1
10
1
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/62e966be2e8a7fb66ccb935d42dc8a9f.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=f2l-FYVQ7qG8xaos616avPvDYuPG%7Ev%7EWAlQ5BDc%7E7z2Fo-2bUljouamwTpUum4nG455XtcjUyxOBwR2eS18CshmtHRq2rPN748iJuA7BvFRx1fz-B1h-h8xBQiPKjQJnnhbfy35EjZ9mDWnJXEZyykXAjzXl3WTvsmblaKfqXWjgNPX5ZV88TiZ-DlOYTqfNZa00Sw8MaT6CboeXIe63dK1RsV9eHebzzacroZBFHj-u1uVQu3s0Ojp22b-gaYozsrra3LpjibtJE6Ni4LhWy2mVw52WIBMreTCSBjqJ0Xvu5FRNbHE8XqUZeO476U1kjkbT8KpO1iPAvVRIy2yxiA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
8a48984ad0fda6268a197945b685dd4e
PDF Text
Text
Price One Penny.
NOW SUFFFRING FIVE YEARS* IMPRISONMENT UNDER
THE
FRENCH REPUBLIC FOR ADVOCATING THE
CAUSE OF THE PEOPLE.
Translated by H. M. Hyndman. Reprinted from “TO-DAY" (Monthly 3d.).
1885.
Published at The Modern Press, 13, Paternoster Row, E.C.
T T is to the young that I wish to address myself to-day. Let the
-L old—I mean of course the old in heart and mind—lay the
pamphlet down therefore without tiring their eyes in reading what
will tell them nothing.
I assume that you are about eighteen or twenty years of age ;
that you have finished your apprenticeship or your studies; that
you are just entering on life. I take it for granted that you have a
mind free from the superstition which your teachers have sought to
force upon you ; that you don’t fear the devil and that you do not go
to hear parsons and ministers rant. More, that you are not one of
the fops, sad products of a society in decay, who display their
well-cut trousers and their monkey faces in the park and who even
at their early age have only an insatiable longing for pleasure at
any price. ... I assume on the contrary that you have a
warm heart and for this reason I talk to you.
A first question, I know, occurs to you—you have often asked
yourself—“ What am I going to be ? ” In fact when a man is
young he understands that after having studied a trade or a science
for several years—at the cost of society, mark—he has not done
this in order that he should make use of his acquirements as instru
ments of plunder for his own gain, and he must be depraved
indeed and utterly cankered by vice, who has not dreamed that one
day he would apply his intelligence, his abilities, his knowledge to
help on the enfranchisement of those who to-day grovel in misery
and in ignorance.
You are one of those who has had such a vision, are you not ?
Very well, let us see what you must do to make your dream a
reality.
I do not know in what rank you were born. Perhaps, favoured
�2
by fortune, you have turned your attention to the study of science;
you are to be a doctor, a barrister, a man of letters, or a scientific
man ; a wide field opens up before you ; you enter upon life with
extensive knowledge, with a trained intelligence ; or, on the other
hand, you are, perhaps, only an honest artisan whose knowledge
of science is limited by the little that you have learnt at school;
but you have had the advantage of learning at first hand what
a life of exhausting toil is the lot of the worker of our time.
I stop at the first supposition, to return afterwards to the second ",
I assume then that you have received a scientific education. Let
us suppose that you intend to be a—doctor.
To-morrow a man in corduroys will come to fetch you to see a
sick woman. He will lead you into one of those alleys where the
opposite neighbours can almost shake hands over the heads of the
passers-by ; you ascend into a foul atmosphere by the flickering
light of a little ill-trimmed lamp ; you climb two, three, four, five
flights of filthy stairs and in a dark, cold room you find the sick
woman, lying on a pallet covered with dirty rags. Pale, livid
children, shivering under their scanty garments, gaze at you with
their big eyes wide open. The husband has worked all his life
twelve or thirteen hours a-day at no matter what; now he has
been out of work for three months. To be out of employ is not
rare in his trade; it happens every year, periodically; but,
formerly, when he was out of work his wife went out as a char
woman—perhaps to wash your shirts—at the rate of fifteen-pence
a-day ; but now she has been bedridden for two months and misery
glares upon the family in all its squalid hideousness.
What will you prescribe for the sick woman, doctor ? you who
have seen at a glance that the cause of her illness is general
anaemia, want of good food, lack of fresh air ? Say a good beef
steak every day ? a little exercise in the country ? a dry and wellventilated bed-room ? What irony ! If she could have afforded
it this would have all have been done long since without waiting
for your advice I
If you have a good heart, a frank address, an honest face, the
family will tell you many things. They will tell you that the woman
on the other side of the partition, who coughs a cough which tears
your heart, is a poor ironer; that a flight of stairs lower down
all the children have the fever ; that the washerwoman who occu
pies the ground floor will not live to see the spring, and that in the
house next door things are still worse.
What will you say to all these sick people ? Recommend them
generous diet, change of air, less exhausting toil. . . . You
only wish you could, but you daren’t, and you go out heartbroken
with a curse on your lips.
The next day, as you still brood over the fate of the dwellers in
this dog-hutch, your partner tells you that yesterday a footman
came to fetch him, this time in a carriage. It was for the owner of
a fine house, for a lady worn out with sleepless nights, who devotes
all her life to dressing, visits, balls, and squabbles with a stupid
husband. Your friend has prescribed for her a less preposterous
habit of life, a less heating diet, walks in the fresh air, an even
temperament and, in order to make up in some measure for the
want of useful work, a little gymnastic exercise in her bedroom.
