Los Angeles herald., 1905-10-22
IDLE WOMEN
APPEAL TO KING
WIVES OF UNEMPLOYED IN
DISTRESS
Great Army Plans March on Bucklng
nam PaIace-Emlnent, Authorities
See Menace In Industrial
Conditions
Special Cable to The Herald.

special Gable to The Herald.
LONDON, Oct. Eleven with the
improvement in trade, the ranks of
the unemployed continue to swell. Not
III any way discouraged by the refusal
of the king to receive an army of un-
employed workmen who proposed to
march through the streets to Buck
ingham palace, the wives and daugh-
ters OF the east end unemployed are
now organizing great procession to
march to the palace, with view Of
laying before the king a plain state
ment Of their sufferings.
There is now an air of suppressed
excitement in Poplar and the sur
rounding centers of distress. Thou
sands of women from Poplar, Bow,
Bromley, Westham, Milwall and even
Bermondsey, have declared their In
tention of forming part of an army of
misery that will march through the
streets of the west end.
The final mass meeting of wives will
be held on Monday week and few
days later the order to march will be
given. Mrs. Will Crooks, wife of a
labor member Of parliament, will lead
the procession.
But what the unemployed expect the
\ king to do for them has not been
stated at any of the mass meetings
of the unemployed.
Points to America
A discussion has been started in some
papers apropos of the unemployed
upon the skilled artisan system, that
of the United States being compared
with that of England. Sir Gilbert Par
ker Is one who brings a most powerful
yfc.fi
"The tendency of the last thirty or
forty years has been toward the con-
centration of SKILL" he says. within
a limited area of production the United
States has, with philosophic steadi-
ness, developed technical education,
not for what might be called the sake
of education alone, but because the
habit of technical education produces a
habit of technical skill sooner or later
throughout the whole population.
1.-THE United States believes in ad-
mitting raw material free, or as free
as possible, but not manufactured
goods.
"But England buys an immense lot
of half manufactured goods, which
means limiting the area of skill and
energy. Skilled Workmen during the
last twenty-five years have been ceaa-
ing to be skilled and have become un-
are filled with men who once had a
trade which is now obsolete or exer-
cised only through a third or half of
!ts processes. We have more unskilled
unemployed who have come from
skilled classes than any other country
among western nations"
Would Encourage Men
Sir Clifton Robinson. in suggesting a
remedy for the trouble, pays tribute to
the American system. He believes in
giving the initiative in workmen full
play.
In the engineering establishments
with which he was connected in
America the men We're encouraged in
every possible way to devise and bring
forward new ideas, which, however
wild they might be. were given con-
sideration by their employers and
/ whenever they were adopted the work.
men received the credit.
Sir Hiram Maxim blieves the effect
of that concentration of skill referred
to by Sir Gilbert Parker is doing about
as much harm in the United States as
i'll England.
"a great deal of the lack of skill In
workmen," he says, "and it applies to
the United States as we'll as to Eng
land, arises from work being too high
ly specialized, so to speak. But much
more serious is the fact that there is
gcing on in both America and England
certain degeneration. which is
brought about by the fact that we
have been doing all we can to make IL
so very expensive for mankind to live
that the better classes shrink from
marriage, and when they do wed they
restrict the number OF their children"