Labour under Liberal Rule. (1911)

Book Review from the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

What the Workers owe the “Great Liberal Party”.

L. T. Hobhouse, M. A., Professor of Sociology at London University, is the author of a book on Liberalism (Home University Library). The book coming from a well-known supporter of the Liberal party, many may turn to it expecting to find a serious examination of the aims and methods of Liberalism. The capitalist Press has been profuse in its praise, but those who seek a knowledge of Liberalism will get little direct information therein.

Our Liberal apologist indulges in a long academic dissertation upon Manchesterism, Benthanism, abstract ideas, and absolute rights, and throughout the book there runs the hypocritical plea that Liberalism, from its inception to the present day, has carefully guarded

THE INTERESTS OF THE WORKER

and made his lot better and brighter.

The real position and interest of rising Liberalism is not dwelt upon, but an understanding of it is essential.

The Liberal Party represented the developing manufacturing class, the merchants, etc., who found the progress of their order hindered by the old forms that had survived from feudal days. The landowners, the nobility and the clergy had placed various restrictions upon the trading class—the bourgeoisie. It had imposed taxes and tariffs, and made the trader and the manufacturer bear the greatest part of the expenses of carrying on the various wars.

The Liberal Party arose an a protest against the prevailing semi-feudal institutions. Representing, as it did, the manufacturers and middlemen, it objected to any interference by the landowning legislature. In its battle against them it was aided by the workers, but when the Liberals had won their battle they spurned and betrayed those whom they had beguiled into helping them.

Laissez-faire, the gospel of the Liberals, was a policy conceived in the direct interest of the industrial capitalists.

It believed that no limits or restraints should be put by the State to the rate at which they could pile up wealth and

MURDER THE TOILERS

and their children in the process. Our author says:

“The condition produced by the new factory system shocked the public conscience and as early as 1802 we find the first of a long series of laws out of which has grown an industrial code that year by year follows the life of the operative in his relations with his employer into more minute detail. The first stages of this movement were contemplated with doubt and distrust by many men of Liberal sympathies.”

Thus cowardly and cunningly does the Professor of Liberalism hide the savage ferocity with which the members of the “Great Liberal Party” opposed all attempts to improve the conditions of the Capitalism’s insatiable greed.

The Legislature had enclosed the land, driven the labourer from the soil, and confiscated his cottage. The artizan found his simple tools and plant superseded by the giant machinery and factories that had arisen all around him. These propertyless workers were forced to seek work from the Liberal manufacturers, who took a fearful advantage of their outcast condition. These manufacturers piled up huge wealth by the unlimited toil of men, women, girls and tiny children. They used every subterfuge to prevent any legal limits being placed to the crushing slavery even of tender little ones. In the forefront of this great army of industrial murderers stood the champions of Liberalism, John Bright, Richard Cobden, C. P. Villiers, W. R. Greg, and W. J. Fox. Bright and Cobden are the revered pioneers of the present Liberal party, and the book under review is lavish in its praise of these

PIOUS PURITAN HUMBUGS.

Hobhouse says to the Liberals: “Rather we want to learn our supreme lesson from the school of Cobden.” The history of the attitude of the Liberal party toward the awful sufferings of the working class in those early days has more than a passing interest for workmen. Their record in opposing factory legislation, trade unionism, manhood suffrage, etc., is pregnant with significance. For insight into their actions then, helps to show the true nature of their motives and methods in the present.

We have the following admission grudgingly made (p. 88):

“It is true that in the beginning factory legislation enjoyed a large measure of Conservative support. It was at that stage in accordance with the best traditions of paternal rule, and it commended itself to the religious convictions of men of whom Lord Shaftesbury was the typical example. It is true also that it was bitterly opposed by Cobden and Bright.”

But our Liberal apologist seeks to water down their opposition and lead the workers to believe that it was a very transient one.

No more damning indictment of Liberalism could be penned than a bare description of the awful condition of the workers in the days when the Liberal manufacturers were uncontrolled by factory laws. The toilers’ Inferno has been truly described in the pages of Engels’s “Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.”

Richard Cobden owned print and cotton works at Manchester (R. Cobden & Co.), and his life, written by that Czar of India, Morley, is replete with

DETAILS OF HIS VILLAINY.

