PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN

...And when she arose to speak the members prepared to give scant attention to this "slip of a girl...

...He had a mechanical genius, and he handed in to his employer the sundry inventions he made...

...and she overflows with personality...

...To this theme she speaks, front' some angle, whenever she takes the platform...

...We have behind us a great tradition...

...that Margaret Bondfield had landed from England...

...And we believe it can be done, without violence or social war...

...She is well set up and trig...

...If you in the United States seem to have another story, I believe it is because you are a young country, where we in Great Britain are witnessing capitalism in its more fnlly developed stages...

...But she reported back what Russia whs doing and what it was attempting...

...And we have the voices and the labor of an ever growing multitude of liberty loving people to spread the word, to lay the foundations of the new order, and tu herald the coming day...

...she answered, "I believe there will be room for a great multitude of them and that they will fare vastly better than today.when big industry is inevitably running them to the wall...

...A prayer for Social Distress to be found in Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book expresses this view of ownership in classic form: "They that are snared and entangled in the utter lack of things needful for the body, cannot set their minds upon Thee as they ought to do," it says in opening...

...Margaret went first to Brighton where one of her brothers was at work, and found employment as a "shop assistant" (i...

...praise is an article for which she has no least use...

...Now, she is to be back in Parliament again, one of six women members, three of wrhom stand for Labor...

...We seek to restore the social order to the way of Jesus...

...He was a rare lover of nature, and brought home a geologic hammer at a time when every sixpence was needed to keep the wolf from the door...

...She was among the speakers at the Anti-War Demonstration held in Trafalgar Square on the first Sunday in August, 1914, just before the outbreak of war...

...Board and lodging were found on the premises of her employer, which, in English terminology, is called "living id...

...Socialism she defined in Ram-* say MacDonald's words as "an organization of economic resources for human ends, where capitalism is the organization of human beings for economic ends...

...At the same time, she is wholly devoid of self seeking...

...She had stood as an International Socialist during all the years of the war, and as an International Socialist she has faced its bitter aftermath...

...Turn thou the hearts of them that live by cunning rather than by labor...

...she reported the evidences of enthusiasm and of service which she saw, and that, "though a great continent, there were evidences that life was stirring...

...Fired With Ambition BUT presently Margaret's employer went out of business, and Margaret was bent on trying her fortunes in London, which has always had a lure for every ambitious English boy or girl...

...Growth in Membership DURING the ten years of her secretaryship, from 1898 to 1908, the membership of her union rose from 2,817 to 20,218...

...A few weeks later took me to the Labor Conference at Portsmouth to which 1 travelled, through the courtesy of Ramsay MacDonald and his wife, in the delegates' car...

...She went to see, not to judge...

...I asked of my neighbors...

...He had steady employment in a lace factory some two miles from his village...

...both of them took a keen interest in political questions, while the father in his young days was the life and soul of the "radical" government of that time...

...She traced the historical development of Socialism down from medieval times, when no lord of the land would ever have thought of claiming his land for his own U3ˆ6| it was held in joint ownership with those wh* tilled it and for whose maintenance he at<M>4 charged...

...She was the farthest removed in her own thought from the beliefs inaugurated there...

...Shall I try to suggest, in a few words, ho-* she answered the question, "What is Thus Socialism," which was chosen for her topic by the highly conservative Women's City Club of Boston ? She explained in opening that She would define her terms as they are used and understood in Great Britain, and which possibly may be quite at variance with their uses in th* United States...

...This was often little less than slavery...

...the flowers always to be found upon her desk bespeak memories of her early days in the West Country...

...And in continuing: "Have mercy I-ord upon all forestallers and upon all those that seek undue profits or unlawful gains...

...Moreover, she found intellectual food through one Mrs...

...Her name carried my mind back almost twenty years when, attending a meeting of the Fabiau Society in London with Bernard Shaw in the chair, apparently the subject of discussion and, oddly enough, foremost among the speakers,— I was attracted by the clear, ringing voice and rich English intonation of a young woman who spoke from the floor...

...To her this was a rift in a very black sky...

...The factory was sold to new managers and this faithful workman at the age of 08 was turned adrift from the employment at which he had labored for sixty years,—since he had gone to work at eight years of age...

