BOOKS.

M. BROADHURST'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.* BRAM:MI:MST'S autobiography is excellent reading. It is so absolutely free from every sort of affectation, so wholesome

and good tempered, and so refreshingly pervaded by the spirit of enjoyment. In the words of the sub-title, it is the story of a progress "from a Stonemason's Bench to the Treasury Bench." But unlike most stories of men who have advanced from the ranks of the day-labourers to the ranks of the legislators, it is not a story of struggle for distinction, for wealth, for social success, or even for existence. That is one thing that makes the book so pleasant

" Let me at once" [Mr. Broadhurst says on his very first page] "assure my readers that I never had a way marked out in my own mind. I have gone from point to point as circumstances seemed to require me. 'One step's enough for me,' as Cardinal Newman sang. I am not conscious of ever having had a goal for my ambition, that is if I ever at any time possessed an ambition. I have never burnt the midnight oil considering my next move. Each succeeding morning I have done the work nearest to hand. On the Saturday in November, 1872, when I had done my last day's work as a stonemason I should have thought the man beside himself who had then ventured to tell me that it was my farewell to my trade."

Born at Littlemore in 1840, he grew up under the shadow and influence of Oxford, making his beginnings of work "in

repairing and enlarging Churches and Colleges," and con- ceiving "a great affection for the old city which I have never lost. Its grey walls and ancient buildings were always a source of delight, and I would gaze with awe and wonderment at the great men in their caps and gowns as they paced the quiet quadrangles and the broad walks of the College gardens." But he did not envy the great men in caps and gowns, nor did he till very much later in life give even a thought of regret to the small advantage he had reaped from his opportunities of education in the village school of Littlemore at an earlier stage. Life in the fields where stoats, hedgehogs, weasels, and field-mice abounded

had made him perfectly happy up to his twelfth year, even as the eleventh or twelfth member of a family living on wages that varied from 20s. to 24s. a week, and the only drawback

in his existence at that time was the restraint of school. It was joy to escape from the schoolmaster at the age of twelve and make oneself generally useful at home, besides doing odd jobs for neighbours and getting a few useful pennies in return. Promotion to regular employment in a blacksmith's forge was still more delightful, and the tall blacksmith, who was a leading person in the village club and wore ribbons and decorations at festivals, became young Broadbmst's hero. The Broadhurst tradition appears to have been of Puritanic strain,—gay ribbons not being worn or thought much of. Soon the boy was taken from the forge— where he had learned to do things which later made a noise in the House of Commons and found their amusing echo in

Punch—and put to his father's trade. This, too, was for the best, and Mr. Broadhurst records his opinion, based on experience, that "most lads will learn their father's trade quicker than any other." • As the youngest employe in the stonemason's shop he had much to do besides learning his trade. To get hot tea and

coffee ready for thirty or forty men every morning was one of his duties; another was to fetch their beer twice a day from a public-house a mile away. But it all came in the day's work and went to the makina, of life's experience. And

it la all remembered affectionately, though not without recog- nition of a darker side. In those days, Mr. Broadhurst tells us, the treatment of boys in a workshop. was not what it is now

" Generally the language and manners of the men were coarse Ilearr Broadhurst, M.P. : the Story of his Life from a Stonemason's Bench to Treasury Bench. Told by Himself. With an Introduction by Augustine R.C. London : Hutchinson and Co. 1120.1

and brutal in the extreme. The man was never recognised in the boy, who was regarded as created for the sole purpose of ministering to the fancies of his elders ; any lack of ready obedience brought down upon the victim's head a storm of abuse, not unfrequently accompanied by more substantial admonitions in the shape of kicks and cuffs."

Next came Wanderjahre. He went to London for a time and could not stand it :—

" The teeming masses of humanity rushing in all directions, bent, as it appeared to me, on getting clear of their neighbours, yet never succeeding in shaking off their pursuers, the roar of the streets, the glare of the lamps at night-time, inspired in me a carious mingling of fascination and distaste. The same con- ditions were reproduced in the workshop. Above, below, and around me, machines throbbed and whirled ceaselessly. Tbe homely surroundings and social interests of country life had no existence here ; life seemed a new thing, almost unearthly. Even the Houses of Parliament, with the great Clock Tower, my chief delight, could not compensate for the absence of the joys of rural life. A month's stay in modern Babylon was quite sufficient for me, and, gasping like a fish out of water, I set my face towards the open country."

He found work at Pangbourne, "a most delightful spot," where he would have liked to stay, but the work did not hold out. He journeyed to Lowestoft, and from Lowestoft to

Norwich, where he found a congenial master, for whom be worked six years on the happiest terms, most happily described. In 1865 he settled in London, and between that date and 1872, when he gave up mason's work, he tells us :—

"I was employed upon many of the best-known buildings in London, and traces of my workmanship might be found in Westminster Abbey, the Albert Hall, St. Thomas's Hospital, Burlington House. the Guildhall. and the aristocratic residences in Grosvenor Place and Curzon Street, Mayfair, though I am certain that the prolonged and minute search necessary to find such traces would not be rewarded by any startling artistic discovery:, From the beginning of his journeyman days a useful and trusted member of the Trade-Union of his craft, Mr. Broadhurst found himself in the spring of 1872 called upon to take a leading part in a dispute in the building trades. The men's intention of striking was anticipated by a lock out, and Mr. Broadhurst was elected chairman of the men's committee. The results were satisfactory :—" Rarely, I suppose, in the history of labour disputes was a lock, out con- ducted on a more amicable basis. No breaches of the law occurred, and so quiet was everything that scarcely any one save those interested in it was aware of its existence."

