THE UNEMPLOYED BILL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9081, 4 May 1908, Page 3

THE UNEMPLOYED BILL.

SOME HARD HITTING

In his speech on the Unemployed Bill, by which every man out of work was'to have work provided for him, or in default, maintenance for himself and his dependants, Mr John Burns went in for some pretty hard hitting, says a London paper. No one on the Treasury Bench could have smashed the measures so ■eftectively, for Mr Bums has the subject ac his fingers' ends, and can reel off an over-whelming mass of figures to show that farm cobnies and other such measures to relieve unemployment have been a failure. "Personallv," said he, "I have brought every hour I could to the consideration of the subject. I have been the Darby dog running down the Parliamentary racecourse, with all sort? of members throwing sticks and stones . at me." Members of the Labour had complained of his tone. '""•"P*Fancy," he said, "revolutionaries talking about tone!" Then .'he proceeded to deal some deadly blows afcthe Socialism in the Bill. The SBfiesley Bay colony, he said, as an estate under a bailiff and eighteen farm hands, had resulted in a small profit or a small loss each year. As a colony employing 250 workmen, there had been a loss of £ 22,000 a year. "This Bill," he exclaimed, "would place, upon me the responsibility of dotting every country and every district of England with relief works of this kind." "It's not true," shouted Mr Will Crooks. Cries of "Order" came from the Government benches. "I repeat it," said tho Labour member, "even if' I am suspended. It's not true." A good boxer never looses his temper. "That, is a type of interruption," said Mr Burns, "which I had better ignore,." He went on to speak of the Laindon colony, in the neighbourhood of which he found a typical old labourer, between sixty and sixtyfive, digging in a field. "I asked him how long it would take him to dig an acre," said Mr Burns, "and said a fortnight. I crossed the line (to the colony), and found that it took sixty-seven men ten days in which to dig an acre and a half." At the Ockenden colony 790 had parsed through, yet there was no* a single recorded instance of a colonist gojßg back to the land. "Mr Speaker," said Mr Burns, in conclusion, "it is because you cannot make a good overcoat out of a bad pair of trousers that I ask the House to reject this Bill." The House took his advice. His speech widened still more the breach between him and the Labour party. Before he was"tho right honourable renegade," now the English language seems to be inadequate to describe his sins.^