Speaking of Cobden’s opposition to the legal shortening of the working day, Morley says, p. 68,

“What he maintained was that all restrictions, however desirable, ought to be secured by the resolute demands and independent, action of the workmen themselves, and not by the intervention of the law.”

But when the workmen did try to obtain shorter hours and better conditions, what did Cobden say ? Listen to Morley (p. 68) :

“Singularly enough, while he thus trusted to the independence of the workmen, he objected to workmen’s combinations. ‘Depend upon it,’ he wrote to his brother, F. W. Cobden (Aug. 16, 1842), ‘nothing can be got from fraternising with trade unions. They are founded upon principles of brutal tyranny and monopoly. 1 would rather live under a Dey of Algiers than a Trades Committee.’”

Cobdcn’s co-worker, John Bright, was a Rochdale cotton manufacturer (John Bright and Bros.) He was highly esteemed by the Liberal party, was a member of their Cabinet, and acted as their champion against the struggling wage-slaves. His biographer, C. A. Vince, the leader of the Birmingham Liberals, says of one occasion (“John Bright,” p. 19) :

“In August 1842, a general strike or, as it was then called, a turn out, was organised in Lancashire. Bright issued a long address

TO THE WORKINGMEN OF ROCHDALE,

urging them to return to their employment. ‘Neither act of Parliament nor act of a multitude can keep up wages. You know that trade has long been bad, and with a bad trade wages cannot rise. If you are resolved to compel an advance of wages you cannot compel manufacturers to give you employment. Such attempts must always fail in the end and yours must fail.’ ”

This was always the cry : “Bad trade !” Yet they were running their mills day and night, and gaining huge profits. These were truly the days when “Capital celebrated its bacchanalia.”

Yet present-day Liberals delight to talk of the “Hungry Forties,” and identify the landlords alone with the horrible sufferings of the people. Vince, speaking of Fielden’s (M.P. for Oldham) Bill to limit the labour of women and young persons to 60 hours per week, says :

“This Bill was opposed by Peel, Cobden, Bright, and Mr. Villiers, and rejected by a small minority. . . . Bright had already successfully resisted a proposal made by Lord Ashley (afterwards Lord Shaftesbury) two years earlier. His speech on that occasion had of necessity been acrimonious.”

The method of the Liberals was to claim that the condition of their workpeople was better

THAN THAT OF THE TORY LANDOWNERS’ TENANTS.

But it wasn’t true, as was easily proved.

Bright urged against the Bill of 1844 for limiting the labour of children under 13, that it would mean shortening the hours of adults too. And Vince says (p. 33)

“That this was the intention, as well as the effect, of the Bill, was proved by the refusal to accept an amendment of Bright’s to allow the women to work in relays”

He declared that if the Bill passed they would have to close their factories ! This was the cunning way of these past masters in trickery. They opposed the reduction of children’s hours by talking of its effect upon men’s hours. ” ‘Most of our evils,’ says Bright” (quoted Vince, p. 34) “‘arise from legislative interference,’ and this maxim, eminently characteristic of the Manchester school, continued to approve itself to him to the remainder of his career. . . . The same principle led Bright a few years later to throw cold water over Sir G. Forster’s Bill to strengthen the Truck Act. ‘Under the present condition of labour in the country there can be no permanent, continuous and irritating tyranny such as has been described by the promoters of the Bill, which the working classes are not perfectly well able to correct without coming to the House of Commons for a new measure !’ Finally, in 1855 he successfully resisted an attempt of J. M. Cobbett to improve the Factory Act.”

Thus did the Free Trade leader look after his pocket interests. He was not above raising the good old cry: “I’ll take my capital out of the country !” On page 36 Vince quotes Bright as saying :

“If I thought the elements of discord were again to be stirred up, I should myself be glad to leave the country and to

GO SOMEWHERE ELSE

where Capital and Labour are allowed to fight out their battles on their own ground without legislative interference.”

Vince further tells us that Bright “was also an enemy of any possible scheme of national education.”

