress is this: You have a state of things now in London which exists to some extent elsewhere, but nowhere so acutely as in London, in which, owing to this huge congeries of populations, the local conditions vary so enormously£boroughs, unions, side by side with one another, so different in wealth and in necessity, and the geographical and administrative distinctions between them so irrational, that the time has really come—and I want to press and shall press this on the attention of the Government—to add to the list of useful legislative and administrative changes which they have in view at least two—one, for a real reform of London government, which, not from want of sympathy, I am sure, has got into a clotted chaos through these artificial distributions and distinctions, and a reconsideration of the basis of the Poor Law itself. Those are the directions in which I should welcome, and most of my friends would welcome, anything to prevent the possible recurrence of what has happened in Poplar and elsewhere. It is not from any desire to show a lack of sympathy with or any lack of understanding of what has been done there, but from a real wish that this, which is a most pressing social question—and whenever these waves of unemployment come it becomes almost an absorbing and a predominating question in our municipal life—may be dealt with, and that some substantial and permanent reform may take place, that I have offered these observations to the House.

None of us can complain of either the tone or the manner of the two speeches to which the House has just listened. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition, during a considerable part of his speech, delivered himself in such terms as to render a reply almost unnecessary. In the course of my remarks I shall refer to a few of the questions which he raised and certain of the topics which formed the theme of his speech. But first let me say one or two things in regard to the points raised by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith). He recognises—and we are glad to acknowledge it—that being a Labour Government without a Labour Parliament, the Government must have regard not merely to the pace at which public opinion has travelled as measured so far by decision at the polls, but to the limit to which Members of this House will go as the result of any action which the Government itself may take. But within those limitations it is a matter of satisfaction to us that the limitations themselves are fully recognised.

The right hon. Gentleman is right in assuming that an opportunity will be offered, upon some later occasion, for discussing the action of the Government in relation to Poplar and the whole of the Poor Law questions raised on account of its action in this regard. All that I would like to say here, in view of the full discussion which will take place later on, is that the earlier observations of my right hon. Friend regarding points of fact and points of law are not quite in conformity with the departmental information which we have received. We shall, therefore, afford Members of the House the fullest opportunity of having the facts placed before them, in order that discussion, when it does take place, shall not be conducted under any disability due to doubt as to what the actual facts are. I can also say to my right hon. Friend that when we reach the stage of having to discuss the questions recently debated and the resolutions recently reached at the Imperial Conference, the Government will not merely give an opportunity to the House to express its views, but will, of course, use that occasion to express its own views on the subject when these resolutions are submitted to the House.

Everyone recognises that certain parts of the speech of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister yesterday were necessarily sketchy, that he was not, and that no one could be, in so short a time, in a position completely to state the whole Government policy or announce decisions on all matters even of the first importance. Reference was made in that speech to the general situation of the country in relation to the National Debt and questions of finance. No one will deny that that Debt and our general financial obligations have become subjects of the gravest concern, not the concern only of a party, or of a Government in power, or of any one class, but they have become the gravest concern of the nation as a whole. We are asked, whenever we refer to questions of finance or National Debt, "What about the Capital Levy?" I need not, of course, argue that we could not approach any question of a Capital Levy when no national approval has been given to a device of that kind, but who will say that the country or the Government can afford to leave this question of the National Debt where it is? Indeed, it would be a good thing if many of those who refer to the subject of a Levy would refer more often to the question of the Debt, for the truth is that the device of a Capital Levy was not necessarily a Labour proposal, and it is known that it was looked upon at one time with a good deal of favour by many who are not attached to the Labour party. We should be happy to receive from any quarter an alternative to the remedy of the Capital Levy, and we are satisfied that after further experience, and particularly when the matter has been fully investigated by a competent and an impartial tribunal, the decision will be not to leave the country to carry for generations the enormous load of interest which the Debt involves, or to leave our general condition of finance in its present unsatisfactory state. Accordingly, we suggest, not on party lines, but in the national interest, nay, indeed, in the interest of the Empire as a whole, that the subject of how best this matter should be handled should be the subject of a complete and impartial investigation.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition rather discounted the position which has been created in the field of foreign affairs, so far as it was connected with anything which the Government so far have been able to do. I do not think, however, that he can disprove this statement, that, during the short time the Labour Government have been in office, there has been a considerable improvement in what might be called the atmosphere of our foreign relations. The Press attests that the normal opponents or critics of the Labour party do not now say what was said by the "Times" on the 17th of last month, namely, that Britain had ceased to count in international affairs, and we claim, therefore, that the least that has resulted in the sphere of foreign politics during the short time of our occupancy of office has been the creation of a better atmosphere, and of improved relations generally between this country and the rest of the world with which we have relations.

The right hon. Gentleman asks definitely why the Prime Minister yesterday omitted from his speech any reference to the question of national defence. I might just as well have asked some weeks ago why the Leader of the Opposition, when Prime Minister, made no reference to the question of national defence—why, for instance, the recent Speech from the Throne made no reference to it. The question of national defence has not arisen in any new sense at all, but I think I can say it would be a good thing for the nation as a whole to turn to this subject of national defence in the spirit of seeking greater protection, not in any competition in armaments, not in the spending of more money upon munitions, but in the cultivation of more pacific relations between the nations of the world who have already spent too much on wasteful, futile, and ineffective devices, which in the end have secured too often neither victory nor defence. We are, as was said by the Prime Minister yesterday, using every available opportunity, with, I think, the good will of the House as a whole, for strengthening the League of Nations, for making it the real instrument of achieving the ideal which stood out most in the War, at least so far as the general body of the soldiery was concerned, the idea of making it the War to end war, and it is upon those lines that Labour policy will be conducted. That policy, if successful, will be not merely a policy of peace, but a policy of the truest international economy, enabling the nations of the world to spend upon work and more humane objects the enormous sums now wasted in maintaining large armies and very costly navies

The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition devoted a large part of his speech to the subject of Russia, and I would like, therefore, to follow him on one or two points. I claim that the policy of the Prime Minister, unanimously supported, as it was, by the whole of his colleagues, has meant in relation to Russia not a surrender of any principle, but a real advance towards the attainment of outstanding points for settlement between Russia and ourselves. Recognition is not the last act in our relations with Russia. It is really the first step of many that have yet to be taken. If, as I rather conclude, the Leader of the Opposition holds the view that we should not put ourselves upon an equal footing with other nations, unless those nations are similar in ideas, similar in their terms of expression, similar in etiquette and ceremonial—if we were to seek these conditions of sameness in the nations of the world, we should be friends with few indeed. We prefer rather to set aside points of difference, and seek, even if they should be few, the material and outstanding points of agreement that do exist between other countries and ourselves.

One or two of the speakers during the course of this Debate spoke, I thought, rather slightingly of the trade and opportunities which, in our view, will be opened up as the result of the full recognition of Russia. It was suggested that Russia was not honest in her commercial transactions. I think commercial evidence is to the contrary. Indeed, Sir Allan Smith, whose commercial knowledge, at any rate, will not be impeached, has declared that, so far as his knowledge goes, he is not aware of a single instance where the Russian Government has failed to honour any arrangement, commercial or financial. Its reputation in that regard is without reproach, and the House may refer with same advantage to the document issued by the commercial or trade delegation which spent some weeks in Russia during the summer of last year. Generally, it will be recalled that the delegation were in favour of entering into the fullest commercial relations and trade arrangements with Russia, but expressed the view that in the main those relations, under present conditions, must necessarily depend upon the establishment of a system of credits as between the two countries. Such a scheme is in no sense outside the limits of the policy of the present Government in recognising Russia.

Here may I remind the House that we should not be taken as standing absolutely upon the same political footing as Russia in seeking friendship and trade relations with her. By the two more extreme sections of political opinion in the world, Labour, it may be said, is treated alike. The Diehards of this country can scarcely say things more extreme or more hostile against the Labour party than day by day are found expressed against the Labour party by the Leaders of the Soviet Government. We are in no sense in relation with them in respect of political outlook, method or principle, but we say that this country cannot afford to treat that country as something alien, and in no sense deserving such recognition as was long ago granted to countries which we had to fight bitterly in the field. Indeed, we ought not to forget the immediate past of Russia, her entry at the same moment as ourselves into the War, her alliance with us until she could no longer maintain her position. A very large part of the strength of the Allies in the earlier stages of the War was supplied by Russia, and until she was crippled by a condition of hunger, until she was undermined very largely by the corruption of the Government of that day, she stood staunchly by the Allies.

We ought, therefore, not to forget the fact that she was exhausted in our company, and does deserve very much more sympathy than is very often expressed by those who deal with this subject. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has no intention, of course, of treating Russia differently from other countries in the matter of credits, unless this House should hereafter decide that there was some exceptional reason for so doing. The least we can offer to do is to treat Russia on conditions equal to those granted to other foreign countries, and, so far as British employers, British trading companies and British commercial men can be assisted through the agency of the Government in relations with Russia, our view is that support should not be withheld from any who are anxious or willing to deal either with the Russian Government or with Russian employers of labour.

When the right bon. Gentleman says that the Government of this country is only going to treat Russia on the basis of equality with other foreign countries, he surely has not forgotten that that is not reciprocated, and that the Russians do not treat us as other foreign countries treat us.

I am one of the people who believe in recognising Russia, and in doing everything to get trade; but how can we treat Russia as we do other countries so long as Russia has no Courts of Justice, in Russia itself? That seems to me a difficulty.

May I say, in reply to the Noble Lady, that it may be there are many things in Russia quite unlike our own country. The general conditions are really beside the point. I am referring to the question of arranging better trade relations. I cannot answer for Russian Courts of Justice, or for any one of the different systems that may exist in that country as compared with our own. As to the observation of my right hon. Friend, I can only give what are our intentions. I do not quite know what effect our policy may have upon future Russian action, but an announcement of our policy does not necessarily mean that we concede every point of view which Russia herself may hold. That is a matter for discussion, when, later on, fuller relations are established between Russia and ourselves. On the point of propaganda some objection has been taken to the speech yesterday of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. But the documents already exchanged as between Russia and ourselves amply provide for the security we need in regard to that point. I will add my own view, which is this: Propaganda will be effective—harmful and mischievous as it may be—if it is used in countries where the people have just cause for discontent and anxiety. The real shield against evil propaganda is the wider establishment of a state of justice and contentment. If we cannot protect ourselves on material grounds, and by material means, we shall never ho able to protect ourselves against ideas that will percolate and find their way through if we have not amply shielded the people by surrounding them with conditions of contentment, justice, and fair dealing.

As to the announcement made by my right hon. Friend yesterday on the question of unemployment, to what he said then I should like to add that, in my view, the main causes of unemployment in Great Britain remain the same as they were when the Leader of the Opposition described them in his election address and substantially repeated them in the King's Speech considered by this House only a month ago. Those main causes are not merely to be found in the workshops of Britain; they are to be found in the ruined or partially ruined condition of the world around us. The impoverished state of the people in many countries has lessened their feeling of respect for authority. Wasteful spending is still going on. Currencies are still being debased. Destruction is still going forward, and commercial credit is being largely damaged because ordinary confidence is lacking. Trust must exist before business can effectively and successfully be conducted. Behind all these terms, which are really mere words, you can find the real causes of the greater part of our unemployment. That, however does not mean that a country should neglect or fail to use whatever internal opportunities there may be. The unemployment problem, in our view, has been greatly aggravated by the failure, first of all, of the Government which was returned in 1918 to keep at work in the early days of peace a large number of men and women, amounting to hundreds of thousands, who were at work throughout the years of the War. They began by giving them money. They began on the assumption that the trouble would last for only a few months. The anger or discontent of the unemployed was bought off by grants or bribes. Once you begin that, to give something for nothing, either to rich or poor, you will find it very difficult to check, and may find, indeed, it almost impossible to stop. You cannot, therefore, within a few months of our taking office, expect a complete solution of this problem. So far as we can, however, by inspiration carry the good will of the House with us, we shall use every effort, by means of legislation and in other ways, such as administrative action and so on, greatly to lessen this evil which has been so aggravated by those things which I have described.

We have been asked what we intend to do with the Safeguarding of Industries Act. We were so asked to-day by the Leader of the Opposition. The answer to that question is this: Surely he himself must have formed a moderate idea of the value of that Act for dealing with unemployment, or he would not have caused the Election so suddenly as he did in the pursuit of another remedy! Do we not recall the fact that it was because the Safeguarding of Industries Act could not serve the purpose of dealing with the unemployment problem that the right hon. Gentleman sought larger powers from the country and asked it to give him its confidence for his new remedies? The country answered with censure of his methods, and I doubt, therefore, whether this Government can be expected to look upon the Safeguarding of Industries Act to any great extent as a means for relieving our unemployment troubles.

The Prime Minister made an announcement in the matter of housing. What he said on the general problem of the use of our internal resources is, I think, the profession of every party in this House, and I trust it will be translated into reality. The differences of opinion in the House of Commons on this question will be tested by our proposals. I think that the new state of parties will mean that in the future parties are to count for less, that the country will look rather for action and deed than for mere declarations of aims, and that each party will feel, as a separate entity in the House, that it will occupy in the future a very different place. The Whip is going to be a less important person in the Government than he has been, and we shall hope that personality and policy will count for more in dealing with these matters, and that there will be a spirit of real responsibility abroad, with less of the pressure that exists at present, real consideration being given to proposals submitted by whatever Government may be in power for the time being.

Yesterday the Prime Minister in his speech dealt with housing schemes, road construction, and the many uses to which land in Britain may be put for different public purposes. When the value of land is enriched by the expenditure of public money and by State action, the State should be swift to seek some public benefit out of the additional value so produced. There arc numerous instances of land which has enormously increased in the value as the immediate outcome of pressing public necessity, and yet the benefit of the increase in value has been reaped almost entirely, if not solely, by the private owners of that land. Similarly the Prime Minister, I think, made it quite plain—though the Leader of the Opposition does not appear to give him credit for it—that Labour policy as announced by him in reference to agriculture was co-operation amongst agriculturists themselves stimulated by substantial State assistance in the matter of finance. Smaller countries have shown how considerable the benefit of co-operation can be, and we share the hope that, though the British habit of mind and British customs in rural England may not lend themselves speedily to these approaches for co-operative action, Government encouragement may help the agricultural community to see its value. Therefore, so far as Labour is concerned, we say to agriculture that it ought not to seek a remedy for its trouble either in Protection or in subsidies, but in the better adaptation of its own wide internal resources to co-operative methods and in the increase of those resources by taking the fullest advantage of the financial State assistance announced yesterday by the Prime Minister.

May I add one last word on the question of the housing policy of the Government. It is, of course, impossible at this stage to give completely to the country the plans or schemes now under discussion, but I suggest that on this point there ought to be common agreement. Merely to build houses is not a solution of the housing difficulty. The Prime Minister was able to prove yesterday that not more than 10 per cent, of the houses built have been occupied by the people most in need of them. Houses have been built to be let at a rent of 17s., 18s., or £1 a week. To say that you have built such houses is no solution of the housing problem. Houses must, be built that can be let at rents within the means of the poor who ought to dwell in them, and unless you reach that end, by whatever device, you have not solved the housing problem. I do not think there is any difference in principle between Parties on this matter either. For the words "Socialistic legislation" are used indifferently to mean many things. I think if we dealt less in words and more in realities we should see how little difference of opinion there is between us. There is no difference between the state subsidising either a private builder, an individual house-owner, or a public body by a grant of so many pounds per house in the way of the sketch outlined yesterday by the Prime Minister. Our view is that it is a good plan that is being suggested. The houses may vary in different parts of the country. They may vary in the cost and size of the house, and for very many different reasons there may be a variation in the price and in the rent, but we have given as an average the figure of £500 for the structure, and we have suggested that for the rent, including the rates, the figure should be 9s. weekly.

Does that refer also to the rural areas?

Certainly. The housing problem in many parts of rural England is, indeed, very acute. We must, however, in this regard keep in mind that, it is in the big industrial centres, in the British slums, where real improvements of housing and work in respect of housing reform would have first co be carried out.

What I want to put to my right hon. Friend is this: that those of us who represent agricultural constituencies know that it is not within the power of a man with 25s. a week to pay a weekly rent of 9s. We protest entirely that this problem should be fought out merely in terms of the urban mind.

I spoke of the average figures. When I spoke of 9s. rent I need not be taken to mean that the agricultural labourer should necessarily have to pay 9s. a week.

That is what I want to understand.

When my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health has the opportunity to place his plans fully before the House details of that kind can be more fully discussed. I think that the Prime Minister was safe in his statement regarding our ability to enlist the good will and the good intentions of the brad. and muscle of the building employés of the country to carry through the scheme which we have in view, for we do not approach the building trade employes in a frame of mind to censure them for anything which in the past they may or may not have done. Look for a moment for the causes which have depleted the ranks of the three or four higher branches of the building trade. It is no exaggeration to say that somehow or other our social system has had the effect of giving a weekly income, say, to a bookmaker's tout or a bookmaker's clerk larger than is received in this country by a highly-skilled mechanic — by the joiner, the carpenter, to say nothing of the locomotive engine-driver. A great many factors, such as the uncertainty of occupation and broken time, the irregularity of work, the constant change in the location of employment, the necessity for removing the place of residence as well as the particular place of labour, and until quite recently low wages are among the reasons which have made the higher branches of the building trade less attractive than formerly. If this country is going to retain its skilled workers we must make it worth the, while of ordinary working-class families to put their growing boys to these occupations, so that they may acquire the necessary skill. I make these remarks by way of supplementing the general statement which was made by the Prime Minister yesterday. Finally let me say that we are not going to be judged merely by what we propose. The House will rather judge us by the way our proposals are resisted. We shall see to it that we go as far ahead as the use of superior numbers in this House will permit us to go. If we make the attempt in respect of all these pressing matters of real and serious social evils we hope that we may enlist not merely the cheers, but the votes of those in favour of the proposals which we are submitting.

Most hon. Members will be in agreement with what the Deputy Leader of the House has just said with the exception perhaps of his concluding statement. The right hon. Gentleman said that they were prepared to be judged not so much by what they proposed, but by the measure of resistance which is put forward to their proposals. I should have thought that the real test would be what they accomplished. I want to say a word or two about the statement of the Prime Minister in connection with housing, and I also wich to refer to the observations which have just been made by the Deputy Leader of the House. The result of the right hon. Gentleman's proposals must be judged by the number of houses he builds as a consequence of his plan. I know he did say something which leads one rather to think that the real way to solve the housing problem was not to build houses. The people of this country will be quite content if the Government get on with that part of their solutions by putting up as many houses as possible. I know no subject which needs more the spirit of co-operation if anything is to be done than the present housing difficulty, and I think I can say for all hon. Members on this side of the House that any proper sane pro- posals put forward by the Minister of Health will certainly receive their sympathetic co-operation. In return, however, we are entitled to the same sort of spirit.

