Word: john
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Last week it was not April, but Britain was no longer at peace, when Sir John Simon rose to open a new, extraordinary budget. Before him was the worn red leather dispatch box that had been used by Gladstone. Three famed predecessors of Sir John's sat in the crowded Commons as he opened the box and began drawing out sheaves of paper. There was Neville Chamberlain, who used to have the amiable boomtime duty of announcing surpluses. There was Winston Churchill, who in the years 1924-29 would accompany his budget demands with thumping gestures. And, tiny...
...Germany, Adolf Hitler tells his people what he wants, and takes it. In Russia, Joseph Stalin does the same. In France, Edouard Daladier had promulgated sweeping socialistic measures by decree. In Great Britain, Sir John Simon opened the budget in September instead of April...
...should that staggering $8,000,000,000 be raised? Although he hinted (and the next day confirmed) that half the sum would be borrowed, all Sir John's emphasis was on direct taxation. The guiding principle, he informed his colleagues, would be to impose all the taxes the country could stand. Normal standards of what was popular no longer counted, said he; furthermore, one of his aims was to curtail civilian demands. "There must be restrictions directed against wasteful or unnecessary use of resources, restrictions which limit consumption of a long list of articles, the strictest economy all along...
Next day in the House of Commons Laborite John Morgan rose up to ask how many men the Ministry employed. Tall, baldish Sir Edward Grigg, appointed that morning to represent the Ministry in Parliament, answered for the Government: there were 872 in London, 127 provincial employes. A gusty Whew! swept like a wind through the House, followed by cries of anguish. Of these 999, Sir Edward added, 43 were former newsmen, 48 were Ministry officers chosen because they had press or radio experience. His explanation was greeted with a roar of laughter and jeers...
...Educational opportunities are unequal: Allyn Burleson's children in California get twice as much schooling as Brother David's in Nebraska, three times as much as Brother John's in Kentucky. At least 800,000 have no schools at all. >The teaching profession, says Smith College's retired President William Allan Neilson, consists largely of "timid and unimaginative persons to whom moderate comfort, a moderate competence, moderate security are the reward for a moderate amount of moderately conscientious drudgery...