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THE
SOCIAL EECONSTRUCTION
I
OF ENGLAND.
BY
H.
M.
HYNDMAN,
Author of “ The Coming Revolution
Book
of
in
Democracy,”
England,” “ The Text
etc.
LONDON:
WILLIAM REEVES, 185, FLEET STREET, E.C..
Office of “ The Christian Socialist."
�Reprinted from the “ International Review.”
i1
�THE
SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION OF ENGLAND.
On a former occasion * I gave a sketch of the social and
political position in England at the present time, and briefly
showed how the movement now going on below the surface
has been led up to for the past hundred years. Such a sketch
was necessarily rough and superficial. Nevertheless, it made
plain that in England, the richest European country, the mass
of the workers are in a miserable condition of poverty, and
uncertainty, with no security for continuous employment, even
at the low rate of wages they receive—badly fed, badly clothed,
badly housed. As matters stand, indeed, the great body of
the people are shut out from controlling their own political
business, without even the satisfaction of knowing that the
classes which monopolize the whole power in the State will be
at the pains to care for the wellbeing of the wage slaves, to
whose labor they are indebted for the luxury and indolence
they enjoy. The wealthy lower orders are really quite indif
ferent to the problems of the society they control, so long as,
at the expense of a little cheap philanthropy, they can bribe
the workers not to change the system. What can you expect
of men who have no wider range than the discounting of three
months’ bills, the balancing of yearly accounts, or the acquisi
tion of gain by legalized fraud ? The only hope of general
and permanent improvement for the many is in a thorough
• “ The Coming Revolution in England.”—(Wm. Reeves, 185, Fleet
street, London, price 6d.)
�4
THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
social reorganization, conducted, with vigor and intelligence by
the producing class themselves. The vast wealth which is
now piled up by their ceaseless exertions, the powerful ma
chinery which increases the productiveness of labor and cheap
ens commodities, become, under existing economical conditions,
the direct means for insuring the subjugation of the workers
to those who own that wealth and control that machinery.
The majority of Englishmen are literally enslaved for life to a
class of their countrymen by their own production itself. This
is true of all nations where the laborers work under the
control of capital; but here in England there is a greater con
centration of land, capital, and machinery in the hands of the
few than elsewhere, consequently, the natural bent of the
capitalist system is less checked or diverted by other causes.
Until this carapace of monopolies, which crushes down our
people, is owned by the State—which will then simply be the
organized capacity of the workers, for the benefit of all—no
great change for the better can be brought about in the lot of
those who labor.
Now this, I dare say, will sound to many abstract, utopian,
all in the air. I don’t think it will when I have done. In
America even, where there is much virgin soil still unoccupied,
and rich lands to be purchased at what seem to us preposte
rously low prices, I can observe that every day the class
struggle between the wage-earners and the capitalists is coming
closer and threatens to be most bitter. With Americans, as
with us, new questions are being forced forward, and people
feel that there is something below more serious than the wellworn shibboleths of Republican and Democrat. What we
English have to deal with is, at any rate, far more a social
than a political problem. Who is “ in” or who “ out” matters
not a straw to those who have learned to labor but cannot
afford much longer to wait. Politics are, after all, merely the
�OF ENGLAND.
5
outcome of the method of production below, and he who stops
to consider them alone gets a superficial view of modern society
indeed. For the worst of it is that while we are talking events
are moving. Yet another generation is growing up under the
deplorable oppression which every man who feels for the
misery of his fellows must hate and strive to remedy. Another
succession of destitute workers—men, women, children of
tender years—are even now stepping into the places of that
food for capital which has just been shot into the pauper
graveyard.
I need scarcely insist upon the difficulties we have to face.
That our social arrangements and our political constitution
are altogether behind the extraordinary development of our
industry and commerce none can fail to understand. But
assuredly there is no patent plaster for all economical diseases
—there is no sovereign remedy for the people’s evil which can
be administered with confidence as an infallible cure. No.
Society is the growth of endless ages of evolution and revolu
tion, in the same way as man himself. We ourselves are, of
course, the creatures of our surroundings and our education
from infancy to manhood.
*
The individual can to a small
extent, as most think, modify his own character. Society can,
to a much greater extent, change the surroundings of the
present and coming generations by fostering those elements
which tend to bring about a rapid change. First, therefore,
we must apprehend thoroughly the ills we suffer from and
their causes in order that, as the existing mischiefs are swept
away, we may offer no impediment to the growth of a new and
better state of things from below.
By education we are most misled.
We so believe, because we so were bred :
The priest continues what the nurse began;
And thus the child imposes on the man.
—Dryden.
�6
THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
What we have to-day, I repeat, is a class which owns all
the means of production, including the land on the one side..
Those who belong to this class escape, as a body, without any
sort of manual labor, and live in luxury far in excess of what
is beneficial even to them. On the other side is a class utterly
destitute of the means of production. Those who belong to’
this class are, therefore, obliged to compete with one another,
in order to gain the scantiest livelihood, and sell their force of
labor for miserable wages to the capitalists, who “ exploit ” it.
Hence increasing wealth and deepening poverty, production for'
profit and not for use, recurring industrial crises consequent
upon the socialized system of production and the command by
the individual of the whole process of exchange. Authority
carried to its extreme limit in the factory, in the workshop, in
the mine or the farm: laissez-faire allowed full swing in almost
every other department' of civilized life. Thus the wealthy,
who take care to maintain the strictest discipline where their
own immediate gains are concerned, howl loudly, in concert
with their hangers-on, that freedom of contract is being out
raged when they in turn are called upon to submit to some
sort of regulation in the interests of the mass of mankind.
Between the two classes, the capitalists and the proletariat—
the workers, that is, who are absolutely without means of sub
sistence, and dependent on their weekly wages for bread—
there are several gradations; but the antagonism between
those who employ and those who provide the force of labor
which renders surplus value is becoming more pronounced
every day. Events are manifestly tending toward the forma
tion of a party of the people which shall be in opposition to
Tory and Whig, Conservative, Liberal, and Radical alike.
*
* Those who desire to comprehend thoroughly the problems of our
existing civilization should study the late Dr. Karl Marx s masterly
work on “Capital.” It is no easy reading; but no man competent to
form a judgment will, I venture to say, rise from its second or third
�OF ENGLAND.
7
Within the past few months there has been increasing
evidence of this, and a few instances will not be out of place.
The Trades-Union Congress, which met in 1882 at Manchester,
fully bore out my views with respect to the uselessness of
trades-unionism to the rank and file of labor, so far as the
original programme or the main discussions at the meeting are
considered. Such political proposals as were formulated might
very well have been laid down, and I dare say were laid down,
by the middle-class Liberal caucus which has its headquarters
at Birmingham. From all sides the capitalist press poured
forth its congratulations to the managers upon their “ modera
tion.” The secretary was accorded an unanimous vote of
confidence, because he had given place to young Lord Lymington on a bill before the House of Commons dealing with a
matter which was supposed specially to concern the workers.
A delegate who had gone to Manchester with the express
purpose of proposing a vote in favor of manhood suffrage found
so little encouragement among his fellow delegates that he
absolutely thought it better not to bring his motion forward
this year. Altogether anything but a democratic assembly
one must say. Yet here, in this atmosphere of doubt, feeble
ness and trimming, a great step in advance was made. When
it was suggested by a delegate that an examination should be
made into the titles of the handful of gentlemen who have
taken possession of the soil of England, Mr. H. W. Rowland,
secretary to the London Cabmen’s Society, a well known tradeunionist, but also a member of the Democratic Federation,
boldly brought forward a resolution to the effect that no
perusal without the conviction that he has been in contact with one of
the greatest thinkers of our own or of any other age. The name of
Karl Marx is so well known as that of an agitator and revolutionist
that his position as a philosopher is sometimes overlooked. Future
generations will do fuller justice to his extraordinary capacity, industry
and fearlessness than we of to-day.
�8
THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
measure short of nationalization of the land could be accepted
as a settlement by the working classes of England. This
measure is naturally opposed, both by landlords who see in it
the utter destruction of their wealth and territorial influence,
and by capitalists who, secretly aspiring to be land owners,
*
support what they call “ free trade in land.” Nevertheless,
and in spite of the efforts of some of the principal organizers
of the congress, the motion was carried by forty-nine votes to*
twenty-nine.
Now, of course, I am well aware that nationalization of
the land by itself and without a complete reorganization of
production in all departments would benefit the workers little,
if at all. Still, it is no small thing that the idea of the pos
session of the land of England—land in country and land in
towns, mines, parks, mountains, moors—should be held by the
people, for the people collectively, to be used and developed
as they see fit to ordain—it is no small matter, I say, that
such a reform as this should find acceptance at a wavering
congress of “the aristocracy of labor” in place of the middle
class tinkering for individual advantage which has hitherto
been forced upon them. For such a vote means that at last
the people of England are awaking to the truth that landlords
and capitalists together have robbed them of their heritage of
freedom and well-being; means, too, that no mere vestry
plans for bolstering up the old cut-throat individualism will
much longer blind the workers to their true interests as a class.
“Each for himself, and the devil take the hindermost,” is a
* In 1879, when Mr. Adam Weiler, the London joiner, brought
forward a similar resolution, he could not even find a seconder. So
that democratic ideas do move in these days, the ridicule and sarcasm
of the capitalist press notwithstanding. I may add that the collectivist
view, as opposed to peasant-proprietorship, is spreading through the
Highlands of Scotland as the only thorough remedy for the existing
land system. It was in the Highlands that the Sutherland clearances
and other similar infamous evictions were perpetrated.
�OF ENGLAND.
9
splendid motto for the employing class. For the wage-earners
it means a never-ending and hopeless struggle to keep out of
the slough of pauperism and crime.
If, however, the trade-unionists have adopted nationaliza
tion of the land, the colliers are again claiming to limit pro
duction and to curtail the hours of labour to eight a day.
The determination to lessen the output of coal in the York
shire coal-field, which is really the chief point in dispute
between men and masters to-day, is in every way more
important than any struggle about wages ; for it involves not
merely the right to obtain increased pay, but the right to
control production itself. Here at once, the whole economical
difficulty is placed before us, if we choose to work it out.
Grant the miners the right to say how much coal shall or
shall not be brought to the pit’s mouth within a given period,
and clearly the puddlers have an equal right to determine
how much ore shall go into the smelting-furnace, the iron
workers the right to fix how many bars or plates shall leave
the forge, the cotton-spinners, as they have also contended,
how much yarn shall be delivered per week, and so on through
the whole long series of manufacturing operations. Well, it
may be asked, why should not those who make all the wealth
decide as to the amount of any special form of it they choose
to expend their labor upon ? I say nothing to the contrary.
Far from it, I desire to see the laborers acting in concert and
producing for the general good. But that any particular knot
of producers should be allowed the power to limit their own
production without agreement or concert with their fellows in
other branches of trade would manifestly but confound still
further the present economical confusion. In this case again,
therefore, the workers will be slowly driven to look upon the
interests of their class—skilled and unskilled laborers alike—
as a whole, seeing that the action of one portion by themselves
�10
THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
may disorganize the entire fabric as completely as the strike
of one section of workers may compel a whole factory to stand
idle. A few years ago, the strike of the unskilled dock-laborers
at Liverpool caused a complete congestion of the trade of that
great port for three weeks, and a withdrawal of engine-drivers
and stokers would practically suspend, for a time at least, all
rapid communication. In this complicated society of ours thewhole is, as it were, at the mercy of its parts; but let those
parts once be thoroughly combined on an intelligent compre
hension of their own joint business, and we have opened
up a new industrial era to mankind.