I was rather interested yesterday to hear the Prime Minister make the observation that small pettifogging methods, policies and proposals will be found to produce nothing that is worth while, and he said that the first of those policies is housing. I do not know whether he meant to imply that there had been pettifogging methods and policies in relation to past housing schemes, because I see nothing very different, so far as policy is concerned, in the proposals now before the House from those we have seen for the last two or three years. It is only fair to say that, even under the Addison scheme, about which one hears so much, only 220,000 houses were built, and they were erected at a very considerable cost. If right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Gentlemen opposie end with a number like that during the next year or two, I am sure they will have good reason to congratulate themselves.

The Addison scheme was referred to yesterday by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Leader of the House has referred to it to-day. The Prime Minister made the statement that not 10 per cent. of the Addison houses were inhabited by the class of people whose needs must be met if we are to solve the housing problem. The Deputy Leader of the House went further than that this afternoon, because he said that the Prime Minister had proved yesterday that 10 per cent. of those houses were not inhabited by the people who ought to be living in them, or by the people whe really need houses. I would like to know what distinctions you can draw in this respect. I suppose that some of the most difficult and distressing cases in regard to the want of housing accommodation come from lower middle class people. Who is going to apportion the need? I know there is a very great need for houses existing amongst the working classes, the lower classes and the lower middle classes. I know of no case of Dukes or Peers occupying Addison houses. I know a good many middle class people and lower middle class people who are occupying them, and they have just as much right, and their need is almost as great as any other class of the community. It is only right to say that the very fact that these people have gone into these houses makes the position better. I hope the statement will not continue to be circulated that these houses in many parts of the country are now being occupied by the wrong sort of people. At any rate, if any mistakes have been made as regards the people who occupy these houses, they have not been made by the past Government, because the people occupying those houses have been chosen by the local authorities. Take, for example, the houses under the London County Council. In this case the administrative officers of the London County Council have chosen the occupants of these houses. I contest the statement that has been made that only 10 per cent. of these houses are in the hands of the right people. The needs of the lower middle classes should be equally considered with those of any other class of the community.

May I be allowed to make clear exactly what is in our minds in using that percentage. Most of the people in real trouble about houses are the people with incomes between 40s. and 60s. per week. They cannot pay the weekly rent of the kind of houses referred to by my hon. Friend, and not 10 per cent. of that class are living in those houses.

I hope the right hon. Gentleman's investigations will take him much further than that, because I am sure he will find, that clerks and their families are in just as great a difficulty. [HoN. MEMBERS "Shame!"] Yes, but crying out "Shame does not solve the housing problem, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will equally consider under his scheme all the classes to whom I have referred. The Prime Minister, in asking for co-operation and fair play in connection with housing, referred to the very excellent results, having regard to all the difficulties; accomplished last year. During last year there were no less than 77,000 houses completed in this country, which is more than the annual average for the last 10 years before the War. That is not a bad result. This year, according to the statement, not of a politician or any hon. Member of this House, but of the Director-General of Housing, 105,000 houses will be erected, which will be equal to the largest number which has ever been erected in one year in this country. That statement has been officially issued by the Director-General of Housing.

The criticsm has been made that a large number of these houses which have been put up under the scheme of the ex-Minister of Health have been put up for sale. It is perfectly true that a large number of them have been put up for sale because they were erected by private builders for sale. I think, however, the observation should have been made at the same time that the erection of these houses has helped to solve the housing problem. What I really want to call attention to, and what I should really like to have some more facts about, is the statement made by the Prime Minister, which has certainy created a considerable amount of anxiety among builders, the houseless and the homeless. The Prime Minister stated yesterday—it was the only definite statement he made, and it was a most interesting one—that according to his solution they were going to build houses on the average for £500 each and let them on the average for 9s. per week, including rent and rates. I observe in the "Daily Herald" his morning that there is a big headline over the Parliamentary report saying that houses are now going to be built and let for 9s. a week, including rent and rates.

That statement must be considered with some seriousness, because a large number of people will be expecting to get good houses with a parlour, and I understand the proposal is that they are to cost £500 each on the average. I suppose that is a considered statement, and I hope the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health have gone very carefully into this matter before raising such expectations and hopes. I inquired this morning the average price of tenders recently received in London for houses of that character, and I was told that in London the cost reaches the amount of £625. I hope the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health will make sure of thesel facts before raising expectations of this kind. I would remind hon. Gentlemen opposite and the Minister of Health and the Deputy Leader of the House that a £500 house, with, I suppose, from eight to ten houses to the acre, will require 25 per cent, of that sum for roads and drainage, therefore you have to deduct this 25 per cent, from your £500 before you can erect. your house at all. Hon. Members opposite will see at once that the proposition of the Government is that, apart from roads and drainage, these houses will have to be erected at less than £400 each. It is only fair to say that it certainly is not the case that the cost of the land is going to add to the expense of house building in this country. It never has since Government schemes have been in operation. I have read many speeches on housing in which it has been suggested that some difficulty connected with the cost of the land has held up house building. There could not be a more inaccurate statement. The average price of land in connection with most of the Government houses erected has only been about £18 per house.

Is that an annual charge?

No, it is a capital sum only.

Has it any relation to the kind of house built?

I repeat that the average cost of land for each house in connection with schemes brought forward by the last two Governments has only reached the capital sum of £18, and that applies to houses erected all up and down the country. Therefore I am very doubtful indeed as to the figures given by the Prime Minister. I hope a good deal more consideration will be devoted to this subject before such anticipations are raised. I am very doubtful indeed if houses are going to be erected at that rate. I should be glad to hear what employers and employed in the building trade have to say as to the possibility of houses being erected at an average cost of £500. I want to call attention to another statement of the Prime Minister, to the effect that he hopes these houses will be let at an average rent of 9s. per week, including rates. A very competent and experienced builder to-day told me that, at any rate, so far as 9s. per week was concerned, it is necessary to deduct from that 9s. at least 60 per cent. for rates and maintenance. That practically leaves under this scheme of the Prime Minister a sum for rent of about £11 10s. per annum only. How is it going to be done? How is the cost of this scheme going to be met? We have no information as yet on that point. I hope that the Minister for Health will at an early date inform the House and the nation exactly what are the financial bases of the scheme, because it looks very much as if the use of bases of this kind is going to involve the State in a considerable loss per house, without any provision for redemption at all.

I cannot conceive the local authorities embarking on a scheme of this kind unless they are completely indemnified by the State. I do not know what figures the Government may have in their possession, but it seems to me this proposal would involve the State in a loss of very many millions a year, and I hesitate to estimate what the capital loss on such a scheme would be at the present time. I hesitate all the more because the Prime Minister said yesterday—and this is very significant—that he was bound to continue the policy of subsidies in connection with house building. It may be that he is, but, if he is, he has certainly to reckon on some very dangerous enemies in days to come. I know perfectly well from my own personal experience that directly the subsidy policy was embarked upon in connection with the Addison scheme, the very first thing that occurred was that the figure of £350 for which houses could be built before the War rose almost in a night to £800 or £1,000, and I cannot see how with these millions dangled before both employers and employed in the building trade, we are going now to escape sky-scraping prices. It will need a very far-sighted Minister and a very firm programme to avoid that.

I want to say a word or two on the question of dilution. I do not want to prejudice the negotiations which are now taking place at the Conference which is being held. But it is only fair to say this —and it should be said in this House where it can be replied to if necessary—that while we wish the Conference well, I, at any rate, and many hon. Members on all sides of the House, feel bound to register a complaint that the decision is badly needed, and that an agreement ought to have been come to long ago. The Prime Minister said yesterday that the Government had failed to bring about a settlement between building operatives and building employers. The right hon. Gentleman ought to have put that in another way. He ought to have said that employers and employed had failed to come to a settlement.

Agreement on this question of dilution is long overdue. The Prime Minister himself gave us figures which show that the building trade of this country has now been reduced by about 50 per cent. of what it was before the War. We know that at this actual moment the London County Council housing schemes are being held up on account of the absence of certain branches of skilled labour. The Paddington Council cannot get on with the erection of its baths for the same reason, and the same thing exists wherever one goes. It has been going on for years. This absence of the skilled bricklayer and the plasterer, or some other branch of the trade, is not a matter of to-day. Even under the Addison scheme, when that was first brought into operation, practically every housing scheme in the country was hung up on account of the absence of these skilled men, and, therefore, I say that while we wish this Conference well, the Conference should understand that, speaking on behalf of the housrless and the homeless at this moment, we contend that a settlement of the question is very long overdue. It was in July, 1919, that the Government first. proposed that some steps should be taken by the trade itself in this matter. It was in December, 1920, that the Government actually offered £5 per head to the building trade as a training grant to get men into the business.

Can you train a bricklayer or a plasterer for £5?

The £5 was only a contribution. What I wanted to convey was that the Government in 1920, in order to get more men into the trade, offered a contribution of £5. But the trade turned the offer down. They never said it was not enough, they never asked how it was possible to train men on such a sum. They never said a word about that, but they simply refused the offer. I do not know whether the hon. Member who interrupted me was in the House at the time, but I do remember very well that Dr. Addison, the ex-Minister of Health, now a member of the Labour party, said on 21st October, 1920:

" I had no help from organised labour in this matter from start to finish."

Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that there were unemployed in the building trade long before that date?

May I be allowed to finish my quotation After saying:

" I have had no help from organised labour in this matter from start to finish."

Dr. Addison went on to say:

" The organised Labour party in this House has never given me any help."

I want to emphasise this, I am not desiring to offer undue criticism, but I do hope, in view of what I have said, the Minister of Health will take very careful note of these facts and that the Conference to which I have referred will do all possible to increase the number of apprentices in the trade. But more than that, I may point out that if that is the only solution that can be offered, it will not be possible to build 10,000 additional houses either this year or next. Everyone knows that an apprentice has to serve between three and five years before he can be admitted a member of his union. Therefore the adoption of this course will not solve the problem. I hope the building trade will realise that there is very little prospect, indeed there is practically no prospect of unemployment in their industry to-day. Other trades would very much like to be in the same position.

I could not understand what was meant when it was said that the building trade wanted guarantees. The State cannot give a guarantee as to the number of buildings to be erected in this country. It is the municipalities and the private firms upon whom rests the question whether houses shall he erected. Take the building trade in Birmingham. There you have a very considerable programme put forward by the city municipality, enough to keep the trade busy for 10 years to come. It is the same all over the country. I can quite appreciate that in this matter caution, care, and justice should be exercised, but I do want to emphasise this, that no trade has a right to take up a selfish attitude at the present moment. These building operatives are not asked to make sacrifices in order to build houses for people in Park Lane. They are asked to build houses for their fellow workmen and I hope that that one fact will appeal to them. In many respects I fully share the views expressed by the Prime Minister and the Lord Privy Seal in connection with this matter of housing. I am very glad to see that the Labour party's programme in connection with housing has been considerably revised. I very well remember reading in their official papers their housing programme. Local authorities were to be compelled within three years to erect suitable houses or cottages for everyone who wanted them in the particular locality; the money was to come from the State; and the rents were to be measured, not by the accommodation provided in the houses, but by the wages and the needs of the occupiers. That, apparently, has gone, and we are very glad to know that it has gone. I am also very glad to note that the Prime Minister yesterday did not say a, single word about, those wonderful and beautiful building guilds of which we used to hear so much in this House. I recollect full well the number of questions which used to be put to the Minister of Health by hon. Gentlemen who then sat on this side of the House, as to whether the national building guilds of this country were going to have fair play or not.

They have had fair play. If ever organisations were treated with consideration, they were the national building guilds. They were formed by the men themselves; there were to be no bosses or employers or anything of that kind; they were all to share equally. I think it was about three or four months ago that the last records of the building guilds in this country were written, and they were written at the Bankruptcy Court. The last I heard of them was an appeal to some large building firm to take over and deal with their liabilities. I am glad that these things have gone, and that at any rate Labour Ministers, when they come really to face a problem of this kind, not on the platform, but in the office, see that the difficulties have to be met in generally the way which most people who have studied them would expect. I am sure that, so far as their efforts are made in that direction, we shall wish them well and endeavour to co-operate with them in every possible way. I venture to conclude, as I began, with a note of warning as to the proposals and statements made yesterday, and to suggest that there should be a re-examination of the matter before houses are promised at £500 in this country and at a total contribution to their occupancy of 9s. per week including rates.

We have listened to a very interesting speech from the hon. Member for West Woolwich (Sir K. Wood), but, if he will allow me to say so, my one criticism of it is that, although he spoke at considerable length, he did not really make one constructive suggestion. What we want are houses, and we are only going to get them by making our contribution to what is admittedly a very difficult problem. I think the main trouble in connection with the housing question has been that there have been so many changes of policy. First we had the Addison scheme, conceived on generous lines and with very excellent intentions. That came to an end. Then we had the Mond scheme, a truncated Addison scheme. That was followed by the scheme of the late Minister of Health. I would suggest to the present Minister of Health —I am sorry that he is absent, as the Debate has turned on housing—that the only hope of solving this problem is to take a long view. By taking a long view we are not only likely to get the houses, but also to get the labour. We all know why there is suspicion about dilution. Before the War there was no industry in the country which suffered more from unemployment than the building industry. It was a seasonal industry, and was also subject to great fluctuations. I would suggest to the Government that the real way to solve this problem is to have a seven-years' programme—I suggest seven years because that is a convenient figure. The fault of the late scheme was that it was only for two years, and that was my criticism of it at the time.

As the hon. Member has called attention to the absence of the Minister of Health and the Parliamentary Secretary, would it not be possible for the Minister to be here?

He will be here directly.

I am sure we have a very good deputy in the Chancellor of the Duchy, who is acquainted with all subjects, and no doubt he will convey my views to the absent Minister. My main criticism of the scheme of the late Minister of Health was that it was only for two years. You cannot turn out houses like sausages from a machine You have to make plans a long time in advance. You have to get the land, and you have to develop it, and the development of land is a very long business. For instance, the Becontree scheme of the London County Council was held up for nearly 18 months because of the difficulties of providing sewerage. The roads had to be laid out, and arrangements made for water, and in six months there was difficulty with the water companies; and then the Government changed its mind and the whole scheme was hung up. I say, therefore, that if the Government is really to meet with success, there must be encouragement of the local authorities to look ahead, and, above all, to get the land. If the locai authorities could be encouraged to buy all vacant land that is suitable for houses around the urban areas, and set to work on it the unemployed and get those estates ready for houses by making the necessary roads and drainage, then there would be some prospect of getting the houses. It would then be possible to say to the building trade, "We will give you a guarantee of employment on a certain scale for seven years," and if the housing policy were thus made a permanent thing I feel sure it would meet with general agreement from all quarters of the House.

The shortage of labour in the building trade would be largely overcome. From my experience as a member of a housing committee I have reason to know that the branches of labour concerned, such as bricklayers and plasterers, are quite ready to change their whole attitude if they could have a guaranteed progranune spread over a number of years, and I think the late Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy), will bear me out as to that. What the building trade is afraid of is, that during the present enthusiasm for housing a lot of new men will be brought into the industry and that, when the enthusiasm dies down and building stops, the industry will be flooded and they will be thrown out of work. I think that that fear is unjustified, but the Government, through the Ministry of Health, could overcome it by putting forward a programme for a series of years, showing that they are looking ahead. By that means they will not only provide the labour but will get the materials. If the makers of bricks and the providers of other necessary materials can be sure that this building enthusiasm is going to last for a long time, I have no doubt that they will be prepared to put their capital into the industry and that more brickfields will be developed and there will be a real prospect of getting the goods delivered.

What is really wanted is mase production. It must be realised that the need is so great that we cannot follow the old-fashioned principle of just building a couple of cottages here, developing a road there, and varying the types. There is no reason why there should not be standard plans, provided that they are drawn up by competent architects on sound lines. We know our requirements, and, if we are going to get houses, we must draw up our programme on bold comprehensive, sound lines suited to the industrial conditions of to-day. It is curious that., while the productive power of almost every other industry has increased fourfold during the last 50 years, the provision of houses has not kept pace. While every article of use can now be produced by machinery at extraordinary speed— at such a speed that it is sometimes very difficult to find markets for the production—that increased efficiency does not apply to the erection of houses. I would suggest to the Minister of Health that he should call into his service the. ingenuity of modern industry, and see if improved methods cannot be applied to building. especially by standardisation of parts—window frames, doors, light castings, and so on—so that we may get houses in sufficient numbers to meet the immense demand.

When I intervened in this Debate my intention was not so much to refer to housing, but the hon. Member for West Woolwich diverted me from my path. I wanted particularly to refer to unemployment. In the stimulating speech which he made yesterday afternoon, the Prime Minister, as I thought, if I may be excused for saying so, showed a lack of imagination in regard to this problem. What he said was too much on stereotyped lines. I thought. I was going to hear something fresh, but it was almost word for word the kind of speech we heard from the late Prime Minister— proposals, very good in themselves, but not new. Unemployment is such a big problem that year by year and month by month we must constantly be looking for new methods, new ideas for dealing with it. I am not going into the matter of Poplar, as I am advised we are going to have a day for that question, but I do say that the basis of our treatment of unemployment still remains the Poor Law of 1834. The Poor Law of 1834 has long been discredited; it is disliked by the whole population; it is unsuited to our industrial needs. It was quite suited to the time when we were largely an agricultural people, but it is quite unsuited to the needs of a great industrial community like ours.

