The Cotton Factory Times. — 1917-10-05 (Manchester, Greater Manchester, England)

MOMS- with the diver. preteeditqrs wile whic his uan. tor to Gladstone, that being the linde.tanding of wan unhappily aesothated. Freset fie.h de rare hot. 000 himerli . I distinction a a public dinner given to him by die • • .• • - - - Club to celebrate the mewing of the Retest....• . . ..  We are, however, more interested in the part he played on behalf of the workers Dr. Gore, then Biahop of Birmingham, spoke thus Os 1910: " From. 1870 to this date one man has stood for all the great causes of industrial progress, whether for the agricultural labourer, or in the textile trades, or in the mining industries, or with the rho p aasistanta That in. is Sir Charles Dilke." And it was on. With the cotton workers ae ouch horror identified hinvelf particularly. is later years they were greatly a•sisted by Sir Henry James (afmrwareis Lord James of Hereford), who , in rtsuriion thereof wee preiserAted by them with • Itra:le's, Palen; bs:.'ith.rilte'l.hs tSlS7ife -and'hinim 7,*rs'aseThint,imatelv associated. In the "Watery of the Heavy Woolfen DiOnct Branch of the General Union of Textile Workers." Mr. Ben Turner mentions that about 1888 or 1889, through the instrumentality of Lady Dilke, the union scoured the help of Mite May Abraham, now Mrs. H. J. Tennant, wfo of the late tinder.Seoretary for War, who is brotherin-Into to Mr. Asquith. She spoke at many meetings of the union throughout Yorkshire, afterwards beooming secretary of the Women's Trade I.7nion League, and later the firo lady factory in! specter.  Reform --st on Oe tribution Bill into la, he learned to his annim ment that 'the wife of a Liberal member of Parlament had volunteered a • confeasion' to her husband, in Vdikil Me stated that she had been unfaithful to him with the Merles immediately alter their marriage.' As is usually the cam at such matters, when the &fair wm made public most people were ready to assume the truth qf the charge without reflecting on the possibility of his innoocnoe. All the probabilities seemed to be against him. Yet victims have been made of innocent meal often, and it has to he considered how the very glamour that attached to so dtinguished a man might have operated upon a disordered brain to his undoing. Trut.h is held to be stranger than fiction, and fiction is strange enough. Readers of Arnold Bennett will Teresa, bee the confession of Maris Critohlow, immediately prior to hoe attempted suicide bv stabbing hermit with a pair oscissor f s, and her neeetaary removal to ths asylum, to the effect that Years before she had miaoonducted herself with her employer, Samuel Pitney, who had long bten cemeri. On the unimpeachabie authority of her literary creator we know that thia was • pure . hallucination. Sir Charles was lees fortunate: he mold imrsist ire his entire innocence, as he did; he could not possibly prove it. The charge against him wan dismissed with mom but the shadow remained. Later he applied to the Queen's Proctor for a rehearing of the suit, and ultimately this was granted, but by an absurd rule of law he had now no locus standi, and could not be represented by hie own counsel. He was a. syitness only, with the means, denied him even of proving an alibi. He suggested a trial for perjury, but MIA finally assured that no means were op:in to him to retry his c.c.. The friends who were nearest hint always believed implicitly in his tone. eerier; those pages show that he is entitled to the fullest acqulttal by the jury of the public. The tragedy of his life was largely redeemed by the beautiful and touching conduct of his affianced wife, who at the time was in India recovering from a dangemus illnees. Their union Mortly afterwards was sanctified in a special sense by the cowl stroke that fate had ordained for them. This hisiory of a brave and accomplished man, the main purpose of whosee life was " to revive true enurage in the democracy of hie country," ia a book to he read and treasured. It is immensely rich in the notes and letters of one who had '• known every one wotth knowing from 1850 to his death," and in much of the inner history of political events during the period whioh it omene. In short, it to a brilliant biography of a hrilhmt