The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1912-09-07

kerr HARDlE HERE.
Remarkable Personality OF the
British Labor IEa6er

. . q .
snowy haired. deep chester, power
tui. Keen eyed. Kerr Hardie. leader of
"'i'lions OF British working mon. is
paying his third visit to New York,
me chairman of the labor party in the
mousse ct commons. says the New York
evening Sun, is a striking personality
-picturesque and un~forget!able. He
came to attend the wedding Of his son,
who is in business in BROOKLYN. and
ne Will remain several weeks in the
United States.
At the age Of Z Kerr Hardie was set
10 work IN q mine. His father had
been q miner before him. his mother a
working woman. In the mines he
stayed Q seventeen years. Today. Sc
years old. he is the leading figure in
ariiamen In the fight for improving
inc condition OF working people.
me muscular hand grasp with
Mnlch ne welcomes his caller is a re-
.a,ins OF the days when he used to
swing q pick. There is warmth in II
az well as strength. a warmth that
pears out the steady. kindly gaze from
the mans eyes. Warmth and strength
are Kerr Hardie's characteristics.
HIS co~untenance is p%atriarchal. a
a of white hair. like shredded
wool. sweeps back from an astonish-
9 nigh forehead. a tremendous
GONE the dark matched brows.
glowing health. His figure is not tail.
y Is erect and powerful and the
~noie man radfates personality, u
full blooded man. His face suggests n
dozen other great men: Tcnnyson.
l1or9 salisbury. James j. Hill, the rail-
builders; Longfellow-men Of
great vision. great force. great human
sympathy: His clothes are as simple
al himself: a dark gray suit whose
owner; a soft. white shirt. a soft col
lar, a soft dark blue tie. polka dotted,
loosely knotted. In his lapel is the
button Of the international socialist
bureau. He smokes a briar pipe.
Come right in," he smiles. THAT'S
good American. isn't it? Come ava
ben.' n Scotch would have it,"
me broad Scots burr. warm and
rousn, cltngs to his tongue. His speech
is iuii OF rolling RS and he says ''varra
sude' IN a way that has proper tang
Of the land of John Knox and Robbie
Burns, Hardie was born in the Cum
mock hills. famous in Scottish SONG
n story. Naturally enough he was a
from boyhood. %cultivatinK liter
ature on a little oatmeal in historic
FASHION: His hobby in letters is still
the collecting of old Scotch ballads
n chapbook literature. He is not
averse to riding it for a moment when
his caller gives him a knee to the sad
die:
Yes. I'm more fond of the old bal
a than of modern writing. The
old singers had a way. of going straight
TO the mark. They didn't waste time
with verbal trimmings. AS a result
phrases have al individual fresh
ness and charm that go to the heart.
There have been few modern writer's
that could approach them in their
first to go back to the old ballad form
Kin his Ballad of Reading Gaol.' I
found George Meredith's poems, too,
the sort l like. Kipling l gave up at
the time Of the Boer war, His ballads
were all right in time of peace, though
they are of altogether different char
acter from the old Scotch ballads, but
when the Boer war began and he tried
poison the minds of the people at
home, I threw him over so far as I was
The labor party in England is con-
growing in strength. We have
labor men in the house Of
commons now. out of the go men,
bers. When l was elected as the can
didate from Merthyr-Tydril. Wales, in
1909. I was the only socialist member.
Six years later We had t~wenty-nine.
Now we have forty-one. In a triangu-
lar election between socialists, con-
and liberals the voting
strength of the labor party, in the in
centres, range from thirty
three per cent. to forty per cent. Of
the electorate.
"The labor party's principal aims at
present. the measures which we are
seeking to put through parliament, are
the fixing of a legal living wage, with
a minimum of thirty shillings weekly
for country districts. grading upward
in the cities; a general eight-hour day,
and the right of every citizen to en-
by which We seek to impose
upon the state the responsibility of
providing either work or maintenance
for the genuinely unemployed.
1.-THE chances for the success of
these measures? Well, the political
in England Is unsettled at
present and it would be unsafe to pre-
dict. But 1t is certain that these have
become acute political problems. AL
ready similar measures are in opera.
ton in municipalities. governmental
employees have the eight-hour day and
uEskilled labor employed by the gov
eminent has been granted increased
wage scales, from nineteen to twenty