While such ideas are abroad, and such partial combinationsare going on among the workers in active employment, a little
cloud has arisen in another quarter. How to deal with
paupers has always been a great difficulty. Clearly, it is hard
that men or women who have fallen into poverty from no
fault of their own should be treated as criminals, set to pick
oakum, forced to do disgusting or useless tasks, merely, to keep
a few from coming for the scanty workhouse food out of sheer
idleness. This has been the system hitherto. Now anotheris growing up under the control of well-intentioned men, who •
evidently do not see, or do not care for, either the immediate
or ultimate result of their policy. In several workhouses the ■
paupers are now being employed on the production of useful
articles, not merely for themselves or their fellow-inmates, but
for sale in the open market, the paupers who do the work
receiving a certain proportion of the money obtained, in
addition to their keep. Now this is, of course, a great boon
to the poor people who have been driven to accept ’charity,
but are glad to find that they are not wholly useless
to mankind. The change in the appearance of the men and
women thus employed, as compared to what they were with
nothing but hopelessness and a pauper’s grave before them, is-
�OF ENGLAND.
11
•described as surprising.
Excellent every way, no doubt.
But now look at this admirable experiment from the outside.
The goods which these State-supported workers produce have to
be sold in the open market. Whatever they fetch over and
; above the mere cost of the raw material and carriage is so
much clear gain to the rate-payers, who have to pay for the
maintenance of the paupers in any case. Consequently, the
workhouse goods can always be sold cheap. How, then, does
it fare with men or women engaged in the same business who
have to pay rent, get food, and provide themselves with
■ clothing, out of the profits of their own hand-made wares ?
Very badly, as I can testify. More than one trade has been
• completely ruined by this workhouse competition, and many of
those engaged in it driven into the ranks of the neediest class
themselves. Such is the irony of our present social system.
Not a bit worse, however, than when the introduction of a new
machine, which should result in increased wealth for all, fills a
■ capitalist’s pockets, and sends hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
skilled workmen out workless on the labor market as unskilled
hands. The very people who rightly contend that this organi. zation of labor in the workhouse is far better than the shame
ful criminal treatment hitherto in vogue, shriek Socialism,
• Communism, and begin to call names when it is suggested
that labor and production need organization even more outside
the workhouse, and that were such organization carried out
• on a thoroughly sound basis, not only able-bodied pauperism
but able-bodied sybaritism might be done away. But this
< competition now set on foot, if, as is quite possible, it is carried
into the domain of machine industry, will compel the working• classes to insist upon some general understanding with regard
to rate-supported laborers, and thus, perhaps, lead by anothei’
route to the same great end of social cooperation. Mean
while, the field of State employment is extending every day,
�12
THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
though, as in the post office, the lowest possible wages are
paid, and a profit is secured wherever attainable.
What, however, are the transition-remedies, as we may
call them, which may serve to help on our society to a wider
and nobler development ? Extension of the suffrage to the
whole adult population—the direct control by the electors of
the entire political system—the abolition of the monarchy
and the House of Lords—the prevention of bribery and log
rolling—these and similar reforms, no matter how thorough,
do but give the machinery whereby the people of England
may at length become masters in their own house. Mere
forms of government, nevertheless, afford no guarantee for
social progress. France has universal suffrage, and theancient nobility has long been overthrown. Yet the plebisciteestablished the stock-jobbing Second Empire, and now the
French enjoy a republicanised empire, where the right of the
workers to combine is put down with a high hand, as in the
case of the strike of the miners at Grand’ Combe, and else
where. In Germany universal suffrage gives the people a,
sultan, a grand vizier, and an army of janissaries—what else
are the Emperor, Prince Bismark, and the Junkerdom at
their command?—while the chief cities of the empire are in a
state of siege. In free Switzerland, also, the middle-class^
dominate completely under republican forms. In America
itself the pressure of capitalists “ rings,” the undue power
exercised by plutocrats who but yesterday were unknown men,
and the insidious corruption which creeps through the whole
body politic, threatens grave danger to the great Republic of
the West. There is no security, then, for the social improve
*
ment of the people at large in any political forms, unless those
who use them are imbued beforehand with just ideas, and aredetermined to exercise their influence for the general benefit.
Necessary as it is to sweep away the monopoly of Parliament,
�OF ENGLAND.
13
which, now keeps the working-classes from having any control,
it is even more necessary that this should be done with a
definite idea of policy for the future.
Here, then, are some of the measures which would at least
tend to secure for the rising generation better conditions of
existence and a clearer view of their own future course under
our present capitalist domination:
First—Free education, compulsory upon all, together with
the provision of at least one good meal a day for the children
attending the public free schools.
*
Second—The compulsory erection by municipalities and
county boards of healthy, well-built dwellings, in proportion
to the numbers of the working population, with gardens or
playgrounds in the immediate neighbourhood—such dwellings
to be let at a price to cover the cost of construction alone.
Third—Eight hours or less to be established as the regular
working-day in all factories, mines and workshops, the labor
of women and children being strictly controlled. The same
regulation to apply to all other employes where continuous
labor is exacted.
Fourth—All squares or private grounds in the neighbour
hood of great cities to be held at the disposal of the com
munity, and thrown open for their benefit.
Fifth,—That the railway monopoly should be at once put
* There are few stories more disgraceful in the long infamous record
of class greed apd class robbery than the seizure by the upper and
middle classes of endowments given by wealthy men in the past to
insure free education for the poor. The children of these classes have
quite ousted the poor from the endowed schools, and there seems little
hope of any redress whatever by peaceable and legal means. The
classes which stand out against free education do not hesitate for
a moment to grasp free education for themselves whenever and whereever they can do so at the expense of others. Even the universities,
which should belong to the country at large, have been turned into
middle-class establishments. Here again, who is going to look out
for the rights of the people—save the people themselves ?
�14
THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
an end to, either with or without compensation, as may seem
advisable, the railways thus acquired being used to give the
greatest possible advantages in cheap transport to all classes of
the community.
Such proposals would seem to need little advocacy. Yet
not a single one of them is now before our parliamentary
wiseacres, nor do the working-classes appear inclined to force
them upon their representatives, so hopeless do they seem.
Yet who can doubt that compulsory education, now en
forced by many, if not most, of the school boards, should be
free? It is to the advantage of all that none should
grow up ignorant. Though education by itself does not pro
vide better “ hands ” for the capitalist, and, as we see in
China, may not change social conditions, such education as
can now be given, coupled with the general advance in all
branches of social science around, could scarcely fail to increase
the knowledge of the workers, and at the same time to
strengthen their power of combination. Noble Robert Owen,
who, early in this century, showed us the right path towards
education and industrial organization for the young, never
dissociated his educational system from good food, constant
pleasure, or, later, from physical industry.
*
The authority
* Robert Owen was the father of the factory acts, the most benefi
cent measures ever carried in England. Yet he wras himself one of
the largest and most successful manufacturers. He was also the
leader of modern utopian socialism. Needless to say that, when he
tried to develop his theories on a large scale, he was ridiculed and
boycotted. A philanthropist, he might be : a socialist—oh, horror !
Here is a passage from one of the writings of this truly great man:
“ Since the discovery of the enormous, the incalculable, power to
supersede manual labor, to enable the human race to create wealth by
the aid of the sciences, it has been a gross mistake of the political
economists to make humanity into slaves to science instead of making,
as nature intends, sciences to be the slaves and servants of humanity.
And this sacrificing of human beings with such exquisite physical, in
tellectual, moral, spiritual and practical organs, faculties and powers,
so wondrously combined in each individual, to pins, needles, thread,
�OF ENGLAND.
15
which he exercised over both parents and children at New
Lanark, though at first met by opposition, was in a few years
recognized by the people themselves as the greatest boon.
Similar authority must be now used on an extended scale for
the benefit of the children of the people whose parents too
often, from poverty or other causes, neglect the welfare of
their offspring in their most important years of growth.
Good food in childhood is even more necessary than good
education. Nothing is more certain, also, than that children
brought up to work under favorable conditions do not revert
to idleness if they can possibly help it. Unfortunately, here
comes in the miserable jobbery of our middle-class system
often entailing downright cruelty and robbery of food. If,
however, the workers once understand that the schools are
their schools, that they really pay by their labor for the food
and education provided, they will soon find the means to have
their children properly taken care of and those who neglect
them punished. Already the board schools have produced a
great effect, and the new generation of workers, imperfect as
their education still is, will be able to take quite a different
view of life from their predecessors. Health and education
together will give a power of resistance which can scarcely
fail to be fatal to the class injustice they suffer from.
But, secondly, what is the use of giving education unless
the home conditions of the people are changed ? Here is a
point of the gravest moment. According to evidence collected
by the trade-unions, the working-classes pay from one-fourth
tape, etc., and to all such inanimate materials, exhibits at once the most
gross ignorance of the nature and true value of humanity, and of the
principles and practices required to form a prosperous, rational and
happy state of society, or the true existence of man upon earth.”
In another place he asks where the increased wealth produced by
his two thousand five hundred work-people—equal to the amount
which could have been produced by six hundred thousand a century
before—went to. They did not get it; that he saw clearly.
�16
THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
to one-third of their small wages in the shape of rent. , They
are liable to be sold out of all they possess and evicted into the
street if behindhand with payment, and they absolutely have
not, as in the United States, any lien on their tools to enable
them to work, or on the results of their own labors for what
may be due to them in wages. The lodging of the poor in our
great cities is, as I have observed before, horribly bad, and
very dear. True, artisans’ dwellings acts have been passed
and philanthropists have tried to do something. But the acts
are under the management of town councillors, aidermen and
the rest of the middle-class functionaries, who, elected as they
are, never for a moment consider that the health and well
being of the people constitute the real strength of the nation;
and the philanthropists in this direction, as in others, are really
of very small account in comparison with the work that has to
be done. As a general result, therefore, the overcrowding is
increasing in all our great centres of industry, while the
working-classes who must live close to their work have to pay
exorbitant rents to the very vestrymen and employers who
own the tumble-down dwellings and manage the parish. What
likelihood is there that those who make large profits out of
bad, unsanitary house-property will set to work in earnest to
bring sound, wholesome dwellings into competition at low rents
with their high-priced ramshackle hovels? What factory
capitalist will forego the advantage of being able to evict his
work-people from the cottages he owns, should they dare to
strike, unless some more powerful body undertakes to do the
business for the good of all ? So things drag on. Improve
ment for the upper and middle class: yet more overcrowding,
degradation and misery for the producers of wealth. Compul
sion, nothing but compulsion, can induce our monopolists to
act. And yet the so-called working-class leaders advise their
misguided followers to dissociate the trade interests of their
�OF ENGLAND.
17
dass from any political action. We all know that a well-built,
wholesome dwelling is absolutely essential to health and decency.
How can a woman bring forth healthy children surrounded
by such sights and sounds and smells as are to be found in the
courts and alleys of our great industrial centres ? How can
the children themselves become valuable citizens under such
conditions ? In the country similar compulsion is needed from
the same causes. There is more air and perhaps more water,
but the sanitary arrangements are utterly abominable in many
cases, and the overcrowding goes on there too. Nevertheless,
I repeat, the idea of compulsion revolts the middle-class mind,
and the vested-interest-mongers so far have had it all their
own way.
*
But if free education and the provision of food for children,
the compulsory construction of sound dwellings which shall be
rented at cost, savors of socialism, what is to be said of an
eight-hours-act ? Sir Stafford Northcote, the leader of the
Conservative party, and Mr. Henry Fawcett, the principal
middle-class economist and Postmaster-General as well as a
Badical, have both recently declared that “ freedom of con
tract ” is too sacred to be tampered with. Fancy freedom of
contract between a pauper and a plutocrat; between starving
women and children and factory lords and “ sweaters ”! The
thing is absurd. Our system of contract actually excludes
freedom, and well our capitalists know it. Yet we have made
* It is nothing short of exasperating to read through the answers of
witnesses and the report of the recent committee on artisans’ dwellings.
