FOREIGN MANUFACTURES (IMPORTATION).

HC Deb 17 March 1925 vol 181 cc2184-229

Sir GRATTAN DOYLE

I beg to move That, in the opinion of this House, it is undesirable to continue the unrestricted importation of Foreign manufactured goods made under sweated or other conditions which, being inconsistent with the principles of British trade unionism, are detrimental to the interests of British workmen, and that such imports are a contributory factor to unemployment in this country. When I drafted this Motion I thought, foolishly, that I had done something that has rarely been done before in the House of Commons. I thought I had succeeded in getting before the House a Motion that would receive the unqualified assent of every Member and every party in the House. Of course there was always a possibility that the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain W. Benn), with his eagle eye always scanning the horizon, might think some breach was being made in the sacred precincts of Cobdenism. There was also a possibility that the highbrows of the Liberal party generally, as jealous guardians and custodians of the ancient order of shibboleths, might not be inarticulate on this occasion. But I did rot expect, and I am grieved and disappointed that any opposition to this plain, simple, innocent Motion should come from hon. Gentlemen who claim in a special manner to represent the working men of this country. Indeed, when this Motion first appeared in print I was congratulated by many hon. Members on the opposite benches belonging to the Labour and Socialist party. I was complimented upon it, and I was told that I should receive a great measure of individual and collective support; in fact one Member of the Labour party, a man of very distinguished and high standing in the trade union movement, agreed to second my, Motion.

And then something happened. There was the crack of the party whip. It appears from the Press that several meetings have been held upstairs. There were alarms and excursions, discussions and conferences of a more or less amicable nature have taken place, and this Amendment was the product of long and laborious but not too harmonious consultations of the Labour party. T have seen a good many Amendments put forward it: this House by hon. Members on the Labour Benches, but seriously I do not know whether it is a compromise or a composite Measure, or whether it represents the difference between what we know are the outstanding features of that party. I do not think that the draughtsman of this Amendment is to be complimented. It is a hermaphrodite. It has no ancestry, and it does not represent a fair compromise between the two contending sections.

I have a very definite cause of complaint in so far as this Amendment purports to deal with the Resolution. My idea in framing this Resolution was to get a clear, definite expression of opinion from this House as to whether or not it is desirable to continue the unrestricted importation of sweated goods. I do not want this question to be complicated by going back to the eternal question of Free Trade and Tariff Reform. It is a simple proposal. But what does the Amendment say? It reads into the Resolution three things which are not in it, and to which I venture to say I am entitled to object. First of all, the Motion says nothing whatever about tariffs. I had not tariffs in my mind when I drew up my Resolution, and there is nothing of the kind in it. It says nothing about the Conservative party or any other party, or their relation to trade unions in this country. Perhaps I may be permitted to observe that the innuendo in the Amendment that the Conservative party take no interest in trade unions is not fair. Personally I am a very strong supporter and upholder of the principles of trade unionism and the concentration of trade union forces. Representing, as I do, a large industrial constituency in a great industrial area, and having been returned with a majority of between 11,000 and 12,000, I think I am entitled to say that if I had not received the overwhelming support of the trade unionists and working men in my division I should not be here to-day. Therefore, I think that statement in the Amendment is somewhat misleading and somewhat ungenerous.

The third reference to which I take exception in the Amendment is that to sweating at home. The Motion refers to unrestricted sweated goods coming in from abroad, but there is all the difference in the world between the evil of sweating at home and the unrestricted importation of goods made abroad by sweated labour. Whatever sweated goods may happen to the made in this country contrary to trade union principles, there are, in regard to them, adequate and ample safeguards. There are, firstly, the trade unions themselves, who are well able to look after their own business; and, secondly, there is the machinery which, as all hon. Members know, has been set up to deal with sweating where it is found to exist. Surely, however, the real reason for this Amendment is obvious. It is that the unrestricted importation of sweated goods is the official policy of the Labour Socialist party. I only hear a very faint "No" to that. That being so, I can well understand, and the House can well understand, that it would have been a very awkward thing to allow this Motion to come to a definite Division if it could have been prevented. As a matter of fact, it cannot be prevented. I shall oppose this Amendment, and I hope my Friends will oppose it, and I shall hope and expect to get a Division on the main Question. Then we shall see what attitude hon. Members on the Labour benches will take up on the question of the importation of sweated goods, and what answer they will give to their constituents when they go down to them at the week-end.

At about the time, when I was first preparing a speech to support this Motion, some kind friend sent mo some copies of a weekly paper which is well known and widely read amongst hon. Members on the Labour Benches. There were three issues, and they contained some very striking articles on this very question by the right hoi. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston (Mr. Wheatley). [An HON. MEMBER: "What paper was it?"] Well, I do not mind giving a free advertisement to the paper. It was the paper called "Forward," which, I believe, is ably edited and controlled and governed and directed by the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston). I have been reading it very carefully. When I read these articles, I said to myself, "If I sit down to prepare a speech in support of my Motion, I cannot do it half as well as this. I cannot do it so cogently, so strikingly, so forcibly, so logically. Here is the very thing I am looking for." In one of these articles the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston took occasion to deliver a very trenchant, and, I may say, very crushing reply to his distinguished colleague the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Snowden), who had made a very able speech during the Debate in this House on the Safeguarding of Industries Bill a little time before. It is very interesting to see the giant minds of these two right hon. Gentlemen, these two great intellects, in conflict. I venture to think that, if I were a betting man, I should be inclined to lay a shade of odds on the new school represented by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston, rather than on the old school represented by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Colne Valley. I regret that neither of these two right hon. Gentlemen is present in his place to-night. I took occasion to communicate with them, thinking that it might be very interesting if they were present, but I know that both of them have very important engagements outside this House.

I am glad that when I said, a moment ago, that the unrestricted importation of foreign goods is the official policy of the Labour Socialist party, I was not contradicted. It was accepted, and it is also, of course, accepted by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston. In one of these articles, which appeared on the 21st February, the right hon. Gentleman puts the matter in a nutshell. He says: Labour is in difficulties on this question. Liberal Free Trade is the policy of the party. Until this is somehow modified by an annual conference, the Parliamentary party is helpless. They must continue to be more Liberal than the Liberals, and to regard this as the best way to kill Liberalism. That, surely is not a very generous way of killing by kindness. The right hon. Gentleman goes on to say: I cannot, as a Socialist, support what is called Free Trade any more than I can the Tory policy. Here lot me say that I entirely object to the form "Free Trade" It is a misnomer; it means nothing; we have not, never have had, and never will have Free Trade in this country. We have been talking about Free Trade, but we never had it. We have a system of free imports and taxed exports. We have a system under which we are free to buy but not free to sell. Free Trade is the free exchange of commodities at their proper values between nations. We have never had it, and, looking from the Continent of Europe to the United States of America, I venture to think that we are farther away from it now than ever we were. The right hon. Gentleman goes on to say: Free Trade is outrageously anti-Socialist. It is anarchy in trade. It denies the right of the people to control the individual. The idea is the survival of a primitive commercial age. Its historic and fundamental claim is to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest Trade unionism wisely violates the principle of Free Trade. It prevents an individual from selling his labour power to an employer at a free market place. On the other hand, it insists on the wages of the workers in a particular industry being fixed by collective action, and, when fixed, protected by all the resources of the union and, when possible, by the community. Then he goes on to give a specific instance: If a bricklayer, a joiner or an engineer offers to sell his labour power below the standard rate, his Free Trade action leads rightly to a strike. His colleagues know that if an employer is allowed to import cheap labour into the workshop, all the workers in that workshop will have their standard of living reduced, and in face of this hard economic fact all the available oratorical eulogies of individual liberty leave the workers cold. I could not produce anything half so good as that myself. The right hon. Gentleman goes on: Assume that for some local reason a shipbuilding employer on the north side of the Clyde succeeds in employing cheaper labour than an employer on the south side. What would happen? His ship would cost him less, he could undersell his south side rival, and his yard would-be kept busy while the other was idle. Is not that, perfectly true, and will any of his Socialist colleagues contradict it? No one has ever been able to explain to me what difference it makes if the rival sets of conditions are north and south of the English Channel instead of north and south of the Clyde. If I wanted a ship built on the Ordinary competitive basis and invited lenders from Fairfield, Beardmore's, and a Continental firm, the one which could get its work done cheapest would be able to accept less than the other two. If Beard-more were undercut by cheaper labour what would it matter whether the employer of this was Fairfield or the Continental firm? This is entirely logical, and I would like to supplement it by another instance. A and B are two British workmen who are members of the same trade union. They are friends and live side by side to each other. A is in full employment, B is unemployed. A works every day at the trade union rate of wages. B is on the dole. B has a wife and family and gradually the shoe begins to pinch. His savings are gone and his furniture and whatever effects he has are going one by one. The pinch becomes harder, deeper and fiercer, hunger and want enter into that home, and in this state of desperation that man, a British workman and a trade unionist, goes to his employer and offers his work, because he is starving, at a shilling a week less than the trade union rate of wages. What happens The employer has to say, "No, I cannot agree," and If he did not, there would be a strike at once. [HON. MEMBERS. "Why not?"] You are there upholding the rigid, logical principle of trade unionism, with which I find no fault. But C is a German workman. He works for two-thirds of the wages and two tours a day longer, making precisely the same goods that A is making and B would make if he got the chance. The trade unionists and the trade union leaders and members of the Labour Socialist party say, "While we will not allow B to earn his living and he may starve, we welcome with open arms the work of C, a German workman, because we must uphold the sacred doctrines and principles of Cob-denism. [An HON. MEMBER: "Do you mean shipbuilding?"] I mean any trade you like to mention. What is trade unionism? Trade unionism surely is protection. A workman joins a trade union to protect himself against unfair conditions of labour, against blacklegging, against sweating—

Mr. SEXTON

At home.

Sir G. DOYLE

Against sweating at home, against any condition which will have the tendency or defect of lowering the standard of living that he has set up for himself, and how can he or his leaders of the party whom he is alleged to support go on with this illogical system? Either the workmen of this country will have to make up their minds to work longer hours for less wages under worse conditions, or they will have to make up their minds to give the same measure of protection to the product and fruit of their labour as to the labour itself, and there is no way of getting out of that.

