Snowden & Dole

The wizened, gnomish little Yorkshireman who goes tapping about the House of Commons on two canes popped up again last week, made Mother England jump at his shrill words like a drowsy old lady at the squeak of a mouse.

Philip Snowden is a country mouse. In the Chancellor of the Exchequer's honest squeak there is power, much reverence for God and small regard of men. Indeed what he said last week chiefly embarrassed the Labor Government of which he himself is the most brilliant member. Some 21 radical Labor M. P.'s threatened to leave the party.

The Chancellor was forced into making the speech he made. It was his defense against charges of "gross extravagance" leveled against him by Conservatives. As the little Yorkshireman began his defense there were Labor cheers, then vigorous Conservative heckling. But as he progressed dead silence came upon the Labor benches behind him, finally settled like a pall over the whole House. Members listened as if stupefied to his declaration that Great Britain not only faces a budgetary deficit of $150,000,000 for the fiscal year ending March 31, but will face next year a deficit equivalent to a quarter of a billion dollars.

"I say with all the seriousness I can command," cried Philip Snowden, "that the national position is so grave that drastic and disagreeable measures will have to be taken. . . . The greatest sacrifices will have to be borne by those best able to bear them!"

"Posterity Will Curse!" When the till is short the cashier is supposed to feel guilty. With an almost religious fervor Mr. Snowden cast the onus of this guilt upon his predecessors at the Exchequer. He directly faced and was seen to point an avenging finger at Conservative Leader Stanley Baldwin (who as Chancellor of the Exchequer negotiated the Anglo-U. S. debt settlement) as he said:

"I don't want to give offense to anybody when I make this statement, that when the history of the way, in which that debt was incurred--its recklessness, its extravagance and its commitments made, which were altogether unnecessary at the time--when all that comes to be known. I am afraid posterity will curse those who were responsible!"

Turning upon Conservative Winston Churchill, his immediate predecessor as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Snowden declared that to untangle the "mess" made by Mr. Churchill of the nation's finances he, Snowden, has had to impose an extra $200,000,000 of taxation.

Cut the Dole? Such pot shots at the enemy pass more or less unnoticed in Parliament, but Mr. Snowden made his own party sit up and gasp when he appeared to foreshadow a cut in the unemployment dole.

"Expenditure which may be easy in prosperous times," he said, "becomes impossible in times of grave industrial depression. . . .

"I have been in active politics for more than forty years and my only object has been to improve the lot of the toiling masses. If I ask any temporary suspension it is because I believe it is necessary to make future prosperity possible. The budget position is serious. . . .

"I may put it bluntly. An increase of taxation now, an increase which fell upon industry, would be the last straw.

"Schemes involving heavy expenditure, however desirable, will have to wait until prosperity returns."

Snowden's Dole Policy. Since most Labor M. P.'s have promised their constituents more Treasury aid, not less, Mr. Snowden's speech thunderstruck his party with the conviction that it will badly handicap Labor candidates at the next elections. It was Laborite William John Brown who most completely lost his head. "This Socialist Government." he roared, "has neither the guts to govern nor the grace to get out!"

Amid lusty cheering by the Left Laborites, Mr. Brown went on:

"This speech [Snowden's] is the most revolutionary ever delivered in Parliament. ... It shows that the Labor Party has accepted the capitalist ideas they were sent to the House of Commons to expose! . . . Our whole front bench [Government party leaders occupy the right front bench] is at the bidding of the financial interests of this country! . . . The speech prepares the House for the sacrifice of unemployed men and women. . . ."

Two votes followed, the second most significant. On the straight Conservative motion of noconfidence, the Government won 310 to 235. Immediately the Liberals, with the Government's official support, proposed an amendment appointing a commission to study budgetary economics. The Conservatives were also agreeable, and the amendment should have passed unanimously. Instead, all the Left Laborites bolted, and their 21 votes were the only ones cast in opposition.

Chancellor Snowden did not help matters. Said he acidly of the Liberal measure: "We have already got about 70 committees. One more will do no good and no harm! Such little economies as committees may suggest don't count. It is only on policy that large savings can be made. Let the House of Commons face that!"

The present dole policy, as Mr. Snowden had already made clear, will cost some $275,000,000 if continued through the coming year. Of this, $75,000,000 is the State's regular contribution to the dole fund, and $200,000,000 will be technically "borrowed" by the fund from the Exchequer. Such borrowings already total some $350,000,000.

Alarm in the City. Following the Chancellor's speech, Liberal Leader David Lloyd George leaped next day into the Parliamentary fray, proceeded with characteristic bombast to out-Socialist the Socialists, and proposed in terms which he carefully left vague "prompt measures to utilize the labor of workers in useful and essential schemes of national development."

What businessmen of the City got out of all this was that Mr. Lloyd George was testing the possibility that he could switch over and usurp leadership of the Labor Party; and that Mr. Snowden, with his talk of imposing "the greatest sacrifices on those best able to bear them," meant capitalists no good. Within 24 hours the gross value of leading British Government securities had declined $150,000,000 on Change. And the pound sterling "broke sharply."

Nevertheless British politicians--seldom sensitive to even the most appalling facts of business--were more interested in two pip-squeak developments:

1) William John ("Guts") Brown was expelled for his language from the trade union group of Labor M. P.'s.

2) Chancellor Snowden asserted and maintained that the people who saw him point at Mr. Baldwin when he declared that "posterity will curse" saw wrong. His gesture, he said, was "a sweeping one," and, without saying so, he distinctly implied that posterity will curse not only Mr. Baldwin who made the debt settlement but more especially Mr. Lloyd George who originally hired and spent the money.

The Lancashire Cotton Spinners' and Manufacturers' Association, which recently locked out 300,000 workers (TIME, Jan. 19), resumed operations last week, giving as one reason "we have been impressed by the very grave warning about the condition of industry and finance in this country given by Philip Snowden."

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