FREE TRADE IN THE NAME OF THE POOR
M.P.'s Investments and their Votes--A Lecture from a Lady of
Title--Urged to give up some of his Public Work--Defending Free
Trade throughout the Country--Ridiculing Tariff Reform at
Birmingham--A Brush with Mr. Chamberlain--Real "Little Englanders."
"Show me where a man has his money invested and I will tell you how he
will vote."
Such was Crooks's way of summing up the House of Commons before he had
been a Member many months. Someone had expressed surprise to him that
both Liberal and Conservative Members should have combined to support
the proposed Electric Trust for London when the L.C.C. was promoting a
municipal scheme.
"The first lesson one learns in Parliament," he replied, "is that the
two great parties generally forget their political differences when the
just claims of the people threaten their pockets."
It amused him to find that many Members preferred the smoking room and
the Terrace to the House. It was on the Terrace he overheard a
Conservative Member ask a Liberal:--
"Are you in favour of this Bill?"
"I think I am," came the halting reply.
"That's all right, then; I'm against it. We needn't go up to
vote--we'll pair."
And Crooks left those British legislators smoking on the Terrace, since
it was too much trouble to them to go inside and vote.
It was on the Terrace one afternoon that a party of titled ladies,
taking tea, sought his acquaintance. They immediately began to lecture
him on his duty to the poor.
"I think you are supremely stupid to bother about the poor as you do,
Mr. Crooks," said one of the dames from behind her fan. "I am told they
are always coming to your house to consult you about their troubles. If
they came to my house I should order them away."
"I'm sure you would, madam."
"And if those dreadful people were only like me they wouldn't listen to
what you tell them."
"I'm sure they wouldn't, madam."
"You needn't be sarcastic, Mr. Crooks. I would send them to the Poor Law
officers or the Charity Organisation people."
And then, as another honourable member joined the party, the good lady
turned to him:
"I'm just teaching Mr. Crooks his place."
"Indeed," said the Labour man, "I thought I was teaching you yours."
It was more agreeable to him when accosted by one of the policemen on
duty in the House.
"Well, Mr. Crooks, how's Poplar?"
"You know Poplar?"
"Yes, I used to be stationed that way. I well remember your Dock Gate
meetings. I liked the Poplar people better than the West Enders. You
take it from me, Mr. Crooks, there's far more respect for law and order
in Poplar than there is in the West End."
He still kept his College by the Dock Gates going, notwithstanding his
election to Parliament. Indeed, he was still as much the servant of
Poplar as of Woolwich.
Parliament, of course, added enormously to his work. Friends urged him
to give up several of his public posts. He was advised to retire from
the Asylums Board, and doubtless would have done so but for a powerful
appeal sent to him not to desert the Board's children. He wanted to
resign from the Poplar Board of Guardians, of which he had then been
Chairman for half a dozen successive years; but all parties in the
borough pleaded with him to remain, and the Conservatives and Liberals
withdrew their candidates in his ward in order that he might be returned
unopposed. He was showered with requests to remain for the sake of the
poor. At last he agreed, on the understanding that he should give less
time to the work. This was perhaps an unwise decision, for owing to the
slackening of his personal vigilance the administration was besmirched
by irregularities which of course laid the Chairman's Poor Law policy
open to the attacks of his opponents.
The only post he gave up was that on the Poplar Borough Council. The
Labour League would not hear of his resigning from the London County
Council, and within a year of his election to Parliament, Poplar
re-elected him to the L.C.C. with a majority of over 1,600.
The demands made upon him to address public meetings in other parts of
the country became terrific after Woolwich. I found him one afternoon
turning over the pages of his engagement book with a worried look.
"I'm just wondering whether I can do it," he said. "I find I'm booked to
speak at thirteen different meetings at different places within the next
fortnight, and I've just got a pressing appeal to speak at another
within the same time."
The appeals came from the churches, from temperance societies, from
Adult Sunday Schools, from P.S.A.'s, as well as from Labour
organisations.
The Labour Party, which was then organising for its great political
triumph of 1906, had his first consideration always. He addressed Labour
meetings all over the country, nearly always with an audience of three
or four thousand. He was at Glasgow, Birmingham, Leicester, Plymouth,
Liverpool, Exeter, Darlington, Ipswich, Chatham, Newcastle, Blackburn,
Barnard Castle, Huddersfield, Edinburgh, Cardiff, all within a few
months.
Everywhere he turned Mr. Chamberlain's tariff proposals into ridicule.
He made his great Birmingham audience laugh the loudest. He told that
and other audiences:--
Mr. Chamberlain has shown you two loaves, the Free Trade loaf and
the Protection loaf.
"There's hardly any difference between them," he tells you. "Why
make all this fuss?"
Let him take the two loaves down a Birmingham court and ask a poor
woman with children to cut them up. She'll soon tell him the
difference between the solid Free Trade loaf and the spongy
Protectionist loaf. You trust the mother of a family to know the
difference between good bread and blown-out pastry.
"Ah, but we must make sacrifices in the interest of the Empire,"
says Mr. Chamberlain.