�3
The one is dying because she has never had enough food nor
enough rest in her whole life ; the other pines because she has never
known what work is since she was born.
If you are one of those miserable natures who adapt themselves
to anything, who at the sight of the most revolting spectacles
console themselves with a gentle sigh and a glass of sherry, then
you will gradually become used to these contrasts and the nature
of the beast favouring your endeavours, your sole idea will be to
lift yourself into the ranks of the pleasure-seekers, so that you may
never again find yourself among the wretched. But if you are a
Man, if every sentiment is translated in your case into an action of
the will, if, in you, the beast has not crushed the intelligent being,
then you will return home one day saying to yourself, “ No, it is
unjust; this must not go on so any longer. It is not enough to
cure diseases, we must prevent them. A little good living and
intellectual development would score off our lists half the patients
and half the diseases. Throw physic to the dogs! Air, good diet,
less crushing toil,—that is how we must begin. Without this, the
whole profession of a doctor is nothing but trickery and humbug.”
That very day you will understand Socialism. You will wish
to know it thoroughly and if altruism is not a word devoid of
significance for you, if you apply to the study of the social question
the rigid induction of the natural philosopher you will end by
finding yourself in our ranks, and you will work, as we work, to
bring about the Social Revolution.
But perhaps you will say, “ Mere practical business may go to
the devil! I will devote myself to pure science ; I will be an
astronomer, a physiologist, a chemist. Such work a 5 that always
bears fruit, if only for future generations.”
Let us first try to understand what you seek in devoting your
self to science. Is it only the pleasure—doubtless immense—
which we derive from the study of nature and the exercise of our
intellectual faculties ? In that case I ask you in what respect does
the philosopher, who pursues science in order that he may pass his
life pleasantly to himself, differ from that drunkard there, who only
seeks for the immediate gratification that gin affords him ? The
philosopher has, past all question, chosen his enjoyment more
wisely, since it affords him a pleasure far deeper and more lasting
than that of the toper. But that is all! Both one and the other
have the same selfish end in view, personal gratification.
But no, you have no wish to lead this selfish life. By working
at science you mean to work for humanity, and that is the idea
which will guide you in your investigations.
A charming illusion ! Which of us has not hugged it for a
moment when giving himself up for the first time to science ?
But then, if you are really thinking about humanity, if you look
to the good of mankind in your studies, a formidable objection rises
before you ; for, however little you may have of the critical spirit,
you must at once note that in dur society of to-day science is only
an appendage to luxury which serves to render life pleasanter for
the few, but remains absolutely inaccessible to the bulk of mankind.
�4
Now more than a century has passed since science laid down
sound propositions as to the origin of the universe, but how many
have mastered them or possess the really scientific spirit of
criticism ? A few thousands at the outside, who are lost in the
midst of hundreds of millions still steeped in prejudices and super
stitions worthy of savages, who are consequently ever ready to serve
as puppets for religious impostors.
Or, to go a step further, let us glance at what science has done
to establish rational foundations for physical and moral health.
Science tells us how we ought to live in order to preserve the health
q£ our own bodies, how to maintain in good conditions of existence
the crowded masses of our population. But does not all the vast
amount of work done in these two directions remain a dead letter
in our books ? We know it does. And why ?—Because science
to-day exists only for a handful of privileged persons, because
social inequality which divides society into two classes—the wage
slaves and the grabbers of capital—renders all its teachings as to
the conditions of a rational existence only the bitterest irony to
nine-tenths of mankind.
I could give plenty more examples, but I stop short : only go
outside Faust’s closet, whose windows, darkened by dust, scarce let
the light of heaven glimmer on its shelves full of books, look round,
and at each step you will find fresh proof in support of this view.
It is now no longer a question of accumulating scientific truths
and discoveries. We need above everything to spread the truths
already mastered by science, to make them part of our daily life,
to render them common property. We have to order things so
that all, so that the mass of mankind, may be capable of understand
ing and applying them ; we have to make science no longer a luxury
but the foundation of every man’s life. This is what justice demands.
I go farther: I say that the interests of science itself lie m the
same direction. Science only makes real progress when a new
truth finds a soil already prepared to receive it. The theory of the
mechanical origin of heat, though enunciated in the last century in
the same terms that Hirn and Clausius formulate it to-day, re
mained for eighty years buried in the Academical Records until
such time as knowledge of physics had spread widely enough to
create a public capable of accepting it. Three generations had to
go by before the ideas of Erasmus Darwin on the variation ot
species could be favourably received from his grandson, and that
they should be admitted by academical philosophers, not without
pressure from public opinion even then. The philosopher, like the
poet or artist, is always the product of the society m which he
moves and teaches.
...
,
,
But, if you are imbued with these ideas, you will understand
that it is above all important to bring about a radical change in
this state of affairs, which to-day condemns the philosopher to be
crammed with scientific truths, and almost the whole of the rest of
human beings to remain what they were five, ten centuries ago,
that is to say in the state of slaves and machines, incapable ot
mastering established truths. And the day when you are imbued
with wide, deep, humane and profoundly scientific trutn, tha ay
you will lose your taste for pure science. You will set to work to
�5
find out the means to effect this transformation, and if you bring to
your investigations the impartiality which has guided you in your
Scientific researches you will of necessity adopt the cause of
Socialism ; you will make an end of sophisms and you will come
amongst us ; weary of working to procure pleasures for this small
group, which already has such a large share of them, you will place
your information and your devotion at the service of the oppressed.