I thought that at least, from a Government which includes the present President of the Board of Trade, we should have had some reference to a change in the whole system of the Poor Law. I have been a great student in my time of the Royal Commission of 1904, and especially of the Minority Report. That recommended a, break-up of the Poor Law. If the case for a break-up of the Poor Law was good when it was given in 1904, surely it is far greater now, because many things have now been taken away from the Poor Law. The aged, for instance, have been largely handed over to the pension authorities, and I understand that, as more generous terms are gradually given to the old people, still more of them are going to be taken away from the tender mercies of the Poor Law. The sick have been very largely taken out of the Poor Law by various schemes for dealing with tuberculosis, venereal disease, and so on, and they are being very largely handed over to the health authorities. I am not going to pursue this subject, except to repeat that the case for the break-up of the Poor Law is very much strengthened by the events of, the last 10 or 15 years, and the final blow to it has been the setting up of the National Insurance Scheme and the Employment Exchanges. That has been faulty in one direction, namely, in regard to the gap, and I was very glad that the Prime Minister guaranteed to us that the gap shall go; but, if the gap is to go, where is the need for the parallel system of the Poor Law? If insurance is now going to provide for the whole of the adult working population, with this exception of one or two indus- tries, such as agriculture, there is no necessity in every area and every district for the expensive machinery of the Poor Law guardians and for the workhouses inevitably associated with it. It should appeal to economists in the House. I was very sorry the Prime Minister did not promise us legislation in that direction, and if he is looking for uncontroversial subjects which do not divide parties surely there is room for a drastic change of our whole system of Poor Law. While he is considering the subject he might thoroughly look into the whole machinery of insurance. My own feeling always has been that to have a flat-rate contribution is unsatisfactory. I believe a more effective and satisfactory method would be to have a percentage of wages, a real insurance against the period when he is out of work, such percentage of course being subsidised by the State and the employer. But if you are going to have the State associated with the insurance scheme you must alter the whole attitude of the nation towards Employment Exchanges. Employment Exchanges in the past have largely been mere registers of employment. They have in some highly organised trades worked well, but in the great urban areas of London where there arc no big, highly skilled, organised industries, the machinery largely breaks down. The Employment Exchanges are doing very little more than the ordinary private employment agencies before they were established, and what the newspapers did through their advertising columns. I suggest to the Minister of Health and the Minister of Labour, who is also directly concerned, that the Employment Exchanges should become something more than a mere register of jobs. Attached to those Exchanges are at present employment committees. Sometimes they function; more often they do not. But there should be a highly trained, highly skilled industrial organiser attached to these Employment Exchanges whose business it should be to have a complete knowledge of all the industries in his area—what factories are working full time, what factories are working short time, what factories are working overtime, what factories want to acquire more capital, find difficulties in finding markets, want new machinery or new methods, and collecting that informa- tion, his business should be to find out how the labour available could be fitted in to the industries in his area, because, after all, the country is largely divided into various industries—the cotton mills of Lancashire, the woollen mills of Yorkshire, and East London is largely concerned with the cabinet-making industry.

Fashions change. At present we are suffering from a great trade depression. The ordinary manufacturer is concentrating on managing his own little industry. He does not know very often how to adapt his plant or his methods to new needs, nor is he always conscious of the markets that are available. We ostensibly have an elaborate method of keeping industry informed of the markets of the world. We have our Consular Service and our Board of Trade, but it is largely a Board of Trade in name. It does not create trade or find markets. It is not in touch with areas that want employment. I suggest to the two Ministers concerned that the Employment Exchanges should be really linked up to the Board of Trade, which should be kept informed what plant is idle, what skill is available in a particular district, and what particular skill is seeking employment. If that could be organised on scientific lines right from the district, through the Board of Trade, to the markets of the world, believe many a trade depression could be shelved over by intelligent assistance and wise advice. This is not a new proposal. In other countries, especially in the Dominions, the Government in this matter acts as the honest broker. Take New Zealand. The whole of the butter industry is 'organised by the guidance of the State. Private enterprise produces the butter, but the goodwill of the cornmunity comes in to standardise it and to find markets for it in every quarter of the globe. If this country cannot absorb it, attempts are made to develop a market in Canada or in the Western States of America. The same sort of method could be brought to the service of the industry of the country. The State has a very great responsibility to got men as rapidly as possible to be producers of wealth and bring them back into industry, therefore it has a right and an obligation to interfere in this matter.

These are practical proposals which can be done with very little alteration in the law and by bringing our Employment Exchanges into a condition necessary to carry them out. To make a scheme of that kind a success there must be a real improvement in education. In East London at present there are very few young men or women out of work who have been through either a central or a secondary school. Young men and women who have had the advantage of good education are nearly always rapidly absorbed. Only too often decent, honest, willing men, ready and anxious to work, come to me, and I ask them what they can do. The answer always is: "I can turn my hand to anything." When I say: "What in particular?" their answer has to be: "Nothing." That is a tragedy. That tragedy can be remedied if education is really taken advantage of. And education is possible for the adult. Three years ago in East London we started a men's institute, limited to men over 18. It was viewed with great suspicion. It started with 13 men. We have now 800 men who are rapidly acquiring an industrial skill which will, l hope, enable them to find employment in various directions. If the Minister of Health would get the assistance of the Ministry of Labour, the Board of Trade, and the Ministry of Education, I believe he could make real progress in the solution of unemployment on scientific, sound lines, which would take men from the degrading, demoralising and unsatisfactory position of receiving relief. Nothing is more untrue than to think the average citizen likes to get something for nothing. With even the most generous terms of certain Poor Law guardians, the money they get is not enough to enable them to enjoy idleness. To enjoy idleness you have to be very rich indeed, and then it is doubtful whether you do. The best friends of the people of this country are those who wish to 'organise our industry so as to get these men back as rapidly as possible to be producers of wealth and self-respecting men.

I desire to intervene in the Debate on cue particular subject in which 1 am very much interested, namely, agriculture. I listened with very much interest to the Prime Minister, especially when he touched on this one great national industry. I was very pleased that he stated in definite language that the Government intended to revive the Agricultural Wages Board with the object of stabilising the wages of that far too long under-paid and neglected class and securing for them a living wage. But apart from that, when he dealt with the agricultural policy as a whole, I must confess I was profoundly disappointed, for I had hoped that the Government would see their way clear to granting some immediate relief to this great industry, which by the treacherous act of the then Government in 1921 was thrown into a terrible state of chaos. Unfortunately, apart from the Wages Board, the proposal of the Government does not hold out any hope that this industry will be dealt with and immediate steps taken to put it into a far more prosperous condition than it is in at the moment. It is immediate relief that we want. Whatever opinions we may hold—and I do not go quite with the Prime Minister in some of his remarks about the industry and the cause of this depression—the fact remains that it is depressed, and the agricultural labourers have reached very near the end of their tether. When hon. Members speak of their wages I want to get into their minds the fact that they are not receiving 25s. They get 6d. per hour, and now that they are working 48 hours per week, that brings them down to 24s., and when their insurance is deducted, that brings them down to 23s. 7d. If experts in arithmetic will divide this among a family of five, with three meals per day, they will find that only comes to 21d. per meal for seven days in the week, which amounts to £1 Is. 101d. That only leaves Is. 8½. with which to pay the rent, buy the boots and the clothes and meet the other necessities of domestic life. That is a scandal to a country calling itself Christian. When an industry like agriculture cannot treat its workers better than that there is something radically wrong somewhere. That is the position of the agricultural labourer. Whilst I strongly advocate the Wages Board, because we want the wages fixed by law, I realise that we cannot compel the farmers to employ the men. You can fix the wages, but the farmer can say that he will employ as many or as few men as he pleases. In the Minister of Agriculture's own division, in one small rural district, at the last district council meeting which I attended, 39 men applied for relief work. We had a tremendous fight last March, which gentlemen opposite could have prevented had they liked. We had one of the greatest upheavals that I have known during my public life, when 10,000 men were out fighting against the reduction of this terribly low wage.

I will deal with another side of the question. We have to take a broad view. Despite all that may be said, agriculture is depressed; it has been thrown into a terrible state of chaos. I have known several periods of depression in agriculture. Let us take the smallholder and the tenant farmer. I know something of the position because I have been for the last 12 years a member of a smallholdings committee in my own county. I believe we are the premier county, or nearly the premier county, in administering this Act. We have 21,000 acres of land, with over 2,000 smallholders. I shall ask the Minister of Agriculture a question on this matter next Monday. In that county, so terribly depressed is the industry that the arrears of rent on the 31st March, 1923, in connection with the holdings controlled by the committee amounted to £7,000. Only last Saturday we had to strike off 1,200 of bad debts. I should like to ask the Prime Minister or the Minister of Agriculture what they propose to do in reference to those engaged in this section of the industry.

I will now deal with another class of farmer. In 1919 the landlords were wise in their day and generation. They saw under the Corn Production Act that the value of agricultural land had wonderfully increased, and they brought their land into the market. The land gamblers came along and gambled with God's earth; that ought never to have been allowed. Tenant farmers who had just enough capital to carry on their industry were afraid of being sold out of their holdings and losing their little capital, and they were induced to purchase their holdings and to borrow money for that purpose. The mortgagees, in my judgment, are worse than the landlords. The tenant farmers bought at an inflated price, when everything was prosperous, but at last there came a slump, and these men had overdrawn at the bank. 1 do not blame the banks, because I think they have acted very fairly, although they have charged big interest. These men find themselves seriously handicapped, and unless some immediate relief is given a large number of people will go into the Bankruptcy Court, and there will be no money for wages. I had hoped that we should have had some promise from the Government that they would do something in the shape of a guarantee, for a time at least, to enable the industry to get on to its legs again and to become independent of help, whilst education and scientific research are developing so that the industry can take advantage of them.

I had hoped to hear something about the tied cottages. By the tied house we mean the house which the employer lets to the labourer on condition that he works for him. We had hoped to have had some promise given us on this matter. The Prime Minister gave us a good outline of policy and apart from this question I have not criticism to offer, but, much as I admire the Prime Minister, I want to tell him and the Minister of Agriculture that hundreds of working men this morning would read their newspapers with profound disappointment in regard to the agricultural and housing policy of the Government. To ask an agricultural labourer out of 23s. 7d: a week to pay 9s. a week for his cottage, is a mockery. [HON. MEMBERS: "An average of 9s."1 What is the use of talking about 9s. a week to a man who has only 23s. 7c1. a week and who, when he has paid 2í.d. per meal for himself and family has only ls. 8d. left? I had hoped that we should have had some promise of real help in that direction for the agricultural labourer. I appeal to the Minister of Agriculture, in whose division I live, and as one who has done something to help him to his present position, to ask the Cabinet to reconsider their policy and to see if they cannot devise some means whereby something can be done that will bring this industry into a more stabilised and prosperous condition.

We must look at this question from the national point of view. The first thing we have to ask ourselves—and here I want our Friends who represent urban districts to have patience with us—is whether agriculture is a national necessity. If it be a national necessity, can it be carried on economically and pay the labourer a living wage without some assistance from the Imperial Exchequer? I say that it cannot. If it cannot, we must consider which is the best method of rendering assistance to agriculture. The right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) some years ago, when there was a great industrial conflict, is reported to have said that the mining industry was a national asset because it found food for other industries, and he said that agriculture was a national industry because it found food for the people. If it finds food for the people, something must be done so that it can find food for the people at the cost of production. I have said these things because I feel it to be my duty to the class who have sent me here. We, the agricultural labourers, are waiting in our villages and anxiously hoping that the present Government will do something to relieve the situation, and to lift up the workers in that industry from the terrible state of poverty and the hopeless condition in which they find themselves.

While many of us cannot help being glad to see the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. G. Edwards) back in the House of Commons, I do not think that he was quite fair to the Government in saying that the average rent of houses was going to be 9s. I say this because I want to be fair to all Governments. Like many others, I welcomed the Prime Minister's speech on social reform. It came as a tremendous relief to many of us who are desperately anxious in reference to social reform, though it may have come as a slight disappointment to those who expect the social millennium to come at Once through the Government of the right hon. Gentleman. Et is coming when we have got better men and women throughout the country. Then, and only then, shall we get the millennium. The Prime Minister must realise that in his policy of social reform he will have the majority of the nation behind him. Most of us want social reform. Any citizen who puts the welfare of his country before any personal consideration must see that there are certain reforms which the nation is hound to have if it is to continue to be one of the greatest nations in the world. But we realise that these reforms cost money, and this question of money is not as easily solved as a great many of our Socialists appear to think. The Prime Minister was reasonable and just, and I do hope and pray that the reasonable and just men of all parties in this House will hack him. [An HON. MEMBER: "We are all reasonable and just on this side!"] We will wait and see. The vast majority of the people of this country are not so interested in what our opponents call Capitalism and Labour as in the general good of the community. Many of its who are what are called well placed in life arc not really out to defend our own interests and the interests of our children. We are just as much interested in the children of Poplar as hon. Members opposite. It is a very cruel thing to suppose that because you are poor, you only are interested in the poor. It is a cruel thing that many of us, who care more about social reform than about the position of politics or anything else, have had to stiffer under the imputation that we are simply out to defend Capitalism. Capitalism in itself is a most uninteresting thing, but it is a very necessary thing, as hon. Members opposite will see.

The Prime Minister said, and we are all with hint, that the great necessity is to have peace in Europe. There is no party in this House which will not do everything possible to help to get peace in Europe. Though we want peace in Europe, we in this House will not produce peace by crying out "peace" when there is no peace within. The Government, I believe, are going to do a good thing for the country in this matter. They have got a great contribution to make, a contribution which is overdue, if they will make capital and labour in this country get on better terms. They will go forward with the whole of the country behind them. No matter what the conditions of Europe are like, as long as we have got capital and labour poles apart as they are in England to-day, we simply cannot go forward with our social reform.

I believe that. the present Government have got a better chance than any other Government. They have got to see that the workman for a fair wage will give a fair day's work. But they have also got to see that the employers must give their men more interest in their work, more interest in industry itself. I think that this is a very vital question. Workmen to-day are not going to work in the conditions in which they have been working. [HoN. MEMBERS: "Your place is over here! "] I will stay exactly where I am. I do not mind what party I am in so long as many of the members of that party in their hearts, want to do what is right, and, with due respect to hon. Members opposite, in the, party to which I have the honour to belong, we have got as many high-minded Christian men as any other party in the country. Very often the men who are not so high-minded or so Christian make most noise. But that happens in all parties. Every party has got its dark spots as we all know, dark and bright spots. [HON. MEMBERS: "Bright red!"] I am not one of the people who have been frightened at a red light. But I realise that if you put a man like. the Prime Minister in power, or even a man like the Minister of Health, and give him responsibility, then you will find that the things that he talked about so lightly on the platform are very difficult to deal with. Let us be fair to them. I do think that the country is looking to all parties in the House of Commons to try to work together at this juncture. The main point is unemployment. That is the tragedy of our country. The Lord Privy Seal said, very truly, that the causes of unemployment under this Government were the same as they were under the last. We have always known that—the European markets, capital and labour not working together, and so on. We welcome now his admission that the causes of the misery of the world are not owing to the capitalist system.

My real object in rising was to speak about the League of Nations and the question of defence. lion. Members opposite will say that the Member for Plymouth is thinking of Plymouth when she refers to the Navy. I am thinking of nothing of the kind. I am thinking of the civilisation based on Christianity throughout the world. I welcome the League of Nations and will fight every reactionary who opposes it, but I do not want to see the League of Nations take the place of the British Navy. I welcome the Washington Conference, I welcome any other Conference which has anything to do with disarmament. [HoN. MEMBERS: "Not the Navy!"] I am all for disarmament. Do you really think that there is any section of the country that wants war again? There may be, I agree, people in all classes who want class war. But that is not the predominant feeling. The great mass of the people of this country in all parties want peace on earth and good will among men. The British nation as a whole want it. I think that many European nations have not got as far as we have, and do not see things as we do. We want the League of Nations to go on to work for peace and disarmament, but do not meantime play with the British Navy.

I say truthfully that that is not from the party point of view, and not with any wish to embarrass the Government. It is only what thousands of men and women of the country are thinking. We do not want the Navy for the purpose of fighting, but for the purpose of peace. Anyone who casts his mind back will see that the British Navy has gone further than any other single agency to make possible civilisation such as it is, not only hero in England but throughout the world. Let us be fair. Do not let us just talk about the things which we want, but the things which it is possible for us to get if we thought that by keeping the present Government in power we were going to get peace in Europe, we should keep them in power for their life time and never let them go. I do hope that the Government will realise that, when they go in for sound sane social reform, they will have behind them, not only the Members of this House, but the whole of the country. But if they begin speaking about the international brotherhood —I HON. MEMBERS: "The League of Nations! "]—then that only exists in the mouth and not in the hearts of men. Let us keep working on until we get it, but do not let us tinker with our main line of defence until we do get it.

May I suggest to the hon. Member for Plymouth (Viscountess Astor) that., although we cannot always have the Christian love in our hearts which we would like to have, yet the next best thing to having it there and not acting upon it is for us even, if it is not there, to act as if it were? I sometimes think that if you can act as if you do love people, because you feel that that is the wiser thing to do, then gradually you will find that the result of your action will lead to the feeling which you desire to have, even though circumstances might be against it for the moment. After all is said and done in this world of ours, we have to live together.

I am profoundly opposed to those who are associated with the hon. Member for Plymouth, so far as their particular views are concerned. I find it exceedingly hard to believe that those who are associated with her arc the high-minded Christian men and women to whom she has referred. [HoN. MEMBERS: "Withdraw!"] I will tell you why. It is because my experience has proved it. Just as you know a tree by its fruits, so you know parties by the things which they do, and leave undone. We on this side have not always had the pleasant experience which perhaps we are enjoying just now as Members of this House. We do remember, some of us, that we were born in slums. We do remember the men and women who brought us into the world, who never had a holiday during the whole of their long lives, and were worn out before they were middle-aged, and much of their experience has entered into our hearts in a way in which we can never forget, and which will always give us the moral passion which we have in our work.

We remember that those who have been associated with the hon. Member for Plymouth have maintained that system of private enterprise in which she believes—private enterprise that has given to us the slums, that has given to us wars, that has given to us sweating, that has given to us the agricultural conditions that have been mentioned to-night. It is private enterprise that has given power to the strong in order that they might oppress the weak. I find it very difficult to believe that there can be Members belonging to the party of the hon. Member for Plymouth, who can be prepared to live as millionaires to-day while millions of our people are suffering the agonies and anguish of poverty. If I understand Christianity aright, while my own conduct, perhaps, falls very far short of my belief, I share with the hon. Member for Plymouth her belief in that most wonderful of all religions that has given to us a new conception of God and of man. I suggest that one of the most revolutionary things in the teaching of the Carpenter of Nazareth was just this: that we should think of others and not of ourselves, that we should actually put others in the place of ourselves, and that if it he necessary for another man to have a coat and we have two, somehow or other we should find means to share our belongings with him; in other words that we should live as a family and not as if the big brother had a right to reverence while the weaker one had to go to the wall. In our own families what do we do? In the family of the hon. Member for Plymouth if a babe in the cradle was crying and there were needs on the part of her husband, would she go first of all to her husband who is strong and healthy? No, she would go to the weak babe and attend to its needs first.

Hear, hear!

The hon. Member says "hear, hear!" Then why, instead of attending to the well-being of the rich who can look after themselves, not go and eliminate the slums and cease to talk about—[HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw!"]

I hate to interrupt a maiden speech, but I cannot understand why the hon. Member should pick me out of the House as one who looks after the well-being of the rich, when I have done nothing since I have been in public life except fight for those whom the hon. Member has described.

