Rise of Neville Chamberlain a half years as Chancellor, directing Britain's financial policies as the nation emerged from the Depression. When Baldwin (who had replaced MacDonald as Prime Minister in 1935) retired in 1937, Chamberlain succeeded him. Chamberlain was born in a house called Southbourne, in the Edgbaston district of Birmingham, England, as the only son of the second marriage of Joseph Chamberlain, who later became Mayor of Birmingham, and who also served as a Cabinet minister. Joseph Chamberlain had fathered two children by his first marriage, Beatrice and Austen. Joseph's first wife, Harriet, died giving birth to Austen; Neville's mother, the former Florence
Rise of Neville Chamberlain pleasing and appropriate that Chamberlain could now promote his father's policies, and Sir Austen Chamberlain wrote to his brother in November 1931, "Father's great work will be completed in his children." The tariff issue bitterly divided the Cabinet, and threatened to end the National Government. The Cabinet accepted a proposal by Lord Hailsham, Secretary of State for War, that they agree publicly to disagree, a rare suspension of the doctrine of Cabinet collective responsibility. Chamberlain prepared his tariff bill, which exempted the Dominions pending the Ottawa Conference, set for later that year. On 4 February 1932, he laid it before