MR. BURNS AND THE UNEMPLOYED.
[To TIIR EDITOR OF TOR sr KorAToio]
Sin,—In your issue of October 31st you have dealt impartially with Mr. John Burns in showing his merits and the attitude which he has taken in the present crisis, even though at the serious risk of being unpopular. You could not do a better service to the working class than to open their eyes to the fact that, after all, the President of the Local Government Board, though seemingly not complying with all that they might wish him to do, has done so only for their good. His statement in Parliament that millions of pounds are yearly spent by working people alone on drink fills one with sorrow. Being a foreigner who has just come to this country, I was simply shocked to see so many workmen crowding the public-houses. Nothing, it seems to me, is sadder and more demoralising than to meet on a Saturday afternoon people coming out of public-houses tottering and almost unable to walk until somebody helps them. And this during these months when on all sides the cry of unemployment is at its height, when corporations and benevolent committees are making superhuman efforts to mitigate the prevailing misery. One is tempted to ask : How do these people, who cry that they have no bread to eat, that their children have no clothes to wear,—how in the world can they find the necessary money for drink ? Admitting that a certain proportion of these men belong to that class who are employed, must they not take a serious lesson from the. existing con- dition of things and realise that the wheel of fate may some day turn and they also be thrown out of employment? Working people of this country, it seems, have come to bold the doctrine that, come what may, they must spend immediately whatever they earn during a week and let the future take care of itself. If the working class could only spend less money on football snatches and betting, and less still on drink, they would do themselves much more good than any m easures the Corpora- tions might take could do for them, or any Unemployment Act that the Government might put in the statute-book could accomplish in the end.—I am, Sir, &o.,
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