The history of the fight for the Factory Acts is a record of the war of Liberal manufacturers against the slightest reduction of their enormous profits. The children—boys and girls—were semi-starved, flogged and brutally ill-treated for the slightest slackening of their terrible toil. Lord Shaftesbury, the Dorsetshire landlord, after long and bitter straggles, succeeded in getting a Bill passed during the Liberal administration of 1833. Bat it was such a hollow fraud that the battle continued for over 20 years longer. The Act of 1833 and other Acts were passed as a result of protracted warfare, but it was many years before the Government would vote a halfpenny to provide inspectors to see them carried out. The Acts long remained a dead letter. Even afterwards Leonard Hornerer and Alexander Redgrave—the best factory inspectors the workers ever knew—bitterly complained that when they brought cases into court they found the magistrate was the

LOCAL MANUFACTURER HIMSELF

and, of course the workers lost.

The Act of 1834 permitted 8 hours to be worked by children under 13, and young persons between 13 and 18 were allowed 12 hours actual work per day, but these regulations were not to come fully into operation till 1836. The Liberal Government with a majority of 307 refused Shaftesbury’s amendment to improve the Bill.

Shaftesbury introduced his 10 hours Bill (for young persons) in 1838, and the Parliament with a Liberal majority of 51 threw out the measure. Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister, and “The Times” (June 25, 1838) said :

“The public attention cannot be too forcibly directed to the scandalous conduct of the Melbourne Ministry with regard to the factory question. It was not that Lord Shaftesbury had been mocked and deluded by the broken promises and callous feeling of a mercenary and jobbing clique, but that laws of our making have been left unenforced and the unfortunate children unprotected, and that all the representations and remonstrances made to the members upon the subject had been treated with total neglect and contempt.”

It shows the unspeakable hypocrisy of the Liberals when we recall that it was this same Parliament with the largest majority of any in the 19th. century, that allowed children under 13 for years after to be employed for

72 HOURS PER WEEK

while in the “Emancipation” Act it limited the hours which adult Negro slaves could be worked by the planters to 45 per week !

The 10 Hours Bill came into force (partly) on May 1st., 1848, but the manufacturers rose up in a body against it. Karl Marx well says (“Capital,” chap. 8):

“The working class was everywhere placed under a ban, under a virtual law of suspects. The manufacturers had no need any longer to restrain themselves. They broke out in open revolt, not only against the 10 Hour Bill, but against the whole of the legislation that since 1833 had aimed at restricting in some measure the “free” exploitation of labour-power.

“It was a pro-slavery rebellion in miniature, carried on for over two years with a cynical recklessness and terrorist energy all the cheaper because the rebel capitalist risked nothing but the skin of his ‘hands.'”

The methods they pursued are beyond description, but they can be read in the factory inspectors’ reports for the years that followed. Sufficient to say here that they practically nullified the Acts. How well they carried out the nefarious work may be gathered from the speech of Mr. Ferrand in the House of Commons (27th. April, 1863):

“The cotton trade has existed for 90 years. It has existed for three generations of the English race, and I believe I may safely say that during that period it has

DESTROYED NINE GENERATIONS

of English operatives.”

In urging the claim of the Liberal party to working class support, Mr. Hobhouse says (p. 84): “Trade Unions gained the first step in emancipation through the action of Place and the Radicals in 1824.”

The fact is that the workers found the chief opponents of trade union combination in the Liberal-Radical party. The ferocity with which the workers were treated by the Liberal Government reminds one of the worst incidents of Russian rule. In 1824 Francis Place, the tailor, and Joseph Hume “smuggled” a law through Parliament annulling the Anti-Combination laws. But directly the workers sought to actually combine for defensive purposes the law pounced upon them. The presence of more than two workmen together laid them open to the charge of conspiracy, and in the reign of the strongest Liberal Government (1834) six Dorchester labourers were sentenced to seven years transportation for the “crime of combination.”

And again, under Liberal rule in 1838, five Glasgow spinners were condemned for the same term under the charge of illegal combination and conspiracy. Lord Melbourne and “the historian,” Lord Macaulay, were members of the Cabinet, and they did all they could to support those who were coining millions out of the blood and tears of women and children. They acted as in a panic and appointed numerous commissions to enquire into methods to

COMBAT AND SMASH WORKMEN’S UNIONS.

Bright, Cobden and Gladstone in their day were prominent enemies of working-class combination.

After long years of strife and suffering the workers got the Liberals to pass the Trade Union Act of 1871. This was proclaimed the “charter of the trade unions.” But it was so futile that the masters and the Courts still carried on a bitter war against the workmen. The following year (1872) some London firemen engaged at gasworks were charged with striking and sentenced to 12 months imprisonment.

