THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, MONDAY, JANUARY
The Churchill Story: 15th Instalment
WINSTON AND THE STRIKE
TWICE in his rich and varied life Winston Churchill has been editor of a. paper.
By Colin Frame
to hold the nation to ransom, an
enemy to be smashed. pect to be impartial as between Later he said: "I can't ex- the fire brigade and the fire."
But if the "British Gazette"
but eight days
later he left hospital and set about dictating knocked down by a taxi," an article-"How it feels to be
First time was at school when,
The taxi driver, Mario Con- in rivalry with magazines pro-was a cross between a propa-Churchill's hotel. Churchill had tasino, was invited to tea at duced by other boys, he decided ganda sheet and a military com- already assured the police "It to have one of his own. Typi-munique it served its purpose was entirely my fault." cally, he called it "The Critic." from the Government viewpoint. There is no doubt at all that Churchill thoroughly enjoyed his eight, days as
an editor. Years later he could still re- capture the thrill of work in a big newspaper office "with its well. a. magazine
machines crashing and grinding away."
Its front page showed yacht race in which the yachts bore the names of all the papers produced at the school.
With unaccustomed tact young run by his masters as race winners. His own was placed second,
Churchill showed
Circulation Jump
BUT
It reminded him, he said, of a combination of a first-class battleship and a first-class general election.
One Churchill touch was a quotation
from the poets on and Tennyson were the only the front page each day. Kip- poets selected.
DUT despite this original and somewhat inaccurate circula- tion table, "The Critic" only sawling the light of day in one issue.
Churchill's second editorial experience was with
a paper Gazette."
Mrs Churchill and Diana were And as the taxi driver left-
at the tea party-he burst into. tears and described the family as the "nest in the world."
But Churchill was far from planned lecture tour, but before He went on with his
day on his back in a railway each of 40 lectures he spent all
compartment,
-101-
8, 1951.
EDITORS PRESS SERVICE, ING-NUEVA YORK
"Due to the condition of our treasury, the only speaker we can afford this month is my husband."
FOR THE BUSINESSMAN
New Steel Works
For Dorman Long
Above all, in these dokkrum years, he fourid more time to ture enjoy the graceful architec-
high-spirited family. Chartwell with
and wooded acres of his wife and
Visitors told of Churchill called the "British
"An Indiscretion"
pacing his beam-roofed study There were eight issues.
dictating to his secretary, break- And from the first single Churchill, restored to the open windows at his family on POR months afterwards Editor "Children, children" through the ing off occasionally to appeal. sheet of May 5, 1926, to the four pages of May 13 the circulation
role of Chancellor of increased from 232,000 to 2,250,- ariticism of this paper.
Exchequer,
the the lawns, and then throwing had to 000, a Fleet Street record likely
endure it all up to go out to them and to be unsurpassed.
"A first-class
join some boisterous game. indiscretion, clothed in the tawdry garb of to leave Eton for Oxford. Diana Randolph in 1929 was about Lloyd George's sneer. third-raté journalism,"
was was a composed young woman Today Churchill
of 20, who had just made her probably first public speech, agrees that his paper
Sarah a brilliant editorially
was not leggy fifteen-year-old already certainly effective politically.
but it was showing traces of the elfin in the editorial chair to make Young Lady and take her to film
He once used his experience were to make
beauty and acting ability which a Parliamentary joke. let loose on us another General chubby and well-loved seven.
"If you fame, and little Mary was
cost of the Sirike we will..."he fought
a work is £6 millions, and the output 10,000 tons of ingots a Socialists leant forward to hear overalls with a brick and trowel 360 tons, the air as if for words while the Churchill was often pictured in each with a nominal capacity of Those were the years in which week. The four steel furnaces,
will," repeated Churchill, "let rockeries, cottages, what awful fate awaited.."we
will be the largest his hand, 2 builder loose on you Gazette.' ".
including a probably larger another British
toy-size one for Mary, a swim-America. This year of 1926 was
ming-pool--and a wall, the one in which Churchill intro- Govern-duced a betting tax-five per-
In fact that final circulation figure was the highest at that time of any daily newspaper in the world. How did all this come about?
