the House of Commons on March 12th, 1906, Mr. P. Snowden, M.P., said:
'Sixty years of Free Trade had failed to mitigate or palliate to any
considerable extent the grave industrial and social evils which Free
Traders and Protectionists alike were compelled to admit. Sir H.
Campbell-Bannerman had admitted them when he said that 30 per cent. of
our population were on the verge of hunger. He contended that whatever
improvement had been effected in the condition of the people during
the last sixty years was due to other causes than Free Trade."[796]

During 1907 the complaints among the Socialists about the effect of
Free Trade upon employment have become louder. The fact that British
unemployed workmen furnished an apparently inexhaustible supply of
strike-breakers to Continental employers, that men fought like wild
beasts at the registry offices in order to be allowed to act as
strike-breakers in Hamburg and Antwerp, has shown the great prevalence
of unemployment. Commenting hereon a Socialist monthly said in bitter
irony, under the heading "British Blacklegs": "The intervention in the
Antwerp dock-workers' strike of British workmen as blacklegs is a
striking commentary on the prosperity of the people of this country.
Under Free Trade we have been told--_ad nauseam_--by Liberal
politicians that the British working-man is the most prosperous and
well-fed human being on the face of the earth. He, with wages nearly
double those of the best-paid Continental workman, with all kinds of
provisions infinitely cheaper--thanks to Free Trade--than they can be
procured elsewhere, is indeed 'God's Englishman.' It would be as
unkind as rude to suggest that these honourable politicians had been
lying. The only alternative conclusion to be arrived at is that the
British workman is a most disinterested being, willing to sacrifice
his prosperity and comfort in order to compel the miserably paid
dockers of Antwerp and Hamburg to submit to the conditions against
which they have revolted."[797] The action of Mr. Haldane, the present
Secretary of State for War, in dismissing a large number of workmen
from Woolwich Arsenal and giving a contract for 100,000 horseshoes for
the British Army to an American firm on account of greater cheapness,
prompted the following verses:

Mr. Haldane was smiling and suave
As his views upon horseshoes he gave;
He will buy from the Yanks
(Who take orders with thanks).
And believes that mu