tly left business again and took up his duties at the
national capital. There is little probability of his making any speeches,
or of writing any literature while he is a member, but his work will be
felt in legislation as forcefully as it was while he was Governor of
Massachusetts.

A LABOR LEADER'S RISE.

Son of a Washerwoman Determinedly
Trod Thorny Paths Until He Became
a British Cabinet Minister.

John Burns, president of the Local Government Board in the Liberal Cabinet
of Premier Campbell-Bannerman, has been for many years the principal
representative of labor unionism in the British House of Commons. In that
capacity he received no compensation from the government. His salary now
amounts to ten thousand dollars a year, and the administration expenses of
the department of which he is the head amounts to one million two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars a year.

Many years ago, one bitterly cold winter night, or morning, for it was
then nearly one o'clock, a puny boy of eight was helping his mother carry
a big basket full of washing. At the bottom of the basket there was a lot
of broken food that had been given to her by persons who knew the cruel
struggle she had to support not only the little boy with her, but his
several brothers.

The thought of the food and the feast he would have strengthened him to
the heavy task for a while, but at last it proved too much for him and he
staggered so that the basket had to be put down on the sidewalk, and he
sat on it to rest. They were then near the houses of Parliament, and the
boy choked back a sob as he shivered, looking up at the building.

"Mother," he said at last, "if ever I have the health and strength, no
mother will have to work as you do; and no child shall do what I have to
do."

The boy was John Burns.

Mother Died Too Soon.

Between the time he helped carry home the washing and his elevation to the
cabinet there intervened years of the hardest kind of work, and his mother
did not live to see his triumph in the end. Almost as soon as he could
walk young Burns began to help with such work as could be done at home. At
the age of ten he went to work in a candle-factory and received
seventy-five cents a week for his labor. That was followed by a short term
as pot-boy in an inn and as a "boy in buttons."

Such work did not suit him, and he went as rivet-boy in the Vauxhall
Ironworks, and when he was fourteen he became apprentice to an engine