And be sure that then the feeling of duty accomplished, and of
a real accord established between your sentiments and your
actions, you will find powers in yourself of whose existence you
»ever even dreamed. When, too, one day—it is not far distant in
any case, saving the presence of our professors—when one day, I
say, the change for which you are working shall have been brought
about, then, deriving new forces from collective scientific work, and
from the powerful help of armies of labourers who will come to
place their energies at its service, science will take a new bound
forward, in comparison with which the slow progress of to-day will
appear the simple exercises of tyros.
Then you will enjoy science ; that pleasure will be a pleasure for
all.
If you have finished reading law and are about to be called to
the Bar, perhaps you too have some illusions as to your future
activity—I assume that you are one of the nobler spirits, that you
know what altruism means. Perhaps you think “ To devote my
life to an unceasing and vigorous struggle against all injustice ! To
apply my whole faculties to bringing about the triumph of law, the
public expression of supreme justice—can any career be nobler? ”
and you begin the real work of life confident in yourself and in the
profession you have chosen.
Very well: let us turn to any page of the Law Reports and see
what actual life will tell you.
Here we have a rich landowner; he demands the eviction of a
cottier tenant who has not paid his rent. From the legal point of
view the case is beyond dispute ; since the poor farmer can’t pay,
out he must go. But if we look into the facts we shall learn some
thing like this. The landlord has squandered his rents persistently
in rollicking pleasure; the tenant has worked hard all day and
■every day. The landlord has done nothing to improve his estate,
nevertheless its value has trebled in fifty years owing to the rise in
price of land due to the construction of a railway, to the making of
new highroads, to the draining of a marsh, to the enclosure and
cultivation of waste lands; but the tenant who has contributed
largely towards this increase has ruined himself; he fell into the
hands of usurers and, head over ears in debt, he can no longer pay
the landlord. The law, always on the side of property, is quite
clear : the landlord is in the right. But you, whose feeling of
justice has not yet been stifled by legal fictions, what will you do ?
Will you contend that the farmer ought to be turned out upon the
high road ?—for that is what the law ordains—or will you urge that
the landlord should pay back to the farmer the whole of the increase
of value in his property which is due to the farmer’s labour ?—this
is what equity decrees. Which side will you take ? for the law and
against justice ? or for justice and against the law?
�W"
6
Or when workmen have gone out on strike against a master
without notice, which side will you take then ? The side of the
law, that is to say the part of the master who, taking advantage of
a period of crisis, has made outrageous profits ? or against the law,
but on the side of the workers who received during the whole time
only 2s. a day as wages, and saw their wives and children fade
away before their eyes? Will you stand up for that piece of
chicanery which consists in affirming “ freedom of contract ” ? Or
will you uphold equity, according to which a contract entered into
between a man who has dined well and the man who sells his
labour for bare subsistence, between the strong and the weak, is
not a contract.
Take another case. Here in London a man was loitering near
a butcher’s shop. He stole a beefsteak and ran off with it.
Arrested and questioned, it turns out that he is an artisan out of
work, and that he and his family have had nothing to eat for four
days. The butcher is asked to let the man off, but he is all for the
triumph of justice ! He prosecutes, and the man is sentenced to
six months’ imprisonment. Blind Themis so wills it! Does not
your conscience revolt against the law and against society when
you hear similar judgments pronounced every day ?
Or again, will you call for the enforcement of the law against this
man who, badly brought up and ill-used from his childhood, has
arrived at man’s estate without having heard one sympathetic word,
and completes his career by murdering his neighbour in order to
rob him of a shilling ? Will you demand his execution, or—worse
still—that he should be imprisoned for twenty years, when you know
very well that he is rather a madman than a criminal, and, in any
case, that his crime is the fault of our entire society ?
Will you claim that these weavers should be thrown into prison
who in a moment of desperation have set fire to a mill ? That this
man who shot at a crowned murderer should be imprisoned for
life ? That these insurgents should be shot down who plant the
flag of the future on the barricades ?—no, a thousand times no !
If you reason instead of repeating what is taught you; if you
analyse the law and strip off those cloudy fictions with which it
has been draped in order to conceal its real origin, which is the
right of the stronger, and its substance, which has ever been the
consecration of all the tyrannies handed down to mankind through
its long and bloody history; when you have comprehended this,
your contempt for the law will be profound indeed. You will
understand that to remain the servant of the written law is to place
yourself every day in opposition to the law of conscience, and to
make a bargain on the wrong side ; and since this struggle cannot
go on for ever you will either silence your conscience and become
a scoundrel, or you will break with tradition, and you will work
with us for the utter destruction of all this injustice, economical,
social, and political.
But then you will be a Socialist, you will be a Revolutionist.
. And you, young engineer, you who dream of improving the lot
of the workers by the application of science to industry,—what a
sad disappointment, what terrible disillusions await you ! You
devote the youthful energy of your mind to working out the scheme
�7
of a railway which, running along the brink of precipices anti
burrowing into the very heart of mountains of granite, will bind,
together two countries which nature has separated. But, once at
work, you see whole regiments of workers decimated by privations
and sickness in this dark tunnel, you see others of them returning
home carrying with them may be a few pence and the undoubted
seeds of consumption, you see human corpses—the results of
a grovelling greed—as landmarks along each yard of your road, and,
when the railway is finished, you see lastly that it becomes the
highway for the artillery of an invading army. . . .