Let him come down our way and talk like that in Poplar. I tried it
the other day.
"Times is awful bad just now, Mr. Crooks," said one of a party of
women who stopped me on my way to the House of Commons.
"Yes," I said, "but don't you know the new kind of comfort the
Imperialists have found for you? They say you belong to an Empire
on which the sun never sets. It's so filling, isn't it, when you're
hungry?"
"An Empire on which the sun never sets!" cried one of the women,
pointing towards her slum tenement. "What's the good of talking to
us like that? Why, the sun never rises on our court!"
"That may be," I say, "but you've got to pay more for your bread
and your meat, all in the interests of the Empire. You've got to
learn to make sacrifices for the Empire."
"Look here, Will," says the eldest among them; "I've known you
since you was in petticoats, and you've never deceived me yet.
Wot's the use of talking to us about sacrifices when we can't make
both ends meet as it is?"
"Both ends meet!" exclaimed one of the women. "We think we are
lucky if we can get one end meat and the other end bread."
"Wot's it all about, Mr. Crooks?" asked another. "Here's bread
gone up a ha'penny a loaf. And sugar and tea's gone up. And the
children say they don't get so many sweets for a farthing now as
they used to."
"And," I added, "meat's likely to go up too--all in the interests
of the Empire. Twopence a pound more for Colonial mutton."
"What!" they cried in a body. "Twopence more for mutton!"
"Haven't you heard?" I went on. "The Tariff Reformers have a great
scheme to bind the Empire together by letting the Colonies charge
us more for our food. If you don't agree with them they'll call you
little Englanders."
"That's just it," said one of the women. "If I'm to pay another
twopence a pound for meat my children will soon be Little
Englanders!"
Then turning suddenly from his anecdotal style, Crooks would go on to
ask his audience how a worthy Imperial race was to be built up on a lack
of food?
The Empire begins in the workman's kitchen. The imposition of new
duties on food imports, though no more than a penny or twopence,
means to many a poor housewife the difference between having and
going without.
I know one large family where the recent addition of a half-penny
on the loaf robbed the children of a slice of bread a day. Do you
know what that means? Have you ever lived in a family where the
slices have to be counted, and where every child could eat twice as
much as its allowance? I belonged to such a family as a child, and
when a clergyman came round once and found my mother crying over an
empty cupboard, he said:
"Ah, well; God sends the bread for all the mouths."
"That's all very fine," my mother said; "but He seems to send the
mouths to our house and the bread to yours."
The policy of Preference came in for his banter equally with that of
Protection. Under any scheme of Preference, the relation of this
country, with its large imports, to our Colonies, which take
comparatively few of our exports, he used to say reminded him of a
boxing-match between a thin man and a fat man. After the first round or
two the fat man stops and says:
"This ain't fair; you've got more to strike at than I have."
"Very well, then," says the thin man, "let's chalk my size out on your
body, and all blows outside the chalk mark don't count."
Mr. Chamberlain seems to have heard how Crooks was riddling with
ridicule his Protection and Preference policies up and down the country.
At any rate, the ex-Minister began his favourite policy of Retaliation.
At some of his public meetings he supported his argument by representing
Crooks as having said at Leith that the poor of this country were worse
off than the poor of any other country.
As soon as Crooks heard of this he wrote to Mr. Chamberlain:--
SIR,--I do not for a moment think you deliberately misquoted the
words I used at Leith, but whoever sent you the information is
absolutely without excuse for the blunder. For what I said I have
said in twenty different parts of the kingdom to tens of thousands
of our fellow-countrymen--viz. "that even if, as Mr. Chamberlain
suggests, the Colonies do desire Preference, it is no reason why
the poor of Great Britain should pay more for their bread to help
those Colonies which have no poor, or certainly no poverty
compared with the poverty we have in this country."
This, as you will note, makes a very great difference in the
reading of your quotation of what I really did say.
I am, yours truly,
WILL CROOKS.
In reply Mr. Chamberlain sent a tardy apology, thus:--
SIR,--I have your letter of December 17th, and in reply I beg to
say that the statement which you say you have repeatedly used is in
no sense inconsistent with the statement which you were reported to
have made at Leith, and which referred not to the Colonies but to
foreign countries. Unfortunately, I have only the extract which was
sent to me and not the whole speech, and of course if you deny
having used the words which I quoted I most readily accept your
contradiction.
I am, yours faithfully,
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN.
A fallacy very popular with Protectionists was neatly dealt with by
Crooks at a meeting of the London County Council. One of the Moderate
members asked whether an assurance could be given that certain tramway
materials would be of British manufacture.
The reply was that since the Council worked under Free Trade conditions,
no such assurance could be given.
"Will not trade union conditions be observed?" inquired another Moderate
member.
"Yes."
"Do you call that acting on a Free Trade basis?"
"Some members," interposed Crooks, "seem to identify trade union
conditions with Protection."
"Quite right too," shouted the Moderate.
"Yes," came Crooks's retort; "but the one kind of Protection is the
protection of the workers against the sweater, and the other kind is the
protection of the sweater against the workers."