Of Gladstone Mr. Hobhouse says (p. 103):

“He was not sympathetically disposed towards the ‘New Unionism’ and semi-Socialistic ideas that came at the end of the ’80’s, which, in fact, constituted a powerful cross-current to the work he had in hand.”

Right up to the present day the same class legislation in trade union matters continues. The Liberals claim to have legalised peaceful picketing by their Act of 1906, but it lies with the carefully selected judge to interpret this clause.

Hundreds of convictions have occurred since the Act was passed. The London polishers, the Newport dockers, the Hull seamen, the Belfast dockers and the agricultural labourers of Norwich—all have been fined or imprisoned for picketing amongst possible strike-breakers.

The Liberals, despite our author’s claim, in fact acted just as fraudulently

OVER THE SUFFRAGE

as on other issues. No mention is made of the long, terrible struggle on the part of the workers for a share in the franchise under Liberal Governments. Nothing is said about the ferocious fight the Liberals waged against the Chartist pioneers for simply advocating Manhood Suffrage. The trickery and treachery of the Liberals over “Household Franchise” in 1867 is completely passed over.

“The most striking victory of Liberal ideas,” Mr. Hobhouse tells us, “is the establishment of Free Trade,” and he points out that “the battle is one Liberalism is prepared to fight over again.” This shows the essentially capitalist character of Liberalism, for Free Trade is the manufacturer’s panacea, though it was obtained by deluding the working class and winning them away from Chartism by telling them, in the words of Cobden (Morley) : “Is it not clear that if capitalists were free to exchange their productions for the corn of other countries, the workmen would have abundant employment at enhanced wages ?”

Listen to Cobden’s appeal to his capitalist brethren (Morley’s “Cobden,” p. 74) : “Let us,” he said, “invest part of our property to save the rest from confiscation.” And he further says:

“At one meeting in Manchester one man after another called out’in quick succession, ‘A thousand pounds for me,’ ‘A thousand pounds for me,’ until 60 thousand pounds had been subscribed on the spot. They were spending £10,000 per week. . . . ‘ I am afraid,’ said Cobden, ‘that most of us entered upon the struggle with the belief that we had some

DISTINCT CLASS INTEREST IN THE QUESTION.’ ”

Vince, in his life of Bright, says (p. 28): “The battle of the corn laws was a contention between the middle class and the aristocracy.” How hypocritical the agitation for repealing the Corn Laws was we may gather from the report of the Inspector of factories for 1849, where we learn that wherever the circumstances permitted the manufacturers reduced wages 25 per cent. upon the introduction of Free Trade.

Nearly 65 years have passed since Free Trade was introduced. Mr. Hobhouse tells us that “the 19th. century might be called the Age of Liberalism” (p. 214); and the National Liberal Federation, speaking of the period since 1832, says (“The Work of Liberalism since the Great Reform Act”): “It has been in the main an era of Liberal administration. The Liberal Party has had practically unfettered control of the interests of the country in foreign, colonial, and financial policy.” Yet after all this what is the position of the worker ?

After detailing the high claims made by the pioneers of Free Trade our author says :

“The actual course of events has in large measure disappointed these hopes….. the prospect of a complete and life-long independence for the average workman upon the lines of individual competition, even when supplemented and guarded by the collective bargaining of the Trade Union, appears exceedingly remote. The increase in wages does not appear by any means proportionate to the general growth of wealth.

“There appears no likelihood that the average manual worker will attain to the goal of that full independence covering all the risks of life for self and family, which can alone render the competitive system really adequate to the demands of a civilised conscience. The careful researches of Mr. Booth in London and Mr. Rowntree in York, and of others in country districts, have revealed that a considerable percentage are actually unable to earn a sum of money representing the full cost of the barest physical necessities for an average family.”

Of industrial competition he says : 

“That system holds out no hope of an improvement which shall bring the means of such a healthy and independent existence as should be the birthright of every citizen of a free State, within the grasp of the mass of the people of the United Kingdom.” 