I referred a moment ago to the very able assistance I also received from my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee in that paper to which I have referred, the name of which was received with so much acclamation on those benches. In a leading article on 21st February, which I think my hon. Friend would be rather proud to acknowledge because it bears the impress of that trenchant style so characteristic of him, he says: We recognise that there is a Socialist policy on international trade differing fundamentally from a Liberal party policy The Liberal party welcomes imports of goods irrespective of the labour conditions under which the goods are produced. But, surely, so does Labour. So does the official policy of the Labour party. That is less than fair to the benches behind me— The trade unionist in Dundee, for example, objects to sweated jute goods being manufactured in London or Aberdeen or Glasgow. He or she will take active measures to prevent the importation into Dundee of sweated goods manufactured in any part of the United Kingdom. Why, then, in the name of all that is wonderful, is he or she expected to welcome the importation of sweated goods provided only that these sweated goods are manufactured in some other country? Why, indeed? Why object to the sweater in London and welcome him in Belgium or Japan or India? Then the hon. Member gets worked up to a pitch of enthusiasm, and he bursts into poetry. He says: Wide open the ports and let them in free, Though they starve the puir wifies o' bonnie Dundee. The hon. Member goes on— The Liberal party says, 'No interference with the products of the foreign sweater.' So does his own party, and what is the hon. Member going to do about it. Free imports without qualification, and without question as to the labour conditions under which these imports are manufactured. But surely, whatever else that may be, it is non-Socialist and it most certainly is destructive of trade unionism. If a Capitalist in Dundee were to start a jute factory in England and pay his labourers 4d. a day, the jute workers of Dundee would be on the warpath. They would see that such a wage would soon drag down the miserably low standard in Dundee. But if this same capitalist opens his factory at Calcutta, as some others have already done, and gels cheap 4d. a day labourers and produces jute bags at a price at which Dundee cannot compete, ought the trade unionist of Dundee to cry 'hurrah for free imports of the sweated jute bags?' That is very sound common sense I am not suggesting he goes on— that a Socialist. Government would place a tariff upon these sweated jute bags". Hon Members do not like tariffs. They cannot bear the word "tariff," but they go much further. They are in favour of Prohibition, which means that they will not let things in at all. I believe that the Socialist policy lies in another direction altogether. I believe that a Socialist country would prohibit absolutely the importation of sweated goods". So says the hon. Member for Dundee, but let us see how Prohibition will work out—[An HON. MEMBER: "Are you in favour of Prohibition?".]

An hon. Member has asked me whether I am in favour of Prohibition. There is not much in a name, one way or the other, but anything that might prove to be a remedy I would examine. Let me examine the proposal. I put this formula to hon. Members above the Gangway, and I suggest to them that to be logical and consistent members of trade unions and of the Labour party ought to accept this formula, that to whatever extent goods are imported into this country made under conditions inferior to trade union conditions here, to that extent the makers of those goods arc blacklegging the British workman. I want to examine for a moment the declared policy, I will not say of the Labour party, but of a very lively and pronounced section of the party. Prohibition, under the formula which I suggest that hon. Members above the Gangway are bound to accept, would mean that you would accept no goods from France, Belgium, Scandinavia, Italy, Holland or any country in Europe. You would accept goods from no country in the world except the United States of America. In that case, how do you propose to pay for your imports?

Mr. JOHNSTON

That is your formula, not ours.

Sir G. DOYLE

I am suggesting a formula which. I think hon. Members, if they are logical, arc bound to accept, and what I would like to know is, how under that policy of prohibition you arc going to pay for your imports. The policy of the trade unions during the last few years has degenerated, and since the Labour party has become a political party and since politics have come first I will not particularise or specialise as to what comes second—before the general interest of trade unions, there has been a degeneration. In 1888, the official report of the Parliamentary Com- mittee of the Trade Union Congress said: The demon of cheapness has pervaded our whole social system and while the cheapness of goods has been a matter of wonder, the purchasers seldom or never give a thought to the human blood and muscle that have been ground up in the production of the article. That would be a very wholesome thing for hon. Members to bear in mind, when they go out wholeheartedly for the importation of sweated goods, because it is a kind of religion to which the Liberal party profers. It is a long step in the right direction that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston (Mr. Wheatley) refuses to sail in the same boat.

Every Member of this House knows perfectly well that the state of trade and industry in this country is alarming. The outlook is dark. We are not maintaining out place in the world's trade. It is true that our export trade is of great importance, but it is also true that our home trade is probably three or four times greater than our export trade. It is, I believe, true that we depend not merely for our' prosperity but for our very-existence on being able to hold our own as a manufacturing and producing nation and to sell our goods overseas in export in order to pay for the goods which we must import. If that be true, surely it is equally true that the home market which is three or four times greater is three or four times more important. Yet hon. Members know that the home market is invaded and honeycombed by the sweated goods that come in from abroad, made under any conditions or no conditions, and certainly under conditions which hon. Members would not tolerate for a moment.

In the Board of Trade Journal for January, 1922, comparing the trade of the last three years with that of the year before the War, on the basis of values recorded in 1913, we find that imports were greater in 1924 than in 1913, measured by quantities, by about 74 per cent.: that re-exports were less by 3 per cent. than in 1913 and that our exports were less by 20 per cent. in quantity than in 1913. Therefore, our export trade in quantity of manufactured goods, which are the life blood of the country, depreciated in volume by 20 per cent., while the imports increased by 7 per cent. I had intended to give a statement of German and other wages as compared with those of the British workmen—

Mr. KELLY

I hope you will give us those figures.

Sir G. DOYLE

I do not want to weary the House. I have taken up a long time already. I want to say a word about the coal trade. In the old Tariff Reform days, when Mr. Samuel Storey and I were supporting Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's policy—

Mr. BATEY

You never succeeded.

Sir G. DOYLE

We never quite succeeded.

Mr. BATEY

You never succeeded.

Sir G. DOYLE

And for this reason, that when we went into the colliery villages, some of which the hon. Member so worthily represents, we were received very coldly, and made very little impression. We were told, "The coal trade is safe from any competition. You must talk to somebody else." Let the galled jade wince. My withers are unwrung. But there is a different outlook now. I want to give one or two extracts from an article written by the right hon. Member for Shettleston in the "Glasgow Eastern Standard" last week. He refers to the coal industry, and says:

9.0 P.M. What is going to happen in, say, the coal industry? Our miners have a universal seven-hours working day. Germans work nine hours. The additional transport cost of bringing coal from Germany to Glasgow instead of from Lanarkshire is equal to a half-hour per day of the miner. Thus for every seven tons of coal the Lanarkshire miner delivers in Glasgow the German sends eight and a half tons. The purchaser of coal, when offered eight and a half tons instead of seven tons for the same amount of money, will take the larger quantity. In these circumstances at least all the thin and less profitable seams of Lanarkshire must be closed, the capital invented lost and the workers put on the dole, or miners must work for less wages. The same prospect exists with regard to factory goods. In China we have just been told children from four years of age and upwards are employed in the mills. According to Liberal Free Trade we should welcome such competition. Perhaps I am not quite accurate. We should welcome it if it took place in Calais but not in Dover or Caithness. What difference does the locality of the sweating make? Only the cost of transport. Many hon. Members on the opposite benches represent the great organised industry of the coal trade. There is a rumour that a syndicate has been started in Glasgow for the purpose of importing German coal cheaper than it can be produced in Lanarkshire or in this country generally. I am told that the syndicate is shortly about to operate and that German coal will be imported into this country more cheaply than it can be produced at our pits. [HON. MEMBERS: "What is the name?"] The name is Hugo Stinnes. There is no need for me to dwell upon the serious position in the coal trade in this country. To-day the owners are not making a profit, or are making very little profit, and the men are not getting subsistence wages, and in many cases it seems that the industry cannot go on. If German coal is coming in here to undercut your coal in your great industries, what are you going to do? [HON. MEMBEES: "Remove the mining royalties!"] The mining royalties are only an infinitesimal proportion of the total price of a ton of coal. Hon. Members would call into existence an 80-ton steam hammer to crush a fly. This matter of the coal trade and the competition that is offered by Germany is one of great concern to all Members of this House. I have statistics which I am afraid I shall not have time to read, but Mr. Brownlie, who is president of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, has just been to Cologne, and he has written a report on the conference which he had there with the German metalworkers' organisation. Along with him were Mr. John Hodge and Mr. T. McKenna.

Mr. Brownlie told the conference that while no attempt was being made at present to interfere with the eight-hour day in the metal trade, the fact that German workers were working more than eight hours was a serious menace to the continuance of the eight hours day in Britain. The wages paid to steel smelters and road iron workers on the Continent were low in comparison with the wages paid British workers in the same industry. He gave the following figures: Belgium, £1 14s. for a 48 hours week; France, £1 13s. for 48 hours; Germany, £2 2s. 6d. for 60 hours; Britain, £3 3s. 7d. for 48 hours I have a series of figures which put the scale of wages in Germany at very much less than this, but I shall not trouble about them. The Report further indicates that: There was also a discussion on trade agreements and European iron combines. Mr. R. Oessmann of Stuttgart who introduced the discussion said that the policy of the German industrialists was to export their products to Great Britain under the banner of Free Trade, but to tax heavily all imports. Mr. John Hodge took part in this discussion telling the conference that while Great Britain is the only country in the world with a Free Trade fiscal policy, there are in Britain to-day a number of Trade Union leaders who are doubtful whether the policy of Free Trade is beneficial to Great Britain, and that they are seriously considering whether Protection would not alleviate unemployment. 'We formed our trade unions,' he said, 'for the protection of the worker against the employer, also the protection of the good employer against the bad employer. Why not carry out our policy further and protect the nation of good employers and workers from the operations of a nation of bad employers? In the present instance Germany is the bad employer.' He concluded by saying that the solution of the problem was an international eight-hour day, higher wages, and universal Free Trade. A resolution in favour of universal Free Trade was passed with acclamation. The irony of it. All these foreign countries with their tariffs meet and pass resolutions with enthusiasm for Free Trade all round, but they never practise it. Instead of that you have tariffs in every country in Europe and in America. I put before this House one main simple definite question. I do not want this Debate to roam over all the familiar fields of the whole fiscal policy which has been discussed so often in this House, but I would like to have a definite reply from hon. Members: yes or no, are you in favour of the continuance of the unrestricted importation of sweated goods into this country?

