The late great Joseph ("Old Joe") Chamberlain, though he was never Prime Minister of England, dominated the policy of the British Empire from 1895 until his paralytic stroke in 1906. Dying in July, 1914. he bequeathed to British politics two arch-conservative sons. Old Joe, scion of masters of the Cordwainers' Company,* maltsters, brewers, cheesemongers and ironmongers, was the first middle-class Englishman to move with arrogant authority among Victorian England's ruling class. Symbols of his good opinion of himself were the monocle in his cold, irritable eye, the invariable orchid in his...
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