But what is the remedy ? Surely not more Liberalism and Free Trade ! Despite the above admissions of the

FAILURE OF CAPITALISM,

Mr. Hobhouse devotes many pages to attacking what he calls “Mechanical Socialism” and defending the present system of society. He defends it, though his leader, Mr. Lloyd George, told us (Swansea, Oct. 1, 1908): “No one can really honestly defend the present system.” Mr. Hobhouse ignores the great combinations and trusts the workers have to fight by making this statement (p. 99):

“It is possible under a competitive system for rivals to come to an agreement. The more powerful may coerce the weaker, or a number of equals may agree to work together. Thus competition may defeat itself and industry may be marshalled into trusts and other combinations for the private advantage against the public interest. Such combinations, predicted by Karl Marx as the appointed means of dissolving the competitive system,

HAVE BEEN KEPT AT BAY

in this country by Free Trade.”

This is a fitting statement for a capitalist Professor of Sociology to make. Anyone, without propertied interests to defend at all hazards, can see all around him the existence of great combinations and trusts. From the Imperial Tobacco Company to the gigantic Coats Cotton Trust; from the Salt Union Ltd. to the United Alkali Manufacturers, Ltd., they thrive and flourish even under your Free Trade.

One of the leading members of the Free Trade Union (Mr. J. A. Hobson) points out in his work “The Evolution of Modern Capitalism,” that Great Britain is honeycombed with trusts and combines ; and recently the great Birmingham Free Trader, Mr. Arthur Chamberlain, told us that rings and combines were necessary to the capitalist and inevitable even under beloved Free Trade !

A. Cleveland

Editorial: The Food of the People. (1906)

Editorial from the July 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Food of the People.

Let the people eat grass, said the representative of the governing class in reply to the clamour of a hungry populace in the days that preceded the French Revolution; and let the people eat the poisonous products of Packingtown say that portion of the capitalist governing class of to-day engaged in drawing their profits from that nauseating undertaking. And from the point of view of capitalism, why not ? If diseased flesh, decaying offal, and excrementitious matter can be dosed with essences to change its taste and chemicals to stay the process of decomposition and after passing through embalming machinery appear upon epicurean tables as ham, chicken and tongue, or other delectable comestible, and upon the scanty board of the hungry as corned beef or what not; and if this can be done without inducing nausea in those who eat and without coroners’ verdicts of death from ptomaine or other poisoning being too closely associated with the “food”-stuff; and if, above all, it can be done at a good fat profit—why not, indeed ? Why cant of the “moral” aspect and blether of the anti-Social rapacity of the vendors of such filth? Are they more anti-social or immoral than the God-fearing capitalist who locks out his men for refusing to submit to his terms, or shuts down his factory or mine when, through the arduous toil of his “hands” a surplus has accumulated which he can then proceed to work off at enhanced prices ? He doesn’t care greatly whether the men thrown out of employment starve to death. It isn’t expected of him. He is quite within his right in the action he takes. “The law allows it, the court awards it.” If the unemployed refuse to die quietly, he is quite justified in shooting them into eternity. He is even applauded for his “strong” action in protecting property and maintaining order. The embalmer of “beef,” or filth, as the case may be—or rather the capitalist director of that “industry”—is just as indifferent to the fate of the purchaser as his kind order-loving fellow capitalist is to the fate of his discharged hand. Yet a mighty roar of indignation goes up when we get a sensational disclosure of the “food” embalmers’ method and the name of Armour is anathema; while the only roar that goes up at the Featherstone disclosures is one of congratulation and the name of Masham is honoured in the land.

Capitalist Cant.

The only apparent reason for this divergence of opinion is that the probable purchasers of “canned delicacies” are to some extent members of the capitalist class themselves and their esprit de corps is not equal to the strain of a possible painful death even in the noble cause of unlimited profits. It is fairly certain that if it had been merely a question of the revolting conditions under which the workers of Packingtown were forced to exist, the stir would have been barely sufficient to perceptibly disturb the social placidity. That at any rate has been the invariable effect of other disclosures of working-class hardships and unhappiness in the process of production. They can be poisoned by lead or pork, killed by starvation or bullets, cremated, suffocated or drowned in mines, worked under revolting conditions in Chicago or Cradley or Whitechapel or the Potteries. That is of no great consequence. But let the suspicion get abroad that the capitalist goes in danger of his life from poisoned food out of Chicago or of disease-infested clothing out of Whitechapel and the Social “conscience” is immediately aroused, the “soul” of Society is stirred to its deepest depths, and we are in the throes of a great popular agitation assiduously fostered by Press and Pulpit, for something to be done to end such immoral rapacity.