Lieut.-Colonel Sir FREDERICK HALL

I beg to second the Motion.

I cannot help thinking that many hon. Members on the Labour Benches will go homo to-night with food for thought. They will begin to wonder where they stand, because they have heard such plain truths from my hon. Friend with regard to statements made by various important members of the Labour party. [HON. MEMBERS: "Go on!"] There is much that I would like to say, but I do not intend to go on, because I am not going to be the means of stopping a Division which may put Some hon. Members in rather a difficult position. I have noticed that in January last, at a meeting in Nottingham of the lace industry, a resolution was passed by the trade union in favour of the Safeguarding of Industries Bill, because it was found that the lace trade was interfered with so much by foreign competition. I was rather interested to see that the hon. Member for West Nottingham (Mr. Hayday) supported that resolution, and indicated that, as far as he was concerned, he would do all in his power to see that the wishes of the meeting were satisfied. That means that in effect he said, "As far as lace is concerned—I represent a lace constituency—we must not allow the free importation of lace into this country, because it interferes with the livelihood of the people in my constituency." If that is advisable in the one industry, surely hon. Members must stop to think whether in certain circumstances it is not also advisable in other industries.

When my hon. Friend was moving this Resolution and spoke about sweated labour, I noticed that the hon. Member for St. Helens (Mr. Sexton) made the interjection, "Sweated labour, yes, as regards this country." Are we to understand from that, that trade unionism stands for this—that we will protect the labour of the people of this country, we will not allow the labourer to sell his labour except at a price which is accepted and recognised by the trade union. We will not allow blacklegism of any kind to come in and under-sell us." The hon. Member for St. Helens said, "I do not mind. I want only to protect sweated labour in my own country. On the other hand, I am here as a representative of the British working man, and, although T represent him, in my opinion he is desirous of throwing open the gates, the markets, of this country, free, gratis, and without a penny piece being paid towards the upkeep of our Army, or Navy or any of our Forces. The foreigner shall come in and sell the products of sweated labour in this country, although I recognise that it could not be produced, and they would not allow it to be produced, under the same conditions in this country."

Mr. SEXTON

I hope that the hon. and gallant Gentleman will not misrepresent me. I said no such thing, neither did I infer it. But I do agree to stopping them coming in altogether.

Sir F. HALL

If my hon. Friend says that that is his intention, I am delighted to hear it; but he will not mind my drawing his attention to the interjection ho made, which undoubtedly will appear in the OFFICIAL REPORT to-morrow if it was heard in the Reporters' Gallery. I particularly made a note of it at the time. As soon as my hon. Friend referred to the question of sweated labour, the hon. Member for St. Helens interjected "At home." That is perfectly plain. I am very glad that the moving of this Resolution has brought about my hon. Friend's conversion in that particular. There is an old saying that there is great rejoicing over one sinner that repenteth. Apparently the hon. Member, after having paid attention to the speech of my hon. Friend who moved the Resolution, has thought the matter over, and has said to himself, "How is that going to do in my constituency? How will it be if it is reported in my constituency that I am prepared to accept in this country the product of sweated labour, when I am not prepared to accept it?" I can quite understand that it might be a little inconvenient to the hon. Member. At least we have got him to admit that he is not in favour of that. Then he must be In favour of the policy which I support.

Mr. SEXTON

No.

Sir F. HALL

The hon. Member will not think that I wish to misrepresent him; far be it from that. But I have stated the fact exactly, and I repeat that I am delighted that the discussion so far has brought out a confession by one hon. Member that he is opposed to permitting the product of sweated labour to come into this country. [HON. MEMBERS: "Who brings it in?"] Who brings it in? The result, unfortunately, of the policy that operates at the present time. I do not disguise the fact that I have always been in favour of the policy of protecting our own industries in this country, and I have stated so. But, unfortunately, it is not the policy of the Government at the present time. [HON. MEMBERS: "They do not believe in it! "] Hon. Members say the Government do not believe in it. I cannot speak for the Government, because I do not happen to be in their innermost mind. But I can speak for myself. £299,000,000 worth of foreign-manufactured exports have come into this country, as compared with £179,000,000 worth in 1913. Those are the figures. That must be taking wages away from the British working man at home.

Mr. SEXTON

How is the hon. Member going to stop it?

Sir F. HALL

My hon. Friend has put a very plain question to me. I do not happen to be in the difficult position of sitting on the Government Bench, and what I am in favour of—I have never faltered, and have stated my views in a constituency for which I happen to have been returned since 1910—is a policy of protecting the labourer in this country. The hon. Member for Peckham (Mr. Dalton), whom I am delighted to see in this House—he is a very near neighbour of mine, but although a near neighbour, we cannot all agree—made a speech in this House only last month, and, referring to the question of Free Trade, said that as far as he was concerned it was a policy to which he did not subscribe. What policy are we going to have? My hon. Friends do not agree with the policy of Free Trade. They say they do not agree with the policy of protective measures and yet my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens now states that he does not agree with allowing the products of sweated labour to come into this country. If he does not he must vote for the Motion. He cannot have it both ways. I want to stop the increased importation of foreign manufactured articles. I do not believe in giving many figures, but I propose to give some for the information of my hon. Friends in case they may not know the exact position. Perhaps if they saw these figures in the Board of Trade returns they would be in a hurry to turn over the pages, in case some of them might be converted to the policy of protecting labour in this country. What are the figures? In the year 1913 £178,000,000 worth of foreign manufactured articles were imported. In 1921 the figure was £225,000,000; in 1922 it was £229,000,000; in 1923 it was £256,000,000, and in 1924 no less than £299,865,978 worth, or practically £300,000,000 worth of foreign manufactured articles came into this country. [HON. MEMBERS: "How did we pay for them?"] Hon. Members ask how did we pay for them. I am not going to suggest a policy of prohibition. My hon. Friend the Member for Dundee (Mr. T. Johnston), whose plain-spoken statement I respect, has declared that he is in favour of prohibiting sweated goods coming into this country. Is that policy subscribed to by the majority of the Labour Socialist party? I wonder.

Taking for the sake of argument the figure of £300,000,000, I will cut it in half and say that £150,000,000 should be and could be produced at home. I think it is generally recognised as a round figure by trade union leaders that 50 per cent. in the cost of manufactured articles represents labour. As a rough-and-ready calculation, if you take it that £150,000,000 worth of foreign manufactured articles were imported which should have been produced here, surely that shows at once that by producing the articles here you would increase the wages bill of your own country by £75,000,000. That statement may appear illogical to the hon. and gallant Gentleman for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood), but it seems plain to me. I have never posed in this House as a great authority on political economics, but I have always been a business man and have looked at these matters from the business point of view, and I challenge my hon. Friends above the Gangway to controvert my statement. If you can get another £75,000,000 of wages in this country, it does not require a great amount of common sense to see that it must be a benefit to this country. I am delighted to have the opportunity of seconding the Motion. I am going to call a halt now although there are many other things I should like to say. [HON. MEMBERS: "Go on!"] No, I shall not go on, but before sitting down I wish to remark that I do not see, many of my hon. Friends of the Liberal party in their places. I can understand that this discussion might have been a little difficult for the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), and I can quite recognise that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Swansea (Mr. Runciman) might find it difficult to reconcile his latest speeches with the statements which he made when he was seated on the Treasury Bench as President of the Board of Trade. We do not want too much stalemate to-night, but my hon. Friends the Liberals are conspicuous by their absence, possibly because they found that this discussion might be a little difficult for them. I sincerely trust we are to have a straight vote on this question. Let us have the courage of our own convictions. It does not matter whether we are politically opposed to each other or not, I have many Friends on the Labour Benches and even on the Liberal Benches and, after all, what matters is what is the real intention of this House and that we can only ascertain by a straight vote.

Mr. DALTON

I beg to move to leaye out from the word "That," to the end of the Question, and to add instead there of the; words as the interests of British workmen and of trade unionism cannot be helped by tariffs, and, having no confidence in the professed concern of the Conservative party for trade union principles, this House declines to pass a Resolution which suggests no effective remedy for the problems with which it is supposed to deal and which, while purporting to protect trade unionism against the effects of sweating abroad, fails to recognise that the causes and consequences of sweating at home and abroad arc one and indivisible and should be dealt with as a whole. We have listened with great pleasure to the speeches of the Mover and Seconder of the Resolution, and we have been delighted to hear the Mover speak of the "rigid and logical principles of trade unionism," with which he said he found no fault. I do not know whether the hon. Member speaks for the rest of his party or not. We arc accustomed to hear a great deal of criticism of the principles of trade unionism from hon. Members on the other side. On the Friday before last a Bill was brought in which was intended to interfere very considerably with some of the principles of trade unionism in this country. [HON. MEMERS: "No!"] It was withdrawn as the result of a combination of the good will expressed by the Prime Minister in a very remarkable speech and of the lively sense of good tactics, which some of cur opponents displayed on that occasion. I do not wish, having regard to the comparatively late hour of the night, to spend too long in dotting the "i's" and crossing the "t's" of the adherents to trade unionism among hon. Members on the opposite side of the House in their attitude towards wages in connection with the Weir houses or towards wages in the so-called sheltered trades. The principles of trade unionism, as applied by the National Union of Railwaymen. and the other organisations of railway-men, we have often been told, are preventing the revival of trade, and that it is only the principles of trade unionism which are preventing the lengthening of the working day in the mines, which, we are told, is necessary if we are to compete with foreign countries.

