Foreign News: Snowden’s Budget

(See front cover)

Miss Megan Lloyd George, 28 (daughter), made her maiden speech as a member of Parliament last week, and Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, 29 (son), made his maiden speech. But nobody took any great notice though both bright young people were warmly applauded.*

The empire was waiting with breathless impatience to hear a sallow, middle aged, crippled little Yorkshireman.

Tantalizing Chancellor. Months ago Philip Snowden’s 1930 budget became the state secret most tantalizing to British businessmen. If he should decide to revoke the so-called McKenna duties protecting British auto makers, these gentry knew they would almost have to close up shop. How could they find out what was in Snowden’s mind? They could not. Punch cartooned the Chancellor of the Exchequer with his box of secrets clutched under his arm, snarling at businessmen who wanted information. Punch was right, but so was Snowden. The budget of the world’s greatest empire is by tradition a “political surprise” which the Government springs on the Opposition.

On budget afternoon last week the great leaders of British banking, shipping and industry left their offices and jostled each other in the distinguished visitors’ gallery of the House, or the Peers’ gallery if their rank entitled them to that eminence. Noticed in the distinguished jam was Rt. Hon. Montagu Collet Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, and in the packed Peers’ gallery Baron Kylsant, chairman of the Royal Mail Line, White Star Line and associated companies, largest shipping combine on earth.

Like a deus ex machine in the women’s gallery sat Mrs. Ethel Snowden, strong helpmate, the sustaining moral force which her husband has said and everyone believes enabled him to win alone, against all the great powers of continental Europe at The Hague (TIME, Sept. 9).

Thump, thump, thump, thump—at 3:30 p. m. the sound of the crippled Chancellor’s rubber tipped canes was heard, and at 3:46 the great budget speech was on.

Shocking Figures. Reading his speech with frequent glances at the opposition bench on which sat his rival and predecessor as Chancellor, Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill, Mr. Snowden rasped:

“I regret that the financial position I inherited [i.e.] from Churchill does not permit me”—but he got no further at the moment. Conservatives cried, “Shame, shame! That was vulgar, Snowden! Shame! Vulgar!”

Not in the least ruffled, and with Mrs. Snowden smiling happy encouragement, the Chancellor soon plowed ahead, amid Laborite cheers. The nation’s fiscal year had ended with a deficit of £14,522,000, he said sourly, in contrast to the £4,096,000 surplus estimated by Mr. Churchill. He proposed to make up this deficit and balance the budget for the year at £781,909,000—nearly £40,000,000 more than the balancing figure last year. “I will now.”said Mr. Snowden pouring himself half a tumblerful of water,— “I will now give the House a moment to recover from the shock of those figures,”and amid laughter the Chancellor downed two swallows.

Making up the Deficit. “As long as I hold this office,” resumed the Chancellor, “the country shall pay its way by honest methods.”

He announced an income tax increase of “six pence in the pound”(2^½%) on moderate incomes—thus making “the tax on incomes under $10.000 22½%, with a 25% deduction on the tax, whereas in the U. S. such incomes pay circa one half of one per cent.

Next came a thumping increase in the “death duties” (inheritance tax), so that hereafter the Exchequer will get exactly half the estate of every man who leaves $10,000,000 or more. Cried Conservatives, infuriated. “Take the lot!”

Thirdly Mr. Snowden announced that “after tomorrow” the tax on beer would be a penny more a gallon, “an increase too small to justify any raising of the retail price.”

These were the main tax increases in one of the briefest British budget speeches ever made. Mr. Snowden said in their defense little more than that they would give him the extra £42,264,000 he must have.

Two Promises. The real crux of the speech was a statement by the Chancellor anent the “safeguarding” and McKenna duties, British equivalents of U. S. protective tariffs. Although Mr. Snowden is a convinced, passionate free trader, he held himself in check, promised first that the safeguarding laws will be allowed to run to their expiring dates a few years hence, promised second not to tamper with the McKenna duties now “although they must be abolished within four years.”

Tycoons who had feared Cripple Snowden might cripple their protected industries breathed easy.

Poet Chancellor. Thus the Chancellor had produced a middle-of-the-road budget. As a sop to the left Labor wing he threw in a closing suggestion that taxation of land values must eventually be revised upward, but this was a mere sop and did not affright landed Liberals whose votes are needed to keep the Labor government from being overthrown. Confidently, perhaps overconfidently, Mr. Snowden predicted that the MacDonald government will remain in power four years. The cost of the Empire’s fighting forces, he said, had been reduced by £3,106,000 for next year, but still, “It is deplorable that the great Powers should be spending so large a part of their resources on armaments.” With genuine sorrow Mr. Snowden mourned that he could not “remove all existing food taxes.” Friends remembered that ho once wrote a poem in Yorkshire dialect on this subject. Two lines:

We want noa taxes on food, lad, nor on clothes nor shoes nor light;

Tha’s a better plan ner that, Ben, for keeping t’home fires bright. “

Socialism is a Religion!” Conservative attacks in Parliament will come this week, but last week’s quick reaction by the London press was that Mr. Snowden’s opus is “safe and sound.” His sturdy weaver sire in Yorkshire was a Liberal, and the days of Mr. Snowden’s evangelical radicalism, when he shouted from platform and stump: “Socialism is a religion!”* are drawing to an end. He has become so moderate a Laborite that he is almost a Liberal again. He has broken with the I. L. P. (Independent Labor Party) the radical Labor bloc.

As every Yorkshireman knows, “Phil” Snowden went into politics after a bicycle accident crippled him so much that he had to give up a civil service job. His mother toiled and slaved to feed the young stump speaker, died happy in the knowledge that her “Phil” was an M. P. and a power in his party, died a few pitiful months too soon to see him Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first MacDonald cabinet (1924). She also died satisfied that her Phil had coined and contributed to socialist oratory an immortal phrase: “The idle rich,” though his title to this distinction has been challenged.

Aggressive pacifism during the War cost both Mr. Snowden and Mr. MacDonald their parliamentary seats, and the Chancellor has known what it is to have a crowd at one’s heels shouting, “Hang Snowden!” But now Peace is the fashion again and the Chancellor, as he nestles his small body in great gorgeous robes of state, is safe and sound in triumphant possession of the motto he has flaunted for years in public speeches: “You never lose in the long run by sticking to your convictions!”

*Both spoke in defense of a bill to wipe out slum areas. Son MacDonald, practical, urged that the slums be not torn down without previously building better quarters with low rentals for the slum folk to move into. Daughter Lloyd George, who began to speak inaudibly, gained courage and volume until she was heard to say: “We have heard the Minister of Health suggest that the new housing for ‘aged persons’ include ‘spinsters who do not intend to marry.’ Are there any such, who are not ‘aged persons’? Most spinsters must be very aged before they make a resolve not to marry, or at least before they intend to keep that resolution.”

*Mr. Churchill speaks on such occasions on whiskey-soda.

*He called Jesus “The Tramping Socialist of Nazareth.”