"Parity in Tariffs!"

With unemployment in Great Britain nearing the 2,000,000 mark (an increase of 500,000 since the Labor Cabinet took office) Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald faced a turbulent House of Commons last week, barely squeaked by again, with a majority of but 29. Liberal Leader Lloyd George, who, by abstaining with 50 Liberals, spared the Government defeat, complained ominously: "Mr. Snowden treats me nowadays as if I were Mr. Churchill!"* (bitterest Snowden foe). An impression grew that Scot MacDonald may be riding for a fall, partly due to Chancellor Snowden's tsaristic way with the Cabinet's friends, partly because Minister-in-Charge-of-Unemployment James Henry Thomas is "up against it" (as he himself said last week), but chiefly because recent by-elections have suggested that the country may be veering toward the Conservative Party's scheme to try out tariffs as an unemployment cure. Arguing ingeniously last week in the House of Commons, Conservative Leader Stanley Baldwin said: "I agree that high tariffs are a bar to world business, but you cannot get those tariffs reduced so long as you leave our own market a world dumping ground. I want disarmament in tariffs as much as I want disarmament in arms. But how do you get disarmament in arms? By dealing among equals! America and ourselves can go into a conference and settle something, but, supposing Switzerland made proposals to America to reduce her navy, do you think she would do it? People can speak the same language when on tariff equality. We can only protest."

*Mr. Lloyd George might just as well have said, ". . . as if I were Mrs. Elizabeth Tarratt." Mrs. Tarratt is Chancellor Snowden's 85-year-old next door neighbor in Surrey. When aged Mrs. Tarratt built a fence on property adjoining Mr. Snowden's Eden Lodge, the wizened Chancellor promptly had it chopped down, declared it was on public land. Mrs. Tarratt went to the rural council, received a writ declaring that the land was not public but her very own. Last week she ordered a new, indestructible wire fence erected, dared Mr. Snowden to lay a finger on it.

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