The Chicago disclosures simply go to show that adulteration is still regarded by the capitalist class as it was by that “Christ-like” political pet of Nonconformity and Liberalism, John Bright, as a legitimate form of competition. The keener the competition the greater the adulteration. And when competition finds its inevitable end in monopoly what more natural than that the methods which have accompanied its evolution should remain to assist in the creation of greater profits. “Morality” has nothing to do with it. The question of profits is the only thing that matters to capitalism—that and a tender regard for longevity. While commodities are produced for profit there will always he adulteration and unemployment and sweating and misery and poverty. They all spring from the same source in the private ownership of the means of living and although it may occur that some of the more revolting and dangerous of that private ownership may be suppressed, they cannot be disposed of until the cause bas been attacked and removed. Until then the people are at the mercy of the capitalist profit-monger in the matter of their food-stuffs as in all else.

The Camera Cannot Lie (1943)

From the May 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his "Falsehood in War-time” (Allen & Unwin, 1928) Arthur Ponsonby (now Lord Ponsonby) published an interesting collection of the irresponsible or deliberately fabricated stories used on both sides in the last war as an aid to war-propaganda. On the title page he quotes a saying, "When war is declared. Truth is the first casualty.” Wars do not change in that respect, and John Bright's statement of a century ago is still true: "You will find wars are supported by a class of argument which, after the war is over, the people find were arguments they should never have listened to.”

A small illustration of the ease with which news can be coloured occurred recently in the Sunday Pictorial (March 28, 1943). On the front page is a picture of a woman tearfully waving farewell to someone in a departing train at a railway station. The description provided by the Pictorial is that she is "a young Parisienne wife” at a Paris station. ". . . for her the tearful agony of farewell is made all the more bitter by the fact that her man has been brutally torn from her side by Hitler's order to make munitions for use against her friends.”

A very plausible story, but the picture (suitably altered from the original) had already appeared in Picture Post, May 23, 1942. Only there the lady was waving farewell to her husband, an English soldier, who had gone off for his training. So the English wife, who started weeping on Paddington station in May, 1942, was still weeping 11 months later, but now miraculously transformed into a Frenchwoman, in Paris, watching a train, (with "Third Class” blacked out) on its way to Germany. Large numbers of readers of Picture Post (like The Socialist Standard reader who informed us) had spotted the fake, and Picture Post (April 10) drew attention to it. The Sunday Pictorial explained that they had taken the picture from a Swiss newspaper.

The incident itself is unimportant, but it should serve to remind readers of the capitalist Press and listeners to the wireless of the possibility of news being, distorted and falsified. Though it should also be remembered that the really harmful distortions are not usually crude fakes like this photo. What is much more serious is the permanent (and often unconscious) twist given to information by colouring, selecting and suppressing, in line with the class interests of those who control the sources of information.

P. S.

John Bright on Adulteration. (1912)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

J. B. (Manchester) asks where John Bright made his famous defence of adulteration. We quote the following extract from a speech delivered in his capacity of President of the Board of Trade, on March 5, 1861, in replying to a demand that food inspectors should be appointed.

  “My own impression with regard to this adulteration is, that it arises from the very great and inevitable competition in business. . . .  It is quite impossible that you should have the oversight of the country by inspectors, and that you can organise a body of persons to go into shops to buy sugar, pickles, cayenne, to get them analysed and then to raise complaints against the shopkeepers and bring them before the magistrates. If men in their private business were to be tracked by Government officers every hour of the day, life would not he worth having, and I should recommend them to go to another country, where they would not be subject to such annoyance.''

A Proud Distinction (1904)

From the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Adulteration is a legitimate form of competition.”—John Bright.

The proud distinction of having beaten all previous records in the fine art of butter adulteration probably belongs to a Burnley grocer, who succeeded in selling as butter a composition in which there was only 1 per cent of the genuine products of milk. All the rest was "foreign fat.” There were previous convictions, and he has had to pay heavily for his final proficiency. A contemporary referring to the case cannot help asking “Why the 1 per cent.?” Is it chemistry or is it conscience which demands it ? —“The Co-operative News.”