...Fifteen years later she was elected to act as the Chairman of the General Council— "the greatest honor which it was in the power of the Trade Union Movement to bestow...

...Margaret was next to the youngest, and as a child she roamed the fields, plucked flowers and climbed trees with her brothers...

...At the election th« year following she was defeated, but after making a magnificent campaign, with MacDonald taking time from his own fight to make her opening speech...

...she answered, "absolutely...

...She made visits, finding her way as far West as Wisconsin, where she and her friend stayed with the I* Follettes at Maple Bluff Farm...

...Socialism will be a gradual gTOwth, because to convince the public mind is a slow process...

...Oh, I could bring such grandeurs and glories about you...

...Labor Visits Russia IN 1920 Miss Bondfield went with a Labor Delegation to Russia...

...Rather it will conserve capital...

...The answer, ''Margaret Bondfield," left me unenlightened...

...For twenty years he lived on, a broken-hearted old man...

...We believe that the capitalist system is breaking down, bit by bit through its own inefficiency...

...Presently, however, she saw a reference, in some reading, to the Shop Assistants' Union, and thenceforth the narrow confines of the shop and of the dingy dormitory widened out into the struggle of her class for a wider and a fuller Ifie...

...Soon after she took office, she attended the Trade Union Congress at Plymouth as the solitary woman delegate...

...Writing under the name of Grace Dare she became a regular contributor to its journal...

...As far back as 1913 she was chosen upon the National Administrative Committee of the Independent Labor Party, the body which in all Great Britain has been most conspicuously and most intelligently concerned about foreign affairs, For seven years she held this post, and always as a moving spirit...

...Just a few weeks earner I had read of her election to the Parliament of Great Britain...

...The previous year, in the autumn of 1919, she had attended the International Labor Conference of the League of Nations in Washington...

...But Margaret had real things to say...

...It is not Socialism today which creates class war...

...The employer took them with the assurance, "You stand by me and I will stand by you,"—to die before making good his word...

...Labor into power, she won a seat, .and wa« appointed by Ramsay MacDonald as a Secretary to the Labor Ministry...

...So Margaret's first years of self-support, although very hard in some ways, were neither unhappy nor unprofitable...

...And work, when it was found, was of the old character, with hours that averaged about seventy a week, and with the close confinement of "living in...

...The one thing which she laments—or might lament, were there time for such regrets in her crowded life,—is her lack of a college education...

...But she is in fact farthest removed from uneducated...

...Martindale who lent her books and had her sometimes at her house, as she had done to two generations of Brighton workers...

...To the question: What will happen to craftsmen and the small trades under Socialism...

...In Boston they stayed with me in my house overlooking the wide basin of the Charles River...

...In 1918 she was chosen on the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress...

...As far back as 1911 she had come here, running away from Trade Union activities to visit a friend in Atlanta, who had been with me in Portsmouth, where we had first met...

...Her recent lecture trip in this country she took as a jolly holiday...

...At the age of fourteen she had gone eagerly to work to lighten the burden of her parents, who, with a great plenty of love, had too scant means to allow even the little ones to linger at home...

...Orchard's sermons in the church of the King's Weigh House where she is a devoted attendant, have stood her in such good stead that it would be difficult to meet one whose native abilities are more fully or more fruitfully developed...

...And presently every head was turned to the girlish figure speaking at the end of the hall, and every hand and every voice applauded vigorously when she finished...

...In her personal appearance, Margaret Bond-field is slight and short of stature...

...e. a salesgirl), where she was subject to unregulated hours which might run as high as 90 a "week...

...In 1919, when the war was over, she attended the first international gathering which was held at Berre, to which twenty-six nations sent delegates, aid wheve the Socialists of the warring countries first met...

...Parents af Yeoman Stock SHE was born in the County of Somerset which borders the County of Devon...

...At present, under capitalism, big industries are managed mainly by salaried employes, and to a negligible extent by those who reap the profits...

...Margaret Bondfield is a Socialist through and through...

...And give us grace by hand and mind to add our proper share to the common good...

...But a struggle like the recent coal strike is a mighty moulder of public opinion...