If hon. Members opposite will allow me to proceed, perhaps they will understand what I wish to say. I was dealing, as they will be able to read in the OFFICIAL REPORT to-morrow, not with the hon. Member- for Plymouth as an individual, but with her party. I repeatedly spoke of those who were associated with her. I was dealing with her as typical of a system that at present was having certain effects. It was her own reference that led me to make the remarks I have made. I was making the most necessary point that sometimes it is exceedingly difficult for us to have the spirit of love in our hearts for the slum landlord and the sweater, who are now condemned, I understand, by the hon. Member for Plymouth and by all her associates on the opposite side of the House. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] If that be so, I suggest that the slum landlord and the sweater are the product of the system of private enterprise. For that reason we on this side of the House are members of the Socialist and Labour party. We are working in order that the lives of our people might be bettered; we are working in order that we may see that the actions of members of society are of such a character that one would believe from their actions that they have love in their hearts.

If you could get a state of society in which men acted as if they loved one another, gradually you would generate in their hearts that feeling of love and confidence which we ought all to have. [HON. MEMBERS: "Begin at home!"] I recognise the justice of that thrust. I can tell hon. Members quite frankly that no one knows my defects better than myself; no one realises better my own failure to live up to the things in which I believe. I suggest that hon. Members opposite might co-operate individually in living a life according to the principles which I have mentioned, as taught by the Carpenter of Nazareth. We might try to work together in our hearts and lives to live up to our principles and then our actions, both in this House and outside, may be quite different from what they are. I was interested in listening to the speech of the hon. Member for West Woolwich (Sir K. Wood) on the question of housing. He expressed some doubt whether decent houses could be built for £500. He may be interested to know that we in Bristol are already building houses for less than £500, and that they are houses which are worth living in. I must., however, confess to a great curiosity as to how we are to get houses for an average of 9s. a week. I shall be interested to know how much the subsidy is and what are the mathematics of the proposal.

There were some things mentioned by the hon. Member for Woolwich which seem to me to show a fundamental difference, not in our moral outlook, not in emotional outlook, but rather in intellectual outlook, which makes the hon. Member and those associated with him differ from those on this side of the House. He told us of the way in which the building trades had refused to accept dilution. We know that there must be dilution, that dilution must come if we are to have the houses. I suggest that the hon. Member's Government never proved that they really knew how to handle labour while in office. That is one of the things which might be remedied by the advent of the Labour party to office. We know the difficulties from the standpoint of labour, and I believe that we have sufficient imagination and knowledge to understand the difficulties from the standpoint of the employer as well. In a few days, perhaps in a few hours, we shall see by an agreement that has been come to that, at all events, where other Governments have failed, the Labour party has succeeded in handling labour, and in handling capital too, in such a way as to bring them in into fruitful contact that will be for the public well-being.

It is not only a question of dilution in the building trades so far as labour is concerned. Surely the hon. Member for Woolwich knows that the fundamental interests of the system in which he believes, the system of capitalism, is not in plenty but in scarcity. Plenty means low prices and often low dividends, but scarcity means high prices and high dividends. With less labour they can get more out of the labour they put in. If that be not so, why do we hear so much about the restriction of output in the rubber industry, in the textile industry and in the tea industry? Why is it that we are having company meetings continually, and managing directors telling their shareholders that they have decided to reduce output because the market is already glutted? How, then, can hon. Members make accusations against those whose only capital and source of income is their labour'? Let them realise how much more the worker has to lose by unemployment, when there is a glut of labour in the market, than is lost by those who are shareholders in capitalist companies. They will see then that the worker has more justification for his action than have those who have charge of capitalist companies. The real question in dilution, which we know is overdue, is the question of guarantees, which are also overdue. The hon. Member for Woolwich said that guarantees could not be given. We on this side believe that guarantees can be given and can be given by the Government in conjunction with muicipal corporations.

I did not say that. I said that guarantees could not be given by the State. It is municipalities and private builders who build the houses.

That seems to be one of the little intellectual differences which might be cleared up by debate and discussion. After all, the municipalities are only one factor in this question of the building of houses. The State is a very important factor, and the importance of the factor is not only in the fact that it helps the municipalities to provide funds for the building of houses, but that it can also do something more. I will give an instance of what happened in Bristol only last week. We had to discharge 23 bricklayers from the municipal housing scheme because we could not get bricks. What do we find? Whereas last December we were paying 65s. a thousand for bricks, the price, since it became known that the Labour party was going in for houses in a determined way, has risen to 72s. 6d., and now we cannot get enough bricks to keep the bricklayers going. The time has come when, so far as the scarcity of building material is concerned on the one hand, and the way in which owners of building materials on the other take advantage of the market and raise prices, the Government ought to declare a, state of national emergency and place the whole of the building material industry under the control of the State. If we are going to blame the worker for restricting output, why do not the hon. Member for Woolwich and his friends also blame those in the building trade for restricting output so far as building materials are concerned? We are doing the best we can with labour. Will he tell us that he and his party are ready to do all they can so far as capital and their industries are concerned? I want to raise a matter with regard to housing on which I should like to have some guarantee. If there be one thing more than another that is harrowing the hearts and the minds of those of us whose lives have been spent in our constituencies, it is to know that poor men and poor women—and they are. always poor and defenceless—and poor children are being flung out on to the street without any hope of other accommodation, simply because someone wants to go into their house. Of course the someone has come from somewhere else. Why cannot, they stay there until alternative accommodation can be found for those in their houses at the present time? I want to ask the Minister of Health if he can give a guarantee that in the near future these evictions will stop, that there will be no more evictions of harmless women and weak children on to the street until alternative accommodation can be found, in order that we may have a little more brotherhood and Christianity in our social life and towards those suffering and in need. 7.0 P.M.

When I was listening to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) I was rather surprised to hear him say that so far as the programme that had been outlined by the Prime Minister was concerned there was no new departure. I want to suggest that in the speech of the Prime Minister—a speech which seemed to me to bring new hope and new light into many a life in spite of its imperfections and limitations—he missed one fundamental thing. If I read the speech of the Prime Minister aright, it seemed to me that the fundamental departure that has taken place is that he has brought and is bringing an entirely new spirit into the administration of public affairs and the control of industry in this country. What has been the attitude of past Governments? I am afraid that it is out of my power to read what is in their hearts and minds. I am only going to say what appears to me to be in their hearts and minds by the things that they have done. I know practically none of the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite. I only know that so far as 1 am concerned, in the short time I have been in the House, I have watched the ex-Prime Minister both un this side and the other side, and if I could only eliminate from my mind the fact that he stood for a policy I abominate, if only could think of him as a man and as a friend, I should wish for no finer example of a Christian gentleman than I feel in my own heart that he is because of the attitude and the spirit he has displayed in this House. But I know none of my friends opposite. I know but one or two of my friends below the Gangway. I know, heart to heart, a good many of my friends associated with me on these benches.

This question of the way in which previous Governments have dealt with thee great social issues that are confronting us to-day is one upon which they and we fundamentally differ. What has been their attitude of mind towards the unemployed man The unemployed man has been an economic factor, a potential social unit in revolt. He might become dangerous unless he was cared for. If there were too many of him imbued with the wartime spirit, then the same thing might happen in this country as in other countries. The question has not been what they could do for that man because he is a human, divine personality requiring what every one of us requires in order that he might develop that divinity within him. He is an economic factor; he is a potential unit of social reform. How little is necessary for him to have in order to keep him quiet and out of our way for the time being? The result has been that instead of us giving to the unemployed man full meals in order to keep him fit, in order that, freed from the claims of his stomach, mind and soul might expand and he might realise what life was and do his duty as a citizen, all that we have said is, "How little can he live on?" If he does not require his unemployed pay week by week throughout the year, then we shall institute a gap, so that he may starve a little more sometimes, in order that he may save a little more money for the well-to-do in our country.

Our point Of view is entirely different. The point of view of the Prime Minister, if I understand him aright, is that he sees in the unemployed man and woman and the slum child divine and human personalities that can never be developed while the claims of the body are supreme to the claims of the mind and of the spirit. So, he says, our policy is not how little can we give to them in order to keep them quiet, in order to prevent them from revolting; our aim is to see how much we can give them in order that the whole of their lives may be nourished and developed. I want to suggest that when the Prime Minister takes that point of view he takes a point of view that, so far as we are concerned, is one which makes for social solidarity. It is one which helps us to realise that we are members one of another, and helps us to achieve that fellowship which is the purpose of life. All the time we spend here, all the years we spend here, are worth absolutely nothing unless it brings to us that fellow, ship which means life and Heaven to the human heart and the human mind. That is one of the most wonderful things the Prime Minister has done in the speech and in the spirit of the policy he has adopted. The policy which has been adopted by the Prime Minister has thrilled the hearts of the people of this country and of other countries, because we feel that there has at last dawned a new spirit, so far as home and foreign affairs are concerned.

The right hon. Gentleman the ex-Prime Minister has said to-day that the great question that we have to face is how we are going to enable the unemployed man to take up his bed and walk. We want a man to be able to take up his bed and walk, and we also want him to have a bed in order that he may be able to take it up, if necessary, and walk with it. I suggest that the Prime Minister has quite wisely outlined in his speech the lines on which he is going to work. Until you: can get something to distribute among the people you cannot distribute those goods. You have to produce if you are going to have methods of distribution. The fact of the matter is that the question of unemployment is a question of balancing production and consumption. It is a question as to whether you can produce a scheme which will increase the effective demand of those who are in need to-day and decrease the control over commodities of those who cannot consume the commodities they control. The economic argument in regard to unemployment is that to-day production and consumption are not balancing without a great deal of waste. So far as what is produced is concerned, it is not distributed fairly and equitably amongst those who need and who can effectively demand and consume. Before we can deal with great problems of distribution I want to suggest that we want to stimulate production. The Prime Minister, speaking of unemployment, said:

"Therefore insofar as the Government can influence trade, there should be its first line of attack. Consequently, we shall concentrate, not first of all on the relief of unemployment, but on the restoration of trade."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th February, 1924; col. 759, Vol. 169.]

I would therefore suggest that, so far as that is concerned, the Prime Minister and his Government are on the right lines. The Prime Minister has dealt with the question of public enterprise and with the question of stimulating private enterprise. I want to suggest that we have to consider another thing. While you are getting your schemes at work and while your schemes are fructifying you have to remember that the unemployed man and woman, boy and girl are 'deteriorating all the time. If the Government can stimulate private enterprise which is of a voluntary character, I suggest that we should ask the President of the Board of Education to see if he cannot stimulate the education authorities to mobilise all the forces of good will in our towns and villages so that we can have the men and women interested in education, in recreation, in sport, and in religious work. We might get them all together and open up training centres so that not only boys and girls between 14 and 16 who do not come under the Unemployment Insurance Act, but even men and women of 40, 50 and 60 years of age may spend some of their time in some kind of educational, or recreational work, so as to prevent the moral and physical deterioration that they are suffering from at the present time.

I want to say just one word with regard to Russia. It is quite true Russia has been difficult to work with, and the ex-Prime Minister used a phrase out of a natural history illustration with regard to those with whom the Prime Minister is having to deal at the present time. He told us that the result of dealing with monkeys depended on the monkeys. I want to suggest that very often the result of the relationship of a man and a monkey depends not so much on the monkey as on the nuts the man presents to the monkey. If you go towards the monkey with a stick in your hand to beat it you will probably get the monkey's monkey up. But if you approach it with the things which it requires to nourish and help it, then there will be created a spirit of friendliness that would not otherwise have existed. I come now to a matter which I have some pain in dealing with, because it is a matter upon which I shall have to differ from what seems to be the policy of the Government. I was glad to hear the Prime Minister say that an end had been put to the internment of ex-service men, whose reason was impaired, in Poor Law institutions. I wish the Prime Minister could have found a few moments to indicate to us whether he was going to do anything for the ex-service men and their wives and dependants who are suffering such great hardships to-day. I suppose every Member of this House has been inundated with requests from ex-service men, their wives and children, for help in order that they might not suffer the loss of pensions and allowances. I have a list of thousands of cases where allowances have been either reduced or stopped altogether during the last two years. Probably the most tragic and pathetic feature of these items is that sickness grants to widows and orphans have been stopped to save a paltry £2,500.

I ask the Government what is their policy in regard to pensions? Is their policy still the policy of the Labour party's Bill which was read a First time on 21st March last year? Do they still believe that if a man was fit for service he is fit, for pension? Do they feel that all time limits in respect of claims for disability or death due to service should be abolished; that widows' pensions should be made a Statutory right and all forfeitures stopped; that the full maximum income in need pensions should be £2 for a single person and £3 for a married person? Are national work centres for the disabled to be set up, and is there to be an, Appeal Court to review the decisions of the Appeal Tribunal in the House of Lords in all cases where there have been obvious miscarriages of justice? The time has come when we ought to have a more definite statement as to what is going to be done with regard to those who have suffered as a result of the War. There is one other matter which it is perhaps more difficult for me to deal with than any other. I ask the Prime Minister whether the reply given yesterday by the Secretary of State for War represents the considered policy of the Government with regard to ranker officers. During the Election I gave a pledge to these men. I told them so far as I was concerned, I was going to back up their claims with all my strength.

I am not interested as regards the military experience of these ranker officers or of ex-soldiers. I am opposed to war. I fought against the war of 1900 side by side with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) in Birmingham. I fought against the last War on the same principles. While I was free I fought on the public platform; yea, and in the streets when I was denied the right of speech elsewhere. I fought it through seven different prisons, and I would have fought through seventy prisons in order to stop the War and bring about a better feeling in Europe. Do not think for one moment you show your Christianity by slaughtering your brother. You can never imagine Jesus Christ dressed in khaki with a rifle on His shoulder. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] I cannot do so, if you can. In regard to these men it is not because of their military experience that I am interested in their case, but because these men felt just as keenly as I feel, and they felt that their fundamental duty lay, not in funkholes or committee rooms, but out in the trenches. They thought that was their job; they believed they were right in doing it. They have suffered, and if they have suffered in doing what they believed to be the right thing, then we should do not only the right thing, but the generous thing by them. We cannot play ducks and drakes with the people at election time. We cannot give pledges and then go back upon them. If we are going to establish confidence between ourselves and the people it can only be upon the basis of keeping faith with the people. If we want to see a new spirit in society we have to be as generous as we can.

It is not a question of the conditions which these men accepted when they gave, their services. It is not a question of whether these men were, at a crisis, prepared to accept any conditions. The question is—is it dignified for us as a great people to ask men to perform services equal to the service of others and then to treat those men differently from the others? Pledges have been given, and, so far as I am concerned, I intend to keep my pledge. Whatever Division Lobby that pledge leads me into I shall go into that Division Lobby, even though it means that I shall have to vote against my own party. We cannot be too generous to men who have suffered, men who, as I believe, were misled, but who, at all events, went out in good faith and who gave up position and oftentimes gave up family and fortune and business. I hope the House will forgive me for having spoken so long, and I trust that nothing I have said has hurt the feelings of any hon. Members. They will realise that I have not had the faintest intention of doing so. I am not dealing with individuals, but with principles and systems. We are not concerned with bringing about divisions between classes. We are concerned that there should be a right basis for society and that we should get the hearts and minds, the efforts and actions of men directed towards living together in peace. I trust in the days to come, as a result of the change in Government which we have just witnessed, we shall see prosperity and joy and a consolidation of goodwill in society and in the State, such as we have never seen before, redounding to the advantage not only of our own country but also of countries abroad.

I was somewhat puzzled, when listening to the Speech of the Prime Minister yesterday, by certain oblique references which the right hon. Gentleman made, and I find on reading the Press to-day, and in conversation with others, that I am not the only person who has been left in doubt as to the Prime Minister's meaning in regard to the question of the capital levy. Strange to say, the Prime Minister made no direct reference at all to that very important question, and that is the more remarkable because, I believe, every Member of the present Government, with perhaps one exception, pledged himself in his election address to support that proposal. Speaking about unemployment yesterday, the Prime Minister referred to attacks that were made upon his party by those whose only conception of that party's policy in regard to capital was that they would raid it and distribute it for consumption. At this point some hon. Member called out "capital levy," and the Prime Minister made this puzzling reply:

"I am very much obliged to the hon. Member for striding such a valuable footnote to the remark I have just made."

The Prime Minister went on to say:

"I wish to make it perfectly clear that the Government have no intention of drawing off from the normal channels of trade large sums for extemporised measures which can only be palliatives."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th February, 1924; col. 760, Vol. 168.]

That has been understood in many quarters, and I have seen references to that effect in the Press, to mean that the present Government has abandoned the capital levy. [HON. MEMBERS: "Order!"]

What do you know about it?

I submit I am in order. I have just said that in many quarters that ambiguous sentence has been assumed or understood to mean that the Government has abandoned the capital levy, although every Member of it, with possibly one exception, is pledged to such a Measure. I am glad to see hon. Members opposite showing that they too are interested in this subject, because to-night I wish to ask the representatives of the Government to make it quite clear, before the Debate ends, whether the words spoken yesterday by the Prime Minister did or did not mean an abandonment of the capital levy. That is a matter of first-rate importance and the country has a right to be informed definitely as to the intentions of the Government regarding it. I am not criticising the Prime Minister. I am not suggesting that there was intentional ambiguity. I am merely drawing attention to the fact that there was some ambiguity. The Prime Minister afterwards referred to the National Debt and he suggested that a Committee should be set up—a really reliable and authoritative Committee—to consider the whole question of the National Debt and of taxation. [interruption.] I am merely repeating what the Prime Minister said, and I am sorry that some of his followers are so disrespectful to him as to laugh at his words. The Prime Minister made this suggestion about the National Debt, and it was understood by the hon. and gallant Member for Central Nottingham (Captain Berkeley) to mean a reference to the capital levy, because the hon. and gallant Member in his speech said:

"The Committee which was to meet for the purpose of considering-how best to deal with the National Debt, would, I assume, be a Committee designed primarily for the purpose of investigating what is loosely termed the capital levy."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th February, 1924; col. 795, Vol. 169.]

Was the hon. and gallant Member right? He evidently put that construction upon what the Prime Minister said, and other people have put other constructions upon it. It is only fair to the House and the country that any ambiguity existing upon this very important matter should be cleared up. I would like to ask this question: If such a Committee is to be set up, do the Government propose to submit the terms of reference to this House for approval before the Committee is finally bound by them? Secondly, if such a Committee as this is to be set up, will the names of the members suggested for that Committee be also submitted to this House for approval before they are appointed? My reason for suggesting that is, that if a Committee is set up to deal with a matter of such enormous importance as our National Debt, it will be a Committee dealing with a greater and a more vital matter than has ever been submitted to any Committee before; and that being the case, I submit that exceptional precautions should be taken to see that the terms of reference to that Committee are such as this House approves, and that any members appointed to that Committee should also be approved by this House.