All the evidence goes to show that a thorough change of system is
needed, but no suggestion do we find to the effect that such a change
should at once be made. Marvellous indeed is the patience of our
people, when crowded together in attics and cellars; they can see the
west end of London almost deserted for at least three months in the
year, and could learn easily that, cubic space for cubic space, their dens
are more highly rented than the most fashionably-placed houses of the
well-to-do. Supply and demand, how good is it.
�18
THE SOCIAL EECONSTRUCTION
some progress in the restriction of this illusory freedom, and
neither Conservative statesman nor Liberal economist dare
bring in a bill to repeal those factory acts which happily
interfered with the excessive overwork of women and children
for the profit of the capitalist. Limit the hours still further
to eight hours a day, would not the women and children be
the better for it ? Yet if women and children are to work but
eight hours a day the work of the men stops too, so completely
is the whole of the great machine-industry dovetailed together.
Who will contend that eight hours’ work a day in the factory,,
in the mine, in the workshop, in the sweater’s den, is not
enough for any man or woman ? A horse can barely work
eight hours a day on the average of his strength. But the
difficulty is to prevent even the existing acts from being over
ridden. There are not nearly enough factory inspectors to
keep the capitalist class within the limits of the law. But
when Sir William Harcourt, the Home Secretary, was asked
not long since to appoint some more, he replied that any
addition to the number would be too expensive. Once more
the money interests of the few outweigh, with both the existing
parties, the life-and-death interests of the many.
To assume that railways and railway directors will ever be
controlled by the existing Parliament would seem to all who
know the strength of the railway interest in the House of
Commons a foolish assumption indeed. Our railway magnates
are almost as powerful as American Jay Goulds and Vander
bilts. They work their men such long hours in the signal
boxes, on the engines and at the points, that accidents fre
quently occur from this cause alone. The injurious monopolies
they have been granted by landlords and capitalists are sup
posed by them to be permanently valid against the whole
country. So long as debenture-holders and stockholders are
satisfied, what have the public to do with their business ?
�OF ENGLAND.
19
Such is the tone of the railway directors ; and Parliament, as
at present constituted, is merely a huge board for the protec
tion of vested interests.
The opening of squares and private parks to the inhabitants
of large cities is a much smaller matter than the others. But
here again the antagonism of class interests, the sharp social
separation, make themselves felt. Though the children of the
poor have nowhere but the crowded, airless thoroughfares to
play in, what right have they to intrude on the premises of the
wealthy ? A few running-over cases weekly cannot possibly
be pleaded as an excuse for bringing these unwashed youngsters
between the wind and our gentility. Well may nationalization
of the land, whether with or without compensation, seem
downright robbery to people who resolutely oppose a simple
reform like this.
Thus, even with regard to such measures as those mentioned
above, which only tend to improve the health, morals, educa
tion and general welfare of the nation as a whole, we are met
at once with a dead, dogged, brutal resistance by the classes
which live on the labors of others—a resistance, as I believe,
only to be overcome by force, or the threat of force, on the
part of the wage-earning class. Justice has too long been
appealed for in vain. Yet not one of these measures goes to
the root of the social difficulty of the time. They are all, as I
have called them, mere transition-remedies for some portion of
the misery which now we see. Can we wonder, then, that
daily, in England, the numbers of those are increasing who
hold that what we need is a thorough, organized movement
for the overthrow of a social system which enables the rich to
obstruct every reform that can really improve the lot of the
poor ? Is it any matter for astonishment that when admittedly
“ practical ” measures are postponed sine die, those who suffer
begin to consider what effect a thorough theoretical reconstruc
�20
THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
tion might have on their condition ? Perhaps, after all, this
is one of the cases in which the whole is more easy to get than
the half.
Some there are, however, who contend that the workers
have themselves to thank for the hopeless state in which too
many of them are sunk. Their theory is that the poverty of
the great majority, in comparison with the vast wealth around
them is due to drunkenness, extravagance, want of thrift.
Who can deny that drunkenness exists ? But to what is it
due ? When I look around me at the social conditions in
which the workers live, when I take account of the fact that
there are so few opportunities afforded them for healthful
pleasure, when I note that the public-houses—there are far
too many of them, no doubt—are the only places where work
men can conveniently meet their fellows, I wonder that, as a
whole, the very poor should be as temperate, as saving, as
quiet, as contented, as they are. Misery drives to gin, as well
as gin to misery. And what are the figures? What is there
to show that the upper, the middle, the shop-keeping class, do
not drink quite as freely, and more expensive drinks in propor
tion to their means, than those who are directly laboring with
their hands ? There is no trustworthy evidence on this point
at all. But the temperance cry—good enough in itself, to a
certain length, at any rate, for all classes—serves the purpose
of the capitalist class to divert attention from the real causes
of the whole social depression which engenders the drunken
ness, the misery, the pauperism that they so hypocritically
deplore.
Take a hundred children at random from the middle class,
belonging to staunch members of the Blue Ribbon or Salvation
Army, and plant them from infancy in the miserable dwellings
which are inhabited by the very poor ; let them imbibe a little
gin with their earliest pap, hear oaths from their childhood,
�OF ENGLAND.
2X
and witness scenes of vice, or even crime, as they enter on
mature years. Will not a large percentage of them turn out
drunken, dissolute and worthless, be their parentage ever so
respectable, the sobriety of their whole kith and kin beyond
dispute ? Of course we know it would be so, and education
*
might do but little to mitigate the effect of this early training.Reverse the process, and take a hundred babes of the poor'
into such households as might be readily found for them, take *
care that they were surrounded by kindness, purity and plenty
of food for the asking, is it not certain that but a small per
centage would have a tendency toward what is bad, until
driven, perhaps, to desperation at a later period by the long,,
hopeless resistance to economical pressure which forces them
into the ranks of the needy and desperate ? To lecture and
denounce the drunken and extravagant, while maintaining as
beneficent, the system which is opposed to the best interests of
mankind at large, is to mistake the effect for the cause, is to
try to perpetuate the very mischiefs which we are endeavouring
to uproot. Much of the very drunkenness we witness is due
to the vile, adulterated drinks which are sold. But the brewers
and gin-distillers are the pillars of the State. Philanthropists
and members of Parliament, how shall they be effectively
assailed ? The publicans whom they employ but follow humbly
in their wake. The truth is, that though it may be advisable
to restrain the sale of intoxicating liquors (and the fanatics of
temperance are in their * ay doing some good), the social
w
arrangements themselves are really in fault, and drunkenness,like vagrancy, is due to social blundering.
Thrift, again, though good in itself, does but strengthen the
domination of the capitalists under our present system ; for the
savings of the workmen go into the general banking business,
and the workers, for the sake of a trifling pecuniary interest,
lose sight of the far more important interests of their class as a
�52
THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
whole. The ^same objection applies to cooperation among
knots of workers. Those who take shares earn a profit which
they divide, thus becoming at once not mere benefactors of
^themselves and their families, but copartners with the men
who live upon the unpaid labor of their class. None can regret
the defects of the workers more than those who are striving
for a complete reorganization of society. If they were all
/temperate, thrifty, ready to combine, democrats would stand a
:far better chance of organizing side by side with them the great
■class struggle of the near future to certain and rapid victory
ffor the laborers. The hungry and the drunken, the dissipated
-and the brutal, may make riots and rebellions, but a class
^revolution, with a definite constructive programme, is far
beyond their grasp. For this reason, if for no other, any
attempt which may be made to reduce the standard of comfort
-should be vigorously resisted.
Before, however, the people as a whole can thorougly
'Organize their national production, or make common cause
with their class in other countries, they must clearly under
stand, in some degree at least, the history of the economical
-development which has brought about their present condition.
This is, unluckily, no easy matter even for the educated.
.Middle-class economists have succeeded in so thoroughly con
fusing men’s minds that it needs some effort to throw aside
their jargon, and to look upon events as they really have
happened and do now take place. According to them our
present form of production and exchange has been practically
the same throughout the ages, and society at all times may be
measured by the same standard. The difference, according to
them, is in size only, not in kind or degree. This is the exact
sreverse of the truth, though doubtless our whole civilization is
the result • of one long, continuous development, and portions of
■ our present growth may be traced into remote antiquity, side
�OF ENGLAND.
23
by side with very different social conditions—just as our great
machine-industries are contemporaneous with the miserableAustralian nomad, the American Red Indian, with village
communities in Asia, or feudalism in Japan. Historically
viewed, nevertheless, our existing system differs fundamentally
from any which has gone before.
England, for instance, during the Middle Ages presented a
very different appearance from the England which now we see..
That age of chivalry about which Burke grew so eloquent,.,
when it served his turn to denounce the principles he had
previously championed, formed a strange contrast to oursociety of to-day. But in no respect was the contrast greater
than in the manner in which what was needed for the purposes
of every-day life was produced and exchanged. The relationsbetween the various grades in that feudal society and theindividuals who composed them were purely personal. Pay
ments were made in kind, service was rendered on one side or
the other in accordance with personal obligation ; production
was carried on, in the first instance, at any rate, for individual,
use. A certain proportion of the crops was surrendered by the
agriculturists, not as rent, but as dues; not as a rate, but as a
tithe to be applied to purposes and arrangements which were
well understood by both parties. The nobles owed the same
allegiance to their superior, or monarch, that their own peopleowed to them. There were plenty of grievances, and we had
risings in England similar to those of the Jacquerie in France,,
though hitherto our historians have been at little pains to
work out the true character and details of these movements.
In the fifteenth century villenage and serfdom had come toan end, and the soil of England was in the hands of the
people themselves, subject only to the recognized dues orregular service in the field. The nobles were no more owners
of the land than the people or the monarch. Each class had).
�^4
THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
its rights, subject to the performance of certain duties, which
were, as already said, purely of a personal character. At this
time the instruments of agricultural labor or of manufacture
were poor and rude, suited to the wants of the isolated
workers. The yeomen and life-holders produced for the needs
of their wives, children, families, and hinds. Those hinds
were themselves possessed of plots of ground. Day-laborers
formed a small, an unimportant, part of the population. The
cattle, sheep, pigs, geese, etc., all that made up the agricul
turist’s wealth, represented to him not goods which we should
sell and make a profit from, but actual substance which enabled
him and his to live in comfort or in rude luxury. The women,
the wife, the daughters, the hand-maidens, spun the wool of
the farm, or attempted rude embroidery in the same way for
.use or personal adornment; exchange was not thought of
until the wants of those around were satisfied, and only the
superfluity was actually brought to market. Everybody, or
almost everybody, in the poorer class owned his own means
of production, and the spinning-wheel of the matron, the
potter’s wheel, the rough smithy, the still rougher cobbler’s
shop, formed the manufacturing portion of this rural com
munity. Production for general exchange was almost un. known, each neighbourhood supplying most of its own wants.
In the towns exchange had already become more common,
but it was in no sense an exclusive business here as it had
. already become in Venice or Genoa, where also the first
. modern manufacture in its more extended sense found a footing.
This happy state of things for the many—happy it was
. according to old chroniclers—could not be of long duration.
. Already business for profit had obtained a footing, and goods
were being produced with a view to their exchange. The
middle-class had begun to gain ground, and soon became
- strong enough to obtain those laws against laborers some of
�OF ENGLAND.