General Strike YINETEEN TWENTY-SIX was NE
a year of growing industrial depression.
The Government withdrew the coal subsidy and coal owners gave notice of a reduction in the already meagre
wages of miners.
The Trades Union Congress, exasperated by
long-drawn- out negotiations to improve the miner's lot, called out all workers to their support in an attempt to force the
ment's hand. Britain's first and cent on every stake laid with only General Strike had begun. a credit bookmaker.
By May 4 the industrial heart of the country, had almost ceased to beat. Trains did not run, buses were off the streets, gas and electricity burned low, police clashed with strikers, pickets guarded against black- legging, the printing presses were silent.
a
Paper
Withdrew Tax
TT was bitterly criticised both by, as he put it, "the angels who disapproved of betting and the devils who got their living from it" and three years later, still Chancellor, he withdrew it as a failure.
Twenty years
passed before
in
THIS
a betting tax was again intro-year duced in this country.
her a Cochran
Joined Union
was no
the
Churchill
London, Jan. 7.
Good progress is being made with the con- struction for Dorman Long and Co., Ltd., of the new steelworks at Lackenby, Middlesbrough. It is hoped they will be in production before the end of 1952.
The estimated
CHICAGO
of tilting furnaces in Europe and GRAIN
than any in
The work began in November, MARKET
1949. The stripper building is now erected and has been con- verted into a structural en-
Chicago, Jan. 6.
on the first season note than the week. After an
on a rest of
members required where the ing shop are being made. The week of 1951 . Grains closed foundation work for the furnaces lower is well advanced, and the frame- the work of the melting-shop build-opening, linked with the works at Redcar lower at the Board of Trade. ing is being erected. When preciably
sagged complete the works
finished will be session mostly around
futures and
easy ap-
the a cent
Today it stan ordinary wall ment to five years of solid in- dustry, thick, roofed with tiles. surrounding
fruit and vegetable garden. their consternation, the Union of While he built it he joined, to
Building Trade - Workers (subscription as an adult
and Cleveland, so that they will Two factors were contributed to His Old
ap- prentice 5s).
become virtually a continuous the major share of selling: the HURCHILL
-was struck
series of production units. By 1932 it was finished. That
continued scarcities over price forcibly as a journalist and
Important economies in turned to re-consumption have been secured [ment announcement that there
fuel control problem propagandist by the last point.
and Govern gard another wall, a wall he was at the Cleveland works largely woulkt To maintain
The five years Churchill was not allowed to build but to the by the installation of new boilers wheat disciplined
be no calm in a time of rumour it was since the last war when he has
restriction DRY Chancellor and the five years erection of which he bent all and
and corn essential, he felt, for a Govern- led the Conservative Party are oratory-the
acreage pass-out turbo-alternator next years production.
for his power, his intellect and and by the conversion to higher ment newspaper to be on the the only periods
wall which was pressure steam of other turbines streets and in the homes.
in his Par- required to shield his country in the power station. The coal reported a quiet condition
The export grain trade circles He led a deputation to his
liamentary half-century when against the greed and hatred equivalent old paper, the "Morning Post," he has identified himself com- of Europe's dictators.
of the boilor fuel Saturday, The lard market for which he had worked in thought. By 1929, when Ramsay
pletely with
consumption was 6.48 percent responded to the rallies on short Conservative
lower in 1949 than in 1946, and covering and scattered during this period, the output of to erase the early losses, caused buying rolled steel increased by 20.6 by the easiness in the vegetable percent. This is equivalent to oil markets. At a saving of 22.6 percent in the markets,
the outside grain prices consumed
were for steam mostly in fractionally lower to raising for every ton of rolled more than one steel:
cent lower in During the same period, the electrical energy imported by the works from the national grid fell from 773,000 to 183,000 units a week, equivalent to a reduction of 400 tons of coal.
South Africa
as war cor- respondent 26 years earlier.
And in the offices of the "Morning Post" in the Strand the "British Gazette" was born. The "midwives" volunteers."
were
all
MacDonald - "The Boneless Wonder" Churchill called him- Labour Government formed his
second ill-fated was already at loggerheads with Churchill some of his Party's ideas.
