The Prime Minister's Speech At Bristol Mr. Baldwin gave almost
all his attention to unemployment. He spoke of the dark shadow which rested on about 10 per cent. of the people in varying degrees, but begged his audience not to forget the 90 per cent. who were enjoying a higher standard of life than 697) ever before. He refused to adopt " hurricane tactics." The Liberals had presented a scheme which was less a cure for unemployment than a corpse-reviver for their Piuty, but he hoped that the Unionist Party would remember the famous Words of Burke, once member fOr Bristol, " Our first duty is not to be popular, but to run straight." His own view was that unemployment could not be conquered " by fits and starts." The effect of the huge borrowing required by the Liberal scheme would be to pull down real wages through inflation. He remembered too vividly the experience of the Ministry of Munitions. He believed that at the end of the two years in which Mr. Lloyd George promised to cure unemployment he would have all the men back on his hands.
* * s * .
