Pocket Wildcat; Mother Hubbard

A pocket wildcat is 98 Ib. Miss "Wee Ellen" Wilkinson M. P.--not James Ramsay MacDonald's most potent hench-woman but without doubt the most intense person in the whole British Labor Party.-- Last week Miss Wilkinson, just landed in Manhattan, set out to spend her British Parliamentary recess on a whirlwind U. S. lecture tour. First object of her wrath: apple selling.

"Don't you know that your breadlines are the worst kind of dole--except apple selling!" she shot at reporters. When they mumbled a weak defense "Wee Ellen" interrupted:

"How unspeakably cruel! I don't understand it at all. If I hadn't seen with my own eyes these poor wretched people standing on street corners with a sign-- a label mind you--reading 'UNEMPLOYED,' I would not have believed it of this wonderful country. . . . There is comfort in the thought that others are suffering with you--even in a breadline. But there is not one grain of solace in selling apples!"

One afternoon of her U. S. tour Miss Wilkinson will devote, she said, to shopping. Queried newshawks: "What will you buy?" Replied Wee Ellen, defiant, candid: "Silk undies! I hear yours are wonderful."

In Barmouth, Wales, last week the British dole was justified by David Lloyd George thus: "We would have had a revolution long ago but for the dole."

On second thought the careful Welshman, who always leaves himself an "out," added that "even better than the dole" would have been a system of employing the unemployed on public works. "I be-lieve," he proclaimed, "that there is no justice in allowing even one man to starve through no fault of his own while there is a crust to spare in the nation's cupboard."

Old Mother MacDonald. Rather more anxious than Old Mother Hubbard was James Ramsay MacDonald last week, for the dogs of unemployment were baying louder than usual, and in the nation's cupboard were few bones.

Coal Dogs. In a last, great effort to force the coal mine owners of South Wales to accept certain advisory provisions of the Coal Mines Act as though they were binding in law, the Prime Minister declared in a speech at Seaham Harbor:

"I want to appeal to the whole nation! . . . What would the public have said if it had been the miners who declined to recognize an act of Parliament? . . . The owners by their conduct in ignoring the act have been knocked completely out of court."

Retorted the mine owners: "The Prime Minister's speech contains statements that would be astonishing indeed were not allowance made for the fact that Mr. MacDonald sits in Parliament for a mining constituency."

Thus squelched. Old Mother MacDonald made feeble rebuttal: "I intended to be helpful."

Before the week closed the 150,000 striking South Wales miners were joined by 2.000 more.

Cotton Dogs. Bitterest last week were the plaints of Lancashire cotton weavers. Five thousand had already struck against the employers' new system of assigning one weaver to tend eight looms instead of four, while raising the basic wage from $9.36 weekly to only $11.18.

"The idea of one man or woman running eight Lancashire looms efficiently is preposterous," declared the weaver's union. "The work is hard at only four looms. To double it would mean unbearable physical strain. . . . The offer of the employers is a fraud. The individual weaver would stand to profit about 20 per cent on his present wage, while he would be turning out almost 100 per cent more work."

To this the employers' association retorted last week that only by such "increased efficiency" can the British cotton industry cut prices sufficiently to secure enough new business to keep going at all. "Weavers fearful of being put out of work under the new system," declared the association, "will find themselves out of work anyway if the old system is continued, as more and more mills will be forced to shut down."

To drive home this point, the association shut down 70 mills last week, "locking out" 20,000 weavers.

*Most potent is Miss Margaret ("Saint Maggie") Bondfield, His Majesty's first female Minister of Labor.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.