You have given up the prime of your youth to perfect an in
vention which will facilitate production, and, after many experi
ments, many sleepless nights, you are at length master of this
valuable discovery. You make use of it and the result surpasses
your expectations. Ten, twenty thousand men are thrown
out upon the streets ! Those who remain, most of them children,
will be reduced to mere machines I Three, four, ten masters will
make their fortunes and will drink deep on the strength of it. . . .
Is this your dream ?
. , ,
,
.u <Finally, you study recent industrial advances and you see that
the sempstress has gained nothing, absolutely nothing, by the in
vention of the sewing machine; that the labourer m the bt.
Gothard tunnel dies of ankylostoma, notwithstanding diamond
drills • that the mason and the day labourer are out of work just
as before at the foot of the Giffard lifts—and, if you discuss social
problems with the same independence of spirit which has guided
you in your mechanical investigations, you necessarily come to the
conclusion that under the domination of private property and
wage-slavery, every new invention, far from increasing the well
being of the worker, only makes his slavery heavier, his labour
more degrading, the periods of slack work more frequent, the crisis
sharper, and that the man who already has every conceivable
pleasure for himself is the only one who profits by it.
.
What will you do when you have once come to this conclusion .
—either you will begin by silencing your conscience by sophisms ;
then one fine day you will bid farewell to the honest dreams of
your youth and you will try to obtain, for yourself, what commands
pleasure and enjoyment—you will then go over into the camp of
the exploiters. Or if you have a tender heart, you will say to
yourself
“ No, this is not the time for inventions. Let us work
first to transform the domain of production ; when private property
is put an end to, then each new advance in industry will be made
for the benefit of all mankind ; and this mass of workers, mere
machines as they are to-day, will then become thinking beings who
apply to industry their intelligence, strengthened by study and
skilled in manual labour, and thus mechanical progress will take
a bound forward which will carry out in fifty years what nowa
days we cannot even dream of.
And what shall I say to the schoolmaster—not to the man who
looks upon his profession as a wearisome business, but to him who
when surrounded by a joyous band of young pickles feels exhilarated
by their cheery looks, and in the midst of their happy laughter,and
who tries to plant in their little heads those ideas of humanity
which he cherished himself when he was young.
�8
Often I see that you are sad and I know what it is that makes
you knit your brows. This very day, your favourite pupil, who is
not very well up in Latin it is true, but who has none the less an
excellent heart, recited the story of William Tell with so much
vigour! his eyes sparkled, he seemed to wish to stab all tyrants
there and then ; he gave with such fire the passionate lines of
Schiller:—
Before the slave when he breaks his chain,
Before the free man tremble not.
But when he returned home, his mother, his father, his uncle,
sharply rebuked him for want of respect to the minister or the
rural policeman ; they held forth to him by the hour on “ prudence,
respect for authority, submission to his betters ”, till he put Schiller
aside in order to read “ Self-Help.”
And then only yesterday you were told that your best pupils have
all turned out badly ; the one does nothing but dream of becoming
an officer ; another in league with his master robs the workers of
their slender wages ; and you, who had such hopes of these young
people, you now brood over the sad contrast between your ideal
and life as it is.
You still brood over it ! then I foresee that in two years at the
outside, after having suffered disappointment after disappointment,
you will lay your favourite authors on the shelf, and you will end
by saying that Tell was no doubt a very honest fellow, but after all
a trifle cracked, that poetry is a first-rate thing for the fireside,
especially when a man has been teaching the rule-of-three all day
long, but still poets are always in the clouds and their views have
nothing to do with the life of to-day, nor with the next visit of the
Inspector of Schools. . . .
Or, on the other hand, the dreams of your youth will become the
firm convictions of your mature age. You will wish to have wide,
human education for all, in school and out of school; and, seeing
that this is impossible in existing conditions, you will attack
the very foundations of bourgeois society. Then, discharged,
as you will be by the Education Department, you will leave
your school and come among us and be of us; you will tell men of
riper years but of smaller attainments than yourself, how enticing
knowledge is, what mankind ought to be, nay what we could be.
You will come and work with Socialists for the complete trans
formation of the existing system, will strive side by side with us to
attain true equality, real fraternity, never-ending liberty for the
world.
Lastly you, young artist, sculptor, painter, poet, musician, do
you not observe that the sacred fire which inspired your prede
cessors is wanting in the men of to-day ? that art is commonplace
and mediocrity reigns supreme ?
Could it be otherwise ? The delight of having re-discovered the
ancient world, of having bathed afresh in the springs of nature
which created the master-pieces of the Renaissance no longer
exists for the art of our time ; the revolutionary ideal has left it
cold until now, and, failing an ideal, our art fancies that it has
found one in realism when it painfully photographs in colours the
dewdrop on the leaf of a plan# imitates the muscles in the leg of a
�9
eow, or describes minutely in prose and in verse the suffocating
filth of a sewer, the boudoir of a whore of high degree.
“ But, if this is so, what is to be done ? ” you say.—If, I reply,
the sacred fire that you say you possess is nothi ng better than a
smoking wick, then you will go on doing as you have done, and
your art will speedily degenerate into the trade of decorator of
tradesmen’s shops, of a purveyor of libretti to third-rate operettas
and tales for Christmas Annuals—most of you are already running
down that grade with a fine head of steam on.