The two hon. Members who have spoken this evening have been reading in the "Daily Mail" and other papers of a serious split in the Labour party on the fiscal issue. I wish them joy of their latest mare's nest. Our attitude as a party is perfectly clear. On the one hand, we have continually expressed our opposition to tariffs in resolutions at Labour party conferences at party meetings and in speeches on the platform and in this House. We re-affirm that opposition in the Amendment which I am moving to-night. We have continually expressed the view that tariffs afford only one more opportunity, of which our present social system affords a good Dumber, for the few to fleece the many. We have continually maintained that tariffs raise the cost of living, that they safeguard profits, but that they do not safeguard either wages or decent hours of labour. We have said that before, and I have very great pleasure in saying it again to-night. We have said before, and I am glad to repeat it, that tariffs play into the hands on and strengthen the combines and trusts which are robbing the working men every day of their lives.

Sir G. DOYLE

I do not wish to interrupt the hon. Member, but tariffs do not occur in the Motion at all.

Mr. DALTON

They occur in the Amendment I am moving, and I was about to give a simple illustration of the way in which tariffs are advocated, though not in the terms of the Motion, but in the speech of the hon. Member for Newcastle North (Sir G. Doyle). You can find many illustrations of the working of combines. Let me take one from Birmingham. In and around Birmingham they make bedsteads, and all the firms which make bedsteads in and around Birmingham have joined in a combine in order to fleece the consumer, or, rather, I should say the sleeper. To each of these firms is allotted a quota. If they produce more than their allotted quota, they are fined. If they produce less they are rewarded for "ca'-canny." According to an official report, one firm have withdrew from production altogether and discharged all their employés, but the shareholders were not left empty. At the end of the year they received an allowance from the pool which was being fed by the fines from the members of the combine that produced too much. Is that the kind of thing hon. Members opposite want to make more frequent?

Even under Free Trade we have a great number of cases where trusts and combines have got a grip, not only upon the party machinery of the Tory party, but also, and this is much more important, upon the general public of this country. If we are going to support any scheme of tariffs, we are simply going to strengthen these combines to continue on their evil courses. If we take the big industries of this country which are working to-day under sweated conditions, I venture to submit that not in a single one of them would this proposed policy of the Mover of this Resolution be of the least avail. He spoke of coal mines. It is quite true that the British coal industry-has been reduced to the state of a sweated industry. That is true, but not because of the importation of German coal into this country in the past. All he told us was that Hugo Stinnes, junior, assisted, I suppose, by certain British and Scottish capitalists, is going to set up a business shortly in Glasgow for the importation of sweated coal from Germany. That does not account for the fact that the coal industry is sweated now. It has been sweated for the last two or three years for a number of reasons; partly because of the broken promises with regard to the Sankey Commission's Report; partly because of the gross inefficiency of the coal owners in the management of their business; partly because of the Treaty of Versailles and its provisions and the Separation muddles that have been made ever since; partly because of the occupation of the Behr by French troops and the compulsion on Germans to work an extra hour under the pressure of French bayonets. Those are the reasons the British coal industry to-day is, as the hon. Gentleman says, in a sweated condition.

Then take agriculture, represented hero by a solid phalanx of Conservative Members. Agriculture is a sweated industry. The agricultural labourer is paid a sweated wage though not so sweated as it was before the late Government passed, with considerable difficulty and in face of opposition, both from the Liberal and Conservative parties, the Wages Board Bill, which has increased the wages of agricultural workers by £4,000,000 a year. But in spite of that it is a sweated industry. Are we going to keep out sweated food imports? That was not mentioned by the Mover of the Resolution. Are we going to put taxes on food? That was not on the Tory programme at the election? They did not think it wise to introduce it before. Are we to understand that it is part of the new official policy to tax imported food? One might take other industries which are suffering from very severe depression and sweated conditions. Take engineering; take shipbuilding; take cotton. What possible use is it going to be to impose import duties on engineering goods or on ships or on cotton goods coming into this country in order to improve the conditions of those trades? None at all, because they are trades depending upon exports. If you take the main industries in the country which are suffering at the present time from trade depression, the remedy proposed by the hon. Members who have moved this Resolution is of no use at all.

This question has, of course, an international aspect, as has been stated, and we on these benches pin considerable faith to the development of international Labour Conventions. Even some hon. Members opposite have recently been saying that Germany should be encouraged to ratify and conform to the Hours Convention. We believe that, by the development of these international Labour Conventions, a very great deal may be done to raise standards of life and labour and wages and hours throughout the world, and we have continually committed ourselves, as a party, to full support of the policy of the International Labour Office and the development of these Conventions as widely as possible. It is well that we should consider care fully what steps can be taken, and can effectively be taken, to bring pressure to bear upon any country which should not conform to these Conventions, once passed. It is not, I think, a very easy problem, but we have to consider care fully how far, if you have a number of the leading industrial countries of the world conforming faithfully to these Conventions, it would be possible, by a threat of prohibition of imports from some country which was not conforming, to strengthen the hands of those in that country who wanted to conform, and to make it easier to pull that country into line. I suggest that that is a question which needs very careful consideration, and I hope that hon. Members on the other side will assist us by taking part in the discussion which is quite certain to proceed for some time to come in this country on this matter, and by seeing whether there is some possible solution along that line for the position of one or two countries hanging back behind the others in the improvement of their economic conditions.

I said that our policy in the Labour party on this matter, and what I believe always has been our policy, has two parts: first of all, that we are opposed to tariffs, and, secondly, that we do not fact inclined to join in the Hallelujah Chorus to the blessings of Free Trade which is very often set up in the camp of our hon. Friends on the higher benches below the Gangway. We do not believe that Free Trade alone is any remedy for the social evils from which we are suffering. [Interruption.] I am very glad to hear that hon. Members below the Gangway are gradually following in the wake of our thought on this matter. But I remember that John Bright opposed the Factory Acts, and I remember a number of other occasions on which those of us who argued for the State taking some conscious and deliberate, action in order to improve the conditions of life of the people were thwarted and opposed by the Liberal party in past days. [HON. MKMBERS: "When? "] I do not want to be led aside into a long historical disquisition, but if hon. Members can prove to me that John Bright did not oppose the Factory Acts, I will take back what I said. I was only recently reading a very favourable life of him by Mr. G. M. Trevelyan, in which that matter was made perfectly clear.

My point is this: We do not believe that Free Trade alone is a key that will open any gateway into any earthly paradise. We believe it has to be supported and backed up by a very great deal more in the way of policy, and that is why, in these Debates in which Free Trade and Protection are introduced, we are not particularly interested to take our stand in the old pre-War ruts, when the politics of this country was a fight between the Liberal and Conservative parties, and when cur party were yet too young to count for much. We are not interested in getting back into those old ruts of Free Trade against Protection. We set against the Protectionist proposals our own positive policy for effecting improvement rather than a mere negative policy of Free Trade, in spite of the fact that, as I have said, we all of us, with, I think, practically no exception, are going to oppose the tariff policy put forward by the Government and by their supporters.

In the last resort, each of us must slay his own dragon, and each country has to break up its own sweaters and deal with them within its own boundaries. We in this country have to deal with sweating primarily as arising from the social and economic conditions of this country. We have to deal with it as arising from a social system which is characterised, on the one hand, by gross inefficiency in production and, on the other, by a gross inequality in the distribution of wealth. The two indictments that we make against what is commonly called the Capitalist system are, first, its failure to deliver the goods in sufficient quantity, and, secondly, the delivery of most of them at the wrong addresses, in addition to which we draw a very broad indictment against the land system of this country, under which, by uncontrolled private ownership, you have large quantities of the land of this country either wasted, misused, or withheld from use altogether. [HON. MEMBERS: "Where?"] You come with me for a week-end, and I will show you. We maintain that these things which I have enumerated are the root causes of sweating and unemployment and social injustice in this country. This Motion that has been moved to-night seems to us to embody a policy which is not only futile, but which is pettifogging and on altogether too small a scale. It is for that reason that we have tabled this Amendment and have attempted to draw the attention of the House to those much larger and more fundamental issues on which these questions of sweating and bad conditions depend. In the time at our disposal we can do no more than that, and I have very great pleasure in moving the Amendment.

Mr. T. HENDERSON

I beg to second the Amendment.

I have been very much surprised by the simplicity of the Mover of this Motion, and I am quite in agreement with him that, as we get older, we become simpler ourselves, but the difficulty is to get others to understand that simplicity. He told us, in moving the Motion, that he was surprised at the Amendment on the Paper to be moved by Members of the Labour party. He said he never intended to go into the question of Tariff Reform and Free Trade, but that is just where he went, and he was followed by the Seconder of the Motion, who simply spent all his time in dealing with that question. There is a part of the Amendment which expresses surprise at the great zeal and interest expressed by the party opposite with regard to the trade union movement of this country, and it is something new, because, as workmen, we can remember the sufferings that the workers had to endure at the hands of both the Conservative party and the Liberal party in this country. I want to quote from one great Conservative leader, whose memory is enshrined in the heart of every true Conservative, who, when he was the leader of that party, was regarded by all the Conservative Press as a real, Heavenborn statesman. I refer to the late Lord Salisbury, who, speaking on trade unionism on one occasion, said: Trade unions are dangerous institutions, and ought to be swept from the country. I believe that is just how you feel about it now, and, further, I believe that that is just how you have acted ever since the rise of trade unionism in this country. I want to say more than that. I want to say that all the power of Parliament and all the civil power possessed by Parliament has been used for the purpose of destroying the progress of the trade union movement in this country. [Laughter.] I think I will be able to prove what I say. I cannot forget that it was a Liberal Home Secretary who, at the in- stigation of the mine-owners of this country, sent the military forces of the Crown down to Featherstone, and there used those forces against the unarmed miners. It has always been the case. I can give hon. Members another case, not so very long ago, which is known to every workman on the banks of the Clyde. I refer to "Bloody Friday." The Leader of the Liberal party in the House, the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) had made promises to the workers of the country, and told them, in fact, to be more audacious than they had been and to demand from the employers the right to a greater share of the wealth which they produced. He intimated that if they did that they would have the support of the Government in their demand. The workmen came, rather simple men, together, and walked to George's Square in that city of Glasgow, and asked the magistrates and the Lord Provost to appeal to the Government. They urged that the Prime Minister should be asked to come and fulfil the pledges that he had made. The civil forces of the Crown were turned against the workers—against men, women, and children. The civil forces of the Crown were used to beat down these people. It is because we know that you have always done these things that we have no hesitation in saying your pretence as to your regard and your high opinion of the trade union movement is sheer hypocrisy.

