THE "LONDON TIMES" FAINTS. "People" not "Persons."

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 291, 27 January 1906, Page 6

THE "LONDON TIMES" FAINTS. "People" not "Persons."

THE London "Times" has received a tremendous shock to its system through the results of the British elections. The extremely respectable print — threepence on day of publication, and three-ha'pence the day after — has been so long m the habit of regarding the ruling classes, and the money and real estate of the ruling classes, as the only things worth worrying about, that it voices its alarm, and fears that Labour questions will receive sympathetic attention from Parliament to the detriment of shareholders in railway companies and industrial concerns.

If there has been published anywhere a sentence showing a clearer leaning towards "class," we would like to be favoured with the clipping. The dear old "Times" evidently fears that Labour I—which1 — which means the great mass of the people — may get a little of the consideration that up to now has been reserved for shareholders, etc. That the "Times" is alarmed because the people of Britain are likely to get a chance is one of the most cheering bits of news it is possible to read, although it isn't at all clear why the state of funk should be cabled all over the world, unless the cable man sympathises with the working man, whom the "Times" fears is about to get a "show." • ♦ • It is perfectly clear, from the dread with which the great paper views the possibility of Parliament legislating for the masses instead of the classes, that up to now Parliament has been in the habit of ignor-, ing the worker, and pandering to the man who would have no wealth were it not for that same worker. It is "disquieting" to the Conservatives that a Government should legislate for the people, and not for the persons. • • • There can be no question that the beneficent legislation introduced by colonial Governments, which has aimed at the suppression of the mere boodler and the killing of serfdom, has B*ad an effect on the thinking apparatus of the more democratically inclined statesmen of the Old Country, and the fact that Labour men, who have won high honours m the politics of the Homeland, are something more than mere politicians, and will wield enormous influence in great questions. • • • And suppose those poor, long-suf-fering shareholders of the enormously wealthy railway companies of Britain, and the holders of stock in the great business concerns, don't get ao big a dividend in the future, and the working-man gets enough to keep his family from starving, and fewer hours of toil. Do you think that the "Times,"or any other paper or any fat-pursed person, has any just cause to blame a Government that may be a little humane ? • • • The average colonial has happily no conception of the- absolute disre^ gard of the "classesi" for the "masses" in the Old Country, and the "classes" have always vigorously opposed any proposed measure that had for its, object the softening down of the hard lot of the workers to the small inconvenience of the ruling classes. So sacred have the rights of property, and the very few owners of it, been regarded, that the State owns no land itself. • • • If the State desires to ameliorate the conditions of the people by getting them on the land at Home, it will first have to convince the hereditary landowners, who are also the hereditary rulers with right of veto, that the worker is an object for consideration. It will be difficult to convince their lordships. While they are being convinced, the poor, full-pocketed shareholders before^ mentioned are not getting quite so much income, because the rulers haven't time for them alone. Truly, an awful prospect for the poor shareholders. *• • » The crime the Government are suspected of being about to commit m giving "sympathetic consideration" to labour questions, is a crime that, if committed, should give them a fifty years' tenure of office and golden harps and crowns on retirement. If the British working man can be made to feel that in his own country he is regarded as a person worth paying and worth keeping, and if he can be got to feel that he is something better than a door-mat

for the ruling classes to wipe their boots on, and the Government can--see tEat it will not destroy "the moral, fibre" of the worker by filling his stomacE, the country ought to» bleas the day when Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman became Prime Minister.