First break with the Baldwin
MORE TOMORROW
STANDARD BRIDGE By M. Harrison-Gray
Dealer East. North-South game. N.
and he
A J 10 6 5.2 KQ 10 4 2 54
These were great days for regime was over what he re- volunteers. Young men in flannels and sports coats drove He foresaw
garded as the surrender of India. London buses with policemen down of the Empire
in it the break- perched beside them to stop said so bluntly and often. trouble.
So by the time Baldwin and Undergraduates and
young the Conservatives women ran food convoys. Re-in power in 1931 the rift between were back tired technicians ran power Churchill and the orthodox Tory. stations. All over the country was so wide that he was not Town Halls became recruiting invited back into the Ministry. stations where anyone
could enlist for essential work to keep wilderness.
For ten years he was in the Britain alive from dustbins
trains.
emptying
At first, before the menace
to driving express of Germany loomed so large in
his fertile brain that he spent Day by day, staffed
by day and night in restless thought volunteers from many Fleet trying to bring home the danger Street offices, the "British to those in high places, Churchill Gazette"
gave the Government did not mind this lack of office. view of the strike, warned against rumour, reported how things were going and called for more volunteers.
painted the Rockies.
He went off to Canada and
He went to the United States to lecture, and there in 1931, three decades after his visit to tell of his escape from the Boers,
To Ransom "PUBLISHED by His Majesty's he
Stationery Office," it an- nounced, "Please Pass on this Copy or Display it" was printed on each issue after the first three.
nearly lost his life.
Hit By Taxi the night of December 13 in Fifth Avenue, New York, at he was knocked down by a taxi Churchill wielded this weapon and was taken, conscious but unashamedly on the Govern-battered, his evening clothes torn
side. No hint of the and bloodstained, to hospital. ment strikers' case was given. The Injuries strike was dubbed an aberpt his strong point-led to pleurley, to his chest-never
E.
AKJ763
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♦ AJ 85
10 6 ⇓ J 2
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763
Both East and North asked for trouble on this hand from rubber Bridge, East. opened One Spade and West forced with Three Clubs. North could not resist bidding Three Hearts in spite of the warning: his void should have suggested that the Spades might well be stacked in his partner's hand. East should now pass and await West's rebld. The result would have been a penalty of at least 1100 In Three Hearts doubled.
In practice East bid Three Spades, which led West to believe that the Spade suit was solld, and that Hast had B singleton Heart, so the final contraal was Six Spades, Southy doubled and led guild the Heart return. and hd still to make & trick in Spades. East's lack of a judgment was heavily
"London Xeprean Serdica.
coal
some cases.
On
cents lower, corn was % to 1%. Wheat futures closed % to 12
cents lower, rye was 2 to 2% cents lower, oats were % to cents lower and soybeans 2 to 34 cents lower,
Prices closed today as follows: Wheat-price per bushel.
Singapore Rubber Spot
Market
Singapore, Jan. 8,
Prices in the rubber futures market here closed today as follows:
December
2.43 2.46%-
March (1951)
2.45%
May
2.4014-%
July
2.414-%
Corn
Spot December
1.80%
1.779%
March (1951)
1.7715-46
Number 1 rubber, per lb.
January (1961)
February
March
May
Rye 198-199
December 189-190 May 184-185
Oats
1.779-2
July
1.70%
1.76%
1.79
9776
9736
New York Flour-per 200 lb. sack. 199-200 $13.00-United Press
152-154
207-314
Number 2 rubber, January 192-194 December Number 3 rubber, January 186-188 March Number 4 rubber, January 180-181 Spot rubber, unbraled Black crepe No. 1 pals arepe
United Press.
Metal Market Prices
New York, Jan. 6.
Commodity Prices
London, Jan. 6. The Economists fortnightly
Prices in the metal market index of wholesale commodity
here closed today unchanged prices continued to advance for
with the following exceptions:
Tin, grade A (99,80 percent
or higher)
New York,
United Press,
the fortnight ending December 27, I stood at 313,8, compared with 211.01
156 It has rised 188.
the Korean wax-