Moreover, the men got their terms.

Mr. Broadhurst gives interesting accounts of the various labour movements in which he had part. But this is not the place in which to enter into the intricacies of these great and difficult matters. It is enough to note the spirit of candour and fairness and the absence of parti-pris with which Mr. Broadhurst approaches them. He always hoped great things from the quiet talking over of disputed points, and he aimed at bringing masters and men to recognise that side of every question that is "the other side," and to this end he believed

in the efficacy of mediation :—

"During my chairmanship," he says," I succeeded in inducing the Central Committee to exercise executive powers. I was moved to do this by the conviction that with a firmer control from the central body many strikes in various parts of the country might be prevented, while others would be considerably shortened. Em- ployers and their representatives were then, and I have no doubt are still, too apt to treat their own workmen with very little con- sideration, often displaying an unreasonable repugnance to talk over what the men consider to be grievances. This failure to observe the minor courtesies of life is equally shared by the men, so far as my observation goes. I reasoned that if an outside body, exempt from local prejudices, could intervene and act as a go-between, interviewing masters and men, the causes of dispute might frequently be adjusted without having recourse to the extreme measure of a strike."

When in 1880 Mr. Broadhurst became a Member of Par- liament he found his labours very much increased, though he had worked pretty hard as a delegate and chairman of Trade- Unions. And his opportunities of rest and means of economy were proportionately lessened. With acceptable straight- forwardness and simplicity he goes into the detail of the interesting question of the income and expenditure of the

working man in Parliament :—

" I found myself face to face with an entirely new situation, imposing new responsibilities and larger means. During my married life, which commenced at nineteen years of age, I had always practised a fair measure of frugality ; but a seat in Par- liament and a salary of £150, out of which I had to pay for any clerical assistance I required, seemed utterly incongruous. But

the slituation had to be met, and I met it by maintaining the same habits at home and abroad as before my election, with the

• exception of such changeses were unavoidable when Parliament was sitting. in the matter of dross I followed the same line of conduct. For years past all my clothes had been made at home by my wife, and, for several years of my Parliamentary life, my wife remained my only tailor,—a circumstance which I fancy is unique - in the history of the English Parliament. But with all these economies, my financial position was far from comfortable."

Evening dress Mr. Broadhurst always steadily refused to • put on, not because he objected to it on principle, but because he did not see his way to paying the tailor's bill. The refusal has had its inconveniences, excluding him from dinner-parties, as a similar objection to Court-dress has shut him out from levees. But he has been to garden-parties at Marlborough House, and even stayed. at Sandringham,— though the difficulty about a dress-coat almost prevented that. But here the kindly tact of the Prince and Princess of Wales stepped in. Mr. Broadhurst was told that if he would only come, he should have his dinner to himself in his own room, and the " week-end " was accomplished with great

• mutual satisfaction and enjoyment. Are these details snob- bish? Not in the least. Etiquette has its raison d'être, and when Prince and workman agree that it is worth while to overrule etiquette for the sake of coming .together, they pay a very real compliment to their common manhood.

Mx. Broadhurst takes all the changes and chances of life with such serene philosophy that but for his account of what he felt when Mr. Gladstone proposed " office " to him we shonld have feared that he was hardly human. That moment found him out. It was the climax of his honours, and it almost daunted him :—

" I can honestly declare that I left Mr. Gladstone's house with- out any of those feelings of exhilaration and pleasing excitement which the gift of office is generally supposed to awaken in the heart of the politician. Like a drowning man, I lived my life over again in the next half-hour. The lowly beginning of my career, its labours at the forge and the stonemason's shop, the privations, the wanderings, and my varying fortunes stood out in my mind's eye as so many living pictures. Especially did my memory recall the months I had spent working on the very Government buildings which I was about to enter as a Member of the House. Then, returning to the present. I realised as I had never done before the irretrievable loss which the lack of educa- tion in my early days involved. Visions of humiliation arising

• from the duties of my new office and my meagre capacity and endow-

ments rose before me with startling vivdnass I firmly believe that had not Mr. Gladstone shown such a determined intention to attach me to his Ministry I should have left him that day with a grateful acknowledgment of his kindness, but an un- mistakable refusal to accept his offer."

Everybody knows how entirely unrealised were these fore- bodings of humiliation. But that makes the confession of them none the less genuine or graceful. It is pleasant to contrast with this confession of diffidence the passage in which Mr. Broadhurst sums up the reasons why, though his • time of Parliamentary service was one of arduous drudgery, he never wanted to retire except when momentarily jaded. The fascination of the "best club in London" was as strong

- for him as if he had been to the manner born. He liked all that it brought him,—the great contacts and also the small amenities. But if he was perfectly happy and at his ease on the Terrace at Westminster, it must be remembered that he was not less so when he was working at the stonemason's *bench. It is of those earlier years that he writes: "At this time I lived every hour of my life ; I do not think the wealthiest or most exalted person in the land obtained half

the joy from mere existence that I did." And this in spite • of hardships in the workman's lot—general and particular— some of which he rejoices to think are removed for the majority by the reforms of recent years, others which are in the nature of things, and must continue to the end of our civilisation.