25'
which have lasted to our own day. Meanwhile, the Wars of
the Roses impoverished the nobility, leading them not only to
discharge their retainers, but also to uproot from the soil those
who had a better right to it than they, in order that wool
might be grown for the increasing Flanders market. Through
out the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the process of
tearing off the hold of Englishmen from their own land went
on, while the needy peasants who were thus turned loose on
to the highways were forced by law into the control of themiddle-class, now possessed of the means of production and'
developing the system of small workshop manufacture. From
this to the preponderance of the capitalist farmer, growing
crops and cattle for profit on the land, and of the capitalist
over the whole domain of production and exchange, was an
inevitable transition. The landlord lost all sense of personal
connection with his people or their lands. He became merely
a sleeping partner with the farmer, the coal capitalist, the'
factory-owner in the exploitation of the agricultural laborer,
the miner, the factory-hand. Thenceforward the capitalist
has been the master of our modern society, production has
been carried on solely with a view to profit by exchange, the
workers have been regarded simply as ‘‘hands,” to be used to
the greatest possible extent for the enrichment of the capita
list. He, therefore, who, in England at any rate, strikes
merely at the landlords or the land monopolists tilts at wind
*
mills.
The private ownership of land was as inevitable a.
* In Ireland, of course, circumstances are different. There the
landlord has in most cases rack-rented the cotters direct. But peasant
proprietary under present conditions would only strengthen the gom
been men and small money-lenders. All over Europe and in India the
money-lender, in the shape of the Jew, the Soucar or the mortgage
bank is pressing upon the agriculturist. Even where the land is
“nationalized,” as over the greater part of India, the same blood
sucking capitalism goes on. The crops are mortgaged instead of the-
�26
THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
portion of the evolution as the private ownership of the other
means of production up to a^d including the most complete
improved machinery, whether for agriculture or manufacture.
Control capital, and landlordism falls of itself; break down
landlordism, capital may be yet more powerful.
The effect of this development has necessarily been to
render the workers more and more the slaves of their own
production. First came the cooperative workshop where the
individual workman did his bit in forming a complete article,
only useful according to the social conditions of the times
when put together. This is the system which Adam Smith
has so glorified, though its result manifestly is to make the
worker “ a portion of a machine of which the parts are men.”
The employer sat by and took the product of the labor, for
which he paid only a small proportion of its real social value.
Here, at once, was a complete change of method. In place
-of the isolated worker owning his own means of production,
and owning also the product when complete, we have the
socialized worker who owns nothing but his bare force of labor
which is used in concert with others ; the entire product
belonging to the employer. As the cooperation extended
machines came in. These, too, naturally passed into the
possession of the capitalist. Steam motive-power followed
the same direction
*
The workers now no longer serve or
help one another as individuals; they themselves simply serve
land. Thus, as I say, nationalization of the land can only bs useful
to the people as a portion of a complete collective system of pro
duction which will include capital, communication, credit, and
machinery.
• The history of the extraordinary industrial development of Eng
land, from Hargreaves’ invention of the spinning jenny in 1764 on
wards, has to be yet fully written. Its effect upon the physical con
dition of the working classes may be studied in the terrible evidence
and reports of the various commissions as well as in those of the health
officers and factory inspectors.
�OF ENGLAND.
27
the machine through which they embody their force of labor’
in the commodity produced.
Now suppose a new machine invented which lessens theamount of labor, and therefore cheapens the goods. How'
does it work under our present system. The capitalist com
petes by reducing prices. His object is to undersell his fellows
as quickly as possible, but always at a profit to himself. Tcp
do this he must get a wider market and sell cheap too. Con
sequently goods are produced at high pressure until there
comes a glut, and the industrial army of reserve is increased
by the forced idleness of men who cannot sell their labor, owingto the introduction of new machines and the refusal of capital
to produce except at a profit. But there can be no profit
where there is a glut. Thence an industrial crisis, owing tothe fact that the socialized method of production revolts against
the individual system of exchange, to the injury of all.
“ Then follows a partial recognition of the social character
of production by the capitalists themselves; the great engines
of production, and the great highways of the country are taken
possession of, first by companies with many shareholders, then
by the State.” *
Thus, as the feudal nobility lost power by the very methodsthey used to strengthen and enrich themselves, so the middle
class is being in turn displaced by salaried officials, and in the
next stage of the organization of production will themselves be
useless.
What a waste of strength, then, it is for the workers tn
expend their funds in maintaining men on strike for higher
wages. Why, it is the wages system itself that crushes them,
and never will they, as a class, know what true freedom and
real independence are until they break it down. Let the
workers spend what money they can afford in obtaining control
* F. Engels.
�'28
THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
•of political power for their class, and use this power, when
obtained, to take possession of the entire means of production.
This would benefit, not themselves alone, but even the idlers
and the vicious who now live upon their labor.
Can anything possibly be worse than the existing system ?
We have seen its effects upon the workers in the country
'where capital has most power. For them any change must be
beneficial. Necessary as this stage may be in the process of
human development, capital contrives to exact more labor,
..and to brutify the lowest grades of the population more com
pletely than any method of forced work known. But what is
the result to the soil, to our cities, to our general surroundings ?
England is now supplied with food and raw material from
•other countries; draws from them interest on capital lent. In
America wheat centre after wheat centre is worked to sterility
while we sweep the phosphates down into the sea which might
■fertilize our impoverished lands. In Australia the like process
is going on, to the permanent injury of the Continent. In
India—but the ruin of India by our capitalist system is an
.awful lesson by itself. Meanwhile, everywhere forests which
perhaps can never be replaced are cut down for fuel, for
sleepers, for timbering mines, regardless of the mischief
wrought to the climate and the next generation. Everywhere
the same rampant individualism, utterly indifferent to the
general good; everywhere the same furious greed for gain,
reckless of what may befall. And what of our cities ? Men
of artistic training see no hope of great art under our present
.social arrangements. Such a man as William Morris, the poet,
is driven to look below for some remedy for the hideousness
thrust upon him, as democrats are driven to look below for the
means of overthrowing the social miseries due to our system of
production. Monstrous factories and squalid hovels, blank, fea
tureless houses, and ghastly advertisements, elevated railroads
�OF ENGLAND.
29
and a net-work of telegraph, poles, such are the decorations of
our cities; one long vista of almost irredeemable ugliness, in
which each can vie with his neighbor in parading his indivi
duality in order that he may sell at a profit. Scamped build
ings, adulteration in every form, cheapness and nastiness and
ugliness in every direction.
*
And all for what ? All in order
that the few may live in luxury and the many exist as we
know. The loss to society by the mere cramping of human
intelligence cannot be estimated. What sense of beauty,
what exquisite artistic faculties, what power of invention may
not lie dormant in millions who may now have not a moment
left free from grinding and degrading toil ? The greatest dis
coveries and the noblest inventions have never been made for
gain. A Faraday, a Simpson, a Newton scorns to trade upon
the welfare of the mass of mankind. How many a great idea,
turned to account in hard cash by the capitalist, has been, as
it is, stolen from the poor enthusiast who worked for some
thing higher than mere greed.
* “ Why are cotton, potatoes, and gin the pivots of bourgeois so
ciety ? Because they need least labor to provide them, and they are
consequently at the lowest price.
“ Why does the minimum price decide the maximum consumption ?
Is it because of the absolute utility of these articles, of their intrinsic
utility, of their utility so far as they answer in the most useful manner
to the needs of the workman as man, and not of the man as workman ?
No, it is because, in a society founded on misery, the most miserable
products have the fatal prerogative of serving for the use of the greatest
number.
“ To say now that because things the least costly are most used
therefore they must be of greatest utility, is to state that the wide
spread use of gin, in consequence of the small cost of production, is the
-conclusive proof of its usefulness; it is to declare the potato to be as
nourishing to the working classes as meat; it is to accept the existing
state of things.
“ In the society of the future, when the antagonism of classes has
ceased, when there are no more classes, use will no longer be deter
mined by the minimum time of production ; but the time of production
devoted to an article will be determined by its utility.”—Karl Marx,
-Misere de la Philosopliie, p. 41.
�30
THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION OF ENGLAND.
But whether we like it or not, whether we try to help it on
or not, whether we shall live to see its victory or not, the
movement of the people goes steadily on all the same.
*
The
antagonism of classes is becoming too serious to be concealed
any longer. In England, where the causes of hostility are
deepest, the attempt at reorganization must first be made.
This is the revolution which, sooner or later, we have all of us
to face. That it may be brought about in a peaceful and
orderly manner every Englishman must hope ; that the domi
nant classes will be wise in time is the best that can be desired
for them. But the time is fast approaching when every man
must take his side, and strive for slavery with the landlord and
the capitalist, or for freedom with the people.
* Vous triompherez des tempetes
Ou notre courage expira ;
C’est en eclatant sur nos tetes
Que la foudre vous eclaira.
Si le Dieu qui vous aime
Crut devoir nous punir
Pour vous sa main resseme
Les champs de l’avenir.
It was this idea of Beranger’s I tried to express at one of our
great anti-coercion meetings in Hyde Park : “ And so, when we, the
small men of our time, pass unregarded to the rest of the tomb, this
holy consolation shall close our eyelids in their never-ending sleep—
that though our names be forgotten our memories will be ever green
in the work that we have done, and the eternal justice we have striven
for.”
��
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The social reconstruction of England
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Hyndman, Henry Mayers [1842-1921]
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’T4/0£a
THE
COMING REVOLUTION
IN ENGLAND.
BY
H. M. HYNDMAN,
Author of “ The Social Reconstruction of England,” “ TextBook
of
Democracy,” &c.
LENDING
LIBRARY
LONDON:
WILLIAM BEEVES, 185, ELEET STBEET, E.C.
Office of “ The Christian Socialist."
�Reprinted from the “North American Review.
�THE COMING REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND.
England at the present moment affords beyond doubt the
best field for the study of the social development of our times.
*
To a superficial observer we are still the Chinese of Europe,
clinging to old forms and old reverences, which have long since
been discarded elsewhere; though a closer examination shows
clearly that we have entered on a period of change which will
probably carry us far in advance of anything yet seen, either in
Europe or America. Few educated Englishmen, if pressed for
a deliberate opinion, would deny that there is every likelihood
that a complete social and political reorganization will be
attempted in these islands before the end of this century. Even
among the useless men and women who dub themselves “society,”
an undercurrent of uneasiness may be detected. The dread
word “ Revolution ” is sometimes spoken aloud in jest; more
often quietly whispered in all seriousness. The luxurious classes
feel that there is something going on below which they do not
understand, while now and then the truth that they are after
all but a handful of drones amid a dense swarm of ill-housed
and underfed workers forces itself in dimly upon their minds.
“Of course,” said one lady, “we know the working classes can
overwhelm us if they are only organized, but what is to come
then?” The deluge was to her but a swollen brooklet compared
to this loosing of the waters of democracy.
* See “The Social Reconstruction of England,” (W. Reeves, 185,
Fleet Street, London, price 6d.)
�4
THE COMING REVOLUTION
Now this growing consciousness of weakness if, if, if—this
or that takes place, which sooner or later is allowed to be
certain to come, acts itself as a force on the side of the people.
The “ it will last our time ” sort of men soon go to the wall in
days of real popular excitement. Those who refuse to look
thoroughly into the problems of their own age and country,
cannot fail to make grave mistakes when brought face to face
with the relentless necessities of social evolution, or even with
a body of enthusiasts who know their own minds. Ignorance
and cowardice invariably engender spasmodic injustice and
hap-hazard cruelty. And the worst sort of ignorance is that
which neglects to take account of natural laws, the most hope
less cowardice that which leads men to shut their eyes to
approaching danger.
Among the upper and middle classes in England to-day
there is absolutely no ideal for the future of their country.
