Current Literature
UP AND DOWN STREAM. By Harry Gosling, C.H., M.P. (Methuen. 7s. 6d.)—A Labour leader who has that rare distinction, the Companionship of Honour, must be an exceptional man. Readers of Mr. Gosling's modest and engaging reminiscences will see that he stands apart from the average politician of any party, and that he cares far less for abstract politics than for some definite improvement in the conditions of labour. He loves the Thames and all who work on it or beside it. At least four generations of his family were lightermen by trade, going back to before the French Revolution. As a boy of fourteen he was apprenticed as a waterman (that was in 1875), and he worked on the river till he was thirty. The bad health that drove him ashore did not prevent him from becoming an active trade-union official, and the work of his later life has been to build up the organi- zation of Thames labour, now but a part of the great Transport and General Workers' Union. He recalls the development of the Trades Union Congress, and his own share in the formation of the General Council. He describes also his work, for twenty-seven years, as a member of the London County Council, and briefly alludes to his Parliamentary and Minis- terial experience. His temperate comments on the miners on " Black Friday " (1921) and on the difficulty of dealing with Irish Labour men are significant.
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