I would only add one word more, and that is that it would be a most unfortunate thing for the country if a phrase contained in any unfortunate term of reference implied a threat which would alarm the country. It is of the greatest importance, as I think the Prime Minister himself would agree, that there should be a feeling of confidence and security, and anything which hinders that must be very detrimental to the interests of the country. The Prime Minister, in fact, took pride yesterday in the fact that since he had taken office securities had risen, but, if I may say so without offence, I think the fact that securities rose was rather a left-handed compliment to the policy of the Government, because I believe that securities rose, not because the Government was to be in a position to carry out its policy, but because it was realised, at home and abroad, that although the Government might be in office, it was not in power, and would not be able to carry out the more drastic items of its policy.

Before I attempt to make a speech, I would like to ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether you have ruled that no Member is to refer to Poplar during this Debate.

No, it would be beyond my power to make such a ruling. I have suggested to some hon. Members that, as I understood time was to be given to discuss that matter in the near future, it need not be pursued to any extent on the present occasion, but it is in order to refer to it.

Thank you, Sir. I will not go into the whole question, in deference to your ruling, and also because there will be other opportunities, but there are two or three things that I would like to say in order to try and clear up one or two of the statements and the inferences that would arise from the statement of the right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Ascuith). I would like to recall to the attention of the older Members of the House that the question of Poplar is no new one. My Friend the late Will Crooks, years and years ago, brought the question before the attention of this House, when the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain was a prominent member of the Tory party and of the Government of the day. Therefore, if they are going to understand the question and to discuss it in an intelligent manner, I would suggest that hon. Members should take the trouble to read the evidence in the last Poor Law Commission Report on the condition of Poplar. I would suggest to them also to look up the writings of the late Mr. Charles Booth, on "Life and Labour in East London," and they will find that what is called the Poplar question, or the problem of Poplar, has been a persistent one for the last 32 nr 33 years. I have been a guardian of the poor of that parish for over 32 years and I am still, and the question of what to do with the mass of poverty that we have on our hands has always been one with which none of us felt we ought to be called upon to grapple, but which we also contended should be a London charge, or, at any rate, a charge over a bigger area than Poplar itself.

It is not true to say, as the right hon. Member for Paisley said, that we have of set purpose set ourselves to break the law. Our contention is, and always has been, that the peremptory Order issued by Sir Alfred Mond was an illegal document, that at least it is very open to question whether the Ministry of Health, or the old Local Government Board, had the power under the 1834 Act to say the amount of assistance that was necessary for an individual who came before a board of guardian; as destitute. Nobody denies—certainly in Poplar nobody denies—that the board could re-issue the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, which prohibits relief to able-bodied people outside an institution except under certain specified conditions, but what the right hon. Member for Paisley did not understand or remember was that, owing to the War, and owing to the enormous number of men out of work, at the end of the War, after the Armistice, in the first year after 1920, all the old Regulations prohibiting outdoor relief were waived. Doctor Addison and those in charge of the Ministry of Health allowed boards of guardians to do what they had never been allowed to do before, That Article 10 was stretched in such a manner that it made legal what previously was illegal, and therefore it is no use standing up here and holding up Poplar in a pillory and saying, "What wicked, violent, law-breaking people these are." Sheffield broke the old Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, Middlesbrough broke it, every great borough was obliged to break it, because there was no other means of dealing with the mass of poverty that all these districts had on their hands. It is very easy to do if the Ministry of Health so desire, and it is easy for this House to do it.

I was rather surprised at the cheeriness of the right hon. Member for Paisley in the discussion of this, and at the challenge they threw out. I will throw out a challenge, and that is, that this House shall dare to pass a law that no able-bodied man shall have relief outside a workhouse. You dare not do it, and you know it very well, and I challenge you to pass a law saying that the Ministry of Health shall declare what in every individual ease shall be the amount of relief a person needs, without seeing that person. You cannot do it, and that is the whole difference between us. We deny the right of a Minister of Health to break the law any more than we are to break it. The law does not give you power to say what amount of relief shall be given outside. The law does give you power to say whether the relief shall be given inside an institution or outside, and, if outside, what the test shall be that shall be applied to that relief, but that is the limit of your power in that respect.

From the fashion in which the right hon. Gentleman talked this afternoon, one would imagine that we had had an impartial, judicial inquiry into our affair. What are the facts? I only want to get this out to-night in order to catch up the statements of the right hon. Gentleman while they are red hot. Who was Mr. Cooper? He was Clerk to the Bolton Board of Guardians, and a very estimable gentleman, no doubt, like everybody in this place is estimable. [An HON. MEMBER: "Bar you!"] Bar me if you like, but where we are divided is in certain principles and opinions that we hold about certain things. Mr. Cooper happens to be a very violent disciple of the great fundamental principle of the 1834 Poor Law Act, and he was sent to investigate, in an impartial manner, the doings of men who, it was well known, were not disciples of the gospel according to 1834. This gentleman was pitchforked into Poplar. I went to him, with my friend the hon. Member for Mile End (Mr. Scurr), who was then Mayor, and we asked him how he was going to conduct this inquiry. He did not want to know anything from us. We were the people he was investigating, and all he wanted was access to our books. He never attended a single relief committee, never attended any committee of the Board, never went anywhere where the guardians were doing their work, and he then got out a hotch-potch of statements, which we flattened out in an answer that we sent to the Ministry of Health, which has never been controverted to this day. Our difficulty is that we do not know on which of the Ministers who have been there during the last 18 months to fix it. We have had to do with four Ministers of Health during the last 15 months. If I go after the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Twickenham (Sir W. Joynson-Hicks), I shall be lumped on to the right hon. Member for the Ladywood Division of Birmingham (Mr. N. Chamberlain), and when I have finished with him, Sir Arthur Boseawen will have me, and when I have done with him, it will be Sir Alfred Mond. Can you wonder at the sort of muddle-headedness that pervaded the Ministry of Health during these 15 months?

With regard to this particular man who investigated us in this fashion, what did he do? This is a sample case, and it is enough to make your blood run cold. There was a stevedore who got over £4 a week in relief. This is a sample, says Mr. Cooper, of the manner in which they induced men, not to go to work, but to live on relief. What was the sample-ease? The man had 10 children, and the amount of relief, at 6s. and 5s. per head for the children, 10s. for him, and 10s. for his wife and the rent, amounted to £4 something. What does it mean? It is said that because he got that amount of money, he would never go to work. Well, the man had relief for one whole week. Then he went to work. What a villainous person he was to destroy the whole of Mr. Cooper's case. Mr. Cooper could have been told this, but he would not go near anybody who could tell him anything about it. He simply took that case out of the books, and gave it as a sample case of how people were induced not to go to work. The right hon. Gentleman made a great point that we were condemned by an impartial inquiry. I have said Mr. Cooper did not come near us. There is a body in Poplar called the Borough of Poplar Municipal Alliance. It has changed its name, like the party opposite has done, many a time. It is now called the Bow, Bromley and Poplar Ratepayers' Protection Association. It was, as I said, the Municipal Alliance, and a gentleman named Alfred Warren was the Secretary. This man, who would not go to the guardians to ask them about the business, went and consulted our political opponent as to the lines on which the inquiry should proceed.

The right hon. Gentleman has no right to stand at that box, as he did this afternoon, and condemn the Poplar Guardians on the word of a man of that kind. He has no business to say that that man made a fair and an impartial investigation of all our books. It is said that if we adopted his policy, we should save £100,000 a year. I do not know whether that figure is correct or not. We could save all our expenditure if you liked. We need not spend anything at all. But the point for the House to consider is, what is it we are actually giving the people in these days? What is this shocking relief given to people, this shovelling it out so that they will never go to work? A woman and one child get. £1 1s. 6d., and her rent and 1s. 6d. for coal. I am sorry the hon. Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Viscountess Astor) is not, here. I would like to know how she would get on with one child with that amount. And, remember, the rent is very high in Poplar, because of the pressure of population. It has to be paid. There, again, the right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that we have destroyed every principle of the old 1834 Act, and all your Regulations, with your cognisance and with your consent. Everybody knows the rent has to be paid, or people would not have any shelter at all. That is why the rent is paid. If the woman has got two children, she gets £1 5s., and if she has got three, £1 8s. 6d. Nobody can defend the giving of less relief to the second and third children. I know what it costs to bring up children, and that one costs as much as another for food, clothing and the rest.

It is said that we do not do anything to bring ourselves into line with the Ministry. Because of their pressure, we have now consented to do what, I think, is detestable, that is to say, if there are more than five children you give no relief to the sixth, seventh and eighth child. They have to live on the grant for the five. We do that, and I think it is monstrous that we do it. We have only done it because of the pressure of the Ministry of Health. But I would like to ask the Noble Lady who sits opposite whether she thinks it right that where there is a sixth child there should be no money given for its maintenance, and that if there are seven children, nothing for two, and if eight, nothing for three. I think it is a most blackguardly thing for people like me and you, who get three and four square meals a. day, to impose such conditions on the poor. What about the able-bodied man? And, first of all, who are these able-bodied men? The right bon. Member for North West Camberwell (Dr. Macnamara), over and over again before deputations of ex-service men, raid, "You men ought to have good treatment. You are part of the living wall that stood in France and Flanders between this nation and destruction." How many of them have we got? 10,600 out of the 30.000 are either the men or the dependants of the men who went out and died for you in France. Arc you going to tell me that for the dependants of those who died, it is too much to give the woman 21s. 6d. for herself and her child? Are yon going to stand up and pass a law.? defy you to pass a law.

What do we give? If there is an adult not living with his parents, 12s. 6d. a week. Stand up some of you young men and women, and say whether you could live on 12s. 6d. a week. What do we give married couples, or two adults living together? Twenty shillings. Are there any here who could live on 20s. a week? In the dining-room here I change a note and in two or three days I have nothing of it left, and neither have you. It is all very well for us to laugh. I can joke here and be amiable with the best of you, but every morning I have to meet these people. Every night, if I get home early, as I did last night, I meet them again, and am I to stand up and tell them to exist on less than this? It is only a bare subsistence, and nothing more. That is a sample of the luxurious living we give them to encourage them to do nothing. I know the right hon. Gentleman will trot out the "family income." He never said anything about the family income of the Hamiltons and the Chaplins when they came to you. You did not say that to the people right at the top of the social scale. You do not take the income of the Royal Family as the family income. No, you give each an income. I am not saying one word about that one way or the other, but you take a family of poor people and you tell the young men and young women that as their father is out of work, and there are half a dozen younger children, they have got to maintain them.

That is the crux of the difference between us and the Ministry. Compare the Mond scale with our scale to-day, and you will find there is very little difference. Even Mr. Cooper has to admit that in his report, and in the appendix to the report. Where you get the difference is in the family income. We defy you to pass a law altering the 1834 law, which is that if there is a person who is impotent, or lame, or sick or aged; those who are left must support him. There is nothing in the law to say that a son or a daughter shall maintain an able-bodied father, mother and family, and of course it could not be. The ordinary working-class boy or girl has to save up for the day when they can get married. Half the crime, prostitution and vice in the country is due to two causes—low wages and bad housing—and we are going to be no parties to saying that the State shall shuffle out of its responsibilities of maintaining those who are not allowed to go to work, and put the cost of those responsibilities on the children of the families concerned.

I have stood in this House, as many Members must know, imploring over and over again that this question should he taken out of the hands of localities, and dealt with by the nation as a whole. I am sorry that the Prime Minister yesterday did not say that we would grapple with this question of the reform of the Poor Law and unemployment. Here is a House of Commons where nobody has a majority. Supposing you make me a bankrupt, and made my colleagues here bankrupts. I am old. What will be the odds to me? It will make no difference. You will perhaps keep me out of this House, but you will not keep me quiet until I am dead. All you will have won will be a little bit of spite, and even if you lampoon us 'through the country, as you have been trying to do, and get your Press to paint us in the most hideous colours possible, of what avail will it be 7 The problem still awaits you. I tell this House the Poplar board has preserved the peace in East London during all these years. If you could put in the box the chief of the police in London, he would tell you that we owe the peaceful conditions of that part of London, Poplar and West Ham, to the work of men like my colleagues and myself.

Without payment.

We all do a lot of work without payment. All of us do many things for which we do not want any payment, but what I want to bring the House back to is this: You have got in this country a problem of poverty and destitution that is not going to be settled by soft words. I always listen to the hon. Member for Plymouth with a great deal of interest. I do not think we have got all the virtues and the other side all the vices. They are spread equally amongst all of us, but we have to show our creed in our deeds. Here we are with no one in a majority, and everybody agrees that this is a terribly difficult problem. I put in nearly four years on a Poor Law Commission, and worked very hard indeed at it. I have been on Committees without number investigating it. You have a Maclean Committee Report. You have got a report which came, I think, from Lord George Hamilton, Mrs. Webb, and others preceding it. Why should not this House say that they will give up this quarrel? There are 30,000 on the rates in Poplar and 70,000 in West Ham. They pay the scale that we do, but they do not get a peremptory order, because t hey are not so impudent as we are. The point I want to urge, and it with all my soul, is: Why should we not sit down at this period. Wn we are all in the which we are, this is a problem that must some, day he settled, or it will settle us, and try to do something effective? I am not one of those who believe in a bloody revolution —as it is called; but there arc worse things that may happen to a nation than revolution. There is economic, mental, and moral decay. I tell this House that in the East End of London you are ruining, crippling, degrading, and demoralising hosts of good living young men and' women. You are breaking their very souls, because there is neither work nor adequate means of maintenance for them. I think I should be prepared to go out, for I should feel that I have lived for something, if this House should really take this job in hand and settle it. Take it out of our hands! Break up the Poor Law. It is expensive, demoralising, and degrading. Break it up and let us start afresh. It is 100 years old. During that 100 years there have been tremendous changes. You want one further change now. You have no right to have Employment Exchanges giving a sum of money, the Poor Law authorities giving some more, and charity giving still some more. You require to have a unified system. Say what you will about us. I do not mind. But get on with the thing; for God's sake get on with the job of rectifying and remedying the evils of which we are the product.

After the impassioned speech of the hon. Gentleman opposite—and we on this side have considerable sympathy as to many of the details—I wish to turn the attention of the House to some other questions appertaining to the subject of unemployment. I wish to draw attention to two utterances of the Prime Minister yesterday. Speaking on unemployment he said:

"Now there is the other question, the question of unemployment. Here, again, we are faced with a problem at which, in my view, we have hitherto rather nibbled. Two things have to be secured, and these we are working at: First, work; secondly, an effective income which is being provided by the scheme of insurance if work cannot be provided. I think that is roughly the situation." — [OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th February, 1924; col. 759, Vol. 169.]

The other utterance of the Prime Minister was relative to the Committee which he proposes to set up. What he said on that matter was:

"I think now is the time to have it. I believe it is possible to create such a Committee. I believe it to be possible to get men of business, men in the actual production side of business, the finance side of business, economists, men of experience, men whose work and whose judgment will be accepted by the whole intelligent business community."-[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th February, 1924; col. 761, Vol. 169.]

For a few minutes I want to develop the argument in another direction, and it is this; that I believe it may be possible effectively to find a form of committee, or commission, to deal with the whole of industry. I want to suggest to the House that from the standpoint of the question of unemployment things are not well with us. We must feel satisfied on this point that while the majority of countries opposed to us have solved their problem of unemployment our own unemployment problem is with us and has varied only 1½ per cent. during the last 18 months or two years. However we look at the question of the staple industries of the country, whether it be the iron industry, or the textile, or the great shipbuilding and engineering industries, we certainly no longer hold the premier position we did some 80 years ago. It is because I am so intimately connected with one of the largest shipbuilding industries of the country that I want to draw the special attention of the House to the position of shipbuilding in this immediate time. The merchant shipbuilding of the United Kingdom compared with pre-War times has been reduced from 44½ per cent. to 33 per cent. The significant feature of that is this, that of the 16,000,000 tons which have been added to the world's tonnage, 15½ millions of it has been added to the tonnage of foreign countries, and only, roughly, a half million to our own. While 30 years ago we held the premier position of the shipbuilding community or country and built 83 per cent. of the world's tonnage, it is a. fact that last year we only built 39½ per cent. of the world's tonnage. Over that period there has been a gradual decline.

We are building less and less ships for foreign owners, with the result that even in my own constituency last year there was not a single vessel built for foreign owners. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why?"] I will tell the hon. Member why. It was partly due, it may be, to a limited extent to the dispute of the boiler-makers, but it was largely clue to the fact that we are building less and less of the world's tonnage. We only built seven steamers for foreign owners in the whole of the shipyards of the country last year. I should like hon. Members opposite to pay particular attention to this. The fact is that vessels built for foreign owners are being built more and more by foreign shipbuilders themselves. Whilst our percentage has decreased, their percentage has increased. So that in 1922, whilst our decrease in the tonnage of shipbuilding was 78,000 tons, the world's tonnage built for foreign owners was six times greater.

I should like to draw the serious attention of the House to this fact: that I believe the personal position both for British shipowning and British shipbuilding lies in the fact that we must recognise that in the years to come we shall have to depend more and more upon cur Empire development and less and less upon foreign shipowners placing orders in our own country. I want to add another word. We are not only faced with that position, but the position also that we are entering into a state of complete competition with foreign shipbuilders as well. I know possibly that hon. Members opposite will dispute this, but there is no one who intimately studies the returns of Lloyds shipbuilding but can see that what I am stating is absolutely correct, and cannot be controverted. Not only is that the position, but the position is further accentuated and sharpened by the fact that we entered into competition no later than a month or six weeks ago in another direction. A particular friend of mine on Tyneside invited quotations not only from British shipbuilders, but also from Continental shipbuilders. The best price quoted by the British shipbuilders was beaten by a Dutch firm, who quoted £3,000 or £4,000 lower for a particular ship. I think the time has come—I think it is a reasonable position to assume that if it is desirable to set up a Committee as suggested by the Prime Minister to look into the incidence of taxation, it is also reasonable to set up a Commission to look into the whole question of industry in this country. [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!"] I am glad of that "Hear, hear," but I also want to say that I believe the time has come when every part of the House, and every party, must seriously look at the condition of industry in this country.

Every party?