There is not a single idea stirring among them which can give
hope to the old or can fire the young. Materially it is the
same. Neither of the present organized Parliamentary parties
offers to the mass of Englishmen any real change for the
better in their own condition, or proposes measures which hold
out the prospect of a brighter lot for their children. The bills
before the House of Commons at this hour exclusively concern
the welfare of the middle class, consequently there is an utter
apathy in relation to them among the workers. What does a
man who has to keep his wife and children on a pound or less
a week care about the provisions of a bankruptcy act, or the
assimilation of borough and county franchise ? All he knows
is, that somehow or other he has to work day in and day out
to keep body and soul together; that to-morrow he may be
unable to earn even the scanty pittance he at present gets;
and that then, from causes quite beyond his own control, he
may have to exchange the squalid misery of his home for the
�IN ENGLAND.
5
yet more squalid misery of the workhouse. No doubt such a
hand-to-mouth workman rarely reflects on his social wrongs;
but, when he does, from thought to action will be a very short
step.
Events just now move fast. Landlords, for instance, can
scarcely help observing that in Ireland, despite coercion acts,
a revolution is being wrought which can be but the beginning
of a complete change of system. At first the movement was
only a middle-class agitation, yet see what has been done in
two years. The farmers are still discontented, but already, ere
they are pacified, the day-laborers make themselves heard.
Those who imagine that the working classes in England will
not be influenced, in the long run, by what is going on in
Ireland, take a very short-sighted view of the situation and
its surroundings. However favorable the conditions may be,
this kind of political yeast ferments slowly through the great
unleavened mass of the people; but it does its work all the
same. The undefined fear that this may be so accounts for
the uneasiness referred to. What if similar steps should be
taken on this side of St. George’s Channel ? What if English
men and Scotchmen should call to mind that though the lap'’,
of Ireland is held by 12,000 people against 5,000,000, the land
of Great Britain is owned by only 30,000 against 30,000,000 ?
What if those who live on the starvation wages graciously
accorded them by the hypocritical fanatics of supply and
demand, with never the hope of rising above the wage-slave
-class—what if they, ground down under the economical pres
sure into a depth of degradation inconceivable to those who
have not witnessed it, should demand the fruits of their labor
from the classes who live in luxury on the produce of their
toil. What indeed ? At the very thought of it a chill shud
der creeps down the back of the land monopolists and the
capital monopolists alike, and they cry aloud in chorus for
�6
THE COMING REVOLUTION
more and yet more tyranny in Ireland, and huddle together
into a “ Liberty (!) and Property Protection League ” here.
For they know, if “society” and the workers don’t, that the
interests of the producing classes on both sides of the Irish
Channel are the same, and that should a struggle commence,
it will be a furious class war between the capitalists and middle
class aided by the landlords, on the one side, against the
*
working class aided by a few thinkers, enthusiasts, and ambi
tious men, on the other—a struggle beside which the old fight
of the burgesses and men of the “new learning ” against nobles
and clergy would seem child’s play.
He who writes the history of class wars writes the history
of civilized peoples. A new, and—unless far more wisdom
and foresight is displayed by the well-to-do than now seems
likely—a bloody page of that history may ere long be turned
over with us here in the “ Old Home.” In such circum
stances what course should be taken by any man who wishes
well to his country ? Surely to try to read aright the signs of
the times, and to endeavor to convince others near and far that
in such a battle surrender is both nobler and safer for the
weaker party than inevitable defeat. As an Englishman who
has had special opportunities of watching our social growth
from many points of view, I venture to think that the following
pages may be of some interest to the great English-speaking
* Among the wiser leaders of the Conservative Party in the past
there has always existed some sort of vague hope that an alliance might
be formed between the landowners and the people against the capi
talists. Mr. Disraeli certainly had this idea. But to carry it into effect
called, and calls, for sacrifices of which our English nobles and squires
are quite incapable. They talk boldly of patriotism, but they always
keep their hands tight clenched in their breeches pockets. Of late this
whole policy has been thrown aside with contempt, and Lord Salisbury
and Sir Stafford Northcote make no secret of their anxiety to make
common cause with the plutocracy in favor of the “ rights of property”
against the rights of the people. A Conservative programme truly.
�IN ENGLAND.
7
■democracy on. the western side of the Atlantic Ocean as well as
to our own people here.
It is a commonplace to say that a hundred years is a short
period in the life of a nation, yet few perhaps reflect how short
it really is. A man of seventy in this year, 1883—and nowa-days our English statesmen are, so to say, in their “ teens ”
at fifty—might have conversed as a youth of eighteen with his
father, who, if he had then attained likewise threescore and
ten years, could retain a clear personal remembrance of the
events of the American War of Independence, and must have
passed through the era of the French Revolution in the prime
of manhood. Thus considerably less than two ordinary lives
carry us back to a date which, in certain respects, social and
economical, seems as remote as ancient history. It needs an
effort of the imagination to recall what England was in 1783..
, Nevertheless, those who have studied the years immediately
preceding the great war with France know well that at that
time the opinions of educated men were to a great extent in
advance socially and politically of what they are to-day. The
writings of Thomas Paine, Priestley, Horne Tooke, Thomas
Spence, of Newcastle; the speeches of the elder Pitt, Burke,
Fox, Sheridan, and Colonel Barre, to say nothing of the crowd
•of pamphleteers who in one way or another reflected the ideas
of Rousseau and Voltaire and the general tone of the working
■classes in their ordinary talk, all shadowed forth a political
movement in England not very widely different in its objects
from that which wrought so great a change in France. A
hundred years ago the Duke of Richmond fathered a bill in
fiavor of universal suffrage and annual parliaments, and Thomas
Hardy the shoemaker was tried for high treason because he
agitated for a National Convention. It is certain that the
mass of Englishmen, so far as they could give expression to
their opinion, fully sympathized with the early phases of the
�8
THE COMING REVOLUTION
attack upon the ancien regime in France,, and would gladly
have followed up the policy so successfully begun in America
and carried on by the French in the direction of a complete
enfranchisement of the people.
Yet here we are to-day without reforms admitted to be
necessary by Lord Chatham, and considered with a view to
bringing them forward from a Tory point of view by his reac
tionary son. The present House of Commons, though sup
posed to represent thirty-five millions of people, is really elected
by a little over three millions; the House of Lords still has
the power, as it so disastrously showed in numberless instances,
of thwarting, for a time at least, any genuine liberal measure
carried by the so-called popular chamber. The House of
Commons itself also, elected as stated, consists of a compact
phalanx of landlords and capitalists, whose interests are directly
opposed to those of the great body of the people. What
Thomas Paine called the game of ride and tie still goes mer
rily on. Tories and Whigs, Conservatives and Liberals, take
turn and turn about in cajoling their constituents, and enjoy
the sweets of office as the reward for their dexterity. The
cost of elections and the nonpayment of members shut out all
but men of the well-to-do classes, or the two or three specimens
of the working class who are ready to do their bidding. Now
it is clear that there must be some great causes to account for
this remarkable set-back, since the revolt of our American
colonies, and the teaching of vigorous minds, both in England
and abroad, led the English democracy to look to a thorough
reform of the constitution, or even to the establishment of a
Republic as not only advantageous, but necessary.
Mere political reaction will not fully explain such a strange
collapse. Doubtless the war against France, into which the
nation was dragged by the aristocratic class, had a great effect.
The horror, more than half manufactured, which was felt at
�IN ENGLAND.
9
the fate of Louis XVI. and. Marie Antoinette, helped the reac
tionists and the war party. Burke and others did their utmost
to fan the flame. The Reign of Terror in Paris, exaggerated,
by the calculated panic of the upper classes intensified the
popular feeling. And of course when once we were fairly at
war the old dogged spirit of the victors of Crecy and Poitiers
was roused, the fatal mirage of glory tempted the suffering
people on, and internal reorganization was practically thrust
aside in favor of naval triumphs and glorious battles. If we
lost, it would never do to be beaten like that; if we won, why,
•all was going well. Hurrah for old England I To this day,
also, the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror are quoted
in almost every middle-class household as standing warnings
against any attempt of the people to organize themselves in
•earnest.
Who shall say, moreover, what an influence the common
school-books have had in this direction ? Till within the last
few years all history for the young has been compiled in the
direct interest of reaction. Not the least noteworthy, there
fore, among the smaller signs of coming change is the fact that
at the present moment efforts are being made to correct the
ideas which have been current with regard to the leaders of
the French Revolution among the working class. Lectures
are constantly delivered and pamphlets distributed in the
growing radical and democratic clubs, which run quite counter
to the middle class idea of that great upheaval. Robespierre,
St. Just, Couthon, and even Marat are rehabilitated com
pletely, and held up to admiration as men who sacrificed them
selves to the good of the human race. This, too, though they
themselves all belonged to the very class which the extreme
-advocates of the rights of labor commonly denounce.
But deeper causes have been at work than the shock of the
Reign of Terror or the satisfaction of martial ardor. At the
�10
THE COMING REVOLUTION
end of the eighteenth century the long and bitterly cruel
process of driving the English people from the soil was pretty
well completed. The idler landlord and the capitalist farmer
had quite displaced the sturdy yeoman of old time. Commonswere being daily stolen by individuals, and an increasing por
tion of the agricultural population now reduced to mere wage
earners to the farmers, were driven into the towns, where they
became mere wage-earners to the factory lords and shop
keepers. The increasing power of steam, together with the
terrible laws favoring long hours and prohibiting combination
among workpeople, handed over the population of the cities
bound hand and foot to their masters—the sole owners of the
means of production. The furious destruction of machinery,
which frequently took place; the long, violent struggle against
the masters for shorter hours, for restriction of child and woman
labor; the persistent endeavors of the workers, as a class, tn
obtain some little freedom,—all show how fearful the pressure
must have been. Readers of Robert Owen and William
Cobbett can form some idea of the horrors wreaked on helplesswomen and children, of the infamous tyranny practised upon
almost equally helpless men by the factory owners and their
managers. The reports of the various commissions give a still
more fearful picture of what, went on. So grave was the dete
rioration of the physique of the poorer classes in the rapidly
growing manufacturing districts, that positively a social col
lapse threatened from this cause alone.
Meanwhile, the whole system of which this was a develop
ment grew apace. Education there was little or none ; justice
as between employed and employer was not to be had. The
workers were trampled under foot to a degree which the slave
class even in ancient Rome never suffered from. In 1825came the first of the great industrial crises which can be
directly traced to our present system of production, and the-
�IN ENGLAND.
11
misery among the poor in town and country alike was deplor
able. Fifty years ago affairs seemed really hopeless. Men
who still remember the situation in the years immediately
preceding the Reform Bill of 1832, say that there seemed
little prospect of the slightest modification. The aristocracy—
though their power had been shaken by the middle class—still
held, to all appearance, effective control. What with rotten
boroughs, sinecures, and bribery, they could still do pretty
much as they pleased. That very manufacturing prosperity
which had enabled the capitalist class to amass wealth directly,
also enriched the landlords in the shape of enhanced rents
indirectly, and thus increased their political strength. England
was already established as the manufacturing power of the
world, and the one idea of the classes which controlled its
development was that the labourers who made for them all
this wealth had really no rights at all. But for the activity of
Robert Owen, Richard Sadler, Lord Shaftesbury, and a few
other self-sacrificing men, even the first factory acts, which in
some degree checked the hideous crushing down of the people,
might have been delayed for years.
Thus, from the very time when some hope of real reform
had dawned on the minds of Englishmen up to the miserably
ineffective measure of 1832—a period of fifty years—a relent
less social pressure was going on in the cities and in the
country, which helped the partisans of reaction to an extent
that can hardly be estimated.