I agree with the Mover of the Resolution in one thing; that we have never had Free Trade in this country, and the Liberal party would never have agreed to it. I was reading one of the greatest of our historians, where he was dealing with the position in the country prior to 1846. He makes the statement that the workers of that time were putting up a great fight for the repeal of the Corn Laws, and they were supported in their fight by the manufacturers and capitalists who were in effect the Liberal party of their day. They supported the repeal of the Corn Law's because they believed that if you reduced the price of food the tendency would he to lower the wages of the worker. That has been the aim of that party to which our hon. Friends are now attached.

On the question of sweated labour, I want, to say just one word. I can remember in 1909 when the country was aflame with the horrible condition in Cradley Heath and other parts of the country, how pressure was brought to bear upon the Liberal Government, and the Liberal Government, because it has always been amenable to that pressure, having in view a political purpose, and being wishful to retain power, put upon the Statute Book the first Trade Boards Act. The Liberal party knew quite well about the sufferings of the people concerned long before they passed that Act. They were quite well aware of the fact, but it was only when the workers, by their efforts, roused public opinion to such an extent to force action that the Government was forced to take account of that action. Thirty years ago I remember that the trade to which I have the honour to belong refused to handle imported joinery; not made in Germany, not made in France, not made in Austria, but made in Canada, so bad were the conditions in Canada. From that time till now it has been a standing order with the members of the Workers' Union not to handle goods made under those conditions.

Might I ask hon. Members not to get away with the idea that there are no sweated industries in this country? You have only to take a walk and go into any of the big cafes in the City of London to see the conditions of the catering industry. You will find women working for 4s. 1d. per week. Out of that wage, they have to pay their expenses to and from their work. It is a crying shame that the Conservative party has refused to help forward trade boards. We contend the principle is a right one, and it will always be our aim, the aim of the Labour party, to try to accomplish the cleaning of our own house before we attempt to interfere with our neighbours. Therefore, we are going to ask for support in stopping any sweated industry in our own country. When we have accomplished that, we will agree with hon. Members to take every possible step to stop sweated goods being imported into this country.

Mr. JOHNSTON

There is at least one common ground between the Motion and the Amendment, and the other Amendment on the Order Paper in the name of Liberal Members. That common ground is that we are all opposed to sweated goods. Every party declares that it will no longer be committed to an unrestricted traffic in sweated goods. The hon. Member for Newcastle North (Sir G. Doyle) offers a remedy. His remedy is tariffs, but he did not spend a moment in telling the House what had happened as a result of the Austrian Parliament putting 33⅓ per cent. tariff upon sweated goods coming into their country. He stands by tariffs; we oppose tariffs. Our objections may be good, bad or indifferent, but at any rate our respective attitudes are clear and distinct. My hon. Friends on the left, I take it, are in favour of preventing the traffic in sweated goods, as we are, by dealing with it through the International Labour Office of the League of Nations, and preventing absolutely the importation and the transportion of sweated goods, as we prevent the importation of indecent postcards, or phosphorus matches, or anthrax goods, or cholera goods, or goods that destroy, or tend to destroy, the health and the life of the British people. I listened very patiently to the hon. Member for Newcastle North, but he never once attempted to define what sweating is. I know there is a tremendous difficulty in doing so, that what are sweated goods in Scotland or England may not be sweated goods in America or Australia, or vice versa, and that India has different standards, and so on. There are various definitions, some based on the money rates paid to the worker, and so on. But surely we have one common ground upon which the hon. Member for Newcastle North could urge his Government to support him, and that is that hours of labour should be universally standardised, and the Washington Convention assented to by representatives of every party in this House.

The Washington Convention set up for most countries a standard of 48 hours per week. Britain has never ratified the Washington Convention, and if the hon. Member for Newcastle North is desirous of helping us to deal with sweated goods he should urge the Government not only to ratify the Washington Convention on behalf of Great Britain but to send their representatives to Geneva to urge every other civilised nation to ratify it. Any country which works its labourers 50, 60, 70, 80 or 90 hours a week should surely be put beyond the pale so far as civilised nations are concerned. At any rate, we could take care that sweated goods, goods produced by 80 and 90 hours work a week should not be introduced into any civilised country. There is a policy for the hon. Member far Newcastle North, but he did not touch upon that. He gave the House, as did his seconded, a speech which might have been applicable to a discussion on Tariff Reform and Free Trade, but which, so far as I could learn, had no relation to the Motion or the Amendment.

10.0 P.M.

Here are some of the instances with which the hon. Member for Newcastle North, hon. Members on these benches, and hon. Members on the benches to my right have got to deal. Whatever views we may hold about Free Trade and Protection, we have got to face certain cold, hard, economic facts. One of the hon. Members talked about silk factories. There is a silk factory on Mount Lebanon, working children all the hours they can possibly be worked, some 13 and 14 hours per day; they are working children of five years of age, making profits for French capitalists; they are making their cheap silk wear and sending it into the neutral markets to cut us out. Then there is the case of cotton. I have a cutting from the "Manchester Guardian," and surely that will not be suspect. It is from the financial column. We are told there, under the heading Cotton Trade lost to the Japanese"— If we are to make any headway there will have to be an increase in the hours of labour, and lower wages, because Japanese sweated conditions are capturing our markets in the Near East.

Major SALMON

Did they sign at Geneva?

Mr. JOHNSTON

Do not let me be led away. This is a matter of fact. Neither Britain nor Japan has endorsed the Washington Convention, and if I had time I could tell the hon. and gallant Member something about that; but let me proceed with what I am trying to be at.

Mr. W. GREENWOOD

Will the hon. Member tell us whether it was the editor of the "Manchester Guardian" who made that statement?

Mr. JOHNSTON

No; I said it was in the financial column. I believe the Government of British India has made a greater attempt to ratify the Washington Convention than any other Government in the world. They reduced their hours of labour from 72 to 60, a reduction of 12, and there is something to be said for that. But still, the constituency I represent is facing competition from jute mills in India, worked by British capitalists, by Dundee capitalists, which are manufacturing cheap jute goods, and sending cheap jute bags into Britain and the neutral markets of the world, and the constituents whom I represent cannot compete with them What are the conditions under which these people work I they work, officially, 60 hours a week. I asked a question about the death-rate of the Noble Lord who represents India in this House. Out of every 1,000 infants, 667 perished in one year before they reached the age of 12 months, that is, two out of three; and the normal figure is ever 400, 400 out of every 1,000. 98 per cent. of the infants in Bombay—that is a cotton place, not jute—it is admitted by the British medical officer of health, are dragged with opium by their mothers before the mothers go cut in the morning to the factories, so that the children will not be able to cry for food during their absence.

This is under the British flag. It will be time enough for us to cast stones at Japan when we have remedied that state of affairs under the British flag in India. The average wage per head for adults is £10 per annum, 5s. per week. The family wage is 17s. 5d. per week. Sometimes they go down the pits for 36 hours at a stretch with their wives and families, the children included, and they are allowed to do it. I do not say that they are working all that time, but I say that the average Indian family goes down those pits for 36 hours at a stretch, as is officially admitted. Another thing is that 97 per cent. of the families live in single rooms. As to the ages of the children, the doctors declare they have no birth certificates, and that the only way they can test a child's age is by examining its teeth.

Let me come to some other commodity. I think my hon. Friend said, Would we tax food? Certainly the hon. Member for North Newcastle, if he put a tariff on sweated foodstuffs coming in, would be taxing food, and I am not in favour of a tariff. But what are we going to do about the currant industry, the dried fruit industry? I have some official figures here. In Smyrna, they work 11 hours a day trampling on the currants with naked feet, and get 2s. a day wages. I make a present of this to the Empire Preference people. In Australia, where the currants are handled by machinery, the wages are £4 a week, and the hours of labour 48 per week, and they cannot send currants into this country to compete with the sweated currants of Smyrna. We should say to Greece and to Turkey, and to all the nations engaged in the production of these sweated currants, that they must ratify the Washington Convention. I will say nothing about wages for the moment, but we should say that no one shall be allowed to work more than 48 hours a week, otherwise these currants shall be deemed sweated currants, and shall not only be prohibited from entering Great Britain, but from entering every civilised country.

I will take the subject of eggs. Australia could send us liquid eggs. I am not arguing for the moment whether they are good, bad or indifferent, nor am I discussing the question of formaldehyde or any preservative of that kind. I am speaking of the commercial fact as it exists. Australian workers have the 48-hours' week, and the South Australian Farmers' Co-operative Union pay 13s. a day in wages. Australia could send her liquid eggs, but she is prevented from sending them owing to the Chinese sweated labour organised by British capital. Dame Adelaide Anderson, a lady inspector, well known to the Home Office, told the Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, on the 29th January of last year, that she saw in Shanghai, under the British flag-not under the Chinese flag—children working 13 hours a day, without a fixed stopping time for a meal, and those children under six years of age.

Mr. LOOKER

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there are five British cotton mills only in Shanghai, that no children are permitted to work in them under 10 years of age, and that the British owners would like to make the age much higher, but the Chinese parents will not allow them?

Mr. JOHNSTON

I was not discussing cotton mills at all.

Mr. LOOKER

What other mills are there in Shanghai?

Mr. JOHNSTON

I was not discussing cotton mills. I am going to say some- thing about cotton, but I do not want to be led away by red herrings from the subject I am discussing. I am now discussing eggs. Seventy per cent. of these workers work seven days a week and 13 hours a day. The only holiday they get is the Chinese New Year; when that is, I do not know The firm which does most of the importing of these liquid eggs into this country is a firm controlled by a gentleman well known to the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley, Lord Vestey. The Union Cold Storage Company controls the entire ordinary share capital of John Layton and Company, Ltd., which imports enormous quantities of these liquid eggs; and the firm called the International Export Company, formed in May, 1914, with articles of association the same as those of John Layton and Company, Limited, and some of the names of the directors the same, although it was dissolved in 1918, so far as our British registration is concerned, is still, as we know, operating in China packing these liquid eggs. These liquid eggs—I have been at some pains to find out the facts—arrive in London now at 88s. per cwt., or 9½d. per lb. I have here one of the tins of these liquid eggs. There are fourteen lbs. in the tin. They come in at 88s. per cwt., and Australian tinned egg factories cannot compete with them. Whatever we may think about Protection and Free Trade, these things have got to be faced. Some of us will believe much more earnestly in the proposals of hon. Members opposite for remedying social grievances, and industrial ills, when we begin to see them tackling men like Lord Vestey, who not only export British capital abroad because they get cheap sweated labour, but bring in these eggs, and prevent a decent traffic in the products of civilised life.

