STUDY IN CONTRACTS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 87, 12 April 1923, Page 7

STUDY IN CONTRACTS

SPEECH BY A MINER AND POET (FROM OUR OWS COSRESPOSMST.) LONDON, 20th February. 'A Scotch poet in the House of Commons did more in ten minutes to advance the sympathetic consideration by Parliament of Labour's social course than, as one writer puta it, ''all the speeches and savagery of the wild men have accomplished since Labour became His Majesty's Opposition." He was Mr. J. Welsh, the Lanarkshire miner, who, "a year or two ago, created a minor sensation in literary circles by his book,, '!The Underworld." That special sitting of the House provided a strange contrast in methods. At one moment Mr. David Kirkwood, the Clydesider, was gesticulating and shouting in his excitement about the additional £15,000 per year which is to be paid to the Duke of York after hi» marriage. At another moment the mirier x poet was t-ell-ing a moving story of contrasts. There was little argument in the speech, but [ the Hou«e> eat silent as -under a spell. Then, when he sat down. Labour men, Liberals and Conservatives Rave him a cheer which few, back-benchers receive.

Members on his side of the House, he said, were sometimes told that they had their heads in the clouds, and ware idealists. The fact of the matter was that they were both materialists and idealists. They wanted better material conditions, so that the ideals of the people might be let loose. Referring to his attendance at the opening of Parliament by their Majesties, Mi. Welsh saii that he had.'never expected to see so much beauty, colour, and wealth gathered together in such a small space. As he looked at it he felt that surely he had wandered into an Aladdin's cave, with all, the wealth and. beauty ranged on either side. (A Labour-Sooialist member: "Beauty?") There was real beauty. (A Labour-Socialist member: "Painted.") It might have been painted, but there was nothing more beautiful that came from the hand of God than a well-formed woman or man. That experience took his mind back to the first impression he had of life. He saw one of a row of 400 or 500 miners' houses, all of them single apartments. There were two holes in the wall for beds. In one, of the beds lay an injured parent brought home from the mine, writhinc and Rroaninj; in aeony. and in the other bed lay a. dead child. At night-time, (during the period of waiting between death and burial, the dead child had to be lifted out and placed on. a table to allow others to use the bed. That was due, not to the parents being thriftless, drunken people, but because economic circumstances were such that they created conditions in which it was, impossible to live.' There were stili cases of that kind to-day. Could there be wonder that men who had experienced these things became intolerari of pre-eent-day conditions, and lost their tempers in their desire for better things? They had discovered that it was not true that God hnd ordained that they should be content in the class in which they were born. The world was teeming with wealth, and the only problem they had to solve was its more equitable distribution. Education had given them a broader vision of lite and dreams, and the country was bound to jive them something that would allow these dreams to be realised.