....
But, if your heart really beats in unison with that of humanity,
if like a true poet you have an ear for Life, then, gazing out upon this
sea of sorrow whose tide sweeps up around you, face to face with
these people dying of hunger, in the presence of these corpses piled
up in the mines, and these mutilated bodies lying in heaps on the
barricades, looking on these long lines of exiles who are going to
bury themselves in the snows of Siberia and in the marshes of
tropical islands, in full view of this desperate battle which is
being fought, amid the cries of pain from the conquered and the
orgies of the victors, of heroism in conflict with cowardice, of
noble determination and contemptible cunning—you cannot re
main neutral: you will come and take the side of the oppressed
because you know that the beautiful, the sublime, the spirit of life
itself are on the side of those who fight for light, for humanity, for
justice!
You stop me at last!
“ What the devil!” you say. “ But if abstract science is a luxury
and the practice of medicine mere chicane ; if law spells injustice
and mechanical invention is but a means of robbery; if the school,
at variance with the wisdom of the practical man,” is sure to be
overcome, and art without the revolutionary idea can only de
generate, what remains for me to do ?”
Well, I will tell you.
A vast and most enthralling task ; a work in which your actions
will be in complete harmony with your conscience, an undertaking
capable of rousing the noblest and most vigorous natures.
What work ?—I will now tell you.
It rests with you either to palter continually with your con
science, and in the end to say one fine day “ Perish humanity,
provided I can have plenty of pleasures and enjoy them to the full,
so long as the people are foolish enough to let me.” Or, once
more the inevitable alternative, to take part with the Socialists
and work with them for the complete transformation of society.
Such is the irrefragable consequence of the analysis we have gone
through. That is the logical conclusion which every intelligent
man must perforce arrive at, provided that he reasons honestly
about what passes around him, and discards the sophisms which
his bourgeois education and the interested views of those about
him whisper in his ear.
This conclusion once arrived at, the question, “ What is to be
done ?” is naturally put.
The answer is easy.
Leave this environment in which you are placed and where it is
the fashion to say that the people are nothing but a lot of brutes,
Come among these people—and the answer will come of itself.
�IO
You will see that everywhere, in England as well as in France,
in Germany as well as in Italy, in Russia as well as in the United
States, everywhere where there is a privileged and an oppressed
class, there is a tremendous work going on in the midst of the
working-class, whose object is to break down for ever the slavery
enforced by the capitalist feudality and to lay the foundation of a.
society established on the basis of justice and equality. It is
no longer enough for the man of the people to-day to pour forth
his complaints in one of these songs whose melody breaks your
heart, such as were sung by the serfs of the eighteenth century
and are still sung by the Slav peasant; he labours with his
fellow-toilers for his enfranchisement, with the knowledge of
what he is doing and against every obstacle put in his way.
His thoughts are constantly exercised in considering what
should be done in order that life, instead of being a curse for threefourths of mankind, may be a real enjoyment for all. He takes up
the hardest problems of sociology and tries to solve them by his
good sense, his spirit of observation, his hard experience. In order
to come to an understanding with others as miserable as himself,
he seeks to form groups, to organise. He forms societies, main
tained with difficulty by small contributions ; he tries to make
terms with his fellows beyond the frontier, and he prepares the
day when wars between peoples shall be impossible far better than
the frothy philanthropists who now potter with the fad of universal
peace. In order to know what his brothers are doing, to have a
closer connection with them, to elaborate his ideas and pass them
round, he maintains—but at the price of what privations, what
ceaseless efforts!—his working press. At length when the hour
has come he rises, and reddening the pavements and the barricades
with his blood, he bounds forward to conquer those liberties which
the rich and powerful will afterwards know how to corrupt and to
turn against him again.
What an unending series of efforts ! what an incessant struggle !
What a toil perpetually begun afresh; sometimes to fill up the
gaps occasioned by desertion—the result of weariness, corruption,
prosecutions ; sometimes to rally the broken forces decimated by
fusillades and cold-blooded butchery I at another time to recom
mence the studies sternly broken off by wholesale slaughter.
The newspapers are set on foot by men who have been obliged
to force from society scraps of knowledge by depriving themselves
of sleep and food ; the agitation is kept up by halfpence deducted
from the amount needed to get the barest necessaries of life ; and
all this under the constant dread of seeing his family reduced to
the most fearful misery, as soon as the master learns that “ his
workman, his slave, is tainted with Socialism.”
This is what you will see if you go among the people._
And in this endless struggle how often has not the toiler vainly
asked, as he stumbled under the weight of his burden :
“ Where,
TAUGHT AT
then,
are these
OUR EXPENSE ?
young
THESE
CLOTHED WHILE THEY STUDIED ?
people
who have
YOUTHS WHOM
WE
FED
been
AND
WHERE ARE THOSE FOR WHOM,
�II
OUR
BENT
BACKS
DOUBLE
BENEATH
BURDENS
OUR
OUR
AND
BELLIES EMPTY, WE HAVE BUILT THESE HOUSES, THESE COLLEGES,
THESE LECTURE-ROOMS, THESE MUSEUMS ?
FOR
WHOSE
BENEFIT
PRINTED THESE
read
?