Yes, I suggest every party. I think the primary object of that would be to know why the instrument that produces both wages and dividends is languishing. Why it is that this is the very thing that appeals least to all parties. The time has come when we should seriously look into it, not as a party issue, but as a great national question. I want to make suggestions on these lines, and to say that it might be desirable in the interests of peace, that peace which is precedent to the maintenance of large populations in limited areas like our own, peace between all classes of interests, as well as between nations; the first necessity is industrial peace. That is a fundamental preliminary—

Is it permissible, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, for an hon. Member to read his speech?

I am not reading my speech; I have scarcely referred to my notes, Not only is industrial peace necessary, but we want industry stabilised as well. It is time something definite, straight and defined should be said, if not from the opposite side of the House, from some other, on the stabilisation of industry. It is very well talking about stabilisation of foreign currencies, but we want stabilisation of the relations between capital and labour. Only in that way shall we have that industrial peace which we require.

I beg to move:

"That, in view of the conditions obtaining in foreign countries, it is necessary to safeguard more effectively industries in this country which are or may be seriously affected thereby and, with the object of providing increased employment, it is desirable to appoint an expert Committee to inquire into the most effective way of dealing with this problem."

I have taken the very first and earliest opportunity which the unexpected good fortune of the Ballot, to which I am by no means accustomed, has given me, of bringing before this House 'what I consider is the most pressing and most important problem we have had to face, namely, that of unemployment. It is now something like six months since Parliament rose in August last, during which period we have had an election, and we have had the experience of a new Government, and yet the problem remains precisely as it stood in August last. I wish to pay every possible tribute to the work which the late Government did within the limits of the powers conferred upon them to deal with the relief of unemployment, The point I want to make is not a question only of relieving those who are suffering, but of getting at the cardinal difficulties which are causing the problem. This is not a party matter and I do not raise it as such, but it is a matter of equal interest to every party in the State. I think it falls into two divisions. In the first place, there is the question of how it affects agriculture and, secondly, there is the question of how it affects our manufacturers. The special point in connection with agriculture which I want to make is that' I admit, and assume to begin with, that the country has definitely decided that meantime, at any rate, it is not convinced that any tariff upon foodstuffs would be for the general benefit. I admit that, but I would point out that no such proposal has been put before the country for many years past.

Before I pass from that, perhaps I may be permitted to say that even upon that subject there may be a change before many years have passed. I do not want to pursue that point but particularly I think there may be a change so far as it is concerned with the question of closer working and freedom of trade between all the units which make up this great Empire. I think a change will come, but even to that small extent I do not want to follow up a subject which may be regarded as controversial. There is in connection with agriculture a definite point. There are certain branches of that industry in which it is not unreasonable that we should expect a wide development provided that the producer could be certain not of a tariff, not of protection in the strict sense of the word, but certain that he would not find his markets taken from him by purely temporary conditions. I will give an illustration. It is within the recollection of almost every hon. Member of this House what the conditions were which ruled in this country a couple of years ago in connection with the crops of potatoes that were grown. I maintain that it is quite possible for the Government to take powers to so regulate the imports of foreign produce as to prevent an absolute glut as a temporary measure, from foreign countries utterly ruining the producers in this country, and they should put that power into action only so long as the price of food is not raised thereby to the consumer. That is a possible scheme. It is one which could have been carried out in that particular industry, and I hope hon. Members will take a somewhat wider view on this question, because it is not against the interests which they have advocated from time to time.

May I give another illustration? I have here a scheme put forward by a very prominent tenant farmer, a descendant of a race of tenant farmers, and this is the opinion of a farmer who knows what he is talking about. In connection with the breeding of pigs, he says if he could be given a chance some 30,000 or 40,000 men could be employed in such an industry. He further states that some £25,000,000 of capital could safely be engaged in it, and bacon and pig products could be produced here. In that way an enormous saving could be made in the purchases we are now making from abroad, and all this would accrue in addition to the enrichment of the soil. He declares that this result could be brought about without raising the cost of these products to the consumer by one halfpenny. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why not do it?"] I will tell the hon. Member. Those connected with agriculture will remember that in 1907 there was practically a financial panic in America, and enormous quantities of bacon were shipped to this country and sold at a lower price than had been current for many years before that event. The consequence of that sudden glut of American bacon was that many pig farmers here were forced out of the business. Within a few months, say three months, that crisis had passed, and the American producers came over here and re-purchased their own bacon in this country. The consequence was that prices I event up and many of our pig farmers went out of the business. The result of cheap bacon for three months was dear bacon for years. It is quite possible for the Government to secure powers to deal with this question, and I believe that nine-tenths of the people of this country would be in favour of such powers to protect the producers against any sudden and temporary gluts which are not for the permanent benefit of the people, and this would only be put into operation so long as it was ensured that the price would not unduly rise above normal to the consumer. There are various other examples that could be given, but. I will pass on to the other side of the question. There is a second aspect of it in connection with our industry. I agree again that the country at this moment—for how long I do not know—has decided that it will not have a tariff to protect our home industries. [HON MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] Hon. Members cheer that statement That is however, the position at this moment. It is not the position, to my mind—and I speak only for myself—that the country has turned down, as I have heard it said quite recently in this House, the whole programme of the Conservative Government. Nothing of the kind has occurred. What the country said was, "We do not believe that you cannot cure unemployment without the powers you seek, and you must go back and carry on the work within the limitations that you have."

I do not want to enter into events that have happened. It is not a question only of protecting the unemployed. It is not a. question only of increasing employment; it a question of preventing more unemployment. I know of a factory, not a thousand miles from here, in which the times have become so critical that they can go on no longer making losses, and if something is not done, yet another industry, or a large portion of it, will be lost to Great Britain. There is no question of trouble between employers and employed. There is no question of over-capitalisation. There is no suggestion that so-called bloated capitalists have been drawing tremendous profits. For four solid years they have not received a single shilling out of the business. It is not a new factory. It is one in which business was carried on for 30 or 40 years in a way to yield reasonable but not excessive profits previously to the War. After the War members of the family who owned it might reasonably have said that they did not want to restart it. It had been largely engaged on national work, but firstly because they are not philanthropists, and secondly because they got into closer touch with their employés than they had been before they did reopen. Week after week they had been paying wages. Year after year they have been facing losses. This is a kind of thing that cannot go on. It is only caused by the fact that owing to special temporary conditions which exist abroad it is possible for certain foreign countries, possibly only for a few months or a year or two, to dump into this country goods such as are produced in this factory at the cost of the raw material only.

It is all very well for people to talk about Free Trade. I am a Free Trader; there is no business man who is not a Free Trader. In theory everybody is a Free Trader, but in England there is no such thing as Free Trade to-day. Far from being free, our trade is hampered in every possible way. How can you call it Free Trade when the position is such that everything can be dumped over our garden wall and we cannot dump anything back again? Free Trade is a game which must be played fairly on both sides, but, in this case there is no such thing as fairness. If things continue as they are we shall have to face the fact that there will be more unemployment, because our manufacturers cannot compete in many cases with the conditions which obtain abroad. [An HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] I presume the hon. Member has only just come into the House; otherwise he would have heard the reason. There are certain Gentlemen on the Liberal Benches who, all their lives, have cried for Free Trade. I have watched them carefully in the past few months and have wondered how much they knew about trade at all. One thing is perfectly certain that if they went to sleep for 50 years and woke up they would still have the same cry. Cobden, in 1846, said that if we adopted Free Trade in this country, in five years every other country would follow our example. Some hon. Members question that statement, I do not make any statement unless I have chapter and verse for it. Cobden said, on 15th September, 1846:

"I believe if you abolish the Corn Law honestly, and it adopt Free Trade in its simplicity, there will not be a tariff in Europe that will not be changed in less than five years."

That was said 70 years ago. How many countries in Europe or elsewhere have followed our example? There is not a single country where the tariff barriers are not higher instead of lower. Those who advocate this Free Trade are Rip Van Winkles, and if this country does not realise that in the last 30 or 40 years everything has changed, and that the whole conditions of world trade have changed since the War, then I must say I shall be very sorry for the future of industry in Great Britain. What, I want to make plain—although I may have been led aside to deal with questions which otherwise I would not have discussed what I want to make clear to the Government is that the great problem before us now, as last August, is this question of unemployment.. We have been engaged in the last few months in interesting discussions on party politics and changes of Government. The right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) recently made a speech on this bench in which he said that the result of the Election was that the Conservative Government should not be supported. Shortly afterwards we had a very amusing speech from the present Minister for the Colonies in which he gave what I may describe without offence, as a "Comic Political History of England according to Thomas."

In spite of all this the question remains, what are you going to do to get rid of unemployment? There are two things you can do. You can give the Government power to control and regulate imports in such a way as that regulation will definitely help to encourage the production of foodstuffs in this country, pro viding that those powers are exercised only so long as the prices of the foodstuffs are not raised to the consumer. That is a perfectly feasible scheme to my mind The second thing you can do is this: As we are prohibited from going further, it is necessary to widen and simplify the Safeguarding of Industries Act in such a way as to ensure that those manufacturers who are on the point of giving up the struggle will be encouraged to carry on until such time as conditions are more suitable. The Prime Minister, in his very able speech yesterday, referred at considerable length to the importance of giving the labouring classes houses within their means. With that everyone agrees, but I would venture to point out that the right hon. Gentleman is attacking the problem at the wrong end. It is not a question of whether a man pays 9s. or 19s. a week for his house; it is a question of what he can afford to pay. It is a question of putting into his hands the power to spend, of increasing his possibilities of spending, or, if you like to put it so, the possibilities of his having an income on which to live decently.

I quite understand some of these references to Free Trade from life-long Free Traders who cannot see further, but I absolutely fail to understand what I am told is the attitude of a great many of the Labour Party in this matter, because the one thing that seems to be outstanding in Labour policy is the protection of the worker. If it is not that, what is Labour policy? And the protection of the worker must mean the protection of the product of his hands. Therefore, in putting before the House this proposal, which I have brought forward in no party spirit, but with the object that the matter should be ventilated, and that we should have a chance of discussing what is vital matter before the country at the present moment, I sincerely hope that this Motion will receive general support throughout the House.

There is only one other matter upon which I want to touch. It would be very easy to argue, from what I have said, that I mean the complete control of all marketing, exchange, and everything of that kind. I mean nothing of the sort. Nothing could be more different, in my opinion, from the limited proposal which I am putting forward than that any man or body of men should set out to decide what are to be the market rates for various kinds of produce in future years. I need hardly tell Members of this House that, if any trader were able to forecast his market even for one week, he would he a millionaire very soon. The idea that a body of men could possibly take over all the land of this country, administer it through managers, and decide what the prices are to be in the future, we can pigeon-hole until it is brought out for the amusement of future generations. That is totally different from the limited proposals which I have made, which I believe are constructive, which I believe are possible, and which I believe ought to appeal to every section of this House. It is in the hope that they will so appeal, and that Members will look at the matter, not from a purely party point of view, but from the point of view of the national interest, that I venture to move this Motion.

I beg to second the Motion.

As I represent a constituency which is largely agricultural, but which, although it does not contain any large manufactures, yet has resident in it many who have large interests in large manufactures, I am glad to have the privilege of adding a word to the powerful and closely reasoned speech of my hon. Friend. There is in the Motion a proviso that no recommendation of such a committee of inquiry should involve an increase in the price of food or other imported article. Subject to that, the Motion asks for such an inquiry into the regulation of our imposts as would show whether it was possible, by altering the Regulations, to provide more employment for our people; and to provide more employment is the earnest object in every quarter of this House. My hon. Friend has spoken of what happened in 1922 in the case of potatoes. It was a scandal that many hundreds of tons of good food should have rotted in the Eastern counties, because it did not pay to bring it to market. By a sensible system of licences it would have been perfectly possible, without increasing the cost to the consumer, to have prevented that disgraceful waste. The market was glutted with foreign potatoes, but the consumer did not benefit, as the price of potatoes scarcely altered. The farmer lost, the consumer did not benefit, and the money which should have gone into the pocket of the farmer at home went into the pocket of the foreign farmer, who might have got a useful market outside this country.

There is another foodstuff that I should like to mention, namely, flour. I was in the United States in September, and a scientific friend, who is also a farmer, said to me: "It surprises me that you Britishers do not do your own milling at home. We provide a considerable amount of employment here by doing a large amount of your milling. We take the germ out of the flour and make semolina, providing more employment, and we send that semolina across to you. Then we have the offals, which are of great benefit to our stock and hog raisers; and the total result is a large benefit to this country at the expense of yours." I put it to the House that, allowing the wheat, of course, to come in free, the price of food would not be increased by doing the milling at home, while the farmer would be greatly benefited, because his supply of offals would be increased. Semolina might be made in this country, providing more employment in that and in the milling industry, and the benefit to the farmer would give him more power to pay better wages to his farm workers. The total result would be a very great benefit to this country. I shall be told, no doubt that a large part of the milling in this country is done at the ports, and that there is an export of offals but if the milling industry received the benefit of a large addition to the work done by it, it might very well consent to a limitation of its power to export offals.

Hon. Members opposite are familiar with the idea of regulation. It was only yesterday that the Prime Minister proposed to regulate the building industry by a guarantee. That word "guarantee" is a. blessed word, and we shall remember it., and, when the party opposite speak of guaranteeing, we on these benches shall know that it means Protection. The Prime Minister also proposed to regulate the agricultural industry by establishing wages boards—let, instead of making bricks without straw—which wages boards will be, unless the farmer is put into a position to pay the wages to be fixed by those boards—let us do something such as I suggest in the way of excluding, partly or wholly, the import of flour, and bring employment to our workers and benefit to the farmer. A very interesting telegram was sent recently to the Prime Minister by the. National Farmers' Union, asking him whether, if he were placed in office, he would continue the remission of the Excise Duty on home-grown beet sugar, and his answer was very satisfactory, namely, the one word "Yes." I believe it is one of his objects to reduce the duty on sugar. I sincerely hope that, if he does so, he will be careful in dealing with this infant industry, which most economists, from Adam Smith downwards, would protect, because it is an infant industry, and that he will take measures to prevent its being killed. It is, I believe, the custom of some lion. Members to pour scorn on the two factories that produce the home-grown sugar. But those two factories, and the thousands of acres already that supply the beet which is manufactured into sugar in those factories, give employment to many hundreds of people. The price of sugar might not be affected by the reduction of the duty. The price of sugar is regulated by the trusts in America, as the late Prime Minister reminded us last Session, and when I listened to the Minister of Health fiercely denouncing trusts I could not help thinking, "You may deal with trusts in this country, but you cannot control the trusts in other countries."

For instance, I am interested in a small housing scheme and have taken an interest in the cost of building material for the last four years. One has heard that some little time ago there was a strike amongst the Swedish woodmen for an increase of wages and they got a 40 per cent. increase, and of course that increased the price of wood. The Minister of Health cannot control that. There has been another strike since then, but I do not know what the result was. These are things we cannot control, but when we attempt to get control of an industry ourselves, such as home grown beet sugar, let us remember that it is a small matter now but it might develop into a very large one. How thankful we should have been for that industry during the war When a small beginning is made in dealing with these foreign trusts some hon. Member opposite would pour scorn on that statement and would kill that infant industry, although it is contrary to the maxims laid down by the great founder of so-called Free Trade. With reference to the milling industry, hon. Members need have no qualms about depriving the American workers of employment. I found the States in a condition of great prosperity. I travelled many miles on the magnificent Pacific highway, which runs for over a thousand miles from the Canadian border down to the Mexican border, and I met on a Saturday afternoon, in their Ford cars, hundreds of artizans with their families and their camp kit going out for many miles from their homes to camp out for the week end. Every self-respecting town, however small, has its camping ground with conveniences provided. I could not help thinking bitterly, "here is a country that does regulate its imports and it has this prosperity," and I thought of this country with its hundreds of thousands of unemployed.

May I give one example of how Canada regulates her imports. Take the case of tinplates. Years ago, before the States' had a tinplate industry, South Wales supplied all the tinplates for the States. Then the States put up a tariff wall and they built behind it an enormous tinplate industry and South Wales no longer supplies tin.

Nonsense. I am surprised to hear such a statement.

It is nothing like what they did. But South Wales supplies tinplates to Canada. I have the facts from the head of a firm that employs 15,000 to 20,000 men in South Wales. Canada gives a. 5 per cent, preference to South Welsh tinplates, with the result that there is employment for many men in South Wales, there is employment for our shipping trade, and there is employment in Canada making the tin cans that we heard so much about in the General Election. Tin cans represent a real bond of Empire. Knowing the facts as I do, and having seen the tin cans out there, I was very much entertained by the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon (Mr. Lloyd George) during the Election. Is not any trade between ourselves and the Dominions a bond? Can anyone deny it? That five per cent. that Canada gives us is producing these results, and I would appeal to hon. Members in dealing with this great question of Imperial Preference to think of the results that would follow. We did not make the first offer. Canada made the first offer in 1896 and she was followed by Australia and other Dominions. Let us think once, twice and three times before we give to these great Dominions the sorrowful opportunity of saying they have made this offer to the Motherland and the Motherland has rejected it. This Imperial Preference is the highest form of guarantee for it is a bond of Empire. Is it too much to hope that hon. Members opposite will support this Motion? No increase of cost is involved. We only want to discover whether it is not possible to safeguard our industries better and to provide more employment. As for the party below the Gangway, their companions and sometimes their grieved mentors, as witness the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) this afternoon, I have less hope of them. To bring a free importer within the reach of anything which has the slightest savour of Protection is like bringing a Prohibitionist to a Caledonian dinner. But J would also appeal to those hon. Members, if their convictions are so strong, to support this inquiry if it will only prove more conclusively than ever that they are right. It is because I believe such an inquiry, if followed up, might well produce a better safeguarding of our industries and more employment for our people, that I gladly second the Motion.

I feel sure no Member of the House would grudge the Mover and Seconder of the Resolution the evident enjoyment and satisfaction which they have found in the quite harmless, though perhaps rather mournful and cheerless pastime of flogging a dead horse, at any rate a comatose horse. The Mover of the Resolution is a man of great experience in foreign trade, especially Indian trade, and I was wondering while he was speaking whether he practised in his own business in India what he is preaching this evening. As I understand it, most foreign merchants throw open their own go-downs, their warehouses and their offices to everyone without any restriction whatsoever.

As I see the hon. Member is making a statement which shows that he is quite ignorant of Indian trade, perhaps he will allow me to correct him. The curious position in India is that this House gave India, I do not say incorrectly but correctly, a measure of self-government, and the first thing India did with that power was to put a tariff against Lancashire.

