Origins Analyzed

Political observers last week analyzed the origins of Britain's second Labor (Socialist) Cabinet, They discovered:

In contrast to the U. S. Cabinet of ten, Great Britain is governed by an unwieldy group of some 44 Cabinet ministers and ministers not of Cabinet rank. Oldest in the MacDonald Cabinet is Lord Parmoor, 76, Lord President of the Council; youngest, Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 32, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; average age, 56. Of the new Cabinet, many were self-educated, born in poverty. The Prime Minister was born in a Scotch hut. One of his ministers was an engine cleaner and fireman, one worked in a cotton mill at the age of ten, another's father was a lace designer, one is the son of an Irish laborer. However, five have titles, four went to Oxford, two to Cambridge, three to the military schools of Sandhurst and Woolwich, and one (Author-Economist Sidney Webb) was educated in Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Super-educated is Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan, president of the Board of Education, schooled at Harrow and Cambridge, son of famed Historian Sir George Otto Trevelyan, grandnephew of Lord (Horatius at the Bridge) Macaulay, brother of Historian George Macaulay Trevelyan.

If the new Cabinet continues long in power, its deeds will be watched, its members will be known to the world. Those already famed beyond the bounds of the empire include:

Thomas, James Henry ("Jim") (see col. I). Lord Privy Seal and delegated to investigate unemployment;

Snowden, Philip, wizened, pixielike Chancellor of the Exchequer, Labor's bitter-tongued financial expert (TIME, April 29) who shares with legless Major Jack Benn Brunei Cohen the title of Cripple of the House of Commons;

Henderson, Arthur, grey-mustached, placid Foreign Secretary. "Uncle Arthur" Henderson is one of the oldest Labor M. P.'s in the House; he took his seat in 1903. Self-educated, starting life as a Scotch iron moulder, he succeeds the blundering, monocled Sir Austen Chamberlain as director of Britain's foreign policy;

Lansbury, George, irascible Commissioner of Works, England's veteran radical. White-haired, with clipped mutton-chop whiskers, he is a teetotaler, a nonsmoker, and was twice imprisoned;

Bondfield, Margaret ("Saint Maggie"), Minister of Labor, and Britain's first woman Cabinet minister, parliamentary under secretary for labor in the 1924 Labor government. So strenuous were "Saint Maggie's" hours when she worked in a draper's shop as a young girl that only once a week could she take a bath, running three-quarters of a mile to a public bath, where she had to bathe and dress in 15 minutes;

Webb, Sidney, erudite Secretary of State for the colonies and dominions. Long nosed, with pince-nez glasses and a pointed chin beard, Sidney Vebb is a noted author, one of Britain's greatest political economists. In these works his partner is his no-less intellectual wife, Beatrice Potter Webb,