...And it voices the teachings of Jesus which prevailed throughout the Christian Church until and even after the breakup of the Feudal System...

...Overflows with Personality TO THE question, "Will not Socialism destroy capital...

...she answered, "Far from it...

...To the question: "Is sufficient managerial ability available to allow the state or the municipality to take over big industry...

...Socialism plans that great industries will be taken over one by one, as trams and other public utilities have been taken over in Great Britain, and as the Port of London was recently taken over, by purchase, and by the consent of everyone except a small group of die-hards...

...From the day when I first laid my eyes upon her, I have been deeply interested in her career...

...But in both countries, property is ordinarily amassed by persons who have taken no part in the processes of production and exchange, but who nevertheless reap its profits...

...Margaret's parents were of yeoman stock...

...But that was not her first visit to this country...

...Her home village of Chard stands prominent in the earlier struggles of the people against ship money and other similar oppressions, while the name of Bondfield under different spellings (deBonville, Bomphyle and Bonfil) goes far back in English history...

...And we find her quoting Walt Whitman in her attempt to arouse her sloughful fellow workers...

...You have not known what you are, you have slumbered upon yourself all your life...

...Teach us that we stand daily and wholly in need of one another...

...We have before us a great hope...

...Who is she...

...Before her election she had pledged herself to make a short speaking tour in this country, and she had dates in Boston for January 21st, 22nd, and 23rd...

...I have heird the best suffrage speakers of my day, and I never heard street speaking on a higher level than 1 ers...

...That conflict is bred by the capitalist system which divides the world into a small owning class and an immense class of workers who own nothing, not even the tools whereby they eke out an uncertain and a miserable existence...

...It is capitalism, meaning thereby the improper, the private use of capital, that it will destroy...

...Philosophy of Socialism THIS PRAYER, Miss Bondfield said, voices the philosophy of the Socialist...

...And she took part for several weeks In the Suffrage campaign, speaking at factory gates in industrial cities, and living in Y. W. C. A. quarters where our party lodged...

...But Margaret's first employer was a kind woman, and Margaret escaped from what might otherwise havs been an imprisonment by wheeling the little adopted baby about in its "tram...

...Her adventure in the United States doubtless ranks very small in her memory, but it ranks big in mine because I got to know her here as I never could have done in her own land, where her days a id her night* are over-crowded with work...

...By 1898 she resigned as a shop assistant, and from then on she has found her livelihood in work directly for her kind...

...As a member of the Shop Assistants' Council, she kept the record of its meetings...

...Candidate for Parliament MARGARET BONDFIELD has several times been a candidate for Parliament In the General Election of 1923 which carried...

...she delighted in the cold and in the snow...

...And among the delegates, and foremost in the discussion which kept the members in hot debate throughout the entire journey, was the ardent, ringing voice of Margaret Bondfield...

...Margaret's mother bore eleven children, and with small means to do with, she was never wearied in making a happy home...

...I learned that she was the Assistant Secretary of the Shop Assistants' Union,—a term which in our country would read salesmen and salesgirls' union...

...During the last twenty years Miss Bondfield has championed almost every one of the important Labor measures before the British public, and she has occupied many positions of first class importance...

...She loves music, and finds rest and recreation in a concert when she is overborne with her daily work...

...In those days there were no Labor Exchanges and no way for Margaret to find work except to walk the length of Oxford Street, applying at every shop, first on one side and then on the other...

...where most people would have felt their strength taxed by the long journeys and the frequent speaking—with lunches and dinners crowded in between, her spirit rushed to meet the spirit of those who drank up her words and crowded about her, for a clasp of her hand...

...Socialism has room for all classes in its ranks, artists and literary men, scientists and technicians,—all those who labor cither by hand or by brain, to create the things^which men need, whether for the body or for the spirit, are eligible as members in the I.abor Party...

...She would surely have starved but for the big-heartedness of a woman herself on the edge of poverty...

...She finds room in her life for gaiety and joy...

...She spoke in glowing words of the need for an organization of I^abor along the lines for which Ivier Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald were fighting...

...She inherits thfe cheery nature and the domestic gifts of her mother, which in her have been transmuted into social service...

...The intellectual activities of the Fabian group, the wide contacts of the Labor Movement, and Dr...