England, too, we must never forget, lies outside the great
European currents of popular excitement. The days of July
in Paris (1830) which produced so great an effect elsewhere,
were barely felt here at all. Still the economical conditions of
.the workers were such, and the political disfranchisement of
the masses was so galling, that it was clear even then that
■some attempt would be made to remedy their position. Men
�12
THE COMING REVOLUTION
of our day have grown up into liberty, and forget how hard
their fathers had to fight to maintain freedom of the press,
right of public meeting, and the like. The Chartist move
ment, which began a few years after 1832, renewed in politics
the Duke of Richmond’s electoral plan of more than sixty
years before1—see how slow it goes 1—the basis of the pro
gramme being manhood suffrage, annual parliaments, equal
electoral districts, and the ballot. But below this the leaders
had hope of real social reforms. Fine fellows, indeed, those
leaders were. Some of them are living now, and known to
me, and I do think nobler men with higher ideals have rarely
come to the front in English politics. The spirit of the people
was once again rising. That wave of revolutionary movement
which at times seems to spread, no man knows how, from
country to country, had begun to swell. The anti-corn law
agitation, which went on at the same time, though kept up
chiefly in the interest of the capitalist class, served to bring
the miseries of their social condition clearly before the mass of
the workers. Such men as Bronterre O’Brien, FeargusO’Connor, Ernest Jones, or Thomas Cooper—to speak only of
the dead—hoped for a sudden and beneficial change for the
mass of their countrymen. Foreign revolutionists who were
driven here just prior to ’48, fully believed that in this country,
at least, with its great factories and impoverished workpeople,
its great landlords and miserable agricultural laborers, its
political freedom and general disfranchisement,—that here,
here in England, the social revolution would now surely begin,
and the proletariat would at length come by their own. Alas 1
prison, disillusion and death awaited the English leaders; and
their foreign coadjutors, worn out with waiting, still watch
sadly but almost hopelessly for the dawning of the day.
That nationalization of the land, which is now so eagerly
debated alike in the East and in the West, was a portion of
�IN ENGLAND.
13
their creed, and though the true economical explanation of the
industrial phenomena by which they were surrounded was not
clear to them, most of the English leaders certainly wished to
carry out a far more thorough programme than they could
induce their middle-class supporters to adopt. But the move
ment of 1848 failed, partly because the leaders did not know
their own minds at the critical moment, but chiefly because
the people were not ready for the change, and the social evolu
tion had not—has it yet ?—worked itself up to the needful
point. Yet the men who wished for an immediate recognition
might be pardoned for thinking, in the years just preceding
the shake of ’48, that a complete change could not long be
postponed. Ireland was on the eve of that fearful famine
which ended in the death or expatriation of more than a third
of her population; England was approaching a period of
serious depression, which could not, to all appeartince, lead to
any improvement for the mass of the people; all over Europe,
as well as in the British Isles, men had begun to say that
anarchy could not be worse than the existing social oppression.
No wonder that, in England in particular, the well-to-do
classes drew together in anticipation of grave trouble, and
wild schemes of taking hostages of the daughters of the
wealthy were discussed on the other side. But suddenly the
sky cleared. Emigration to America and- Australia offered an
outlet to the more ardent spirits, of which they were not slow
to avail themselves. The Cronrwells and Hampdens of the
movement gladly took refuge beyond sea, and expended their
*
energy in new countries. At the same time, the gold dis
coveries and improved communication gave a marvellous
impulse to trade in every direction. Those who left became
comfortable and wealthy; those who remained had at least
enough to live upon. And so the revolutionary wave of ’48,
like that of ’89, passed by our shores, causing but the slightest
�14
THE COMING REVOLUTION
disturbance, and the mass of the people were left still in “ that
state of life ” in which it pleased their “ betters ” to keep
them.
From that time forward, though political agitation has
been almost at a standstill—for what, after all, was the reform
movement of 1866, or, for that matter, the household suffrage
it led up to ?—our development in other directions has pro
ceeded with a rapidity altogether unprecedented in human
history. Railways, telegraphs, ocean steamers, submarine
cables, have brought the peoples of the world together, and
have enhanced the wealth-producing capacity of our species to
an extent the wisest could not have foreseen as being possible
within so short a period. Those sciolists who attribute the
vast enrichment of England to free trade overlook the fact that
the mastery of man over nature has increased in an almost
immeasurable ratio during the last five and thirty years. We
English, very lightly handicapped in the race, with our cheap
coal, with our densely crowded cities and socialized workshops,
with the first-fruits of mechanical invention, with accumulated
capital at our command, had the heels of the rest of the world
from the start. Luring the whole of this period, from 1848
to 1878, we had almost undisputed control of the markets of
the globe. Our commercial and industrial centres, London,
Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Sheffield, Leeds, Birming
ham, Bradford, Newcastle, not to mention such places as
Middlesboro’ or Barrow, have increased in population to an
extent scarcely to be surpassed even in America. Our agri
cultural population has meantime decreased most seriously,
and mere lounger towns such as Brighton, Cheltenham, Scar
borough, Eastbourne, etc., have sprung up to afford restingplaces for the growing number of the indolent wealthy.
Nevertheless it is clear to all that the leaps and bounds of
commerce, on which our middle-class financiers are never
�IN ENGLAND.
15
weary of congratulating us, have given far more wealth to the
upper classes than comfort or well-being to the lower; that
riches are rolling into the lap of the few, while the many suffer
hideously from recurrent depressions, which sweep away every
vestige of their prosperity; that unrestricted competition
simply degenerates into combination and rigid monopoly, and
that the beautiful theory of supply and demand, as applied to
the working-classes of Great Britain, produces a state of things
so deplorable that philanthropists wring their hands in despair,
and even the economist hacks, whose business it is to chant
the praises of my Lord Capital and all his works, are sometimes
startled into denouncing the very system they champion.
For here in brief is our present position :
First. In no civilized country in the world is there such a
monopoly of the land as in Great Britain.
Second. In no country are capital, machinery, and credit
so concentrated in the hands of a class.
Third. In no country is there such a complete social sepa
ration between classes.
*
* This is apparent to the most superficial observer. But it is
amusing to note that Englishmen of the upper classes are often
ignorant that so it is. Thus a well-known Anglo-Indian official of a
radical turn said not long ago, speaking of Indian legislation: “Legisla
tion in India is, of course, so much more difficult than in England. In
England, you know, if you want to learn exactly what a body of men
want, you just ask some of theii" principal people to dinner and discuss
the business quietly. But in India that sort of social gathering is
almost impossible, or quite useless.” Now, I’ll be bound to say, that
worthy gentleman does not number among his intimate acquaintace a
single individual who works daily at his trade, let alone asking him to
dinner. Yet our modern jurist would legislate for him and his, with
the profound conviction that the right thing had been done. Probably
the idea of what the men wanted would be filtered through an employer;
and he, doubtless, would dine.
Not long ago a great capitalist—a member of the present Liberal
Government—gave an entertainment to the representatives of the
working-men’s clubs of London at the South Kensington Museum. It
was all very nice, I’m told, but the tone of the fete was pretty much
�16
THE COMING REVOLUTION
Fourth. In no country is the contrast between the excessive
wealth of the few and the grinding poverty of the many so
striking.
Fifth. In no country is the machinery of government so
entirely in the hands of the non-producing classes, or are the
people so cajoled out of voting power and due representation.
Sixth. In no country are the people so dependent for their
necessary food on sources of supply thousands of miles away.
Seventh. In no country is it so difficult for a man to rise
out of the wage-earning class.
Eighth. In no country in the world is justice so dear, or
its administration so completely in the hands of the governing
classes who make the laws.
A few figures will bring out some of these points into high
relief.
Thus, with regard to the land: according even to the
statistics in the so-called “ New Domesday Book,”a compila
tion published expressly in the interests of the landlords, 2,192
persons hold 38,726,849 acres of the total small area of Great
Britain and Ireland, the people having been completely driven
from the soil. Mr. Bright’s statement that 30,000 people hold
the agricultural land of Great Britain is positively very near
the truth. Reckoning rents, royalties and ground-rents, it is
calculated that landowners take not less than £100,000,000
out of their countrymen owing to the monopoly they enjoy.
Much of this vast revenue is, no doubt, heavily encumbered
by debts to the capitalists. This, however, makes it no better,
but rather worse, seeing that the mortgages cripple the possesthe same as it must have been at a gathering called by a feudal lord of
old time, when he condescended to regale his retainers with a roasted
ox and “ fixings.” Not a single middle class or upper class man was
asked. Of course I am not saying that the working-classes are not as
much to blame for this state of things as those who patronise them. I
think they are. No one will give them the social equality they have
a right to unless they claim it,—of that we may all be very sure.
�IN ENGLAND.
17
sor and prevent him from making improvements; while there
is no personal relation whatever between the mortgagee and
the tenants or laborers on the mortgaged estate. Bad seasons
and American competition have, it is reckoned, reduced the
value of land in England in many districts not less than
twenty-five per cent. The percentage of bankruptcies and the
registration of bills of sale among farmers have of late years
been something distressing, and as it is impossible to grind the
agricultural laborer down any lower—his average wages are
but three dollars a week, and farmers charge him at the rate
of eight pounds to twenty pounds an acre if he wants a plot of
the land, which is let by the landlord to the farmer at £1 or
£1 10s.—and the farmers can’t continue to pay rent out of
capital, a great change must be close at hand. Agriculture is
still by far our most important industry, involving the employ
ment of more capital and labour than any other. The value
of agricultural produce alone is taken at three hundred million
pounds a year on the average. A few years ago Mr. Caird
put the landlords’ agricultural rents at sixty-seven million
pounds. A system like the present, which has no elasticity
whatever, and acts as a positive injury to the community,
cannot possibly last much longer. When reforms begin they
will not stop short of the point which takes in the agricultural
laborers.
Who can wonder that, as it is, we are so dependent on
foreign countries for an ever-increasing amount of food.
Leaving Ireland aside, the population of England, Wales and
Scotland in 1840 was, in round figures, 18,000,000, or rather
over. In 1882 it was 12,000,000 more, or 30,000,000.
During that period agricultural science has greatly advanced,
and machinery, improved communications and the like have
increased the area of profitable cultivation. In 1840, however,
we imported a total amount of £27,000,000 worth of food;
�18
THE COMING REVOLUTION
in 1882 we imported no less than £160,000,000, and this
amount is steadily increasing. Yet it is the opinion of such
experts as Mr. Lawes, Mr. Caird, Lord Leicester, and others
that, under proper arrangements, at least twice the amount of
food might he profitably grown in Great Britain than
is now raised, and our enormous importation reduced to that
extent. The grave danger of the dependence upon sea-borne
food, which might be cut off during war with any naval power,
it is needless to insist upon. Enough that from this point of
view also the land question demands immediate consideration.
But again, to show the operation of capital and its absorp
tion of the general wealth. In 1841 the wealth produced in
Great Britain has been taken at £514,000,000 ; at- present
the annual wealth produced can scarcely be less £1,800,000,000.
The working-classes, however, who produce this, take a very
small share of it in return for their labor. The actual
number of workers cannot be put at more than eight millions—though this is a difficult figure to get at—and the power they
exert has been estimated at not less than that of one thousand
millions of men. Yet the average wages of the working
classes certainly do not exceed fifteen shillings a week, and the
total amount paid to them would not be more than three
hundred million pounds, as against more than nine hundred
million pounds absorbed by the upper, professional, and
middle classes, in one shape or another. The last census shows,
too, that while the producing class is not increasing so rapidly
in proportion as the non-producing classes, including domestic
servants, the actual pauper class is not decreasing. Mr. Russel
Wallace even estimates those who are more or less dependent
on charity in England and Wales alone at 4,500,000, out of
our total population of 28,000,000.
Nor is there any possibility that under existing conditions
this state of things will be altered. The tendency of improved
�IN ENGLAND.
