Evening Post. MONDAY, MAY 4, 1925. OUTCRY AGAINST SILK DUTY

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 102, 4 May 1925, Page 4

Evening Post. MONDAY, MAY 4, 1925. OUTCRY AGAINST SILK DUTY

Referring to Mr. Churchill's Budget, Sir William Joynson Hicks, the Home Secretary, said that "the Conservative Party looked before it leaped, but when it leaped it made a mighty splash." With its suggestions of commercial plunging rather than statesmanship the figure is not a particularly happy one for the service of the defence, and it is already obvious that a little more looking and a little less splashing would have considerably strengthened the Conservative position. The biggest item of all—the return to the gold standard—had evidently been well | thought out, and though the general chorus of praise with which it has been welcomed will doubtless ! be varied by some sharp criticism, we may be sure that there will be no surprises in store for the Government. The objections taken : will be only such as Mr. Churchill I and his experts have already considered and overruled. The great social insurance scheme has perhaps made a bigger splash still, knvy and the fear of unpopularity have probably had much to do with its quiet reception by the opponents of the Government. Some lines of attack have been already disclosed, and more will ,in due course be opened up. But it is not likely that the objections of the Opposition", whether sound or unsound, will reveal anything that was not carefully weighed before the adoption of the scheme and perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly, but certainly deliberately, found |. wanting. ; Yet in a field which was certain to.be more jealously scrutinised j than any other, and in which Mr. Churchill of all, men should have been»fully alive to the need for walking warily, his usual caution seems to have deserted him. with the result that the Free Traders have caught him tripping badly. The attack which was made upon the Budget by Mr. Snowden, the leading financier of the Labour Party, was too sweeping, too ungenerous, ' too obviously open to discount as inspired by the disappointment of a rival practitioner, to carry very'much weight. The immense addition which at a time of financial stagnation and persistent unemployment the Budget is making to the burdens of the taxpayer was reasonably open to severe criticism. But to denounce it as "the worst rich man's Budget ever introduced" was an extravagance admirably calculated to create a reaction in Mr. Churchill's favour. In his speech at the Albert Hall Mr. -Churchill was able to retort upon Mr. Snowden's charge with telling effect: Let him and his Socialist friends say that at the New Year to the 200,000 widows who would then be drawine Pensions; also to the six millions who were assured of pensions; or say to the old age pensioners: "Comrades we meant, to give you these on a non-con-tributory basis, but we had to go and - help our Russian friends first. 11 ' _But without falling into Mr fcmowden's blunder of a general and undiscriminating attack, Sir Alfred Mond for the Liberals and Miss Ellen Wilkinson for the Labour Party raised a specific' point with which Mr. Churchill was not able to deal in the samo triumphant fashion. There was an exculpatory and troubled vote in his reference to the subject at the Albert Hall, and au official statement has since been issued which forecasts a substantial back-down, if not a complete withdrawal. "The silk' duty," said Sir Alfred Mond m the Budget debate on Wednesday, "would injure one of the most important textile industries." Lord Oxford describes the same duty as "a tax upon the raw material of a great industry." But it is from the standpoint of the consumer that the strongest feeling has been 'aroused. In the House of Commons Colonel Guinness defended the duty on the ground that, un-' like wool and cotton, silk is a luxury. His additional contention that for ihe tops and the feet of their stockings ladies prefer cotton to silk amused the House, but was not otherwise helpful to the Government. Miss Wilkinson drove the point home by illustrations of the effect that the duty would have on the budgets of the poor. She declared that artificial silk has taken the i place among working women of wool, which they cannot afford to buy; that foi- a. woman who knits j her own jumpers from silk tit 3s a pound a duty of Us would involve [a 100 per «cat, iau'sase } aui tiwt j

a 6d tax on stockings, while negligible in its incidence on women i i who can afford to pay two guineas . f Pair» would add 33 1-3 per cent. . to the cost of the artificial silk ■ stockings at Is 6fd, which is all that a poor woman could afford Concrete facts like these are the Kmd of argument that carries weight with a democracy. The result is an outcry against the "Silk btockmg Budget" all over the country and the issue of a statement by the Treasury "to the effect taat the criticisms will be considered and the export trade will be consulted." An endeavour will now ! be made "to carry out Mr Churchill's real intentions," but it is clear that even when he spoke on the previous day at the Albert ■Hall, he did not know what they were. J