An hon. Member opposite asked me about the cotton factories. The International Labour Office Magazine, Volume 9, No. 12, of the 24th March last year, tells us that in China there, are 1,800 modern factories, including 109 cotton and spinning mills, and that 70 per cent. of the working people work seven days in the week, and get holidays at the Chinese New Year, about which I spoke, though some who are under Christian influence only work six days in the week. In those cotton mills 40 per cent. of the workers are women, 40 per cent. are children, and there are children under six years of age working in the factories.

Mr. LOOKER

Not in any cotton mills under British management. No less than 75 per cent. of those cotton mills are owned by Japanese and other nationalities.

Mr. JOHNSTON

The hon. Member can reply to me after I have concluded my speech.

Mr. DIXEY

Are they English managed?

Mr. JOHNSTON

In those factories of which I am speaking we are told that the hours of work of children are 12 to 14 per day.

Mr. LOOKER

Where are these cotton factories?

Mr. JOHNSTON

The Report of the International Labour Office, Volume 6, says that the hours of work for children in the cotton factories are from 12 to 14 per day. They work seven days a week, and their wages are from 15 to 20 cents per day. Some of these children are literally born in the factories, and the Report from which I have already quoted states that at a meeting which Dame Anderson had with the factory owners of Shanghai these owners declared that before they could bring down their hours of labour and introduce better conditions in their factories the regulations would have to be made universal in China, so that the British, Japanese, American, and French capitalists who had invested their money in the exploitation of women and child labour there should not be put at any disadvantage against Chinese and other competitors outside Shanghai.

On this matter I speak for a considerable number of men on these benches who are exceedingly anxious that the Washington Convention shall be put into operation, and that the 48 hours' week shall be made universal, and that they should have in these foreign countries hours of labour just the same as the other workers of the world. If this is done, then you will give your civilisation a chance which it cannot possibly have so long as British capital and skill is being sent abroad to exploit cheap labour to the detriment of the progress of the world.

Major CRAWFURD

This Resolution has been introduced by the Mover in a very pleasant and a very friendly manner, and I do not desire to introduce too controversial a note. There was one state-men, however, made by the hon. Member who spoke last and the hon. Member who sits for the Tradeston Division of Glasgow (Mr. T. Henderson), which I cannot possibly allow to pass unchallenged. I hope I am not too thin-skinned. I have had a considerable experience of electioneering, and have heard hard things said about me and about other people, but I have realised that in the excitement of elections these things may be said and may be excused. But an hon. Gentleman who is elected to this House has a greater responsibility than those who speak at election times. He represents some 30,000 or 40,000 electors; he represents, perhaps, a large constituency, and the words which he uses are spread through every newspaper in the country. Therefore, as I say, he has a great responsibility. When the hon. Member for Tradeston says of the Noble Earl, who is now in another place, that, at the instigation of the civic authorities, he sent troops to shoot down unarmed miners in Feather stone, the hon. Member is saying—I have not the slightest doubt unconsciously—something that is grossly untrue. I have not the slightest doubt that the hon. Member made that statement inadvertently. It is a statement which has been made, I think, only once inside this House, but many thousands of times outside this House. It is true that the facts have been printed, published, written and spoken over and over again, and, on the one occasion on which it was uttered in this House, the hon. Member who said it made afterwards an ample apology to the right hon. Gentleman, and that hon. Member was a distinguished and revered leader of the party to which the hon. Member for Tradeston belongs—the late Mr. Keir Hardie.

Mr. T. HENDERSON

I desire to say that I did not use the words mentioned by the hon. and gallant Member. I said that the gentleman to whom I referred—the Leader of the Liberal party—was Home Secretary, and that, at the request of the mine-owners, troops were sent to Featherstone.

Major CRAWFURD

By whom?

Mr. HENDERSON

Under the authority of the Home Secretary.

Major CRAWFURD

No. Those are exactly the words which I challenge, and I desire to say again, with every consideration for the hon. Member—who, I am perfectly sure, is saying what he believes to be true—that the Noble Earl knew nothing whatever about this occurrence until, I think, 48 hours after it had happened. The hon. Member interjects that he accepted responsibility. In other words, he covered up the action of those who were subordinate to him in a way which everyone who knows him would expect him to do. I do not want to say any more about the matter, but I do want, by getting the utmost publicity for this statement, to try to stop for ever the use of this slander. I accept, of course, entirely the hon. Member's statement if he says he did not know the facts, but all I have to say is that people who make statements as grave as that should go to some trouble to ascertain the facts. [Interruption.] I am sorry to pursue the matter, but the hon. Member uses the phrase that these troops were sent by the Home Secretary at the instigation of the civil authorities. I say they were not, and I say that that is too grave a thing to say of any man unless you are very sure that what you say is true.

Now may I pass for a moment to the Motion which is 'before the House, an-d may I say that I have just a little complaint to make of what was said by the hon. Member for Peckham (Mr. Dalton). When he spoke of the sweated conditions of the agricultural industry, and referred to the Wages Board Bill, which is now an Act. I thought he was going to refer to the occasion when his Friends, with the help of hon. Members opposite, rejected the Liberal proposal of a 30s. minimum wage. But when, in order to convict the party to which I belong of complicity and complacency with regard to these conditions, ho has to go back as far as John Bright. I think that is a pretty fair estimate of the value that is to be attached to his testimony. But I think the hon. Member paid rather too small attention to the actual words of the Motion. It professes concern for British and foreign workmen, but I think it was really designed to embroil and to entrap hon. Members above the Gangway on this side. It simulates, as the hon.

Member for Tradeston pointed out, a form of words regarding trade unions and other matters which we are accustomed to hear from Labour party speakers, but stripped of its disguise, as it was during the speech of the Mover and Seconder, it appears simply as naked Protectionist propaganda. The voice is the voice of hon. Members on this side, but the hand is the hand of the industrial group.

When we turn to the Amendment it seems to me that the difficulties which hon. Members had in framing their Amendment appear in the wording of the Amendment itself, and although the hon. Member who moved the Motion in one of his opening passages uttered what sounded rather like a funeral oration on those who sit on these benches, as the Debate went on I began to wonder if we were not witnessing something more like a marriage ceremony, or at any rate the deliberate wooing of hon. Members above the Gangway. I find it difficult to see how hon. Members above the Gangway can find it in their hearts to resist his advances, because it seems to me that any Member who professes what is called Socialism, and who has been at some pains to inquire what is implicit in that belief, must find it very difficult indeed to differ entirely from those who are called Protectionists. It seems to me that Socialism and Protectionism have a great deal in common. I should like to suggest that whatever form of Socialism you may believe in, whether it be a State socialism or one of the forms of guild Socialism or syndicalism, a Socialist organisation which has complete control of the productive industries of the country could not for a moment tolerate the importation of goods from foreign countries which might, by being sent in at a cheaper rate, upset the régime which they had instituted, and therefore it seems to me that the doctrine of Socialism must lead directly to the practice of Protection, just as the practice of Protection must tend towards a state of affairs where the argument for Socialism becomes very much stronger.

But if we turn to the actual Motion, I think, besides this, it contains two distinct strains of thought. There is concern for the sweated labour—and in this I and my friends are entirely at one with the attitude taken up by the hon. Member who has just sat down. If you are think- ing merely of the humanitarian side of the question of stopping sweated conditions, then I am sure that nobody who professes to be a Free Trader would find the slightest difficulty in joining with hon. Members in taking steps towards that end. I say that, after reading the "Forward" of 21st February, and in spite of the very severe things that the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston) there says about those who think as I do, I am perfectly prepared, and every Free Trader is perfectly prepared, to stop sweating conditions, and to join with hon. Members in taking appropriate action. [HON. MEMBERS: "How?"] Action of the kind indicated by the hon. Member. Action of the kind indicated by the Washington Convention, and, more particularly, any action which may be made or can be made through the League of Nations.

It seems to me that there is tremendous scope for the activity of any Government in that direction. I am not going "to follow the example of the hon. Member for Peckham (Mr. Dalton) and inquire why it was not done last year. I do not think that that sort of quibble helps us. As far as the sweating question is concerned, no Free Trader has the slightest objection to arrangements being made of the kind indicated.

Mr. JOHNSTON

On a point of correction, and as that has been said three or four times, may I point out that when the Right Honourable George N. Barnes moved in this House in July, 1921, the adoption, in the fullest, of the Washington Convention as far as hours of labour were concerned, Dr. Macnamara, who was a leading member of my hon. Friend's party, opposed it.

Major CRAWFURD

The hon. Member must excuse me if I say that I cannot make myself responsible for what happened in 1921. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] Because conditions obtained then which are very different from conditions to-day. If we are going to pursue the history of the Coalition Government, it will not only be Members of the Liberal party who will be embroiled, but Members of my hon. Friend's party also. Let us get back to the Motion. Let me ask why we were not given some indication of the method which the Mover and Seconder of the Motion propose to adopt. I do not think that even the hon. Member for Dundee took the trouble of defining sweated labour. Perhaps I can hardly be considered an authority on that subject, but perhaps sweated labour is meant to be something of this sort: Labour which under the conditions which obtain in the country where that labour operates does not receive a wage which enables labour to live up to a decent standard of life. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] If something of that sort be the definition, then it is not in the power of the importing country to know whether those conditions obtain or not in the exporting country, because conditions differ as to the standard of life. What may be a comparatively good wage in one country, may be, comparatively, no wage in another. That is an added reason why all these things must be settled, if settled at all, by the international methods which the hon. Member has indicated.

