Leidsch Dagblad
- TROPICAL-COLONIAL POLITICAL ECONOMY.
- INSTITUTE FOR WORKERS' DEVELOPMENT.
- LEIDEN RESCUE BRIGADE.
This Leiden front page of 5 November 1926 mixed academic, labour and civic news. One item outlined a lecture course on tropical-colonial economics that set out to test how far the standard schemes of theoretical economics held in the colonies, opening with two lectures on the colonial setting split into foreign enterprise and the native sphere. A report described K. ter Laan of Zaandam addressing a well-filled Volksgebouw for the Leiden branch of the Instituut voor Arbeidersontwikkeling on Multatuli's meaning for the working class, beginning with the misery of the Dutch people in Douwes Dekker's day and Cremer's picture of Leiden's factory children. The Leiden rescue brigade complained that a rescue hook on one bridge had been destroyed six times and said it wanted safe equipment in place before ice covered the canals.
Translation
TROPICAL-COLONIAL POLITICAL ECONOMY.
At the centre of the subject matter is the question of how far the generally accepted schemes of theoretical economics are valid for the tropical-colonial milieu, and what additions or modifications they need before they can serve to explain the economic phenomena that occur there. The first two lectures are devoted to a characterization of this tropical-colonial milieu, which falls into two parts, namely: foreign business enterprise and the various forms in which it appears, and then the native sphere, with its own character.
INSTITUTE FOR WORKERS' DEVELOPMENT.
Before a well-filled hall in the "Volksgebouw" on the Heerengracht, Mr. K. ter Laan of Zaandam spoke last night for the Leiden branch of the above Institute on "The significance of Multatuli for the working class." The speaker began by pointing to the wretched condition in which the Dutch people found themselves when Multatuli – Eduard Douwes Dekker – lived and worked; a condition which, as far as the factory population of Leiden is concerned, was described by the novelist Cremer in his little book "Factory Children."
LEIDEN RESCUE BRIGADE.
Six times in a row, within a short space of time, the rescue hook on one of the bridges was destroyed; we have had to give up placing rescue equipment at that spot again. Before winter comes, before our canals are covered with that often treacherous layer of ice, we want to have our rescue equipment in order, and we would also very much like to be sure that the equipment is safe.
Context
K. ter Laan, the speaker 'of Zaandam'
The paper introduces the speaker only as 'Mr. K. ter Laan of Zaandam'; he was Kornelis ter Laan, an SDAP politician. A former schoolteacher from Groningen, he had entered the Tweede Kamer for the SDAP in 1901, and in 1914 became the party's first mayor, in Zaandam, an office he held until 1937. He also headed the SDAP list in the electoral districts of The Hague and Leiden in the national elections of 1918, 1922 and 1925, so the Leiden audience was hearing the man at the top of their own district's party list. The subject matched his literary interests: alongside politics he published more than thirty books on Multatuli, folklore, Groningen and language. In the report, ter Laan opened with the misery of the Dutch people in Douwes Dekker's lifetime and linked it to Leiden's own factory population through Cremer's 'Factory Children', presenting Multatuli's significance in terms of social conditions familiar to his listeners.
The Instituut voor Arbeidersontwikkeling and the labour movement
The report names the host as the Leiden branch of the Instituut voor Arbeidersontwikkeling, and the institute's national leadership shows where it stood. From 1924 to 1928 its chairman was Roel Stenhuis, who also chaired the trade-union federation NVV (Nederlands Verbond van Vakverenigingen) from 1919 to 1928 and, from 1925, sat in the Tweede Kamer for the SDAP. As NVV chairman Stenhuis favoured strong cooperation between the NVV and the SDAP, and in 1926, the year of this lecture, he even tried to merge the two organisations. An evening talk on a literary figure by an SDAP mayor and MP, held in Leiden's Volksgebouw under the institute's banner, fits this close web of party, unions and workers' education.
The lecturer: colonial statistician J. van Gelderen
The excerpt itself does not name the lecturer, but the opening of the same article on the page identifies him as J. van Gelderen, head of the Central Office of Statistics of the Netherlands Indies, then on leave in the Netherlands. Van Gelderen started in 1911 as a clerk at Amsterdam's municipal statistics bureau and from 1920 to 1928 directed the Centraal Kantoor van de Statistiek in Batavia. From November 1927 he also chaired the commission for the 1930 census of the Netherlands Indies, in 1927 he became a corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in September 1928 he took up a temporary extraordinary professorship of political economy at the Rechtshogeschool in Batavia. He was a theorist as well: with Salomon de Wolff he proposed long economic cycles of 50 to 60 years, now known as Kondratiev waves. The course's question, whether the standard schemes of theoretical economics hold in a colonial setting divided between foreign enterprise and an indigenous sphere, was exactly the problem facing someone who measured the colonial economy in figures.
Leiden's brigade and the young Dutch lifesaving movement
The notice is the Leiden brigade's own appeal: it reports that the rescue hook on one bridge had been destroyed six times in short order, that it had given up re-equipping that spot, and that it wanted its equipment ready before ice formed on the canals. Such brigades were still a young movement in 1926. Local rescue brigades had been founded in the preceding years, prompted by drowning accidents at their sites, and on 16 September 1917 five of them, from Den Bosch, Amsterdam, Breda, The Hague and Haarlem, held the founding meeting of a national federation, today's Reddingsbrigade Nederland. The federation set out to bring uniformity to lifesaving teaching material and methods, and the movement developed its long-standing motto, 'As long as not everyone can swim, every swimmer must be able to save.' Leiden was not among the founding brigades. Its complaint shows a practical side of the work beyond training: in a city crossed by canals, fixed equipment such as hooks on bridges had to be maintained and protected from destruction.
Original
TROPISCH-KOLONIALE STAATHUISHOUDKUNDE.
Het middelpunt der leerstof vormt de behandeling van de vraag, in hoeverre de algemeen aanvaarde schemata der theoretische economie geldigheid bezitten voor het tropisch-koloniale milieu en welke aanvullingen of wijzigingen zij behoeven om voor de verklaring van de daarin optredende economische verschijnselen te kunnen dienen. De eerste twee lezingen zijn gewijd aan een karakteristiek van dit tropisch-koloniale milieu, dat in twee deelen uiteenvalt, en wel: het uitheemsche bedrijfsleven en de verschillende vormen, waaronder dit optreedt, en vervolgens de inlandsche sfeer, met haar eigen aard.
INSTITUUT VOOR ARBEIDERSONTWIKKELING.
Voor een goed gevulde zaal van het " Volksgebouw " aan de Heerengracht sprak gisteravond de heer K. ter Laan van Zaandam voor de afdeeling Leiden van bovenstaand Instituut over: " De beteekenis van Multatuli voor de arbeidersklasse ". Spreker begon met te wijzen op den ' ellendigen toestand waarin het Nederlandsche volk verkeerde toen Multatuli - Eduard Douwes Dekker - leefde en werkte; een toestand welke, voor wat de fabrieksbevolking van Leiden aangaat, door den novellist Cremer is beschreven in zijn werkje " fabriekskinderen ".
LEIDSCHE REDDINGSBRIGADE.
Zesmaal achtereen in een kort tijdsbestek werd de reddingshaak op een der bruggen vernield; wij hebben er van moeten afzien op die plaats opnieuw reddingsmateriaal aan te brengen. Vóór dat de winter komt, vóór dat onze grachten met die vaak verraderlijke ijslaag bedekt zijn, willen wij onze reddingsmiddelen in orde hebben, willen wij ook graag zekerheid dat het materiaal veilig is.
Source: Source: Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken (leiden.courant.nu)