I was not referring to the Government of India. I was referring to the hon. Member, and asking whether in his own business he practices what he has been preaching here this evening. Does he go down to his warehouse and say, "I am not going to have this man because he is a German or a Bashi-Bazouk or a Frenchman," or does he say, "Let every man who wants to buy my piece goods or my hardware or whatever it is, come here on the same terms as an Englishman"?

rose

I am not going to give way to the hon. Member. My argument is, that what is sound business for the ordinary business man or the ordinary shopkeeper is sound business for a nation of shopkeepers. When the hon. Member started his speech he gave me the impression that he was not going to indulge in anything of a Protectionist nature, but we found as he proceeded with his speech, and more especially as the Seconder proceeded, that we were in for a full-blown Protectionist Debate. Nothing could please this side of the House better than that. The hon Member told us a story about cheap bacon which came over here in 1907. As I understood him, if he had had his way he would have prevented this country from having the benefit of that bacon, even for the six months during which we enjoyed the benefit. He then stated that Cobden in some speech had declared that if we adopted Free Trade or, rather, repealed the Corn Laws, every nation would go Free Trade. We challenged him, and when he quoted what Cobden had said, we found that the words were not that every nation would go Free Trade, but that they would change their tariffs. [Interruption.] We have allowed your champion to speak, and I hope you will allow me to proceed with-out interruption. [HON. MEMBERS: "Quote fairly!"]

If the hon. Member wishes me to re-quote Cobden's statement, I have it here—

"There will not be a tariff in Europe that will not be changed in less than five years, to follow our example."

A change of tariff. [HON. MEMBERS: "To follow our example!"] They found that, owing to our becoming a Free Trade country, we were able to compete more strenuously in their markets, and they had to raise their tariffs in order to keep out our goods. The hon. Member went on to refer to trade unions. I am very much amused to see the flirtation that is going on between the Protectionist party and the Labour party, on the assumption that because trade unions protect themselves in connection with wages and conditions of life, they are going to adopt Protection as their policy in this country. Against what do the trade unions protect themselves? Not against the foreigner, but against the employers in this country, in order that they may raise their standard of life and their conditions generally. If they adopt Protection, they will do exactly the opposite; they will lower their standard of living and raise prices in this country for everything they have to buy, thereby reducing the purchasing power of the wages which they have obtained through their trade unions during the last two or three generations. When my hon. Friends opposite approach the Labour party in that flirtatious way, I think there is no hope for them.

9.0 P.M.

The hon. Member also referred to American prosperity. I wonder if he went into the agricultural districts in America. I understand that over 1,000,000 American farmers left their farms last year owing to the fact that they were unable to sell their products at a profit because of the high prices of everything they had to buy on their farms. When the hon. Member talks about Imperial Preference and he says that the Colonies give us a preference, what humbug it is! We are told by Mr. Bruce that they give us a gift of £8,000,000, which is the difference between the tariff 'we are charged and that which foreign nations are charged. A gift to whom? Not to us, but to themselves. These Colonies say nothing of the £20,000,000 per annum tax which is imposed upon our goods before they are allowed to go into the Colonies. That means restricted trade: it is intended to restrict it. In Canada to-day there is an outcry for an increase in the tax on boots and shoes because our imports of boots and shoes into Canada last year were twice what they were in the previous year. That means that the prices of boots and shoes, owing to the tariff in Canada, have risen to such an extent that our boots and shoes are again able to flow over the tariff and to compete with manufactured boots and shoes in Canada.

It is interesting to have this question raised this evening, and to know what the policy of hon. Members opposite is going to be. Before the Election, we were told by the ex-Prime Minister that he preferred to sink with faith than to swim without it. He seems to have been in a rather water-logged condition since the Election, and in spite of the salvage committee he seems to have been brought safely to land. As a result of the shadow cabinet he has been brought safely to land, and after a certain amount of artificial respiration he has been propped up on the Front Opposition Bench. What does this Resolution mean by "regulations"? If you strip it of its frillings, it is simply Protection. We are asked to approve a Committee to advise us on the question of Protection. Hon. Members opposite sem to imagine that if you can stop imports coming into this country you are going to improve employment in this country. The ex-Prime Minister before the last Election told us that the unemployment in this country was due to imports from foreign countries. [HON. MEMBERS: "Largely!"] Largely due. He never gave us any facts or figures in support of that statement. [HON MEMBERS: "He did!"] He could not do so. He is a fact that when imports of manufactured goods into this country were at their highest, unemployment was at its lowest. That is a fact. which cannot be explained away. During the Election the hon. Member for the Moseley Division of Birmingham (Mr. Hannon) said that if we could stop coming into this country £200,000,000 of imports. we could find employment for 800,000 men. It is like a horse going down a stream with blinkers on. It can see what is going on in front of it; but not what is going on on either side. The hon. Member thinks that he would employ 800,000 men making these goods which are being imported, but he forgets he is going to throw out of employment 800,000 men who were employed in making goods which go out of the country to pay for the goods which are imported.

If that were all it would not so much matter, but you would have another 800,000 men thrown out of employment who are at present making steel, ships, cotton goods and all the rest of it. If you are going to stop £200,000,000 worth of goods corning into the country, you are going to stop £200,000,000 worth of goods going out. That means that you are going to reduce the foreign trade of the country by £400,000,000, which means from 10 to 15 million tons of cargo. What effect is that going to have on the shipping trade? We own practically half the shipping in the world, and that is going to throw millions of tons of shipping out of employment, and going to throw hundreds of thousands of men out of employment. It is going to stop shipbuilding. Nobody is going to build ships if you have got millions of tons of shipping lying idle in our ports. This will be reflected in the steel industry of our country and in every coal mine in the country.

What is the sense of it? Here we are improving, facilities for transport, building faster and bigger ships every day and ships better able to handle cargo quickly and cheaply, and improving our docks, railways, canals and roads to get goods into this country from the uttermost parts of the earth as quickly and cheaply as possible. What. is the sense then of putting on a tariff so that these goods shall not land unless they pay a certain tax before they are landed? If you want to get goods here as slowly and as expensively as possible you had better go back to the old days of the sailing ship when it took six months to get. goods from China, and freights were four times as much as they are to-day. We are told by some people that imports are paid for not by exports, but by money going out of the country, huge sums of money.

Who said so?

I have one quotation here from Mr. Manville, who was Member for Coventry. He is not the Member now, for the centre of the great motor industry refused to have a Protectionist as its representative. Writing in the "Pall Mall Gazette," he refers to the payment of unemployment, money to British workmen and the sending out of Britain of huge sums of money to pay wages of workmen in other countries. I would ask anyone who makes that state-men how that. money goes out of the country? As I understand it, money can only go out of the country in four different ways, as gold or silver bullion, gold or silver coin, notes or cheques, or bills of exchange. I do not understand how money can be exported in any other manner. It is curious, when we come to look into the figures, that in the year 1913 our imports of manufactured goods into this country were £200,000,000, and far from gold going out of this country the imports of gold into this country, on balance, were £12,000,000. In 1922, when the imports of manufaotured goods into this country were £229,000,000, the gold which went out on balance was C13,000,000 only.

In the Free Trade period gold came in with imported manufactures. Under a system of partial Protection such as applied in 1922 gold does go out of the. country. That seems to be an argument in favour of Free Trade. There is no evidence whatever to show that there are any exports of gold or silver coin or bullion from this country in payment of our imports. There is no evidence to show any increased circulation in notes such as would account for £200,000,000 and there is no evidence to show that, these imports were paid for by bills of exchange, because if they had been they would have had the effect of sending sterling down, or else you would have found a high bank rate in this country. What we did find in the 15 years before the War, as the great outstanding feature, was the stability of the £ sterling.

We had a gold standard then.

That is not germance to this Resolution.

You know nothing about it.

And also in the 15 years before the War, so far from there being a high bank rate, the average bank rate was only 3.1 per cent., which does not point to any serious drain of gold in this country. [An HON. MEMBER: "There has been a war since!"] No wonder that the Tory party are advertising for brains. These interruptions make it difficult for me to proceed, but I am going to say what I have got to say. Anyone conversant with foreign trade, as I am—I have had over 30 years of it, since I was an office boy at 16 years of age, and I have been engaged in it ever since—knows that it is a highly skilled industry just like agriculture. It is not a thing which you can pick up from the interesting articles written by the literary gentlemen of the "Morning Post," or by those who compile such manuals as "A Hundred Points for Tariff Reform." You have got to go through the mill, and any man conversant with foreign trade knows that imports must balance exports. You cannot get away from the fact that if you are going to reduce imports you must reduce exports. What is the alternative? People in foreign countries who wish to send us goods here do not want pounds sterling. The manufacturer in France who sends us motor tyres does not want pounds sterling. He wants francs. He can only get those by selling his bills of exchange in London for sterling, and selling to a bank which pays him in francs. The bank does not buy these bills of exchange unless it can sell them. A hank can only sell a bill of exchange if it has a value attached to it. The only value attached to it is the value attached by a man who wants to buy pounds sterling. The only person who wants to buy pounds sterling is the man who wants to buy goods in this country or to deposit money or invest money in this country. There is no sign of money leaving in all that.

Suppose that imports were coming into this country, and no exports were going out, the exporter of motor tyres in France would have bills of exchange on London which he would not be able to sell. He would not be able to get his currency and his shipments to this country must necessarily cease. That is a reductio ad absurdum., but it is a proof positive that so long as imports are coming into this country there is no depreciation of the £ sterling. It is proof that exports to the same value must be going out of the country. Let us take a middle course. Let us assume that imports from France into this country, or general imports into this country, were greater than the exports from this country, that would be affected immediately by the foreign exchange. If the man in France wished to sell a bill on London at the normal exchange of 25, and if there were more sellers of bills on London than buyers, the exchange would go down to 20 francs, which would mean an import tax of the per cent. on French goods coming into this country. The fluctuations of the foreign exchange act like the governor of a steam engine in regulating trade.

Every business man who has handled foreign business knows that these things are true. It may be laid down almost as an axiom that if there are imports coming into this country and no exports going out to balance them, the exchange will be so affected that there will be inevitably, though perhaps invisibly, a tariff raised upon subsequent imports into this country. The hon. Member for Ilford (Sir F. Wise) made a most excellent speech last Session on the question of India borrowing in this country. He pointed out that credit raised in this country must be spent here. We see a lot of "tosh" in the newspapers about India buying engines in Germany. A loan has been raised here by India, but if India wants to buy these engines from Germany she has to sell her credit here first and so the money must be spent here first. Any man who sends goods into this country immediately creates credit through his bill of exchange on London, and that demands exports to cancel it. r should be surprised to find that the hon. Member for Ilford does not agree with me on that point.

I do agree on that point.

I apologise if I have been at all didactic I do not often trespass on the time of the House, and only when the subject is one about which I claim that I ought to know something.

I have listened with considerable interest to the speeches of the Mover and Seconder of the Resolution. To a weaker and more inconclusive argument I have never yet listened. There has not been advanced a single point that could turn anyone's opinion, or that would show that tariffs would be an improvement even on present conditions. The Seconder of the Resolution told us something about his experience in Canada and in connection with tinplates. If there is anything with which T am conversant it is the tinplate trade. I can assure the hon. Member that it would be of value for him to study the history of that trade before making a statement such as he has made to-night. It is true that before the McKinley Tariff Bill was passed 90 per cent. of the trade in tinplates was with the United States. Our manufacturers hardly looked for trade. elsewhere. As soon as the McKinley Tariff came into force all our manufacturers took their wealth, built their works in America, and established the industry there. With what results? Every firm that went to America became bankrupt. I could give the names of every one of them. Every manufacturer who took his men and his capital and built big works in the United States became bankrupt and eventually came back to this country. One of the largest capitalists of all became a foreman in works that were established in South Wales after he had left.

Does the hon. Member suggest that the tinplate trade in the United States to-clay is bankrupt?

I can tell the hon. Member all about that if he wants to know. I have been in America, where I have seen six out of seven large plants lying idle in Newcastle and the other tin-mining districts around Pittsburg. There is no trade for them except their own internal trade. The tinplate trade in South Wales to-day, notwithstanding the effect of the War, is in a. more steadfast and solid condition than it has ever been known to be in, and there are something like 32,000 people employed in the industry. All through the period of the War the trade went steadily along. suppose that it was one of the most stabilised of all the trades that survived that terrible crisis. I can remember the time when the Welsh makers lost their canning contracts. Why? Because competition allowed the buyers to get the goods more cheaply from America. But the business did not stay there long. The buyers had to return to South Wales for their goods. In trade there is no sentiment. If you can purchase an article more cheaply from one country than from another you do so. The tinplate trade has recovered and is well established, and to-clay is doing good business all over the world. It is even sending consignments to America, because it makes the superior article.

Something has been said about dumping. It is impossible to prevent dumping. You can build up your tariff wall to 10 feet high and they will dump over it; you can build it, 20 feet high and they will still dump over it: you can build it until it reaches the clouds, and again they will dump over it. Are we not guilty of dumping? It is not long since I was in New Zealand, where I met a very large crowd of unemployed men. Who were they? They were boot and shoe makers from the New Zealand factories, and they were unemployed because the factories had closed. They asked me to make representations on the subject in this country. What had happened? These people had been taken from this country to New Zealand. Then suddenly there was dumping from this country over the high tariff walls of New Zealand. Huge consignments of cheap goods had been sent out from England. I was told that they were rotten stuff at that, guaranteed not to keep out the damp. Sonic men even said that the hoots had been manufactured in Germany or Austria or some other place, bought by English merchants, and sent over to New Zealand. We are not free from all the vices and evils that afflict mankind. You can build your tariff walls as high as you like, but dumping can never be destroyed.

Let me revert to the tinplate trade. Many things are required before you can manufacture a tinplate. You want the raw materials, the steel, the tin, and many other things. I remember the time when there was some dumping of steel bars which are essential for the making of tinplates and when there was an agitation to prevent, that dumping. It could, perhaps, have been stopped by legislation, and that, probably, would have given employment to, say, 100 men but it would have thrown out of employment 10,000 men engaged in the manufacture of tinplates. You must not look at this question from the narrow or selfish point of view of a particular trade or industry. You must take the wider, broader, and more comprehensive view of how it will affect the nation. It is true, as the hon. Member has said, that last year there was a boom in trade in America. I was there, and I saw it. But it was an internal trade; it was simply a boom in the building trade. They were paying big wages and practically half-a-million people went from Canada into America during that period. But that boom is over, and a slump is setting in. Did the hon. Member, when he went through Canada, see any unemployed there? If he did not, he must have been feasting in the hotel.

There were nearly 12,000 harvesters who went from this country, and Canada has absorbed nearly 8,000 of them.

Why did those half-million people go from Canada into America? They went simply because they were out of work. All the records, if you like to study them, prove that last year was a record year for unemployment in Canada.

All your expert. workmen are going to the States.

I am speaking of the conditions in the country, and, judging from some of the silly statements made. by people who profess to know, they are trying to make us believe that. in those tariff protected countries everything is booming and going swiftly, that nobody complains, that there is no trouble, that everybody is employed, and that there is rarely no distress. What an abominably misleading statement that is. You find unemployment existing in every tariff country to-day. Some of us have travelled and travelled pretty widely, and, when we travel, we mix among the people that are affected by the economic conditions of the country. We see the workers, we mix among them, and we go and discover facts exactly as they are. I challenge anyone to point to any tariff protected country in which unemployment is not a terribly distressful thing just as it is here. [HON. MEMBERS: "What about France!"] I make that statement because. I know it is true. I know it from personal observation, and I am here to say that you cannot name any tariff protected country where the conditions are better than they are here. You cannot advance a single argument to prove that a tariff wall along our little island will improve the conditions here.

We have heard a lot about the Safeguarding of Industries Act. How many factories are working to-day as the result of that Act? How many people have been employed as the result of it? How many people have become unemployed as the result of it? I was speaking to a merchant only at the beginning of this year, and he pointed out to me a big consignment of dolls which he had purchased. The dolls had come in free, but there was tax on the dolls' eyes. Was there eve^ such an absurdity? I am glad to have had the opportunity of refuting the statement made regarding the tinplate industry. It has recovered, and it is stronger than it has ever been. It would have been destroyed and the employers ruined if they had had here, as they had in America, to conduct their industry in a tariff protected country.

The House will have listened with great respect and interest to the statement of the hon. Member for the Forest of Dean (Mr. Wignall). has given us something of his experience in the United States. I wonder whether he read the report and published statements of the hon. Gentleman who is now Civil Lord at the Admiralty (Mr. Hodges) after his return from the United States. The hon. Member for the Forest of Dean tells us that when he travels abroad he gets into touch with the people in the community who are mostly interested in its productive industries. Does he not give credit to other people who travel for getting into contact with every section of the community whose experience may be valuable in estimating the economic situation in other countries? When the hon. Member for Lichfield returned from the United States, we who are interested in the protection of the home market in this country were particularly interested in the statement which he made. He called attention, in his own peculiarly forcible and eloquent way, to the rapid recovery of the economic vitality of the United States. He said that the high wages, the higher standard of living, and the general economic situation there were much more attractive than anything that was to be found in this country or in other European countries. He did not perhaps say in explicit terms what was the cause, but in a very interesting maiden speech in this House he said that it was due to the application of scientific methods and organisation to industry.

I explained in the articles to which the hon. Member has referred that the cause of the prosperity in America in 1923, as distinct from 1921, was the fact that the trade union organisations in America had to force up. wages through industrial pressure.

That statement is quite true, but how could the Trade Union organisations of the United States force up wages if the productive power of the United States could not stand it? The real reason for the astounding progress and prosperity in the United States, to which the hon. Member referred, was the fact that the United States had the common sense to protect its own market in the first instance. As every hon. Member who has taken the trouble to examine economic conditions in the States in the last two years knows, that the first principle of the present-day economic policy in the United States is to preserve the home market for their own people. In this country, for some extraordinary reason, the Labour party never seems to appreciate the necessity of protecting the industry in which they are engaged. I can understand hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, now the tail of a party—a tail which is rapidly disappearing—adhering to old shibboleths. I can understand them keeping up the old cries by which they gained seats in many elections in the past and the deluding and misleading cry by which they gained many seats in the last election, but I cannot understand hon. Members above the Gangway on the Government side of the House, who, in promoting the welfare of their own people through their trade unions, which depends entirely upon the success of industry, being opposed to a reasonable moderate and carefully conceived system of Protection.

Then why drop it?