Where
POSSESS
ITSELF IS
THE
WITH
WE,
FINE
are
OUR
BOOKS, MOST
they,
SCIENCE
NOT WORTH
OF
these
WORN
FACES, HAVE
WE CANNOT
OF WHICH
professors
MANKIND, AND
A RARE
WHERE ARE THE MEN
PALE,
WHOM
FOR
MEN WHO ARE EVER SPEAKING IN PRAISE OF LIBERTY,
THINK TO CHAMPION OUR
BENEATH THEIR FEET ?
FREEDOM, TRAMPLED AS
WHERE
THE
WHOLE
WITH TEARS
FIND
GANG
IN
OF
THEIR
THEMSELVES
HYPOCRITES WHO
EYES BUT WHO
AMONG
US
HELPING
ARE THE
AND
NEVER
IT IS EACH DAY
ARE THEY, THESE
POETS, THESE PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS?
to
HUMANITY
WHERE
CATERPILLAR ?
EVEN
claim
who
WRITERS AND
WHERE IN A WORD IS
SPEAK
OF
NEVER, BY
US
IN
THE
PEOPLE
ANY
CHANCE,
OUR
LABORIOUS
WORK ?”
Where are they, indeed ?
Why, some are taking their ease with the most cowardly in
difference; others, the majority, despise the “dirty mob,” and are
ready to pounce upon them if they dare touch one of their
privileges.
Now and then, it is true, a young man comes among us who*
dreams of drums and barricades, and seeks sensational scenes;
but he deserts the cause of the people as soon as he perceives that
the road to the barricade is long, that the work is heavy, and that
the crowns of laurel to be won in this campaign are inter
mingled with thorns. Generally these are ambitious schemers out
of work, who having failed in their first efforts, try in this way to
cajole people out of their votes, but who a little later will be the
first to denounce them, when the people wish to apply the
principles which they themselves have professed ; perhaps will
even be ready to turn artillery and Gatlings upon them if they dare
to move before they, the heads of the movement, give the signal.
Add mean insult, haughty contempt, cowardly calumny from
the great majority, and you know what the people may expect
now-a-days from most of the youth of the upper and middle classes
in the way of help towards the social evolution.
But then you ask, “ What shall we do ? ” When there is every
thing to be done I When a whole army of young people would
find plenty to employ the entire vigour of their youthful energy, the
full force of their intelligence and their talents to help the people
in the vast enterprise they have undertaken 1
What shall we do ? Listen.
You lovers of pure science, if you are imbued with the principles
of Socialism, if you have understood the real meaning of the revo
lution which is even now knocking at the door, don’t you see that
all science has to be recast in order to place it in harmony with the
new principles; that it is your business to accomplish in this field
�12
;,
a revolution far greater than that which was accomplisnea m every
branch of science during the eighteenth century ? Don’t you under
stand that history—which to-day is an old wife’s tale about great
kings, great statesinen and great parliaments—that history itself
has to be written from the point of view of the people, from the
point of view of work done by the masses in the long evolutions of
mankind ? That social economy—which to-day is merely the
sanctification of capitalist robbery—has to be worked out afresh as
well in its fundamental principles as in its innumerable applica
tions ? That anthropology, sociology, ethics must be completely
recast, and that the very natural sciences themselves, regarded
from another point of view, must undergo a profound modification,
alike in regard to the conception of natural phenomena and with
respect to the method of exposition.
Very well, then. Set to work I Place your abilities at the com
mand of the good cause. Especially help us with your clear logic
to combat prejudice and to lay by your synthesis the foundations
of a better organisation ; yet more, teach us to apply in our daily
arguments the fearlessness of true scientific investigation, and show
us, as your predecessors did, how men dare sacrifice even life itself
for the triumph of the truth.
You, doctors, who have learnt Socialism by a bitter experience,
never weary of telling us to-day, to-morrow, in season and out of
season, that humanity itself hurries onward to decay if men remain
in the present conditions of existence and of work ; that all your
medicaments must be powerless against disease while the majority
of mankind vegetate in conditions absolutely contrary to those
which science tells us are healthful; that it is the causes of disease
which must be uprooted, and what is necessary to remove them.
Come with your scalpel and dissect for us with an unerring
hand this society of ours hastening to putrefaction. Tell us what
a rational existence should and might be. Insist, as true surgeons,
that a gangrenous limb must be amputated when it may poison the
whole body.
You, who have worked at the application of science to industry,
come and tell us frankly what has been the outcome of your dis
coveries. Convince those who dare not march boldly towards the
future, what new inventions the knowledge we have already acquired
carries in its womb, what industry could do under better conditions,
what man might easily produce if he produced always with a view
to enhance his own production.
You poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, if you understand your
true mission and the very interests of art itseli, come with us.
Place your pen, your pencil, your chisel, your ideas at the service
of the revolution. Figure forth to us, in your eloquent style or
your impressive pictures, the heroic struggles of the people against
their oppressors ; fire the hearts of our youth with that glorious
revolutionary enthusiasm which inflamed the souls of our ancestors ;
tell women what a noble career is that of a husband who devotes
his life to the great cause of social emancipation. Show the people
how hideous is their actual life, and place our hand on the causes
of its ugliness; tell us what a rational life would be if it did not
encounter at every step the follies and the ignominies of our pre
sent social order.
