The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1908-08-12

and second readings to subject itself
to the vivisecting knife of hostile per-
sons and if it survives in a condition
ever so emaciated, the asphyxiating at
mosphere of the House of Lords. it
comes back to mocS the condition it
was designed to alleviate
TOO BUSY FOR ANY REAL WORK.
"The hours of the House are fixed
between the ridiculous time of 8: 80 and
1890. This is a sop to the legal and
commercial members. The days rou-
tine has a sickening monotony. Pre-
cious time, in which earnest, inspired
men should be forging generous legis-
lation for the people, is wantonly and
recklessly wasted. one yearns for a
strong north wind of realism to sweep
through the musty chamber, or that
some god might touch their vision
with a sense of fitness and proportion.
We have pleaded in vain for a day to
consider feeding the starving school
children. But the Prime Minister, with
the utmost urbanit, replies that the
House is too busy with other impor-
tant business. A little time elapses,
and the House has an all night sitting
to discuss ana pass the deceased wife
sisters bill. As a cynical Liberal friend
| observed to me in the small hours of
the morning, the only good suggestion
of the bill is that there is a deceased
WIFE This painful absence of right
| perspective on the part of any govern
ment alleging itself to have a serious
human purpose is depressing to the
! point of pessimism.
/ NOT IN TOUCH WITH THE PEOPLE
THE first impression of an earnest
member is one of hopelessness and flu
tility. There seems to be no magma
| BILE relation between this conventional
and formal assembly of phlegmatic and
ceremonious Britishers, sleek and well
fed, and the great drab mass of human
ity who grope in the mean streets of
the big cities. These good-humored
and complacent persons are not to
blame for their apathy. They have
never lived near enough to the heart
the words hunger, poverty, restitution,
are abstract and academic phrases,
with no real meaning. They have new
er stared against the blank, black wall
of hopelessness. What do they know,
what can they know of the haunting
specter that dogs every step of the
luckless worker?
MUST GO TO THE SCRAP HEAP.
Il have no hope for the House OF
Commons with its present personnel. 1t
is worn out and Anticipated machine,
that must be scrapped and replaced
by something more in consonance with
the new desires of a new era. The age
= is too advanced to tolerate this dialec-
teal humbug. The old parties have
exhausted their purpose and lost their
meaning The heart is dead, and they
have fatty degeneration of the brain
The needs of the age are shorter hours
= cleaner and more dignified labor, bet
l ter houses, better workshops, juster re
e Enumeration. The people are ceasing t
= let out their thinking as they let on
1 is complete there will be a destruction
S of baubles and Parliament will have tt
e deal with human life"
= Grayson's entrance into the House o
r Commons has been through the bacl
: door of the slum. He first began hi
career as a worker among the fallel
: women of Manchester. When only L
e years old he entered a seminary fol
S theological studies and on completing
Y his course of three years study, tool
= up his residence in one of the wors
slums of Manchester, in the infamou
f Ancoats district. Here the mill hand
q of Manchester were wont to foregathe
n and hold weekly orgies. Young Gray
= son succeeded in making some i'm
s preston on this life, but at length
It came to realize that one man, or
hundred men, working at such reform
could accomplish little unless radica
changes were made in the whole socia
status of the people. 1t was just a
this period that he came across tn,
works of the great American thinkers
Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman; an,
from reading those authors he wa
converted from his purely sectarial
or theological attitude to look at tn
problems of life from a larger aspect
Abandoning his tneosogIcal work h
went as a teacher and lecturer anon
the miners of Colne valley-one of tn