When we get to what is really behind this Motion it is the old familiar plea for Protection, and it is made under the guise of a plea for the employment of British workmen. What does the argument come to? Hon. Members opposite who support the doctrine contained in this Motion believe that the import of manufactured goods into this country means, or makes, unemployment for British labour. If that be a fact, then I suppose that if we sit with folded arms, that process is likely to go on, more and more imported goods will come into this country, and more and more British workmen will be out of work. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] Hon. Members opposite say, "Hear, hear!" They really believe it, so that we may come to this point, that no staple industries will be left in this country, and foreign goods will keep on coming in. May I point out that no goods come into this country except goods which we want, because they come in response to specific demands for them. If that is going to be the state of affairs, why not let this thing go on?

What can be wrong if we can really arrive at a point when we can sit still, or pursue artistic or pleasurable occupations while the benevolent foreigner sends us the things which we want? What more can we want than that? Hon. Members on that side of the House will agree with me that there will be no more class warfare. We shall all be parasitic rich. But when the hon. Member says, "how are you going to pay for these goods, because you have got to pay for them, but you can only pay for them by the export of goods," the fallacy of the argument is made apparent. We, on these benches, believe in Free Trade. We agree with the hon. Member for Peckham that Free Trade alone cannot solve the problems which we want to solve, but we do say, as I have said before, that without Free Trade these problems will be wellnigh insoluble. We would have preferred a form of Amendment which was moved by some of my hon. Friends, but we do find the Motion moved by the hon. Gentleman illogical and inaccurate, and as the Amendment of the hon. Member for Peckham contains at any rate some measure of truth, and we prefer some truth to no truth, we propose to vote for the Amendment.

Brigadier-General Sir HENRY CROFT

The whole point of the speech of the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston) was an attack of the idea of sweated industry, but in order to try to score a party advantage, he tried simultaneously to prove that where sweated conditions exist in China, Japan or elsewhere, it was as the result of British capital. I have no right to attempt to speak for anyone, but I should imagine that all on these benches would agree with me when I say that we agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman that we want to have no discrimination in favour of British capital in any part of the world if its effect be to operate against British labour in this country.

Mr. W. GREENWOOD

The hon. Member for Peckham (Mr. Dalton), in the course of his speech, mentioned a man whose name is held in very great honour in this country, and who was a townsman of my native town—Mr. John Bright—and remarked that he opposed the Factory Acts. I knew Mr. John Bright and I do not think that my hon. Friend did. Mr. John Bright, in the whole course of his life, never supported any injustice of any sort at all. He certainly did fight against any injustice, whether in this country or in any other country. Another point that the hon. Member raised was with regard to trusts or rings in a certain trade in the Birmingham district. He used that as an argument against tariffs.

I ventured to interject, "Was there a tariff on bedsteads in Birmingham?" There is no tariff at all. Therefore, the argument with regard to any trust or ring in that particular industry cannot be used as an argument against tariffs, because the industry is being carried on in a Free Trade country under Free Trade conditions.

I think there is a great deal to be said for the Motion. I would like to give the House an illustration of how unemployment is affected in this country when imported goods, against which we cannot compete, are allowed to enter. I am interested in a business that tried for five years to carry on the manufacture of motor tyres. Unfortunately, we got to that position in which no industry can carry on, when we lost practically the whole of our capital. We tried to carry on for the sake of the labour that we employed. There was never a penny piece of profit made. Hon. Members of the Labour party seem to think that all masters are profiteers, just as they seem to think that we on this side regard all workmen as rogues—which we do not. This money has been lost, not by a war profiteer, because I am not a war profiteer any more than any Member on the Labour benches, but it has been lost by a thousand shareholders, and many of those shareholders have been ground down to poverty because of the loss of their money in this particular industry. Amongst those shareholders are some members and leaders of trade unions in this country I do wish that hon. Members of the Labour party would refrain from always assuming that when any money is made the people who make it are profiteers and rogues, and that when money is lost they are nothing but fools.

The argument is also used that any industry which cannot prosper in this country must of necessity be inefficient. That is all that some hon. Members can say. In the industry to which I have referred, we tried to get the best chemical experience possible. We engaged in research as much as we could. To those who say that we do not believe in research, I would reply that I have done as much as possible, in this House and out of it, to promote research in the cotton industry. In the tyre industry, to which I have referred, some of those who should have been working with us to-day, are now engaged in selling the very goods which competed against those which we should have been making. I do wish that hon. Members would get out of their minds the idea of always shouting for Free Trade and the doctrines of Cobden and John Bright. I admire the Socialists who do not agree with Free Trade. Some of them believe in Protection, and say so. I admired the hon. Member for St. Helens (Mr. Sexton) when he said to-night that he would prohibit the import of sweated goods. So would I. I believe there is a great deal of sympathy between us in our views. Personally, I have no hesitation in saying that I am a strong Protectionist. It is for this reason that I believe in the policy of Protection as against that or Free Trade. It would place us on a party in competition with other nations of the world, and instead of having one-and-a-quarter million of our people unemployed, we would be something like the others, and have all our people at work.

Mr. DIXEY

I understand that hon. Members opposite, many of whom stand first and foremost for Protection, when we come to a Division like this, instead of going out as they ought to do in favour of a straightforward Resolution of this kind, shelter themselves behind some camouflage about the Washington Conference. I am with them entirely, that the Washington Conference should be put into operation, but I do not agree with leaving the matter there. I think we should try and do as much as we can for the benefit of our workers, when' we know that there are people in certain trades who cannot get employment because of the unequal competition for which the party opposite is responsible. May I point out that you put up these rates of wages—

Mr. SPEAKER

The hon. Member should point it out to me.

Mr. DIXEY

I wish to point out that hon. Members opposite, I think quite rightly, set up a standard here for the working man which is a proper standard, and I am with them entirely in wanting to see that standard applied to all nations, but until that comes about we are bound to protect our industries. There are hon. Members on the Front Opposition Bench who are as great Free Traders as those who sit in small numbers below the Gangway, and their responsibility is heavy because they are refusing the right to work to people in industry who at the present time are kept out of employment by foreign competition. Leaving party politics aside, there is no harm in this Resolution. It does not commit any hon. Member opposite to a Protectionist programme. Its terms are perfectly clear, and those who support it are pledged to vote against goods produced by sweated labour coming into this country. Hon. Members opposite, instead of voting on this Resolution, have put up an Amendment which is intended to get hon. Members who sit for Scottish constituencies out of a quandary. Because hon. Member on the Back Benches do not quite hold with the views of their leaders on Free Trade, they have got out of the difficulty by putting up something with which to assuage their consciences. If they had the pluck of their convictions, they would come out and vote with us.

Mr. MAXTON

I am sure the hon. Member who has just spoken will give hon. Members who sit for Scottish constituencies the credit that they have always been able to get out of their own difficulties without any special assistance either from their own front bench or from the Government Front Bench. I rise, not because I am in any special difficulty, but because the very noticeable absence of any speaker from the Government Front Bench seems to indicate that they are just a little shy about making any pronouncement of their attitude on this matter. Surely this Motion is close enough to the general trade policy of the Government to justify at least one spokesman—even an Under-Secretary—saying a few words to soothe a disquieted and troubled House, but they have not even put up an Under-Secretary. The Debate so far has been taken part in by hon. Members on the Government side, and only by the backest of back benchers. The hon. Gentleman who moved the Resolution devoted most of the 50 minutes during which he delighted the House to reading quotations from my right hon. Friend the Member for Shettleston (Mr. Wheatley) and my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston). All that he did by reading those quotations was to show that a cer- tain number of us who sit on these benches are prepared to face this problem quite fearlessly. It proved that a certain number of us are thinking and discussing. We are not prepared to say that neither tariffs nor Free Trade matters. This is a problem that has to be faced, whether the right hon. Member for Shettleston or the hon. Member for Dundee were expressing the view on this point of somebody else or arguing another point of view. We are struggling towards enlightenment on this matter. We are quite certain that we are not going to arrive at the conclusion that the hon. Member and the right hon. Gentlemen opposite have arrived at, because it is light that we are looking for, not darkness. We are equally certain that we are not going to arrive at the conclusions of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway on this side of the House, because we look over a period of 100 years of their Free Trade paradise and see the working classes underpaid, overworked and periodically unemployed, and we can look back abroad in the protected paradises and find exactly the same thing going on.

Mr. DIXEY

What about the United States?

Mr. MAXTON

It is a poor country that has not got one E1 Dorado, but I am quite sure the hon. Member would recognise at once, and would admit at once, that the position in America is not due to the fact that America is protected. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] I have heard other arguments in this House from the hon. Member's associates crediting the great success of America to the absence of trade unionism there, and to the fact that there are no "ca'canny" callers such as we have on the Clyde, and that they have willing workers who are prepared to work all the time at full speed. That they are a superior body of people I have heard given as a reason for American prosperity. I look to the Belgians, to Holland, and to France, and I see all those countries protected by tariff walls, and I see working people working long hours, getting low wages, and a poor standard of life. We say these two things are obviously not enough on their own.

We have got our ultimate theory also, as we believe that all this poverty and overworking and the poor life that workers generally have is due to the capitalist system. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] If hon. Members opposite are wanting me to take a kindly interest in their nostrum, they need not get so irritated or annoyed at my cure. I am not prepared merely to fold my hands and say that this problem should not be approached or tackled until such time as Capitalism is destroyed in this country and Socialism established. I say that there is surely some practical way to meet the problem at the present time. I am particularly interested in the shipbuilding industry. How is any proposition advanced by hon. Members opposite going to meet the problem that we who are interested in the shipbuilding industry are faced with this week in the sending over to Germany of an order for five great motor ships that might quite well have been placed on the Clyde? In dealing with that problem, the newspapers of the hon. Members opposite in my particular area are telling us that the cure for that, to prevent orders for ships going abroad, is that our workers on the Clyde have got to work longer hours and take lower wages. [An HON-MEMBER: "Quite right!"] That is your cure.

Mr. DIXEY

Does not the hon. Member agree that, if you have a system of Protection coupled with a strong system of trade unionism, you get the remedy?

Mr. MAXTON

My hon. Friend is suggesting, I presume, some sort of coalition between this party here and the hon. Members opposite.

Mr. DIXEY

Why not?