�J3
Lastly, all of you who possess knowledge, talent, capacity,
industry, if you have a spark of sympathy in your nature, come,
you and your companions, come and place your services at the
disposal of those who most need them. And remember, if you do
come, that you come not as masters, but as comrades in the
struggle ; that you come not to govern but to gain strength for
yourselves in a new life which sweeps upwards to the conquest of
the future; that you come less to teach than to grasp the aspira
tions of the many : to divine them, to give them shape, and then to
work, without rest and without haste, with all the fire of youth and
all the judgment of age, to realise them in actual life—then and
then only will you lead a complete, a noble, a rational existence.
Then you will see that your every effort on this path bears with it
fruit in abundance, and this sublime harmony once established
between your actions and the dictates of your conscience, will give
you powers which you never dreamt lay dormant in yourselves.
The never-ceasing struggle for truth, justice, and equality
among the people, whose gratitude you will earn—what nobler
career can the youth of all nations desire than this ?
It has taken me long to show you of the well-to-do classes that
in view of the dilemma which life presents to you, you will be
forced, if courageous and sincere, to come and work side by side
with Socialists, and champion in their ranks the cause of the social
revolution. And yet how simple this truth is after all I But when
one is speaking to those who have suffered from the effects of
bourgeois surroundings, how many sophisms must be combated !
how many prejudices overcome ! how many interested objections
pushed aside 1
It is easy to be brief to-day in addressing you, the youth of the
people. The very pressure of events impels you to become Social
ists, however little you may have the courage to reason and to act.
To rise from the ranks of the working people, and not devote
oneself to bringing about the triumph of Socialism, is to miscon
ceive the real interests at stake, to give up the cause and the true
historic mission.
Do you remember the time, when still a mere lad, you went
down one winter’s day to play in your dark court ? The cold
nipped your shoulders through your thm clothes, and the mud
worked into your worn-out shoes. Even then when you saw
chubby children richly clad pass in the distance, looking at you
with an air of contempt—you knew right well that these imps,
dressed up to the nines, were not the equals of yourself and your
comrades, either in intelligence, common sense, or energy. But,
later, when you were forced to shut yourself up in a filthy
factory from five or six o’clock in the morning, to remain twelve
hours on end close to a whirling machine, and, a machine yourself,
forced to follow day after day for whole years in succession its
movements with their relentless throbbing—during all this time
they, the others, were going quietly to be taught at fine schools, at
academies, at the universities. And now these same children, less
intelligent, but better taught than you, and become your masters,
are enjoying all the pleasures of life, and all the advantages of
civilisation—and you ? What sort of lot awaits you ?
�T4
You return to little, dark, damp lodgings where five or six
human beings pig together within a few square feet; where your
mother, sick of life, aged by care rather than in years, offers you
dry bread and potatoes as your only food, washed down by a
blackish fluid called, in irony, tea ; and to distract your thoughts
you have ever the same never-ending question, “ How shall I be
able to pay the baker to-morrow, and the landlord the day after ? ”
What! must you drag cn the same weary existence as your
father and mother for thirty or forty years ? Must you toil your
life long to procure for others all the pleasures of well-being, of
knowledge, of art, and keep for yourself only the eternal anxiety
as to whether you can get a bit of bread ? Will you for ever give
up all that makes life so beautiful, to devote yourself to providing
every luxury for a handful of idlers ? Will you wear yourself out
with toil and have in return only trouble, if not misery, when hard
times—the fearful hard times—come upon you ? Is this what you
long for in life ?
Perhaps you will give up ? Seeing no way out of your con
dition whatever, maybe you say to yourself, “ Whole generations
have undergone the same lot, and I, who can alter nothing in the
matter, I must submit also ! Let us work on then and endeavour
to live as well as we can ! ”
Very well. In that case life itself will take pains to enlighten
you.
One day a crisis comes, one of those crises which are no longer
mere passing phenomena, as they were a while ago, but a crisis
which destroys a whole industry, which plunges thousands of
workers into misery, which crushes whole families. You struggle
like the rest against the calamity. But you will soon see how your
wife, your child, your friend, little by little succumb to privations,
fade away under your very eyes, and for sheer want of food, for
lack of care and medical assistance, they end their days on the
pauper’s stretcher, while the life of the rich sweeps past in joyous
crowds through the streets of the great city gleaming in the sun
light—utterly careless and indifferent to the dying cries of those
who perish.
Then you will understand how utterly revolting this society is ;
you will reflect upon the causes of this crisis, and your examina
tion will go to the very depths of this abomination which puts
millions of human beings at the mercy of the brutal greed of a
handful of useless triflers ; then you will understand that Socialists
are right when they say that our present society can be, that it
must be, reorganised from top to bottom.
To pass from general crises to your particular case, one day when
your master tries by a new reduction of wages to squeeze out of
you a few more sous in order to increase his fortune still further,
you will protest; but he will haughtily answer, “ Go and eat grass,
if you will not work at the price I offer.” Then you will under
stand that your master not only tries to shear you like a sheep, but
that he looks upon you as an inferior kind of animal altogether;
that not content with holding you in his relentless grip by means
of the wage-system, he is further anxious to make you a slave in
every respect. Then you will either bow down before him, you
�IC
will give up the feeling of human dignity, and you will end by
suffering every possible humiliation. Or the blood will rush to
your head, you will shudder at the hideous slope on which you are
slipping down, you will retort, and, turned out workless on the
street, you will understand how right Socialists are when they say
“ Revolt 1 rise against this economical slavery, for that is the
cause of all slavery.” Then you will come and take your place in
the ranks of the Socialists, and you will work with them, for the
complete destruction of all slavery,—economical, social and
political.
