Review of Rerietcg, 20/3106. 



Character Sketches, 



265 



reorganising its own labour, providing for its re- 

 quirements withi an efficiency and an economy not 

 to be excelled by any private firm. But from its 

 birth the L.C.C. has been checked, hampered and 

 hindered by the jealousy of the Conservatives. The 

 Conservatives created the County Council, and ever 

 since they brought it into being they have acted as 

 a cruel stepmother to their own offspring. From 

 1888 down to the present day, the Conservatives — 

 Moderates as they call themselves— have been in a 

 permanent minority on the Council. During the 

 whole of the period, with the exception of three 

 years — from 1892 to 1895 — they have been in a 

 permanent majority in the Imperial Parliament. 

 They are always in a permanent ten to one 

 majority in the House of Lords. Hence the L.C.C. 

 might propose, but the Conservative majority in 

 another place disposed. Year after year the House 

 of Lords vetoed the innocent request of the Countv 

 Council to be allowed to utilise the river Thames as 

 a highway for steamboat traffic. Down to the pre- 

 sent day the House of Lords forbids the Council 

 to bring the tramways across the bridges or to carry 

 the rails along the Thames embankment. In ever'v 

 direction the Conservative classes have used their 

 power to prevent the spokesmen of the London 

 masses obtaining the conveniences and priviliges 

 which the County Council demanded. It is this 

 which gives such significance and point to the selec- 

 tion of John Burns as President of the Local Go- 

 vernment Board. Heretofore this Minister has acted 

 as if he held a watching brief for the interests of 

 the classes, and he was ever swift to interpose the 

 immense obstacle of departmental obstruction in the 

 way of the eager reformers of the L.C.C. Nothing 

 could more significantly show the change, the revo- 

 lution that has been effected by the substitution of 

 the Liberals for the Unionists in the Government of 

 Great Britain, than the fact that the supreme control 

 under Parliament of the Local Government Board 

 has passed into the hands of the stoutest and most 

 intrepid Progressive on the London County Council. 

 In his first speeches as Cabinet Minister Mr. Burns 

 made the significant declaration that " he would do 

 his best to relieve municipal activity from the con- 

 scious bias that had operated against it too long." 

 All Americans who are interested in the municipilisa- 

 tion of the great public services — trams, railways, 

 gas, water, electricity, steamers, etc. — will do well 

 to keep an attentive eye on the doings of John 

 Burns, of Battersea, now he is President of the 

 Local Government Board of all England. 



John Burns has visited the United States at least 

 once. He was there as a delegate from the Trades 

 Union Congress in 1894. He did not bring back 

 with him a very pleasant impression of the rule of 

 the Bosses. " Chicago," he said, " was a pocket 

 edition of Hell," while the United States seemed 

 to him " a Plutocratic Republic run by concen- 

 trated capital." Like most English reformers, he 



has a holv horror of Tammanv. He declared years 

 ago that if he thought Trades Unionism meant the 

 beginning of Tammany he would fight against the 

 very men from whom he drew his salary. He is a 

 just man and honest withal, and although he has 

 ever insisted upon a fair days wages for a fair day's 

 work, he has been as severe in exacting the latter in 

 the interest of the ratepayer as he was to demand 

 the former in the interest of the workmen. 



It was John Burns who in the first days of the 

 London County Council was entrusted with the 

 framing of what is known as the Magna Charta of 

 Labour in Great Britain. This was formally enacted 

 l)y the following resolutions, passed first by the 

 London County Council, March 5th, 1889, and 

 afterwards by almost all the more liberal local 

 governing bodies in Great Britain. This resolution 

 runs as follows : — 



That this Council shall require from any person formally 

 tendering for any contract to the Council a declaration 

 that they will pay such rate of wages and observe such 

 hours of labour as are generally accepted as fair in their 

 trade, and in the event of any charges to the contrary 

 being established against them, the tender should not be 

 accepted. 



The effect of this resolution was to secure for all 

 workmen employed by any firms doing business with 

 the Council — One day rest in seven, no more than 

 54 hours' work a week, " fair" wages at trades union 

 rates, no overtime, no contract labour, and when 

 continuous labour is necessary three eight-hour 

 shifts substituted for two of twelve hours each. The 

 [jrinciple that the State, whether National or Muni- 

 cipal, should be an Ideal Employer of Labour was 

 affirmed at the Berlin International Congress of 

 Labour. It has probably received more practical 

 application in the London County Council than in 

 any other public body in Great Britain. Before 

 passing on to consider John Burns as a politician, 

 it may be well to advert briefly, in passing, to the 

 part, the heroic part, which he played in the great 

 Dock Strike of 1889, in which he roused, organised 

 and controlled one of the most dangerous of indus- 

 trial uprisings with marvellous courage, energy and 

 resource, which was crowned at last by complete 

 success. He has never been an advocate of strikes. 

 But he has ever done his best to aid his fellow- 

 workers when they have embarked upon a conflict 

 with Capital. 



Bums is a practical man. He has long since 

 "left behind him the days when he horrified Mr. 

 Arthur Balfour by declaring " that it was as idle to 

 talk about moralising Capital as it would be to talk 

 about moralising a boa constrictor or taming a tiger." 

 His old Social Democratic comrades amused them- 

 selves on his accession to office by reprinting some 

 of the more fiery invectives which had fallen from 

 the lips of the NLan with the Red Flag, but they 

 fell absolutely flat. Everyone knew that John 

 Burns was the same man he had always been, but 

 no one expected him to use the same language. Cir- 



