While Chief's Away

With Scot MacDonald away, the steering committee of the Labor Party was in undisputed charge of its alert, broad-featured chairwoman, Miss Arabella Susan Lawrence, a rich barrister's daughter who would rather be Laborite than socialite. Last week Miss Lawrence heard rumblings of discord. People were beginning to say that the Prime Minister ought to be home solving the unemployment problem, not gadding about reducing navies. At such times the party executive must put up a front, loose an achievement or two as a sop to criticism. Observers divined the strategy of Arabella Susan Lawrence in the following Laborite moves last week:

Widows. The Ministry of Health (Parliamentary Secretary, Miss Lawrence) issued the text of an amendment to the Widows Pensions Act of 1925. If passed, the amendment will broaden the pension system to include an additional half-million widows. Complex, the measure teems with such provisos as that if a woman is between 55 and 70, and if her husband died before Jan. 1, 1926, then the lucky widow will receive ten shillings a week ($2.50) for the rest of her life.

Coal. A colleague and reputed confidante of Miss Arabella Susan Lawrence is Margaret Grace ("Saint Maggie") Bondfield, Minister of Labor. Heeding the grumblings of unemployed miners she summoned miners and mine owners to Downing Street, listened to both sides. After deliberation she offered the grumblers a reduction from an 8-hour day to a 7 1/2-hour day without cutting wages, requested the mine owners to formulate a plan for efficient marketing on a national basis. As neither miners nor owners appeared satisfied Miss Minister Bondfield announced that further conferences would be in order.

Trade. The opening of large South American markets to British goods was predicted by Viscount D'Abernon of Stoke D'Abernon, oldtime diplomat, just back from a trade mission (TIME, Sept. 23) to that continent.

Said he: "Our arrangements, if completed, should give profitable employment to tens of thousands of Britons." Viscount D'Abernon's "arrangements" were: 1) an agreement with Argentina by which that country is to buy $38,880,000 worth of manufactured goods from Great Britain over a period of two years, and reciprocally Britain is to take an equal amount in raw material from Argentina; 2) an Anglo-Argentine floating credit of $77,760,000; 3) a British loan of $200,000,000 to the Argentine government for road building.