Some day again you will learn the story of that charming young
girl whose brisk gait, frank manners, and cheerful conversation •
you so lovingly admired. After having struggled for years and
years against misery, she left her native village for the metropolis.
There she knew right well that the struggle for existence must be
hard, but she hoped at least to be able to gain her living honestly.
Well, now you know what has been her fate. Courted by the son
of some capitalist she allowed herself to be enticed by his fine
words, she gave herself up to him with all the passion of youth,
only to see herself abandoned with a baby in her arms. Ever
courageous she never ceased to struggle on ; but she broke down
in this unequal strife against cold and hunger, and she ended her
days in one of the hospitals, no one knows which........................................
What will you do ? Once more there are two courses open to
you. Either you will push aside the whole unpleasant reminiscence
with some stupid phrase :—“ She wasn’t the first and won’t be
the last,” you will say; perhaps, some evening, you will be heard in
a public room, in company with other beasts like yourself, out
raging the young girl’s memory by some dirty stories ; or, on the
other hand, your remembrance of the past will touch your heart;
you will try to meet the wretched seducer to denounce him to his
face ; you will reflect upon the causes of these events which recur
every day, and you will comprehend that they will never cease, so
long as society is divided into two camps, on one side the wretched
and on the other the lazy—the jugglers with fine phrases and
bestial lusts. You will understand that it is high time to bridge
over this gulf of separation, and you will rush to place yourself
among the Socialists.
And you, woman of the people, has this tale left you cold and
unmoved ? While caressing the pretty head of that child who
nestles close to you, do you never think about the lot that awaits
him, if the present social conditions are not changed ? Do you
never reflect on the future awaiting your young sister, and all your
own children ? Do you wish that your sons, they too, should
vegetate as your father vegetated, with no other care than how to
get his daily bread, with no other pleasure than that of the gin
palace ? Do you want your husband, your lads, to be ever at the
mercy of the first comer who has inherited from his father a capital
to exploit them with ? Are you anxious that they should always
remain slaves of a master, food for powder, mere dung wherewith
to manure the pasture-lands of the rich expropriator ?
Nay, never ; a thousand times no ! I know right well that your
blood has boiled when you have heard that your husbands after
4C
�16 '
they entered on a strike, full of fire and determination, have ended
by accepting, hat in hand, the conditions dictated by the bloated
bourgeois in a tone of haughty contempt! I know that you have
admired those Spanish women who in a popular rising presented
their breasts to the bayonets of the soldiery in the front ranks ot
the insurrectionists ! I am certain that you mention with rever
ence the name of the woman who lodged a bullet in the chest of
that ruffianly official who dared to outrage a Socialist prisoner in
his cell. And I am confident that your heart beat faster when you
read how the women of the people in Paris gathered under a rain
of shells to encourage “ their men ” to heroic action.
All this, I say, I have no doubt about, and that is why I cannot
question that you also, you will end by joining those who work for
the conquest of the future.
Every one of you then, honest young folks, men and women,
peasants, labourers, artisans and soldiers, you will understand
what are your rights and you will come along with us ; you will
come in order to work with your brethren in the preparation of
that Revolution which sweeping away every vestige of slavery,
tearing the fetters asunder, breaking with the old worn-out traditions
and opening to all mankind a new and wider scope of joyous ex
istence, shall at length establish true Liberty, real Equality, un
grudging Fraternity throughout human society; work with all%
work for all—the full enjoyment of the fruits of their labour, the
complete development of all their faculties ; a rational, human and
happy life !
Don’t let anyone tell us that we—but a small band—are too
weak to attain unto the magnificent end at which we aim.
Count and see how many of us there are who suffer this in
justice.
We peasants who work for others and who mumble the straw
while our master eats the wheat, we by ourselves are millions of
men ; so numerous are we that we alone form the mass of the
people.
We workers who weave silks and velvets in order that we may
be clothed in rags, we, too, are a great multitude ; and when the
clang of the factories permits us a moment’s repose, we overflow
the streets and squares like the sea in a spring tide.
We soldiers who are driven along to the word of command, or
by blows, we who receive the bullets for which our officers get
crosses and pensions, we, too, poor fools who have hitherto known
no better than to shoot our brothers, why we have only to make a
right-about-face towards these plumed and decorated personages
who are so good as to command us, to see a ghastly pallor over
spread their faces.
Ay, all of us together, we who suffer and are insulted daily, we
are a multitude whom no man can number, we are the ocean that
can embrace and swallow up all else.
When we have but the will to do it, that very moment will
Justice be done: that very instant the tyrants of the earth shall
bite the dust.
Catalogue of Publications of the Modern Press sent on receipt of stamped
envelope.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
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>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
An appeal to the young
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich [1842-1921]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 23 cm.
Series number: no. 6
Notes: Stamp on title page: 'South Place Chapel Finsbury, Lending Library'. Reprinted from 'To-Day'. At the time of publication the author was serving "five years' imprisonment under the French Republic for advocating the cause of the people" [Title page].
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
The Modern Press
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1885
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G4969
Subject
The topic of the resource
Socialism
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Hyndman, H. M. (Henry Mayers) (tr)
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 (An appeal to the young), 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>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Peter Kropotkin
Socialism
Young people