I did not interrupt the hon. Member when he was speaking. I challenge any member of the Labour party to quote a single community in the whole world which has established a protective economic system that wishes to change it. Did the hon. Member for the Forest of Dean (Mr. Wignall) in his investigations in the United States find any statesman or party anxious to change their present protective system [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes!"] Will any hon. Gentleman above the Gangway—because the lost souls below the Gangway are beyond argument—instance a single community in Europe or elsewhere, except perhaps one or two quasi-civilised places in remote parts of the world, that wants to change a protective system which they have adopted? Yet the Labour Party, for some inscrutable reason, went up and down the country during the last Election declaring against the protection of the industry out of which the working classes of the country make their livelihood. It must be said, in justice to the Prime Minister, that he carefully guarded himself in a speech which he made early in the Election campaign. He said he had no pre-occupation with regard to Protection or Free Trade and that he was prepared to examine them on their merits. That was not the cry of a great many of the hon. Gentlemen behind him. They seemed to think they could secure in many localities a few of the votes of the lonely wanderers of Liberalism by taking up this question.

I respectfully address three questions to hon. Gentlemen opposite—those above the Gangway. It shows my respect for their standard of intelligence. The first question is, How are you going to protect the masses of productive workers in this country in the security of their employment, if you indiscriminately allow to come in here manufactured goods which are produced under conditions in which no self-respecting British workman would live? I speak as a representative of one of the most progressive communities on earth. I speak for the City of Birmingham. In that city to-day we have 37,000 workmen out of employment and, at the same time, there are exposed to view in every shop in Birmingham masses of goods from foreign communities which ought to have been made by the working classes of that. community. What; is your remedy except to exclude these goods and give these men a chance? Are you going to expose the working men of this country for all time to every device and trick of unscrupulous importers? [HON. MEMBERS: "Who are the importers?"] Are you going to expose the. mass of the people in this country always to those who have made fortunes out of imported goods and who have never shown the slightest regard for the welfare of the productive classes?

The second question I put is this: How are we going to provide the power of bargaining with foreign protected communities unless we have some protection for our own industries? I have made a series of inquiries in European countries during the past four or five years, and in every single one of these countries the main consideration of the manufacturers was the extent to which they could secure control of their own home market, and in every country except our own they were employing the protection which they enjoyed as an instrument of bargaining with the communities with which they had trading relations. Are we to continue for all time the only community on earth with its gates wide open to the trade of the world, without reference to the circumstances in which imported goods are produced, at the sacrifice of the welfare of our own people? This Motion is one which goes to the very roots of the future prosperity of this country. The third question I ask is: How are we to develop and maintain with our kith and kin overseas in our own Dominions, that measure of preference which will make for continued Imperial development and prosperity, unless we have a tariff in this country, in order to give them some return for what they gave to us? The hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. Darbishire) spoke of the £8,000,000 which we get back from Australia.

The hon. Member will pardon me, but I said nothing of the sort. I spoke of £8,000,000 which was for the benefit of Australia, and not of this country.

I am sorry if I have misrepresented the hon. Gentleman, but I think a statement- was made to the effect that Australian preference was worth £8,000,000 to us.

I did not say so. I said that we were told the £8,000,000 would be a gift to us. but that as a matter of fact it was a gift to the Australian people.

The hon. Gentleman did not tell the House, and probably he would not admit it, that we would not have got all those goods into Australia had it not been for the preference. Would the continuous increase in the export of our goods to the Dominions, since preference in our favour was first, instituted, be anything like what it is, if those preferences had not been established? Since peace in some form or another came upon the world, we have had Liberal statesmen and their followers eating their words from day to day. There never have been such lapses of memory in the history of politics as have taken place with British Liberal statesmen. I want to quote one extract from a speech delivered in this House by the right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) in 1916. At that time the Paris Resolutions, which were drafted by Mr. Runciman, were under the consideration of this House, and the right hon. Member for Paisley, in the course of the Debate, said this:

"No one who has any imagination "—

I hope there is some imagination in that quarter of the House—

"can possibly be blind to the fact that this War, with all the enormous upheaval of political, social, and industrial conditions which it involves, must, in many ways, and ought to if we are a rational and practical people, suggest to us new problems or possibly modifications in the solution of the old ones. I would regard it as deliberate blindness to the teachings of experience if you were to say we had forgotten nothing and had learned nothing from a War like this."—[OFFICIAL, REPORT, 2nd August, 1916; cols. 341–2, Vol. 85.]

You have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. You are still pursuing the same lonely and foggy way which you have pursued for generations, and it is time that in this House there was some real demonstration of common sense on the part of hon. and right hon. Members opposite. In supporting this Motion to-night, I do so after long oversca experience in the development of our Imperial trade. I had the privilege, at one time in my career, of being an officer of one of our Dominion Governments. During the time that I was charged with administration in that Dominion, we had to devise means of establishing and expanding our local manufacturing enterprises. The only way in which we could do it was by imposing such a reasonable and carefully considered measure of protection as enabled our local producers to get some share of their own home market for themselves. We are only asking in this Motion to apply in this country, under the difficult, circumstances in which we are existing, with one and a quarter million people walking the streets, for whom nobody on the other side seems to have any sympathy—[HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw!"]—or any sense of obligation—we are pleading for these people, who are walking our streets to-day—[An HON. MEMBER: "They voted against you!"] They did not vote against me; I had 12,000 majority. We plead for these people who are walking our streets to-day, and for whom the introduction of a carefully arranged, moderate, reasonable Protection would give a chance of a livelihood for themselves and their families.

I listened with considerable interest; to the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Moseley (Mr. Hannon). It was my privilege 30 years ago to have the hon. Member under my influence, to some extent, with regard to economics, and I am sorry to see such a decline, which I am sure has some connection with the company he has been keeping recently. I was rather surprised that my hon. Friend who has just spoken on the other side has not brought himself up to date with the policy of his leader and his party. Should he not have moved for the deletion from this Resolution of the word "imports" and asked leave to insert "exports"? I listened the other day with great interest to the speech of the late Prime Minister in that connection, and I understood him to say that the tendency of his latest point of view, was in the direction. of restricting our exports, while the Resolution seeks to restrict our imports. If we are to carry both these policies to their logical conclusion, we shall very soon convert ourselves into a sort of Robinson Crusoe's island, with his man Friday and probably the goat. If we are going to have the exclusion of imports, as desired by some hon. Members, arid the restriction of exports as desired by the ex-Prime Minister, it seems to me, to involve closing us up in a ring fence.

With regard to the point made by my hon. Friend concerning the United States of America, it is true that you have in the United States apparently a strong argument in favour of Protection, if you are justified in assuming that the prosperity of the United States is due to Protection, but I would suggest that my hon. Friend should apply his intelligence to this point. The United States is, after all, the largest Free Trade market in the world, whilst she has natural resources to a degree with which we cannot possibly compare. I remember a conversation that I had with an eminent economist in the United States on this point. He was a. Free Trader, and I referred to the fact that his own country practised Protection, and yet seemed, notwithstanding its depressions from time to time, to have its periods of boom and good trade. I asked how he could explain that, having regard to his theory of Free Trade. He replied: "Mr. Vivian, the truth is that the United States can afford the burden of Protection, but the old country cannot afford it. We have been so generously served by nature that our position is altogether different from your own." I suggest to my hon. Friends opposite that what Free Trade, after all, does for this country is to make it, to some extent, independent of the niggardliness of nature in regard to its natural resources. The kind of trade that prospers under Free Trade here, more particularly shipping and shipbuilding, bring this little island of ours into close contact with the whole of the world in every sea and in every port; and by cheap transport over these thousands of miles of ocean, this little island, with its huge population and limited natural resources, holds a position in the world, which to me, and I think to any reflecting person, is astounding in the great world of industry. [An HON. MEMBER: "Unemployment!"] I submit a, definite question to hon. Gentlemen opposite, do they or do they not deny that the only way in which international trade can be carried on is on a basis that, for all practical purposes, either in goods or services you export just as much as you import? There is no other principle by which trading can be carried out. Even in our own private life the same principle holds good. You may have a thing given to you; you may steal it; or you may give an equivalent in return for it. The same principle applies to a private and to international business. Therefore, I submit to hon. Gentlemen opposite—and I suggest there is no economist for the last 100 years worthy of the name of economist who would dispute that exports pay for imports, not one—if that is sound, then it proves absolutely that you cannot increase employment in this country by keeping out imports. It is so obvious: if my hon. Friends restrict imports they restrict exports as well.

I want to pass to two other aspects' of this problem. The one is the effect of this principle of the raising of revenue—upon the political life of this country. Other hon. Members will represent the economic standpoint no doubt in greater detail, indeed it has been already admirably presented by my hon. Friend. But I should like to direct the attention of the House to the effect of a system of tariffs upon the political morality of this country. I have always held that the effect upon political morals is as important as on the economic side. If you shift the centre of gravity, or rather the centre at which profits are to be made, from the counting house and the factories to the Lobby of this House, you demoralise your political life and your industrial. You substitute a system of giving interest, or preferential profits in the shape of tariffs, and cause industry gradually to tend to lean, not upon its own efficiency, but upon its influence over the political life of the country. I suggest to hon. Gentlemen opposite that we on these benches may compare hon. Members opposite with some hon. Members on this side of the House. I hope they will not take it amiss if we in effect liken their Resolution to the Socialism of our friends on this side. It is not a question of difference between Socialism and no-Socialism, but between two kinds of Socialism. Our friends on this side stand for Socialism with public control. Our friends opposite on the Protectionist side stand in effect for Socialism without public control. They want to build up a system of industries living upon tariff profits of, say, 20, 30, 40 and 50 per cent. [An HON. MEMBER: "That is not Socialism!"] I will deal with that. It is a system of industry which carries with it dependence, not upon the earnings of the industry, but upon the. earnings of other industries, because the tariff that you levy for the benefit of any particular industry is a burden which is carried by other industries. Therefore, it is a system of legislating so that these industries lean upon tariff walls, which is a form of Socialism without public control.

It carries with it also, if I may say so, a tendency to develop combines. First your tariff fed industries have a local organisation. Presently that organisation becomes national. Huge funds are at the disposal of the combine, and 10.0 P.M. when it sees that the nation is acting with a view to destroying its extortion from the public, the combine proceeds to buy up big newspapers, or to take interests in them, and to spend largely in advertising in the Press of the country with a view to quieting their criticisms of the conduct of the combine. In other words, you. get a demoralisation of public life right through by the adoption of a system of Protection. May I make this quotation from one whose authority will not be disputed on this question. I quote the opinion of Mr. Bayard, one of the greatest of United States Ambassadors we ever had in this country. He spoke these words in addressing a meeting at Edinburgh:

"In my own country I have witnessed the insatiable growth of that form of State Socialism style 'Protection,' which, I believe, has done more than any other single cause to foster class legislation and create inequality of fortune, to corrupt public life, to banish men of independent means and character from the public councils, to lower the tone of national representation, blunt public conscience, create false standards in the popular mind, to familiarise it with reliance on State aid, and guardianship in private affairs, divorce ethics from politics, and place politics upon the low level of a mercenary scramble."

That is the deliberate opinion of an authority whose words are well worth the consideration of this House. I desire to deal with a point raised by more than one hon. Member opposite, more particularly the hon. Member who last spoke. I refer to his suggestion in regard to Imperial Preference. I regard this proposal of Imperial Preference as one of the most dangerous developments in, the whole issue of Free Trade and Protection. It is an attempt., as it were, to outflank the Free Trade position. First, I would observe that any logical development of Imperial Preference carries with it, in effect, to each self-governing part of the Empire the denial of the right of control over its own finances. If as between different parts of the Empire you give reciprocal subsidies in order to develop territory or industry in any part of the Empire and then the interests of your own part of the Empire require that these tariffs shall be removed. you will put on the Empire, in my view. in the long run a strain that it will not stand. Our Friends claim to be the only imperialists. I am speaking from the point of view of the unity of this Empire in the future, and it is because I am anxious for that unity, that I am going to oppose every develop- ment in the direction of Imperial Preference.

I am not talking about mere theory, and I want to direct the attention of the House to the fact that this is not a new principle. If you go back to the 'forties you will see we had this system of preference on wheat and on lumber when the Free Trade principles were carried through this House under Sir Robert Peel. Mr. Gladstone later took office, and it was his duty in the forties to conduct the correspondence with Canada in a very delicate situation. The preference we had given on timber, for instance, had developed in parts of Canada an industry, the profit on which was the Tariff preference, and yet because this country defended the adoption of the Free Trade system, which carried with it the abolition of those preferences, we were very near of losing Canada from the. Empire. If you read the letters in the "Times" of that period, as I have done, and the speeches made in Canada by leading men at the head of boards of trade, you will see we were told that the time had come, when owing to the shattering of those interests, that there was no object in remaining with the Mother Country, and it was only by delicate handling and great care that. we were able to keep Canada within the Empire.

If hon. Members opposite will reflect, they will see that in these clays the development of an extended system of reciprocal preference would involve such financial and industrial restrictions between that the Empire would not stand the strain. It is not only here that that feeling exists. What has taken place in Canada during the last few years? I have given addresses in Western Canada on this very issue of Free Trade. The farmers are Free Trade to a man, and what is their complaint? It is that they are carrying on their backs this huge burden of tariffs in Canada, tariffs which had their origin—I am not making any accusation now—in the most extraordinary system of corruption this Empire has ever known—a system in which the manufacturers' associations did not send a deputation to the Cabinet, but the Cabinet associated with the manufacturers, and a bargain was made for contributions to the political funds based on what the manufacturers were going to get by taxing the public. Canada, from the point of view of purity, has grown out of that, but it has been saddled with this system to such an extent that, much as tile people desire, they cannot throw it off. Liberal Prime Ministers who have been Free Traders have come in, but they have been only able to get reduced protective tariffs.

I want to direct attention to the point, that if you ally yourselves by a system of Preference to one of the parties in a Dominion, the Protectionist party, you are going to antagonise the growing Free Trade party in the West. For the first time in its history, Canada is confronted with a somewhat similar position to that with which this House is confronted, that is, it has three parties. For the first time you have got 50 farmers returned from the prairie provinces pledged to Free Trade, and they hold the balance of power. The latest communication in the Press from the Western farmers on this very point is, that they demand that their Government should develop in the direction of Free Trade as soon as possible. I warn this House not to ally itself with one of those parties in the Dominions. If you want continued co-operation, keep yourselves free from all those party controversies. The same applies to other Dominions. They have developed this system of Protection for manufactures. Those who are developing the natural resources are beginning to protest against, the burdens. Instead of relieving them by taking steps back towards Free Trade, these Prime Ministers want to go back from England, and say to the overburdened farmers in those Dominions, "We cannot give you ally relief in the shape of Free Trade, but we have brought you back some relief at the expense of the consumers of Great Britain." To show you that Canada is not alone, may I quote from one of the most important papers in Australia, namely, the Sydney Daily Telegraph,' of the 19th July, 1914? The article is headed "The Preferential Illusion." I am not out to take advantage, I hope, of debating points When I speak of the Empire and its future I mean what I say. If you can convince me I am wrong, I shall be the first to go over, hut you must convince me. The article said:

"To be sure we have given a percentage of preference to Crest Britain, but we have taken care not to do it so that its application to any article would be detrimental to ourselves."

Indeed, the manner in which the preference was applied is one of the most comic episodes in Parliamentary history. The truth was that in arranging for that system, although they made it a point in their programme, they forgot all about it when they drew up their tariff, and they had suddenly to correct matters. What did they suggest? Not to reduce the tariff against Great Britain, but to raise it higher against the foreigner. The article goes on to say:

"The only preference which would be of direct pecuniary benefit to Australia would be a preference on foodstuffs, and no Australian asks the poorer classes of the United Kingdom to submit to a tax on their bread and their meat for the sake of encouraging any industry whatever. If Mr. Bonar Law thinks that preference from the United Kingdom is the crying demand of the people of Australia, he should visit those shores and get disillusioned, and he would never hear the subject mentioned except by some whizzy-headed orator who was momentarily gravelled for II topic."

I do, suggest to hon. Members opposite that these opinions I have expressed and quoted are worthy of consideration, and I do suggest, as the Australian paper implies, that it is grossly unfair that Australia and Canada should build up a system of artificial prices, artificial wages and artificial industries that are a burden to the whole of their enterprises which deal with natural products, and ask that the working people of this country, the relatively badly-paid people of this country, should he called upon to take any share of the burdens arising out of the policy they have pursued. We should say quite frankly that we have no desire to interfere with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or South Africa in any way. If they desire Protection, let them have it. We may think they are wise or unwise, but so far as we are concerned we are going to maintain the right on these benches from time to time to reduce or increase or modify any system of taxation we like, as a result of the electors' choice, and we shall not allow our Chancellor to say, "I should like to take this or that preferential tax off, but cannot, because if I do we shall have the whole Dominions in arms against us on account of Tariff fed industries which will suffer. These tariffs often make up more than the whole of the profits on many of these industries. Take a protective tax of 50 per cent. upon an article, there are very few industries where you can get a 50 per cent. or even a 10 per cent. profit on an article. A 20 or 30 per cent, preferential tariff would take us back to the 'forties, and the removal of them would bring these industries down like a pack of cards. I warn the House to keep that fact in mind. The position in this country is very delicate indeed. I believe our position is very serious as far as our industries are concerned. For good or for ill, during the last 100 years we have chosen the path of industry instead of the path of agriculture. Had we selected the latter industry, no doubt, we might have had a prosperous country with about half the population, but you did not select that course, and you deliberately selected the course of developing industries and placing yourselves in the position of depending on the markets of the world.

I am not exaggerating when I say that not far from a third to a half of the population of these islands, directly or I indirectly, depend on our position abroad, as far as our markets are concerned. To keep our growing population, increasing at the rate of about 200,000 a year, in food and raw material for its industries, is a difficult task indeed, having regard to the present position of the various countries of the world. There is one way in which we stand a chance of being able to achieve that end, and it is to keep our ports open wider than ever to the whole world, so that, we may regain our shipping industry. I believe the shipping industry is the key to the whole situation. Take the case of cargoes both ways. Take, for example, a cargo boat going to Australia or some other port of the world. If you assume that it will cost a pound a ton to take it, out and bring the ship home again, if you can arrange to have a cargo both ways, then, broadly speaking, 10s. per ton will be the cost being one-half that with a cargo one way. You benefit. your home industries by having a prosperous shipping able, to take your goods abroad at the lowest possible cost of transportation to every part of the world.

The same argument applies to food. In this country we cannot maintain our- selves except on that wide, open basis. Our industries need the fresh air of Free Trade. Hon. Members on the Opposition side may think we are wrong, but I ask them to believe that our view is based on the firm belief that when you once practise the policy advocated by the late Prime Minister, and by hon. Members opposite, and practice it thoroughly, you can make up your minds that from 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 of the population of these islands must get out, because you will not be able to provide the food and the raw materials which are essential to their happiness.