19
machinery, used, not in the interest of the people at large, or
under their control, but simply to enable manufacturers to
undersell their neighbors and produce cheaply, is to create a
“fringe of labor ” always hanging on the skirts of the market
ready to be absorbed in periods of “ good trade,” only to be
thrown out again when the inevitable glut and stagnation
follow. As to getting out of the wage-earning class, that, as
a rule, is hopeless, and even if one fortunate artisan does
raise himself, he but shoves a more needy man into his place.
Since the beginning of this century there have been also seven
industrial crises, and the crushing effect of those upon the
rank and file of laborers, as well as upon the small shop
keepers who live upon selling them necessities and trifling
luxuries in small quantities, can only be known by those who
have seen the houses of the poor sold up and whole families
driven on to the “ parish ” from no fault whatever of their
own. Yet here in England, drawing wealth from all parts of
the earth, no effort whatever is made to distribute this wealth
more fairly among the people. The luxurious classes are
quite content to see their taxable profits alone rated at nearly
six hundred million pounds, while below men are glad to work
for seventy-five cents a day, and cases of sheer starvation are
common.
Once more as regards politics. That the House of Lords
is a house of landlords is a trite saying ; • but it is worse, for
many of their “ lordships ” are landlords and capitalists at
the same time; and they, consequently, no longer, as in
former times, exercise any control over the capitalist class.
Look, however, at the composition of the House of Commons,
elected, as I have already said, by a minority of the adult
male population, and so arranged that no poor man can
possibly sit in it without help from others. The interests of
the aristocracy are represented there by 165 members; there
�20
THE COMING REVOLUTION
are no fewer than 191 land-owners; bankers, traders, lawyers,
manufacturers, brewers, etc., sum up to 285. Out of a house
of 658 members in all, but two members belong to the work
ing-class—a halfpenny-worth of bread, indeed, to this intoler
able deal of sack.
Now here, surely, is the making altogether of a very
pretty overturn if once the working-classes understand their
position. There can be no mistake whatever about that.
Nevertheless, the external aspect of affairs for the moment is
tranquil in the extreme. Never were the people, to all
appearance, so dull. Our agitators say that men have not
half the spirit of the workers of twenty years ago, to say
nothing of the Chartists of ’48. This is, to a great extent,,
true, and the reasons for it are not far to seek.
In the first place, the capitalists are more than ever masters
of the situation. Almost the whole press and literature of
the country are devoted to their cause. The workers fancy
they are free, and for the most part are quite ignorant of the
fact that the wealth they see around them grows out of their
poorly paid labor. Though they can, as a body, feel the iron
law of wages, though they feel the effects of this law in over
work and short food, they still take it all for granted, and
think—those that do think—that chance, or good times, or
perhaps strikes, may improve their condition.
*
Of the abso
* It is from this iron law of wages that Marx has formulated his
famous demonstration of surplus value. A man accepts from sheer
necessity the competition wages of his time, and sells his force of
labor to the capitalist for the week or the day. But in two or three
hours’ work—Mr. W. Hoyle says, on the average, one and one-quarter
hours’ work—he will produce quite enough social labor-value to keep
him or to refund the wages the capitalist pays him at the end of the
week or day out of the results of his toil. The laborer, however,
does not work these two or three hours a day only, he works ten,
twelve, fourteen, even sixteen, hours a day ; for he has sold his labor
force to the capitalist, who can “ exploit ” it to any extent. Those
extra hours of toil, therefore, over and above the time needed to
�IN ENGLAND.
21:
lute necessity for general social and political combination tobring about genuine reforms, they know at present almost
nothing. Moreover, above this rank and file of laborers therestands the aristocracy of labor—the trade-unions, who, though,
they have done admirable work in the past, now block the
path of radical reform. As an old trade-unionist said of them
the other day, they are a standing protest against the tyranny
of capital, without the slightest idea of progress. Their leaders,
too, are almost without exception, more or less in the pay
of the capitalists—mostly Liberals who, in effect, use them to
*
keep back their fellows. This game has been played for years.
If a working-man shows himself capable, he is flattered; and,,
so far as anything in the shape of real revolutionary work goes,
“ squared.” * It is amusing to see members of the TradeUnion Parliamentary Committee button-holing members in.
that least democratic of all gathering-places, the lobby of the
House of Commons, bowing and scraping, indeed, when, if
create the amount of value represented by the wages paid simply
constitute so much unpaid labor which the capitalist takes in the shape
of the surplus value created by the laborer—the articles of utility,
namely, on which he has been employed. That surplus value the actual
capitalist divides up with landlords, bankers, profit-mongers, and other
gentlemen at large. When a workman first thoroughly grasps this
nice little jugglery which is going on at his expense he is apt to get atrifle warm in the expression of his love for the capitalist and “ society ”
in general. How odd !
* The trade-unionists are a small fraction of the workpeople of
England, yet they constantly pose as if they represented the whole
body, there could be no greater absurdity. They are not even
agreed among themselves on any matter of moment; and are, in truth,
to-day a convention or rather a reactionary body full of the “fads”about limitation of apprentices and the like, though meanwhile
machinery is practically abolishing the skilful handicraftsman. The
plan pursued by the capitalists has been very astute. They have
*
found money for working-class movements just enough to carry them
to the point where danger might begin. Then the support has been
withdrawn. This system of pauper politics has debauched many as
promising working-class leader.
�22
THE COMING REVOLUTION
the workers knew their real position, they would talk as
masters. But this sort of thing will not go on for ever.
Economical pressure is becoming too strong. We are no
longer absolute masters of the markets of the world; the
depression in agriculture seriously affects the home trade;
business is dull, even in the height of summer weather, and
the next industrial crisis may absolutely force the workingclasses to sink their petty jealousies, and the trade-unions
their fancied superiority, in a more thorough movement than
.any yet contemplated. Meanwhile there are not wanting
signs that another serious revolutionary agitation has begun.
All through London political clubs are being formed, at which
social changes of the most complete character are warmly
■discussed. The same in the provinces. Everywhere the
-claims of labor to control production are being debated by
.knots of workmen ; and invariably, so far as my experience
lias gone, from the socialist point of view. I do not say that
there are many who are yet prepared to take action—there
.are not; but the number of workers who are taking the
trouble to consider is increasing with surprising rapidity. For
instance, little more than two years ago a few Englishmen
and women, mostly of the working-class, started the organiza
tion known as the Democratic Federation. The programme
includes the fullest possible representation of the people, and
claims for them full power over every department of the
State. Among its other aims are to obtain free justice,
nationalization of the land, and eventually the control of the
machinery of production by the working-class. Already we
have held some of the largest open-air meetings ever held in
London, and have been almost equally successful in the indus
trial centres of the country. This shows in itself that the
political and social stagnation is rather apparent than real;
�IN ENGLAND.
23-
that much is going on of which no account is taken by thosewho wish not to see.
*
More obvious tokens of coming change, however, are not
wanting. The House of Commons, which has for three cen
turies exercised such preponderant influence in the State, is
falling into universal discredit. This is by no means wholly
due to the strain which has been put upon all its traditions of'
free speech by the determination of a Liberal government to
introduce undisguised despotism in Ireland against the protests
of the representatives of the overwhelming majority of Irish
men. The deterioration had begun before.! First of all, theHouse, which should represent the nation, became merely the
scene of party fights and faction squabbles, and then it hasdegenerated into little better than a machine for registering
the decrees of the cabinet—a body, be it remembered, quiteunknown to our constitution. Even worse than this are thelong, almost interminable utterances of wearisome members
on matters of no moment. Let a local question be once
started, and all the bores in the House are immediately in
full cry. They arc sure to know all about it—it is so unim
* The following is the programme of the Democratic Federation,
as revised and sanctioned at the last conference : (1) Adult Suffrage
(2) Annual Parliaments ; (3) Proportional Representation ; (4) Pay
ment of Members, and of all election expenses out of rates; (5) Bribery,,
treating, and corrupt practices at elections to be made acts of felony ;
(6) Abolition of the House of Lords and of all hereditary authorities ;
(7) Legislative Independence for Ireland; (8) National and Federal
Parliaments, including Representation of Colonies and Dependencies
(9) Nationalization of the land; (10) Disestablishment and disendowment of all State Churches; (11) Free Justice; (12) The Right of'
Making Treaties, of Declaring War, or Concluding Peace to be vested
in the direct representatives of the people.
This point was admirably put the other day in the “ Newcastle
Chronicle.” This journal belongs to Mr. Joseph Cowen, member for
Newcastle-on-Tyne, and is almost the only newspaper in the kingdom
which treats politics and social questions from an independent demo
cratic point of view.
�•24
THE COMING REVOLUTION
portant. But still more depressing is the dead level of
mediocrity among the younger men on both sides of the
House of Commons. The traditions of oratory seem to have
faded out from among them, and men look blankly around to
see which of the industrious and painstaking gentlemen now
posing as budding statesmen may artfully conceal under his
apparent dullness the qualities requisite for leadership in
these stirring times. * Formerly it was not so. Gladstone,
Cornwall Lewis, Bright, Hartington, even Forster, Disraeli,
Lord Robert Cecil, Gathorne Hardy, had early given evidence
■of powers which could fire a democracy or influence a senate.
What man is there among the English members under forty
•or five-and-forty—which is it of the landlordlings or conserva
tive money-bags on the one side, or the plutocrats, prigs, and
professors on the other, of whom the like could with truth be
•said ? The fact is, landlords and capitalists are alike played
■out. Their very finance is stuck in a blind-alley. They
neither of them have a policy they can affect to believe in for
themselves or with which they can hope to stir the pulses of
■the people. In a word, the House of Commons, as at present
constituted, is little more than a middle-class debating club,
•with a party wire-puller in the speaker’s chair. To revive the
memory of its ancient glories it must far more directly repre
sent the hopes and fears, aspirations and grievances of the
great body of Englishmen, must gain strength and vigour in
the free, bluff air of democratic agitation, and trust in the
future to the mass of the people for support.
* I but repeat here what is common talk among political people. It
is not that clever young men in other respects are wanting among the
members. Some can write and lecture very well. What is lacking is
'that indescribable energy, independence, imagination, eloquence—that
-genuine political capacity, in short, which pushes a man to the front
-almost in spite of himself. How is it the Irish members stand out
•from the ruck? Surely because they have a cause which they believe
in, and have a people at their back.
\
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41
IN ENGLAND.
2&
Meanwhile the very discredit of the pseudo-popular
chamber prepares the way for root-and-branch reform. Glad
stone, who is denounced as a revolutionary agitator, is really the
last of the great middle-class transitionists, and with his disap
pearance a new era will begin. An agitation for the abolition,
of the House of Commons would even now find adherents. A
little more, and the idea of a hundred years ago will spring;
again, and a National Convention may force its way to the
front. We have outgrown our political swaddling- clothes,
and in any case constitutional forms are but the outcome of
the social and economical structure beneath them. As that
changes, so must they.
This decadence of Parliament is of course only a symptom..
But outside, also, straws show which way the current is setting.
Apparent stagnation, general mediocrity, almost universal
listlessness in grave concerns, indifference to anything but the
superficial aspects of events—these precede almost every great
upheaval which the world has seen. To take an example of
indifference. Among the ugliest growths of modern society
are the numerous gangs of organized roughs—answering tothe hoodlums of America or the larrikins of Australia—who
parade our great cities, and too often, not content with mauling:
one another, maltreat the peaceful wayfarer. Yet in all the
criticisms of the anonymous press on their action, not one
writer has taken the trouble to analyze the manner in which
these people were fostered into their present brutality. Again,,
of late there has been a surprising increase of vagrants and.
loafers—many of them, by the way, are trained militiamen or
discharged short-service regulars, who would be ugly fellowsin a street fight with their discipline and desperation—men
who already render the highways by no means pleasant travel
ing for foot-passengers. In some districts tramps of this kind
have increased ten-fold in number during the last few years.