Mr. MAXTON

He is suggesting that, if we give them Protection, they will join with us in achieving a social revolution. If the right hon. Gentleman who leads his party is prepared to discuss that behind Mr. Speaker's chair, I am prepared to enter into negotiations.

Sir G. DOYLE rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put," but Mr. SPEAKER withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question.

Mr. MAXTON

I have no desire that this matter should be talked out.

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

Division No. 46.]	AYES.	[11.0 p.m.
Acland- Troyte. Lieut.-Colonel	Fremantle, Lt.-Col. Francis E.	Mitchell, Sir W. Lane (Streatham)
Agg-Gardner, Rt. Hon. Sir James T	Gadle, Lieut.-Col. Anthony	Monsell, Eyres. Com. Rt. Hon. B. M.
Alnsworth, Major Charles	Galbraith, J. F. W.	Moore-Brabazon, Lieut.-Col. J. T. C.
Albery, Irving James	Gates, Percy	Morrison, H. (Wilts, Salisbury)
Alexander, E. E. (Leyton)	Gault, Lieut.-Col. Andrew Hamilton	Morrison-Bell, Sir Arthur Cilve
Allen, J. Sandeman (L'pool, W. Derby)	Globs, Col. Rt. Hon. George Abraham	Murchison, C. K.
Allen, Lieut.-col. Sir William James	Goff, Sir Park	Nail, Lieut.-Colonel Sir Joseph
Applin, Colonel R. V. K.	Gower, Sir Robert	Nelson, Sir Frank
Astor, Maj. Hn. John J. (Kent, Dover)	Grace, John	Newton, Sir D. G. C. (Cambridge)
Atkinson, C.	Greene, W. p. Crawford	Nuttall, Ellis
Balfour, George (Hamphead	Greenwood, William (Stockport)	Oakley, T.
Balniel, Lord	Gretton, Colonel John	O'Connor, T. J. (Bedford, Luton)
Barnston, Major sir Harry	Grotrlan, H. Brent	Oman, Sir Charles William C
Beamish, Captain T. p. H.	Guinness, Rt. Hon. Walter E.	Pennefather, Sir John
Bellairs. Commander Carlyon W.	Gunston, Captain D. w.	Penny, Frederick George
Benn, Sir A. S. (Plymouth, Drake)	Hacking. Captain Douglas H.	Perkins, Colonel E. K.
Bethell, A.	Hall, Capt. W. D'A. (Brecon & Rad.)	Perring, William George
Betterton, Henry B.	Hammersley, S. S.	Peto, G. (Somerset, Frome)
Birchall. Major J. Dearman	Hanbury, C.	Power, Sir John Cecil
Bird. Sir R. B. (Wolverhampton, W.)	Harland, A.	Pownall, Lieut.-Colonel Assheton
Blades, Sir George Rowland	Harrison, G. J. C.	Price, Major C. W. M.
Boothby, R. J. G.	Harvey, G. (Lambeth, Kennington)	Radford, E. A.
Bowater, Sir T. Vansittart	Harvey, Major S. E. (Devon, Totnes)	Raine, W.
Bridgeman, Rt. Hon. William Clive	Hawke, John Anthony	Rawson, Alfred Cooper
Briscoe, Richard George	Henderson, Capt. R. R. (Oxf'd, Henley)	Remer, J. R.
Brittaln, Sir Harry	Henderson, Lieut.-Col. V. L. (Bootle)	Rentoul. G. S.
Brocklebank, C. E. R.	Heneage. Lieut.-Col. Arthur P.	Rhys, Hon. C. A. U.
Brooke, Brigadier-General C. R. I.	Hennessy, Major J. R. G.	Rice, Sir Frederick
Brown, Brio.-Gen. H. C. (Berks, Ncwb'y)	Henniker-Hughan, Vice-Adm. Sir A.	Richardson, Sir P. W. (Sur'y. Ch'ts'y)
Broun- Lindsay. Major H.	Herbert, Dennis (Hertford, Watford)	Roberts, E. H. G. (Flint)
Burgoyne, Lieut.-Colonel Sir Alan	Hogg, Rt. Hon. Sir D. (St. Marylebone)	Roberts. Samuel (Hereford, Hereford)
Burman, J. B.	Hohler, Sir Gerald Fitzroy	Ropner, Major L.
Burton, Colonel H. W.	Holbrook, Sir Arthur Richard	Russell. Alexander West (Tynemouth)
Butler, Sir Geoffrey	Holt, Capt. H. P.	Rye, F. G.
Cadogan, Major Hon. Edward	Homan, C. W. J.	Salmon, Major I.
Calne, Gordon Hall	Hope, Capt. A. O. J. (Warw'k, Nun.)	Samuel, A. M. (Surrey, Farnham)
Campbell. E. T.	Hope, Sir Harry (Forfar)	Samuel. Samuel (W'dsworth, Putney)
Cautley, Sir Henry S.	Horlick, Lieut.-Colonel J. N.	Sandeman, A. Stewart
Camlet. Captain Victor A.	Howard, Captain Hon. Donald	Sanderson, Sir Frank
Cecil. Rt. Hon. Sir Evelyn (Aston)	Hudson, Capt. A. U. M. (Hackney,N.)	Sassoon, Sir Philip Albert Gustavo D.
Chadwick. Sir Robert Burton	Hume. Sir G. H.	Scott, Sir Leslie (Liverp'l, Exchange)
Charteris, Brigadier-General J.	Huntingfield, Lord	Shaw, Lt.-Col. A. D. Mel. (Renfrew, W)
Christie, J. A.	Hurd, Percy A.	Shaw, Capt. W. W. (Wilts, Westb'y)
Churchman, Sir Arthur C.	Illffe, Sir Edward M.	Shepperson, E. W.
Clarry, Reginald George	Inskip, Sir Thomas Walker H.	Slaney, Major P. Kenyon
Clayton, G. C.	Jackson, Lieut.-Colonel Hon. F. S.	Smith, R. W. (Aberd'n & Klnc'dine, C.)
Cochrane, Commander Hon. A. D.	Jackson. Sir H. (Wandsworth, Cen'l)	Smithers, Waldron
Cockerill, Brigadier-General G. K.	Jacob, A. E.	Somerville. A. A. (Windsor)
Conway, Sir W. Martin	Jephcott, A. R.	Spender Clay. Colonel H.
Cope, Major William	Kindersley. Major Guy M.	Sprot, Sir Alexander
Couper, J. B.	Knox, Sir Alfred	Stanley, Col. Hon. G. F. (Will'sden, E.)
Courtauld, Major J. S.	Lamb, J. Q.	Stanley, Lord (Fylde)
Cowan. Sir Wm. Henry (Isllngtn. N.)	Lane-Fox, Lieut.-Col. George R.	Stanley. Hon. O. F. G. (Westm'eland)
Croft, Brigadier-General Sir H.	Lister, Cunliffe-, Rt. Hon. Sir Philip	Steel, Major Samuel Strang
Crook, C. W.	Little, Dr. E. Graham	Storry Deans. R.
Crookshank. Col. C. de W. (Berwick)	Locker-Lampson, Com. O. (Handew'th)	stott. Lieut.-Colonel W. H.
Crookshank. Cpt. H. (Llndsey, Galnsbro)	Looker, Herbert William	Stuart, Crichton-, Lord C.
Curtis-Bennett, Sir Henry	Lougher, L.	Stuart, Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn)
Curzon, Captain Viscount	Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh Vere	Templeton, w. P.
Dalkeith. Earl of	Luce, Major-Gen. Sir Richard Harman	Thompson. Luke (Sunderland)
Davidson, J. (Hertf'd, Hemel Hempst'd)	Lumley, L. R.	Thomson. F. C. (Aberdeen, South)
Davies, A. V. (Lancaster, Royton)	MacAndrew, Charles Glen	Thomson. Sir W. Mitchell-(Croydon, S.)
Davles, Maj. Geo. F. (Somerset, Yeovil)	Macdonald, Capt. P. D. (I. of W.)	Titchfield, Major the Marquess of
Dawson. Sir Philip	Maltland, Sir Arthur D. steel-	Vaughan-Morgan. Col. K. P.
Dlxey, A. C.	McDonnell, Colonel Hon. Angus	Waddington, R.
Drewe. C.	Maclntyre, Ian	Wallace. Captain D. E.
Eden, Captain Anthony	McLean, Major A.	Ward, Lt.-Col. A. L. (Kingston-on-Hull)
Edmondson. Major A. J.	Macquisten, F. A.	Warner, Brigadler-General W. W.
Elveden, Viscount	MacRobert, Alexander M.	Waterhouse, Captain Charles
Evans. Captain A. (Cardiff, South)	Makins, Brigadier-General E.	Watson, Sir F. (Pudsey and Otley)
Everard, W. Lindsay	Manningham-Buller, sir Mervyn	Watson, Rt. Hon. W. (Carlisle)
Fairfax, Captain J. G.	Margesson, Captain D.	Wells. S. R.
Falle. Sir Bertram G.	Mason, Lieut.-Colonel Glyn K.	Wheler, Major Granville C. H.
Fanshawe, Commander G. D.	Merriman, F. B. t	Williams, A. M. (Cornwall, Northern)
Flelden, E. B.	Meyer, Sir Frank	Williams, Com. C. (Devon, Torquay)
Fleming, D. P.	Milne, J. S. Wardlaw-	Wilson, Sir C. H. (Leeds, Central)
Forestler-Walker, L.	Mitchell, S. (Lanark, Lanark)	Wilson, R. R. (Staflord, Lichfield)

The House divided: Ayes, 240; Noes, 137.

Winterton. Rt. Hon. Earl	Wood, E. (Chett'r, Staly'ge & Hyde)	Yerburgh, Major Robert D. T.
Wise, Sir Fredric	Wood, Sir Kingsley (Woolwich, W.).
Womersley, W. J.	Wood, Sir S. Hill (High Peak)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—
Wood, B. C. (Somerset, Bridgwater)	Wragg, Herbert	Sir Grattan Doyle and Sir
		Frederick Hall.

Main Question again proposed.

Mr. WALLHEADrose —

It being after Eleven of the Clock, the Debate stood adjourned.