�.26
THE COMING REVOLUTION
Here, one would think, was a social phenomenon calling for
•careful attention. Why are able-bodied men and women
thus roaming the country ? What are the causes which
render them homeless, forlorn, and therefore dangerous ? A
bill for their repression was lately brought in by Mr. Pell, a
Conservative, and Professor Bryce, member for the Tower
Hamlets, and a “Philosophical ” Radical. Neither professor,
nor scholar, nor any other human being in the House of
Commons, considered the question from the point of view that
society might be to blame. In the House of Lords, when the
bill went there, my Lord Salisbury and my Lord Fortescue
said matters were getting serious, and such ruffians ought all
to be put under prison regimen. First drive men to want
and misery by social injustice, and then punish them because,
poor devils, they roam the country in search of food. Bravo,
my Lords and gentlemen, the bloody legislation of Queen
Elizabeth against “ the sturdy beggars ” will soon be revived
at this rate.
Once more. Here in London the number of the unemployed
has swollen to almost an alarming extent, even during the
summer months. Idle, good-for-nothing, drunken fellows, said
the capitalist press; let them starve or go to the workhouse. A
friend of mine, a journalist of ability, was shocked at what
he saw, and took up the question. He soon found that the
great majority of these thousands of workless people were
neither idle, good-for-nothing, nor drunken. But the case of
most of them seemed to him desperate. Ready to do almost
anything, there was literally no work for them to do.
My friend sent a note of his inquiries to a well-known
journal. “It was better,” so wrote the manager in reply, “not
to call attention to such matters. It could do no good.” Thus
the easy classes are shut out from even knowing what misery
�IN ENGLAND.
27
there is below them—which any overturn can only improve—
while what may be the result of such neglect in a troubled
time no one stops to consider for a moment. A few other
instances, and I have done. What is called the “ sweating ”
system is increasing in every direction, with the result that
young women actually work fourteen hours a day, for six daysin the week, for four shillings a week, out of which they have
to find house-rent and food! Several cases of this awful
slavery have lately figured in the police courts. On the
railways and elsewhere the tendency is to increase both length
of the hours and intensity of labour to a point which means
continuous exhaustion and early death—the death-rate of the
working-classes is in itself a lesson when placed by the side of'
that of the well-to-do. Lastly, the increase of prostitution,
especially of very young women and children, of late years, isalone enough to show the utter rottenness of our society. And
yet, I repeat, all this passes almost without notice. Our
statesmen and economists, our journalists and philanthropists,
our politicians and jurists cannot but know these things in a
sort of way; but, as to attempting to correct them, that is
quite another affair.
*
Now, let any intelligent man—he can find similar things,,
or not very different probably, within a stone’s throw of him
at home—come with me into some of the dwellings of the poor.
Here, for instance, is a hard-working family living in a single
room: they can afford no more. Father and mother, two
daughters, almost grown up, two boys and a little girl, pig
together in it as best they may. The court is crowded, the
* The increase of luxury among the upper and middle classes is
positively amazing. Only the other day I went straight from a work
ing-man’s work-room to the Harrow and Eton match. Is it within the
bounds of possibility, I said to myself, that, with the schoolmasterfairly abroad, this awful contrast between the waste of the few and thepinching of the many can long continue ?
�-28
THE COMING REVOLUTION
-•dwelling insanitary, the air unwholesome. Yet the two boys
and the girl go to the board school for “ education,” and return
■with just enough knowledge to enable them to appreciate their
social surroundings. They will, at least, be able to read and
write, and know what is going on. Are they likely to increase
the ranks of “ conservative working-men ” or to rest content,
•unless bemused with beer and tobacco, with arrangements
which thus brutify them ? I judge not. In the agricultural
-districts, where there is plenty of room, I have seen arrange
ments quite as bad. Educate children, and then send them
back to such conditions as these : is not this to prepare revolu
tion with both hands ? Still we hear the old fateful answer,
It will last our time. I say it will not.
For, apart from the lectures of which I have spoken, books,
pamphlets and fly-leaves are finding their way into work-shop
;and attic, which deal with the whole social question from the
very bottom. Theories drawn from Dr. Karl Marx’s great
work on Capital, or from the programme of the Social Demo
Scrats of Germany and the Collectivists of France, are put
.forward in a cheap and readable form. Mr. Henry George’s
work on “ Progress and Poverty,” also, has already found tens
of thousands of working-class readers. Professor Wallace’s book
-on “ Land Nationalization” has also been widely read, though
neither of these writers at all meets the views of the advanced
.school on the subject of capital. But pamphlets and leaflets—
.some of which are written by men actually working at their
trade—produce a still greater effect. Our workers have but
little time, and too often little taste, for reading. With them,
therefore, short, pithy tracts are the ones that tell.
*
* Those who have read Paul Louis Courier’s brilliant “ Pamphlet
-des Pamphlets ” will require no further evidence of the influence which
,the pamphlet has had on civilized men. Those who have not will
thank me for calling their attention to that famous little brochure.
�IN ENGLAND.
29
In support of the views I hold as to the approach of a
troublous time, it is scarcely necessary that I should refer to
the growth of the Salvation Army, though this strange combi
nation of the Convulsionists of the pre-revolutionary epoch in
France and the women’s whisky war in America is, thought
fully considered, significant enough. Moreover, in the really
serious conflicts which have taken place between processions of
these enthusiasts and the roughs, neither the police nor the
magistrates have shown much more capacity than they have
displayed in dealing with the gangs in London. While the
elements of disorder thus gather apace, the controlling power
seems smitten with a sort of paralysis. Outbreaks of brutal
savagery are thought worthy of far more leniency than a paltry
theft by a starving woman. At the opposite pole to the
Salvationists stand the Secularists, who are in their way quite
as bigoted, while the most improper exclusion of their leader—
I had nearly said their pope, for Mr. Bradlaugh brooks no
•contradiction in his atheistic church, and has long since regis
tered his right to infallibility—from the House of Commons
has given them a legitimate grievance to agitate about.
As to the Church of England, she has stood so many shocks
and schisms without a topple, that even the growing feeling
against all state churches may take some time to upset her.
Nevertheless, many of the rising young parsons themselves
•denounce the alliance which the ecclesiastical hierarchy has
made with the mammon of unrighteousness, and proclaim
aloud that whatever modern Christianity may find it con
venient to allow, the religion of Christ means more or less
■complete communism. How many of these audacious young
men will sink their principles in fat livings and preach general
.subservience to snoring laborers, I should be sorry to estimate.
Enough that the ideas are abroad quite apart from individual
•backslidings. If religionists of any “stripe” wish to gain a
�30
THE COMING REVOLUTION
permanent hold on the workers nowadays, they must com
bine the prospect of material improvement in this world with
the promise of eternal happiness in the next. Otherwise the
indifference of the mass will be too much for them, the singular
success of the Salvationists notwithstanding.
But some may say, This gloomy picture you paint for us is
too much of one colour: is there no ray of light to irradiate
the landscape ? For the great mass of the working-people of
England, under present social conditions, I say deliberately—
None. On the contrary, the future seems for them darker than
ever. For nowadays we are not as in 1848 : the outlets are
blocked; industrial crises when they come are universal;
capitalism dominates the planet. Electricity, which is already
clearly seen to be the great force of the future, and which
bears the same relation to steam that steam did to the old
horse-power—this illimitable engine of production is also going
without heed or protest into the hands of the capitalist class.
The anarchy consequent upon the existing system of produc
tion and exchange will be only intensified thereby; the “fringe
of labor,” the vagrants, the paupers, the residuum, in short,
will be increased ; the rich will become yet richer; the poor,
poorer still. Even as I write the process is going on so plainly
that he who runs may read the result written on the faces of
the people. As capital rolls up into larger and yet larger
masses, the small shop-keeper is crushed out by the cooperative
associations and the great magazine stores ; huge corporations
carry on business without the slightest regard for the human
machines they employ. So the wheel revolves, grinding ever
smaller the mass of mankind beneath.
Revolution ! What have the workers to fear from revolu
tion I Their life is one perpetual Revolution. They are
never sure of their home or livelihood from one week to
another. It is reckoned that the working-classes of London
�IN ENGLAND.
31
all change their homes once in every two and a half years.
And these homes, bear in mind, become dearer and worse as
times go on. The very improvements in our great cities mean
closer crowding and worse accommodation for those who really
make the nation’s wealth. What have they to fear from a
general overturn ? Nothing. And ere long they’ll know this.
“We lived in garrets forty years ago, we live in garrets now,”
said one of the most active of the old Chartists, who has lived and
agitated to the present time. Nor must the fact be overlooked
that the great machine industries, so farmore developed here than
in any other country, though they have been the means of keep
ing the people down, have also taught them how to combine.
Thus, then, discontent is growing with existing grievances;
the same economical pressure which produces the discontent
and grievances leads to combination; the present lot of the
workers is so bad as a whole that they are beginning to think
no change could be for the worse ; ideas are gradually spreading
among them which would lead them to strive for a complete
overthrow ; there is no authority above which commands their
respect or seriously strives to improve their condition, and the
very increase of man’s power over nature serves but to render
their case worse. The working-classes of England must, in
the near future, be either rulers or slaves; and they are slowly,
very slowly, learning that the choice rests with them. A
serious foreign war would very soon bring the whole to a
head; for assuredly the mass of Englishmen would never
again submit to heavy sacrifices, which would only benefit the
governing classes. Democracies fight, no doubt, but they fight
for an idea or for their own hand. That revolutionary current
also which is moving below the surface in all European
countries can scarcely fail this time to affect us. The impulse
will probably come from without; but, unless we were already
prepared, it would have little effect. When such ideas are
spreading, it needs but a spark to fire the train.
�32
THE COMING REVOLUTION.
If, however, the country is at present in a bad condition
for the many, which all must admit, there is still not wanting
evidence that the English people, under better arrangements,
would soon rise to the level of the most glorious periods of our
past history. Those very lads who now fall into the dangerous
classes from sheer ignorance and bad management—there are,
according to the police, at least three hundred thousand such
people in London alone—form, if taken early and thoroughly
fed and trained, the flower of our navy. The race is really as
capable as ever. In America, in Australia, all the world over,
the Anglo-Saxon blood is still second to none. It is high
time, then, that the great body of Englishmen should take up
their heritage, that they should make common cause with their
Irish brethren, as well in England as in Ireland, in one con
tinuous effort to free the workers of both peoples from class
domination and class greed. There is enough and to spare
for all. Let, then, the men and women who make the wealth
of these islands bid those bunglers who trade upon their welfare
stand back; let them trust to themselves alone to hand on a
nobler industrial England to their children, sinking all petty
jealousies, race hatreds, and personal selfishness in the endeav
our to secure health, home comfort, and true freedom for the
millions who now have neither happiness nor hope. Then,
indeed, that very concentration of population which, under our
present system of unrestricted competition results in squalor,
degradation, and misery, will be our strength, our safety, and
our greatest resource. Then, indeed, England may hold out
to all nations an example of social reorganization, which may
yet give her an ungrudged supremacy among the peoples of
the world. Such an England I for one see before us in the
future: to bring about such a reorganization, I, for one, will
never cease to strive.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The coming revolution in England
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Hyndman, Henry Mayers [1842-1921]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 32 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Date of publication from KVK. Includes bibliographical references. Reprinted from the "North American Review". Stamp on title page: 'South Place Chapel Finsbury, Lending Library'.
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William Reeves
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[1884?]
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T406
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Socialism
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The coming revolution in England), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
Language
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English
Social change
Socialism